living la vida loco.... no seriously, LOCO!

ok so this is going to be a funny post. most people (on blogs that im looking at anyways) are putting up all of these great pics with their weonderfull blogs of their beautiful homes and decorating and blah blah blah.
WELL,
welcome to MY life.
ill post some pics before i write my blog.




here are some pictures of our disgusting hotel room at the beautiful ramada inn in medicine hat where we have resided for the last two weeks of our lives.
(the hotel is great (nice rooms, pool, breakfast, awesome staff) paid for by jobens new company for the last two weeks which has been really helpfull) the room started out quite nice but we have managed (in our hectic two weeks of joben working min 10 hour days, average 12-16 and me finding places to live, have them fall through, finding more places to live making dinners and lunches and doing laundry and all that wife stuff in that little kitchenette and room and looking for a job and both of us keeping busy at a new church we found here and meeting people, playing vollyball with said people, etc. this room has gotten pretty bad.

i just thought it would be funny to start out this blog with some pics that arent quite so typical.

ive said it once and ill say it again, we live la vida loco.

well about a month ago now we packed up our little blue car and left abbotsford, bc (my beautiful hometown) for calgary, alberta. joben landed a great job doing pipeline x raying which he is going to be jumoing into as a new career and starting up a company with his ex treeplanting boss rod hoel in jan. first though, he has to get a certin amount of hours in (like 300 or somthing) and then take a one week course and take a government test and pay lots of money to the gov.
SO
we found a great company out here in medicine hat and joben has been working for the for the last two weeks....
we spent about a week in calgary at joben's cousin heather's house and had a great time hanging out with them, seeing some barkey uncle and aunts and cousins and spending some time at my favorite place in calgary... the chinook centre mall!!!
it was a good time.
two weeks ago tomorrow we took off from calgary and headed east to medicine hat. joben's new boss put us up in a hotel for two weeks while we got settled and figured out living arangements.
THAT was a nightmare in itself. joben started work the next morning and scince then has only had two days off in two weeks. he is a very hard worker and a trooper and i love him to peices for making this new endevar a reality and working so hard to be the best in this industry and everything. hes awesome. so anyways, that left me to try to find a place to live... we dont have any furnatre since our first year of marraige was basicly a travelling year (we were kinda like gypsies!) we travelled through europe for a few months, visited north carolina three times, spent some time in the fraser valley and also spent some time living in one of our favorite places costa rica for a few months and then went treeplanting again. it was a busy year of travelling and thus we have collected NO furnature or things other than the attic full of wedding gifts that we have accumulated at my parents house. so we were looking for a place that was fully furnished and cheap (cause im a menno, duh!)
SO i found a place (well joben actually did through a guy at the church at drop in basketball the first day we were in medicine hat!) it was small but fully furnished and clean and everything and only like 400 bucks a month for rent and we were pumped... well, a few days later the guy calls back and said his wife rented the same place out to another couple so we were out of luck.
great.
so i franticly started looking again for a place. i found a basement suite this time, again fully furnished, nice landlord, clean and bright for a basement suite. rent was a little higher but we were getting desperate so we decided to take it. i called the guy and he told me to leave it on his voice mail by 8 oclock that night if we wanted it and thats just what i did. so less than 12 hours later the guy calls me and tells me that he rented the suite out to someone else.
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
needless to say i was getting kinda stressed. luckily though, after phoning about 30 people i found in the classifieds and viewing about a dozen places over the last two weeks i found a great lady, a single mom with a 7 year old daughter (and the cuttest puppy you have ever met... even joben loves the dog) offered their basemet suite, nice neighborhood, big recroom/ dining area, nice bedroom with huge closets (as you can see from the pics that is very importiant to us!) and very cheep rent. the only problem is is that we have a shared enterance and kitchen and the luandry room is through the recroom downstairs so it is a very shared space but at this point we are only hoping to be there for less than three months and we DONT CARE ANYMORE!!! we are happy to be in a place. it will be really nice when we have a home of our own in a few years... we are definitly deserving of that let me tell you!!!
other than house hunting craziness we have been having a great time here in medicine hat! its too bad that we arent planning on sticking around because there are some GREAT people here. we are getting really invloved with things at a church here, co-ed rec vollyball, drop in basketball (for joben) bible study, haning out with friends. we just had a great dinner pary at a couples place last night. its been really easy to intergrate here so we have been enjoying ourselves and settling in quickly over the last two weeks.
medicine hat is quite beautiful too in its own way, its kinda like kamloops or kelowna, very deserty. and there are these amazing mini vallies that go through the city and brautiful golf courses (ive seen 3 and i havent even been looking!) nice trails and a river that runs through the city.
im planning at this point to return back to bc in december and i will probably stay there while joben goes and works out oftown for a few months from jan-april. i cant go with him because he and his boss are going to be busy developing contacts for their new buiness and stuff (apperantly they are going to be working "37 days a month") yikes. so i will be able to go visit him once or twice but it doesn make sence for me to tag along and never see him anyways so i think im going to hang around vancouver area for a few months. in the spring joben and i are planning on settleing in a bit near three hills, alberta (thats where rod and his fam live and the buisness is going to be based out of)
its been and is going to be another crazy year but its in preperation for a life that is going to be worth it all. and its been a GREAT adventure. im not going to lie, i am practiacly a wanna be marthastewart so i AM very much looking forward to our "5 year plan" of owning property (hopefully in costa rica) and building a house here in alberta and having babies and all that jazz but for now im happy with our crazy life and our messy hotel room.
we are moving tomorrow and after settling in i can really look for a job hardcore (long days without joben around to play with get pretty boring!) ill post more interesting pics as they come and blog more next week!
i hope all is well on your side of the computer screen!

