Playing Dress Up

I have been kid less for almost a week. I really do miss them! I am grateful that my sister was willing to take them for such a long period of time. Turns out it has been a good thing for them because if they were at home they would be so bored from all the things Regan and I have been doing and getting caught up on. I am excited that I am going to go see them tonight though.

There is a wedding fast approaching!! Will and Deb are getting married in less than 4 weeks and there is lots of little and big things to do. The last two nights have been preparation days for the event. Shopping for little final touch details and playing dress up after! :)

I went to Deb's house last night to see if I could help with some of the alterations needed on the dress. We got her all decked out in her dress and shoes and played with different ideas on how alter the dress. Yeah, I think she needs a real seamstress. Pinning a wedding dress is one thing but cutting and sewing it is completely another! Very intimidating to say the least. But that wasn't the fun part of the evening. Next we played with her hair. Oh the possibilities! Do we keep it long or short, straight or curly, up do or down. hehehe- I can't tell you what we decided- but its beautiful!

While Deb and I were doing that my wonderful husband was at home changing the brakes on my van and rotating the tires so the van would be safe for me to drive down to see the kids tonight. I sure love that he has become so mechanically inclined. He has been a good sport the last couple days. He has driven me and Deb to the mall and patiently waited for us at several stores. Although he did get to pick the restaurant that the three of us went to on Monday night. Good trade off! lol

Regan and I made it to the gym yesterday for the first time in weeks. Wow- that was harder than I remembered! I guess that would explain the feeling in my muscles today. OWwww! Hopefully it will be better by tonight when I am loading up my van with boxes, clothes and furniture to start Deb's move to Cardston. They got possession of their house this week and on top of wedding plans we get to find a way/time to get her moved into it. Have I mentioned how much I don't want her to move :(

How do bloggers do this?

I am so far behind on blogging! I don't know how people have time to do this. I am more than a week behind so I am going to have to do a "week in review" type of entry.

The week started off visiting with family in Red Deer. We had a chance to go to the Collicut Centre for a fun swim. We finally headed back to Calgary. Home at last. Even the kids were happy to have a bit of normal life again. Albeit it didn't last long!

On Wednesday my sister and mom picked up my kids and took them down south for a couple of weeks. My sister has them enrolled in swimming lessons in her town. She has been under a lot of stress lately with her husband working out of town and was looking forward to having Babbling Brook there to help her. BB is a great helper! Especially with the younger kids. J-Bear is doing what he does best, keeps her laughing. lol

The World Waterski-Wakeboard competition started on Tuesday and Regan has been looking forward to this for almost 2 years! He went out on Tuesday by himself to catch the action and I joined him on Wednesday after the kids left. We spent Thursday night, all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the competition. It was super cool. Being with Regan was like being with a kid in the candy store. This was definitely up his alley! He got some pictures and autographs of skiiers he has idolized for years and some new ones too. Canada made us proud and won first over all! It was cool to see the athletes receive their awards and hear the anthems playing. It's cool to see it on TV but in person its even that much more powerful!

We had one night that we made it to the late show of the new Harry Potter movie. The movie ended at almost 2:00am so you can imagine how tired we were the next day. Good thing all we had to do the next day was sit and watch the skiiers!

When we got home last night, we had a chance to look around the house for the first time in weeks. Our house was a disaster! We finally took some time to clean the house and get some laundry done. I can't believe how much better I feel when my house is in order. Now if I could just get caught up on everything else... lol

Saturday August 1st

Saturday morning started off a little later than we had hoped. We wanted to see the Jasper Fairmont Lodge so we drove out there first. It was uneventful. I was expecting something cool like the Prince of Wales hotel in Waterton or The Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, but nope just some condo looking cabins. Meh.

We then headed over to the Jasper Tramway. I think this part was the highlight of our whole vacation. If you are ever in the area and want an amazing scenic view, that is the place to go! Just make sure you get there first thing in the morning cuz there were tons of people who had to wait more than 2 hours to wait for their ride up.



