Christmas 2008

Meghan, Ariel, Katie, Matt, Randy, Austin, Andrew, Brian, Steve, Stacy, Rylan, Nick, MacKenzie, Lanae, Merrilee, and Lisa

Andrew, Austin, Brian, Matt, Nick, Katie, Ariel, Ryan, Meghan, Lanae, MacKenzie

Ariel and Andrew





Austin and Brian
Matt

Lanae, MacKenzie, and Nick


Rylan



Randy, Merrilee, Katie, and Stacy




Meghan

Stacy, Nate, Breckun, Jake, Austin, Matt, Andrew, Joey, Steve, Barb, Tim, Meghan, Jessica,Duncan, Josh, Stetsen, Lindsay, Ariel, and Lisa

Nate, Breckun, Jake, Austin, Matt, Andrew, Joey, Meghan, Jessica, Duncan, Josh, Stetsen, Lindsay, Ariel
Josh and Stetson

Winnipeg....Car Theft Capital of Canada

Well I thought I would start my Wednesday morning off right and get up and go to the club and workout. So 6:15 a.m. I head out to my vehicle, it is getting a little cooler in the mornings so I hit the auto start before I got to my car. I noticed the blinker light was going and thought that was odd...I must have hit it on my way out last night. So I proceed to unlock the door (using my remote unlock button) and get into the vehicle. When I get in the car my passport is laying on my seat, things from the glove compartment are on the floor, the panels that cover the steering wheel area by the ignition (not real good with car terminology!) are on the floor, so there are wires exposed and my ignition unit is totally ruined. Somebody tried to steal my car last night, they couldn't get it to start, so just left it damaged so I couldn't drive it either.



So I proceed to call the police. They take the information, but do not come out and look at the vehicle or anything. Apparently there are approximately 40 car thefts every couple of days here in Winnipeg! I than call our insurance company to report the damage. The vehicle needs to be towed and brought to a repair shop. Thank goodness for the internet! I have no clue who to call so I just start looking for the info on the net. After about 3 hours I finally get the car towed, call a taxi and make it to the club. Thank goodness I did not have anything real valuable in the car and that they didn't steal my passport, can you believe they didn't take my Kenny Rogers CD's! Unfortunately it sounds like it is going to take 4 - 5 weeks to get the vehicle fixed. Apparently it takes an adjuster up to 2 weeks or so to go look at the car.

The rest of the day I just felt frazzled (I am not even sure that is a word). So I was looking forward to the end of the work day. Well about 6:30 one of the members lets me know that one of the toilets is clogged. So I go check it out and it is not just one toilet, but all four!! Holy...welcome to owning your own business....in a big city.....in another country, and all by yourself! Gals....I sure needed a couple of teas tonight!

GRAND OPENING

We had our Grand Opening on Saturday and it ended up to be very nice. We did not have a huge crowd but we signed 7 members up...so we were happy. You never know how many people will show to these kind of things 10, 20, 50, 75, etc.??? So I decided that I would be more save than sorry and order subs for 75. Well I think we had about 35 people and only half of them ate....so I have subs coming out my ears. The worst part is that Steve told me to only order for about 20 - 25, and if I would have listened we probably would have only had 1 or 2 extra trays, but no we had about 12 extra trays. So I am sure I will hear about this one for the next 2 years!

Ariel and Austin came to Winnipeg on Friday evening. When I was finished at the club around 7:30 p.m. we all went out for supper at a placed called Moxie's...very nice restaurant and we had a very nice time.

Tim, Barb, and Jake joined us for the day. They got to the club about 1:00 and we all stayed until around 3:00. We than had to show off our lovely apartment so we went there and sat in folding chairs for a couple of hours (oh sorry Jake, I forgot you had to sit on the floor, not enough of those folding chairs to sit in!!). We than headed over to the Olive Garden for dinner.

Thanks Tim, Barb, and Jake for joining us for our special day!!

My cousin Dave and his family also stopped by the club for a couple hours....which was a very nice surprise! They made it a family weekend starting on Friday night at a downtown hotel swimming with the kids, the children's museum in the morning, our club early afternoon, and than off to the zoo. Thanks Marci and Dave for joining us on Saturday!

I had a half of a cake left over also!!

Dave, Marci, Sophie, Lucy, and John

Ryan and Lindsay. Lindsay is our personal trainer and Ryan is a partner in Everest Training, which provides us with our personal trainers.