1 year later...

this is a picture of joben and i in whistler on august 20th... i look kinda goofy in it but joben looks HOT so i had to post it, i really lost hot points on this one. joben 1- amanda 0 oh well! this weekend was so great. happy anniversary to us!

mmmmm some spicy hot chocolate and a good book on a cold calgary afternoon

so im on a cooking frenzey, i made this really good hot chocolate tonight... 2 cups milk, 1/4 cup chocolate chips, a splash of pure vanilla extact and a little sugar AND a dash of cyanne pepper, i know it sounds weird but it tasted really good, not really noticable but made the hot chocolate a little spicy as it was trickling down my throat. yum. anyways, you should try it next time you make hot chocolate but just to warn you it wont be as good as mine. oh yeah, i put a cinnomon stick in the cup and topped it off with homeade whipped cream and white chocolate shavings.
i talked to my mom today and she was sitting outside with my aunts and uncles bbqing in the back yard in abbotsford.... grrrrrrrrr. oh well, i sipped on my hot drink and finished my book.

snow? in the middle of september?!

most of my friends who read this thing live in beautiful bc... just so you know how lucky you are, yesterday it was 3 degrees here in calgary and there were snow flurries all afternoon. i went out to get a dvd and i had to wear my snowboarding jacket! uhhhhhhh thats not how september is sposed to be! at least not in amanda's world. oh well, at least i got to wear my new jacket!

breakfast for dinner... yummy!

wow, so i just made the best fritatta ever. if you dont know what a fritatta is, its basicly like an egg pie spanish omlette thingy. i usually dont like them cause there is too much egg and not enough stuff and i dont bake it long enough and its gooey eggy in the center but this time it turned out great. there were tons of veggies and stuff in it and joben still even liked it! in case you are longing to be inspired to make a fritatta of your own heres what i did: 9 i modified a recipie i found on foodnetwork.ca...

first i put some butter and chopped onions, one shredded potatoe and two cloves of garlic in the pan to saute for about 3-4 mins.
next i threw in some chopped brocoli florettes, sliced mushrooms and finely shredded/sliced leftover chicken breast into the pan to saute with the onion-potatoe mixture for another couple of mins.
meanwhile i scrambled 8 eggs and threw in some cyanne pepper, parsley flakes, cumin and salt and fresh ground pepper in too.
next i dumped in the egg mixture and turned the heat down to low.
i let the fritatta set for about 5 mins and then put it into a 375 degree oven for about 5 mins... half way through i pulled it out and crumbled some goat cheese and sprinkled some shredded chedder and sprinkled some sliced green onions over top.
after the fritatta was nice and firm i put it on broil for 1 min to make the cheeses really mealty and bubbly.

i served this fritatta with belgium waffles with strawberry sauce and apple chedder biscuits for dinner and my husband loved it....
he might have thought it was SO great because he was watching a ncaa football game on tv while he ate his dinner and sports makes him pretty euphoric but who knows... i think it was the good food.

anyways, i havent cooked for a while so it was great to make a special breakfast for dinner meal but now i have a pile of dishes to do so i gotta go!

oh! we are moving to medicine hat tomorrow... jobens company is housing us at the ramada in madicine hat while he is traning. its going to be weird living in a hotel for the next couple of months but hey! its paid for by the company and the hotel is nicer than i expected we would be put up in... there is a nice pool and exercise room and everything so im pretty pumped. ill put up some pics of our "new place" soon. hahaha, yeah right. i WILL post a pic of my fritatta though cause its totally awesome.

change in plans...