The tramway is different than the gondola in Banff and definitely goes ALOT faster! Once you get to the top there is a hike (1.8km) uphill on shale. The air was pretty thin so it was not a fast hike and it was pretty steep so it was a good work out. J-Bear and I made it most of the way, but opted not to keep pushing it so we stopped after we got to the first peak. We ended up wandering a little bit and had a very cool, peaceful moment just the two of us and the 12 baby birds that we found. My adventurous husband and daring daughter kept going. No surprise there! But they were able to get some amazing pictures and had a great time together.


The next part of our trip led us to Horseshoe Lake. There are a lot of cliffs there that are well known in the area for jumping. And wouldn't you know it...


Yep that is my 8 year old J-Bear following in his daddy's footsteps! The 3 of them all had a couple of jumps. I elected to remain behind the camera!

We then headed over to Athabasca Falls. What an amazing waterfall! It was a really hot weekend so the glaciers were melting tons- literally. The melted glaciers fill up the falls. It was at its peak flow level so seeing the power of the water was really cool.

We next headed off the Red Deer to spend some time with my sister and her family. It felt like a very long drive. We were all getting a little sick of being in a vehicle at this point. Once we got to their apartment we quickly ate and put the kids to bed. We had hoped to be able to play some games or cards or something but Regan and I fell asleep shortly after the kids. Too much driving in the sun!

Friday July 31st

Friday we got up early and finished packing up at the time share. We knew we had a long drive ahead of us so we checked out of Fairmont and were on the road by 9:00am. Off to Jasper!

I expected the drive to be scenic, but I never expected it to be as beautiful as it was. Every twist and turn of the road seem to bring new beauty with it. There were so many roadside turnoffs that we couldn't possible stop at as many as we wanted too. We did manage to stop at a few though. My favorite stop was at the Columbia Icefields. I have seen it on the news and commercials before, but honestly I just thought it was a block of ice. lol I would never have guessed that it would capture my attention the way it did. The picture below shows me and the kids walking up toward the glacier from the parking lot. The glacier used to extend further out and much taller than where we are standing in the picture. It tells you how much it has melted over the years. But even the thought of what was still there has been there since the ice ages is purely amazing to me.

After several hours of driving, we decided we were never going to finish everything that we wanted to see in just one day. We decided to stay over night in Jasper. Uh... Friday of a long weekend with no reservations in a tourist area. Can we say $$$$$$$! :(

We did find a nice little place to stay right as you first enter the town. We were relieved to be able to at least find something, it was filling up quickly. We needed to stretch our legs as it was now after 5:00pm (that's a LONG time driving) so we walked around the town site for a bit and got some ice cream, fed the bears...


After we got something to eat ourselves we headed off for the Jasper Hot springs (Miette Hot springs). That was another hour drive each way! The hot springs were nice. The kids had a lot of fun jumping from the hot springs into the cold pool. Which I may add could not have possibly been the 21' it said it was! I am surprised there wasn't ice on it, it was that cold!!

There was a little cafeteria at the hot springs and the fellow running the place was SUPER nice. He gave us tons of ideas as to where to go while we were in Jasper, what stops to make and how to get there. His first suggestion was just down the hill from where we were. We left the hot springs on foot down a path towards the old abandoned hot springs. They closed them in 1984 and have just let them fall apart since then. The hike was about 10 minutes down the path and it was getting dark so we didn't stay long. Plus me and the kids were starting to lose our voices from trying to make enough noise to keep the bears away!

After running like crazy walking back to the van we finally headed back to Jasper and went to bed. The beds were hard as rock but we were all so exhausted it didn't matter. lol I Couldn't even tell you which one of us fell asleep first.

