Thursday, July 7, 2011

Family vaction...recap

I thought that there would be more installments to chronicle the vacation, but time got away from me.  So now we're back in Saskatoon and I'll have to attempt the remember some of the highlights.  Here goes...

There was a fair bit of driving involved (1600 km altogether) and my theme song proved to be a hit to help pass the time.  We have a DVD player for the kids, but it's really only Jorja who uses it.  Ginny watches for a bit, but then her attention wanes.  So at every departure point, I plugged in the ipod and cranked up our theme song (or as Ginny liked to say, 'play the bean song.')  Everyone got into the action - even CeCe was singing along.  Check it out here.  It was a lot of fun.

After we left Hanna, we headed to Canmore.  It was the girls' first look at the mountains and they were impressed.  We took Highway 1A from Cochrane to Canmore, which was a nice, scenic drive.  I wouldn't want to do it at night or in the winter, but it was a good introduction to the mountains for the girls.  As we ascended, the trees got thicker and I said that we were in the forest now.  Jorja sat up and said with great excitement, "A REAL forest!"  Yes Jorja, a real forest.  And yes, we are from Saskatchewan.  There was then some discussion between Jorja and Ginny as to whether it was an enchanted forest or a spooky forest.  I guess when you grow up in central Saskatchewan, your only exposure to forests is in fairy tales.

We spent three nights in Canmore and had lots of fun.  My sister turned 40 this year, so we all celebrated with her.  We stayed in a really nice condo, which is definitely the way to go - two bedrooms, two bathrooms (an en suite!), full kitchen, dishwasher, clothes washer, flat screen TV and DVD player, wireless Internet, balcony with a BBQ.  It was great.  We checked out all sorts of neat shops in Canmore, including a glass blowing place.  That was really cool.  The older girls and Julie enjoyed spending time in the pool (CeCe and I were more into the hot tub).  We had lots of good times visiting and seeing all my family.

From Canmore we headed to Calgary to spend two nights with Julie's brother and his wife.  We all went to Calaway Park for a day, and the girls had a blast.  I think we all did actually.  After one initial incident, Ginny warmed up to the rides and became quite the daredevil.  I think Jorja was cramping her style a bit.  It's a good thing she had her aunt and uncle there to go with her, because I tend to get a bit squeamish at any sort of spinning ride.  The weather was gorgeous, and even CeCe stayed fairly happy all day with only a 20 minute power nap in the stroller.  We had some more good visiting and then headed home.

The drive home was the longest stretch in a row, and by the time we were home, we were all ready to be done the holiday road.  It was a great time, but we were happy to be home.  Here are some pictures from our fun:

CeCe on Canada Day.

Jorja showing her patriotic spirit.

Everyone posing except for Ginny.

I had to get her when she wasn't looking.

The view from our condo.

In the beginning, it was all about the merry-go-round.

It was all they could talk about.

Later on, Ginny got a bit more intense.

This was the favourite ride - the mini roller coaster.

CeCe was a good cheerleader (but she went on some stuff too.)
    Later.

No comments:

Post a Comment