...we are moving to medicine hat... for now. oh my crazy life.

a good day

well today was an eventfull day!
Jo-Ben and i headed to brooks, alberta early this morning from his cousin heather's house. its about a two hour drive from calgary. it turned out that brooks wasnt as dumpy as we htought it would be... it was actually really nice, bute houses, tree lined streets and everything. we thought it was going to be this town full of rig pigs as they call them which i am sure it is but there also seemed to be some nice families there too. anyways, joben had his interveiw with his new boss there and it went really really well. he offered him the job and is paying him two dollars more than we originally thoguht he would AND he is paying for our living arangements in med hat while we are there for jobens work experience. we are pretty pumped for both of those things. what a blessing it is for me expecially because while joben is doing this pipeline stuff this year we are planning on putting all the money he makes aside so we can save for an investment (either in costa rica or a home here in alberta) and live on what i make so it takes the preassure off that we are going to be living rent free... all i have to worry about is getting food on the table which shouldnt be too hard. this also gives me the freedom to do somthing i want to do insted of working in a resteraunt because they tips are good or somthing i can go and try my hand at doing what i love- working in a spa! yay for me!
so today started out being a graet day and kept getting better and better. we came back to calgary in the early afternoon and hung out with joben's friend ryan shantz(from trinity and treeplanting)hes awesome. we cheacked out his house and took a ride in his new jetta. SO nice, i originally wanted a golf as our next car but i think i really like this jetta we drove in today. BRAND new, super comfy... kinda felt like a town car or somthing from the back. anyways, we went down to the river that runs through calgary and grabbed a booster juice and had a long walk through a beautiful park along the river. it was good times. then we went back to ryan's place and ordered some pizza and hung out. it was relaly nice to see him again.
so yeah, great day. seems like this new adventure is on a good roll. we are really excited and totally appreciate any prayer thats being given up for us... we are excited but still nervous. :)
sorry i dont have any pics from today, i left the camera in the car... maybe tomorrow.
hope you are all having a good day too!

quiz

here is a link for a quiz i made... its pretty lame but if you are bored & have nothing to do then you might as well be bored figuring out how much you know about lil ol me!

http://www03.quizyourfriends.com/takequiz.php?quizname=060910225721-379127

PICTURES

this is the chateau in three valley gap that i want to go and stay at, saw it driving to calgary yesterday.

this is one of the tree houses that they have at this place called the enchanted forest, some kitchy tourist attraction that i want to go to near the chateau.

wishing for moraccan tea and details about our road trip to calgary

so this morning i woke up with a HUGE craving for mint tea but not any mint tea... when joben and i were on our honeymoon in europe we spent 10 days in belgium visiting friends and while we were there our friend vincient took us out for coffe (they call it coffee che which just means little coffee... they actually add che to alot of things i guess its like slang like they called me amanda che.) anyways, our friends in belgium drink coffee all day (a perfect life for little miss amanda... i LOVE coffee) when we were out with vincient this one time he told me to order this mint tea because this place made it the best so i got it and i have never had a better glas of tea EVER. this morning i woke up craving it and i am just wondering if anyone knows anywhere in calgary or vancouver that serves this tea because i need it! i have discoverd its moraccan mint tea and apperantly they drink it all the time in moracco... guess ill just have to go there! j/k but here are a few pics that i found on the internet to show you what it was like. amazing.



the tea itself was served in a pot like the one in the picture and it was brigt green like the stuff in the glasses. it was served in a glass with tons of mint sprigs in it with sugar on the side and when i had it there was another pot kid of like the silver tea pot but it was really tall and skinnier than the tea pot and it had pure jasmine in it and i was told to put a few drops in my tea. anyways, it was amazing and i was just curious if anywone knew of any coffee shops or perhaps moroccan resturaunts that served this wonderfull drink!