Thursday July 30th

Regan, Babbling Brook, J-Bear and Grace all rode their bikes this morning. Em and I drove them up to the base of the ski hill and dropped them off. While they rode down the hill, Em and I went shopping. We tried on some really cute dresses that go over your swim suits. Just as I was almost tempted to buy something the bikers showed up. So instead of buying a dress, we bought cookies and drinks.

Again it was really hot today. It must have been over 30 degrees at least. We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out at the pool. They had some timed trials for the water slide, so everyone (except me-cuz I was the camera girl) took a turn trying to be the fastest.

While some of us will be remembered for our craziness,

others will be remembered for other things. LOL

In his defense though, he is trying to help Deb plan their wedding. After supper, Will and his kids packed up and headed off to Calgary. This gave me plenty of time to pack, clean up and get ready to leave Fairmont in the morning. Regan and I weren't ready to end our vacation yet so we decided that instead of going home in the morning we would head over to Jasper. Regan and the kids had never been there before and I had only been there once when I was about 8 and we drove through it. So, we are off for another adventure. Yay!

Wednesday July 29th

Regan, Babbling Brook, J-Bear and I started off this morning at the driving range. We had a tee time at 11:30am at Coy's so we wanted to hit a few golf balls before we headed over there. Once we got there we had made it to about hole 3 when out of the bushes Will and his kids showed up. They were looking for golf balls around the perimeter and saw us and came over. We visited shortly and kept going so we wouldn't make anyone wait behind us. Will took his kids to Coy's driving range while they waited for us to finish golfing. The kids and I have really improved on our golf game. Not that we are good or anything but we definitely each had a couple of good shots. Regan is already a pretty good golfer, so his challenge was just having patience with the rest of us.

When we were done we all headed back to town for ice cream. Mmmm. It was so hot out that it was the perfect treat. We came back to the condo and hung out at the swimming pool. At supper time, while Regan was setting off the fire alarm cooking on the BBQ the 4 youngest kids made some new friends and were playing soccer. It was hard to tell them to stop and come eat because they were so fun to watch.

After we ate we headed over towards the original hot springs. We did some hiking up the hill and checked them out and took pictures finally.

We then headed over to the waterfall where they drain the pool at the end of each night. We stayed there for a while into the evening until it was almost too dark to hike back to the vans. We remembered to bring towels but didn't think about a flashlight. Good thing I had the camera light.

Tuesday July 28th

Ok so it has been a while since I blogged and I have alot that I want to journal, so I am writing several posts on the same day but changing the date in the title. Hopefully that makes sense to more than just me!

Tuesday morning was off to a good start. Grandma made breakfast for everyone so that was one less thing I needed to do. Yay for Grandma!! Today was a much more relaxing day. Grandma, Em and I did an aquafit class in the morning. We had a lot of fun doing that. It was the instructors first time teaching aerobics in the water and it was funny to try and keep up with her when you are so much slower in the water. During the class the swimming pool was open to the public in other areas and it didn't take long before *Bigguy, *Taylor and J-Bear were watching us and pretending to join us. It was fun to hear my mom laugh and enjoy herself.

Regan and Grandpa spent a little one on one time together and went golfing down at Coy's Par 3. J-Bear and I went over to the driving range at the Fairmont Golf Course and hit a couple buckets of balls while we waited for them to come back.

Sadly when Grandpa came back, him and Grandma packed up and headed home. They needed to be home for Wednesday so they could go work at the Temple. They left before I could really play some serious cards with my mom. Good thing mom knows I would have won! LOL

Will and his kids and us all headed over to the Fairmont Hot Springs. We watched as Babbling Brook showed off and as Taylor tried some pretty wild and crazy moves on the diving boards. He did a not so pretty dive off the 3 metre and had a good headache for awhile. Poor thing. We had a great time playing in the water together. The boys had several challenges to each other as to who could stay under the water the longest or who could swim the farthest without coming up for air, and so on. I wish I had my camera with me, but alas I had forgot it- AGAIN.

We were all so exhausted after we got back that we quickly ate a late supper and everyone crashed into bed.