WE ARE OPEN!!!!!

Well we finally did it! We opened our doors yesterday. Our first day was great...we had such wonderful response from all of our members. We had a guy that owns a personal training business here in Winnipeg along with one of his trainers here on Saturday to go through all of the equipment and so forth, and we asked him his opinion on the club and he said "it is one of the nicest clubs in Winnipeg", so hearing that from someone in his position made us feel really good. Plus, we have another member who has worked out at gyms all over the city and is very knowledgable about equipment, he basically said the same thing and that equipment is awesome...he was like a little kid in a candy store....he could hardly wait for us to open to try all the equipment out.

So yes we are very pleased with the outcome of the club. Our memberships having been doing good and I think now that it is open and people can see what it looks like...hopefully are numbers will start soaring!!!

Anytime Update

We finally got our sign up!!!!

Paint on the walls!! We should start the flooring next week.

Weekend in the Cities

I went to the cities to see my sister Brenda. My mom and dad made a stop in the cities on their way back to Arizona. My nephew Luc was in Blaine playing hockey for the Chicago Mission, which I believe is a triple A team. So we watched a couple of games of Luc's, planned our activities around lunch and dinner and had a very nice time.

Anytime Update

Well we finally have walls! They will be finished taping this week and will start the painting next week. Unfortunatley they have backed are finish date to the 2nd week in October. We are planning a opening date of October 13th (hopefully no other setbacks!). Steve and I are so ready to get the club opened...it seems like it is taking forever! The fun part will be starting with the paint going on and than the carpet, tile, mirrors, etc. I will take pictures and keep the site updated.

Labor Day Weekend

We spent Saturday at Tim and Barb's and had a barbecue. The guys played croquet and the gals played domino's. It was really windy outside so us gals wimped out and stayed inside. Tim won the first game of croquet and Austin won the second game. Ariel was the winner in domino's. Of course my kids were wishing they were playing for money!! No such luck!



The Croquet gang! Dad, Steve, Austin, Jake, Tim, Joe, and Nate

The Domino gals. Mom, Amber, Ariel, Barb, and Jessica



Jessica, Breckun, and Grandma Connie...Look closely...obviously Breckun is trying to tell me something!

Downtown Toronto

Toronto, Ontario

Steve and I were in Toronto for the weekend attending a fitness conference and tradeshow. It was a short weekend...we got there Friday afternoon and left Sunday morning. We did get to do a little site seeing. We went on a double decker bus and toured most of the downtown area and then we went out on Ontario Lake for another tour.

I didn't realize how big Toronto is....huge and a ton of people everywhere! We went up in the CN Tower...apparently the 2nd tallest structure in the world. It took us over an hour of standing in line to get to the "Outlook Area", so of course once we got there we sat in the bar and had a drink before we had to stand in line and go back down again. I think if we had to do it again, Steve would pass on that little adventure!

Pre-sale Site

Yes, this is where I sit every day waiting for people to come in and sign up for a membership. They should start sheet rocking by the end of this week, so within the next week it will look a lot different.

Luxury Living

You gotta love the kitchen table...only one chair! If you come to visit we will be going out to eat!

I got the pictures to upload! So what do you think? Do you love those chairs? Hopefully we can look back at this and say this is how we started out.

Lisa's New Blog

OK....I am not really sure how all of this works, but I am sitting in Winnipeg by myself...there is nothing on TV, I have already gone for a walk, checked my emails, done the dishes (I only have paper plates and cups, so that was easy), etc., so I thought I would create a blog.

I returned to Winnipeg this morning after a nice weekend at home. Stacy and George came to GF on Friday night and we sat outside on the deck and ordered lavosh from Southgate and had a few drinks...we had a nice time.

We went to Bemidji on Saturday to deliver some more of Ariel's belongings for her new apartment. I think...no I know she has more things in her apartment than I do!! Steve and I had lunch with my mom and dad, took Ariel grocery shopping, and headed back to GF.

There was a holiday in Canada today so there was not much activity at the construction site....so I figured I should have a holiday also since I am in Canada. We started pre-sales last week and I signed up our first 2 members. That was exciting! We have not done any advertising yet...our first one goes out in the paper on Thursday....so hopefully we will get some action from the ad.

I was trying to add some pictures to my blog page, but I keep getting an error when I try to upload the pictures....so any fellow bloggers that know what I might be doing wrong, I would appreciate any feedback.