Hi everyone,

Well this is my first time posting to the blog so I guess I have lots of catching up to do. It's been great to read up on the happening's in everyone lives, congrats to everyone who has recently had babies/bought houses/got married; it's great to hear everyone is enjoying life.

Life has been good for me, I am still in Fort St. John working for Sander Rose Trobak LLP. I wrote the UFE to become a Chartered Accountant last year in September. I achieved honours which is the top 2% in Canada of around 2,700 writers, I am very happy about it and it means that school is finally over. A short bio and pictures were put in the BC CA magazine; on the right is one of the pictures that was taken for the magazine.

When I finished I swore I would never have anything to do with the hell called CASB (Chartered Accountant School of Business); however, I have just signed up to be a facilitator coming up in October. It should be interesting to be on the other side.

Last November I went to Maui for a Taekwondo tournament. It was amazing, I placed 1st in my division for Sparring and 3rd for Poomsae (patterns). My boyfriend, Mike, is a Taekwondo instructor and competed in the tournament as well. I stayed there for 10 days and I have to say I can't wait to go back. I went scuba diving and snorkeling, as well as up Mount Haleakala and travelled the treacherous road to Hana.

Scuba diving was a lot of fun; our guide would hand us different types of 'sea life' to get a picture with, he tried to hand me an octopus but as you may see from the picture I was not impressed. It's so beautiful there, the air smells like flowers and the weather is great! I'm going on vacation for two weeks in January and am either going to Mexico or Hawaii, so excited!

I also went to Quebec in February this past year. That was an experience! Mike was competing in Nationals; they were held in Montreal. I figured that I would take an additional week off and go with him so we could take some time to explore Montreal and go shopping.

We stayed in Old Montreal for the latter part of our trip; however we didn't get to do much exploring. When we arrived there was a snow storm which dropped about 3 feet in town; then it followed by a day of nice weather before it dropped down to -30 with the Windchill! We spent a lot of time in our hotel and running to the Metro to shop underground; although we did visit the Museum and Science Centre which were lots of fun. I've decided that is the last time I take a 'vacation' anywhere in Canada in the Winter :-)

Well that's about it, these days work has slowed down which is great before the audit season begins. I just bought a 2008 Ford Escape Ltd; I love it! I won't say I'm looking forward to winter but having heated leather seats will ease the pain!

Hope everyone is doing well!

Anne