Are you looking for my Olympic ticket giveaway? If so, you can find it here, just one post below this one. Also, don’t forget you can follow me on Twitter along with more than 3,000 other friends for Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games coverage and my West Coast tweets of course.

Just a quick post here on our last weekend before the Olympics start in Vancouver. We headed up to Apex Mountain (near Penticton, BC) for Allan’s outdoor ice hockey tournament with his team, as well as for snowboarding and fun! There’s so much to explore in BC outside of Vancouver… if you’re in town visiting, I highly recommend you check out other parts of our beautiful province of British Columbia!

Here I am snowboarding in the trees in the powder. We got so lucky with the conditions… it snowed all week and then dropped 15 cm of light fluffy BC interior powder the night before. Yep, we pretty much rode trees in the bowls on the backside of the mountain all day.

It was a beautiful drive up to Apex.

Every morning we woke up there is looked like this… gorgeous blue skies and lots of snow.

The snow was fantastic. (Yep, I’m actually in this picture although very, very far away)

I loved watching the boys play outdoor hockey. We don’t really ever get to see that in Vancouver, and it’s such a part of our Canadian heritage and culture! Definitely got me even MORE stoked for the Olympics if that is even possible.

We made breakfast a few mornings… lots of sustenance for the day! Can’t live without BACON!

We left a little surprise on a friend’s car.

Here’s the boys’ hockey team. They lost two games but won their last one, and they definitely played hard (although drunk). So much fun to watch… I love these guys!

View from my office window above. What can you expect from my blog in the upcoming weeks? Well, lots of Olympic coverage… definitely from the games/events/pavilions I am attending (see below) and tons of photos and HD video. I’ll be all decked out cheering Canada on as loud as I can, and I’ll be wearing my Canadian pride on my sleeve (and well, my face with tattoos).

GO CANADA GO!

P.S. I’m currently deciding what I should do… should I buy myself a ticket to the Men’s Gold Medal Hockey game? Each ticket is now over $2,200 and it’s a big expenditure… argh… help! What would you do?

I finally had a chance to edit the very mini HD snowboard video from our first day of the season at Whistler. It’s always embarrassing posting videos of yourself from the first day of the season, because… quite frankly… you look silly on video with shaky legs and not-quite-there-yet balance. Nevertheless, please do watch this video and feel free to have a chuckle

My legs are STILL sore from last Sunday. Song from Chixdiggit, filmed entirely hand-held on a Nikon D90 at Whistler Blackcomb. Click the video above!

In other news, I am very happy to say that this blog has come a long way since I started it just over a year ago! It’s been a fun ride, and I’ve really enjoyed meeting bloggers from Vancouver and around the world… exploring new places, sharing my photography and video, and frequently embarrassing myself on my blog.

Bear with me, I’m going to toot my own horn for a paragraph. I can’t help it! I can’t believe it’s been a year since I started the VancityAllie blog (although I’ve been blogging since I was 12 years old)…

In the past year, the blog has really surpassed my expectations and we’ve hit 1,632,517 unique visitors over the past year and 2,466,670 page views! 16 HD videos, over 1400 of my own photos uploaded, and a Twitter account with nearly 3,000 followers! We’ve got great rankings on Google and are averaging 100,000 to 300,000 unique visitors a month depending on content and time of year.

P.S. Did you enter the Westbeach contest below? We already have 114 entries!

Okay, now that that is out of the way…

I’m really excited about some of the trips we have coming up this December and next year. I’ll have lots more on the blog… more videos, more photos and more contests! But don’t worry, I’m still the same old me… clumsy, nerdy, and prone to ramble…

Hope everyone is excited for the Holiday season!

Update (November 30, 2009 10:30 AM PST): I will be doing the draw tonight for the Westbeach outerwear and post the results tomorrow. Stay tuned!