TL;DR-Had a month with fiance, spent time with inlaws, and great experiences driving back and forth across Canada!
Sorry, this will be long, but I just want to share the awesome month that I just spent with FI. I finished work on April 29, and we left that evening for Nova Scotia (we live in Alberta). We left on Tuesday evening (29th), and arrived in Nova Scotia on the Friday afternoon. I already knew his mom from meeting her a couple times and talking to her on the phone a lot, and his daughter had stayed with us for 3 months a couple years ago. I met all except one of FI's aunts and uncles, as well as a few cousins. Staying with them was really awesome, and I was very warmly accepted by the rest of the family. It felt like coming home, I don't know any other way to describe it.
We stayed with his mom for 10 days, and visited quite a few places. We visited the Titanic graveyard, and that was really humbling. It was also sad how many of the people buried from that disaster were unknown.
We also visited the Swiss Air memorial in Peggy's Cove, then drove up the coast visiting the small fishing villages (one of which several of his relatives had lived in years ago). We also went fossil hunting on Blue Beach, a lot of interesting plant and mud fossils there.
FI and I were able to get our pre-nup/independent legal advice, wills, and powers of attorney there, and I was blown away by how much less it all cost in Nova Scotia vs Alberta! All of it cost $1100 in Nova Scotia, as opposed to $2500 just for pre-nup for one person in Alberta, + minimum of $1000 each for wills. Insane! It helps that FI pretty much knows everyone in Nova Scotia, but wow, very thankful we saved as much as we did!
FI has a beautiful house that he'd built himself, we'll be moving there for retirement
We took a little longer coming back, and spent a couple days in national parks-one in Manitoba, and one near Edmonton. We saw a couple bears in a poplar tree eating catkins (flowers of that tree) in the park in Manitoba, and took a ton of photos there. The next place we stopped was Big Quill Lake in Saskatchewan, to take photos of the swans...except the swans turned out to be pelicans, thousands of them! That was just so cool! The following day we spent at Elk Island National park near Edmonton; we were able to get photos of waterfowl we hadn't seen before, as well as some I'd seen that FI hadn't.
The only damper was that someone broke into FI's mustang literally 6 hours after we got back, trying to steal it. This is the third time, someone's tried to steal it, and we're pretty sure it's the same asshole each time. The dude hasn't figured out that it's a chipped key, and that key is necessary for it to work! FFS dude, stop trying already!
We got home in time for me to be able to go to work, except that there wasn't any work at the time (oilfield, it's very slow right now), so we went to Calgary to pick up a new lens for FI, and car-camped in Jasper on the way. Note to self-don't wear jeans while car camping, I know where every.single.rivet. is on my jeans!
After picking up the lens, we spent a day and a half in Jasper taking photos, getting some really great ones, mainly of waterfowl. Went back, and there was still no work, so then we went back to Jasper again, and got more great shots, my most favorite were of the pileated woodpecker, and a blue winged teal with day-old ducklings.
We ended up going to Edmonton before going home, where someone ended up backing into my car in the hotel parking lot-found that out because my car alarm fob was going crazy-at least they were waiting for me so we could exchange info! I found myself comforting the driver because she was so upset. I told her that it was only a car, no one was hurt, NBD. I'd have been far more upset if it were a hit and run or break-in to my vehicle.
Then getting back, I had to get the insurance quote done on the car yesterday, and get ready to go out to work. It's definitely hard to get back into the swing of things after a month!
I told FI that the last month that we spent together felt like the honeymoon before the honeymoon. I couldn't imagine having a better time than I had!