oh also- we are safe and sound in calgary. we are staying at joben's cousin heather's house. joben was really excited to get here to insted of waiting till saturday morning to leave joben and i left around 3 am on friday... i guess that IS saturday morning. anyways, i slept till salmon arm and then we switched and then switched again in golden. saw some AMAZING sights when i was driving and joben was sleeping. the drive between salmon arm and revelstoke is so fun. there are alot of things to see and do around there and a chateau on this lake that i am dying to stay at. i didnt take any pics cause i was driving but i found some on the internet. i guess it was when i was driving through rogers pass. the chateau is located at three valley gap.
well i tried to upload the pics i found but they arent working, i will try again later. about 2 k away from the chateau there is this place called the enchanted forest which is this cute whimsical place with bc's tallest treehouse that looked pretty cool and a suspention bridge AND (my sister will love this cause shes a big geek like me!) MINERATURE LAND! oooooooooo. hahahha it looked like a funny dutch commune or somthing but looks like it would be funny to go see. im trying to hook joben on going to stay at the chateau with me and seeing all of these kitchy things with this hummer wilderness tour that they offer around there! haha, anyways, i think next time we drive to bc we will go through here and stay, looks like there is alot to see and do.

we are off to alberta!!!

tomorrow morning we are leaving for alberta and i dont know when we will be back! i have mixed feelings about this move, dont get me wrong... i am SUPER excited or this new oppertunity that we have been blessed with but i am also sad... its going to be an exciting adventure but i am sure going to miss our friends and family out here in bc. im going to miss alot of other things about here too... (but NOT the rain and grey days, thats FOR SURE!) anyways, keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we make this transition... we are slowly moving there semi-permenantly so ill keep you all posted on how things go! here is a pcture of one of the things i will miss the most... i stole it from my friend stephen hubbards daily photo blog, you should check it out... hes the first one on my links! have a good day friends!
ok... i lied, that picture isnt working out so well but you should still go and see his blog, but im going to post another pic...

ahhhhhhhh one of my favorite things, i love driving down the number 1 and seeing this majestic beauty come up over the hill.... goodbye, so long.

the trooth about ahmanduh's spelling non-abiliteees

just wanted to post that my husband has informed me that im a bad speller. for all of those out there who read my blog- SORRY! but im pretty lazy (i dont even use capitals on this thing!) and i dont think i can spellcheck on blogs so the conclusion of this post is: my spelling is bad, deal with it.

our day... saying goodbye for now

my beautiful cousin jessica and i... sorry about the red eye!

not too much to blog about, we just got home from hanging out with my cousin jessica and her fiance adam for the last time in a long time and we dont know when we are going to be able to see them next so thats sad... im going to miss her tons. also tonight we went to my parents house for a bbq with some family and my cousins were there with their son benjamin. he is ADORABLE and i took some pics of him so ill post those! joben and i leave saturday for alberta. we are staying with his cousins for a couple of days and then figuring out living arangments where he is going to be working for a few months. this year is pretty crazy because his job is taking him all over the place... three months here and a couple there so im just kinda following him around but we are hoping that things go smoothly and go by quickly this year so that this time next year he is settled into his job and doesnt have to do anymore schooling and we can finally find a more permanent place to settle down, probably near calgary. anyways, im sure there will be lots of fun travel pics after this weekend. goodnight!


this is a picture of my cousins son ben playig with an elephant and making elephant noises... you cant hear him but im sure you can imagine, super cute.


i tried to get a picture with the cute little guy and he is saying cheese but mostly looks scared of me!... he really does like me though cause i got him some juice... i know how its done.

apperantly i look like...

saw this on some other blogs and thought it would be fun to try! results- super funny.



ooooOOOOOooooo my husband looks like BRAD PITT! hahaha... another one that came up was ralph nadder but i decided not to include him. Jo-Ben's matches were all very different looking.



i thought this was funny... i just put in another pic of myself with totally different hair and a different expresion on my face and everything and got TOTALLY different results, weird.

a mouse and our dear kitty wormwood

so my brother and sister in law have a cat named wormwood (i wanted to name him sara jessica parker but that didnt fly by my brother in law) anyways, in recent months my brother and sister in law have developed a mouse or i should say mice problem (mice being plural?) and it turns out wormwood isnt fufilling his cat duties... he mostly likes to look at them, they are cute but we prefer them outside. here are some pics to prove wormwood SHOULD in fact be named sjp because he is no man cat.

yoeys wedding!

