Paul Ille [dot] com

It's 3 hours away until Santa comes and we're all excited here. We've got to put the cookies and milk out for the big guy and also some carrots outside for the reindeer. They have to keep up their energy of course. Tomorrow is a big day here at the Ille house cause we're going to host Christmas and we'll have even more people than at Thanksgiving. I just wish everyone could come. Sometimes as families get bigger it gets near impossible for everyone to be together. Regardless, we wish everyone near and far to have a Merry Christmas and Happy ...

So it's a couple days late :) Happy Thanksgiving anyway. We hosted our first Thanksgiving here this year and it was a lot of fun. While we weren't able to get the entire family together, we did manage to get a good portion of it, we had a good time and damn did we have food. I didn't even get to taste all of the food we had cause there was just so much! There was: Turkey, Chipolte Turkey Breast, Ham, Home made Cranberry sauce, String beans, Califlower with cheese, Califlower, Mushrooms, Mashed Potatoes, Gravy, Spinach with garlic, Sweet Potatoes, Stuffing, Creamed Onions, Cornbread Casserole, ...

I haven't really had much time lately, but I figure it's important to do what you can. I know getting involved with politics is painful, but it's not about the politics. It's about you and your children. It's about what you believe in. Recently I took a little bit of time to at least contact my representitives via e-mail regarding the health care reform. I'm not sure it'll help, but it's all the time I can spend right now. It's fairly easy to do. Look up your representitives using the following page. Congress.org http://www.congress.org/congressorg/dbq/officials/ In New Jersey here I contacted 3 people: Senator Robert ...

Back on 9/18, the Friday before the wedding, I picked Jonathan up from school and snuck over to Mozart's to record a couple songs I've had circling around my head. I still haven't had time to mess with my own recording equipment so I figured I'd use his. It was Sandy's birthday and I wanted to do something nice for her so I figured I'd surprise her. Tack on a couple candles and a cake and she was surprised and happy :) The first song is based on a poem I posted a while back called Break with Trains. The second song ...

We landed in Newark around 7pm Monday night and finally got home around 9pm. It was quite a long day considering we started waiting for the shuttle to Calgary at 7am in Banff (factoring in the 2 hour difference it was 9am EST though). We only had yesterday to relax because today we're going to be surprising Jonathan. He felt a bit bummed that he couldn't go with us to Banff, but of course that was just for Mom and Dad. So we did the next best thing. We're going to leave tonight for Orlando, Florida so all 3 of ...

Well, today is our last day here in Banff unfortunately. We have to take a shuttle out of here at 7:30am tomorrow in order to catch our flight. Our flight isn't until around noon, but the shuttle to Calgary takes about 2 hours. On the bright side, we had a great day today. The Glacier Trail Tour we took today was probably the best tour we took all week. We went back to Lake Louise for a bit, stopped by a few other lakes and had the chance to hang out on an actual glacier. We also finally saw ...

We took a bit of a break from excursions on Day 5 and hung out in the center of town a bit more buying miscellaneous gifts for our family. Today, we went on the Minnewanka Lake Cruise which we were originally made to think wasn't so great, but we're so happy we went. Minnewanka, which translates into 'Water of the Spirits' is largest lake in the Banff National Park and it's just amazing. The water isn't as much of an emerald color as Lake Louise was, but it was surrounded in every possible direction by ...

So today we went on the Banff Gondola and it was pretty awesome. For all you non-Gondola riding people out there, it's basically a cable car combined with a ski lift. This one in particular brings you up 2,292 ft to an area surrounded by the Candian Rockies. They have a resturant up there with some gift shops, but more importantly they have areas that allow you to look out over the valley and the mountains. Well, here's some pictures from the adventure. On the way up the mountain I snapped a quick picture of the ...

Today we went on a tour of Lake Louise and Lake Moraine. I can't imagine I captured how unbelievable it was because even with a wide angle lens, I couldn't get everything in to a shot. Hopefully these give you an idea of how beautiful it was. Lake Louise is formed from a glacier you can see there in the top middle. The lake is formed between a set of mountains that surround it and there's a small stream that runs away from the lake. As you can see, you can take a canoe out in the lake which must ...

Well, we had to take a later flight in which meant we needed to take connecting flights. It was Newark to Toronto (1.5 hours) and then Toronto to Calgary (4 hours) and then a shuttle to Banff (2 hours) so when we finally checked in at around 8pm mountain time. Needless to say coming from Eastern Time we were really tired. We're staying at the Fairmont Banff Springs hotel and I have to say the hotel is amazing. Faster internet service and bigger rooms would be nice, but otherwise I can't say enough about it. Picture a castle-like ...