our very good friend jonathan (aka:yoey) & not to mention jobens most prized planter got married yesterday. it was a beautiful ceremony, i am in awe of how much that couple honnored god in their ceremony i mean, isnt that what getting married is all about? it was such a blessing to be there and a very special day. we love you yoey and robyn! here is a picture of yoey, myself and my husband... i planted with yoey when i was a rookie and he worked for joben for 4 years!

my life as i know it

well, since i check out other people's bloggs just about everyday like an obsessed blogg stalker, i figured i should start one of my own. i have tried (quite unsucsessfuly) to start a blogg of my very own THREE times now. the first time i forgot my user name AND password and couldn't for the life of me retrieve it, the second time i started this blogg, wrote out my first blogg entry and tried posting pictures on it and managed to erase the whole blogg entry entirely which got me SUPER frustrated so here we are... hopefully the old saying of third times the charm is true because i REALLY want this to work.

WELL

i should pobably begin this new endevar with a run down on this past year of mine.

about a year and two weeks ago from this very day my wonderful husband and i got married. we had a gorgeous outdoor wedding in my hometown of Abbotsford, BC and it
was all i could have ever dreamed of.

my amazing husband planned a suprise honeymoon for me and it wasnt a typical affair. he took me on a two month trip through europe. i guess if i really do think about it it is typical of him because he has travelled to over 30 countries but it doesnt seem very typical of most people to me. we went EVERYWHERE. we started out our adventure in london for a week, flew to barcelona and off to the island of ibiza in the medateranian for 12 days at an all-inclusive resort there, headed to the south of france for a few days after that and then to switzerland. after a night in the alps we spent a few days in paris, 10 days in belgium and then a whirlwind trip through amsterdam, prauge, germany, austria and part of italy, back to london for a few days and then a night in denamark before heading home. i know! its alot to take in even just to read. those two months flew by!

we spent the winter in our cute suite in maple ridge. we had a great time (other than joben breaking his foot playing soccer!) hanging out with friends and family, spending time in our hot tub, watching way to much csi and eating the best homemade pizza you have ever tasted (we became homemade pizza perfectionists) oh, also we had a blast babysitting our favorite cat and dog, minu and jackson.

we flew down to jobens parents place in north carolina for holidays with the WHOLE family (there are alot of us!) and then made it back up to canada for christmas with my family (there are alot of us too!).

in february we decided to go back to costa rica (we travelled for a few months and got engaged in central america over the winter the year before) we absolutly LOVE costa rica. its an amazing place and we are looking forward to investing in property down there one day really soon and spending alot more time there.

after we came back to the lower main land from central america we headed straight up to northern bc for another eventful summer of tree planting in canadas great north. (well actually we were in the south alot, we were lucky enough to have contracts in the okanogan and calgary) it was an interesting summer to say the least. we worked for a new company this year (after jo-ben spent 9 years with his last company... this was my second season out in the bush) and it had its ups and downs. all in all we made money and that is what we go out there for and we also came to a realization that this might be the end for us as far as the great world of planting goes.

jo-ben was offered a terrific job by his former boss this summer in a new feild and it looks like it is taking us to alberta. we are really excited about this new move and oppertunity and can't wait to get started. i just might be able to put my aesthetics license to some good use too!

its been an amazing last couple of years for me. its increadable how god changes your life around every new bend in the road and sometimes so drasticly! i am SO blessed by god in the life that he has given me and i can't WAIT to see what he has in store for the barkeys around the bend.

hope you enjoy my blogg and i have better luck figuring things out on here so you have new things to read and look at!

1.Jo-Ben and i in the rainforest in Costa Rica Jan, 2005 a few days after we got engaged, this was on a zip line tour we took.
2.my handsome husband on our wedding day.
3.a picture of me walking down the isle that my husband likes!
4.Jo-Ben and Amanda Barkey August 20, 2005
5.amanda!
6.our first dance. we danced to michael bubles 'it had to be you' and my husband sang along to it to me. replicating probably THE most romantic moment of my life, the first time he told me that he loved me... but that time we were dancing in the rain!
7.on our honeymoon in venice, italy, st. marks square... i was VERY tired in this picture!
8.london!
9this is what we look after a day of tree planting... pretty scarey huh?! summer 2005
10.and here i am a couple of weeks ago when we went wakeboarding at cultas

little miss sunshine

jo-ben and i went to see the movie little miss sunshine tonight and i would HIGHLY reccomend seeing it, halrious, well acted FABULOUS film. so good. thats all i have to say right now. ... ill try working on a real first post... third times the charm right?