Family and Friends - Day 7

Today we met up with our good friends Courtney and Carol (and their two kids) and spent the day at Fort Edmonton Park. The park is a way to experience what life in Edmonton was like at different time periods. We met Court and Carol at the front gate and went inside to catch the train that would take us to the other side of the park. The park wasn't busy, except for the large child care groups that were also at the park. Because of the large groups, getting on the train was an adventure, as dozens of kids marched past us while we tried to get all our stuff out of our strollers and get the strollers stowed away on the train. Somehow we managed.

We started out by exploring the old trading post fort. It was a lot of fun showing the kids the beaver pelts and the Hudson's Bay blankets, as well as all the old living quarters. There were people in period specific costumes doing period specific tasks that you could talk to. For the most part the kids were too shy to even stay in the room with the people, but Xander was very attentive when the one guy explained how he started a fire using a flint and a metal ring. The funniest part of the fort was when I showed Xander the sundial in the middle of the fort. The shadow was lying just beside the 12, so I explained that it was just about noon. He paused and then said "but not really", so I had to get Sandra to confirm that it was a few minutes before noon when she arrived out of one of the fort buildings.

After lunch, we explored the buildings representing Edmonton in 1895. The kids really enjoyed going into each of the buildings to see what new things there were to see. The farm was the best part for Evan, as there were a lot of animals that he could get close to, including a bunch of chickens that had free rein of the area. He spent a lot of time watching a couple of goats and turkeys, and I think he would have stayed there all day, if we hadn't convinced him that there was more to see.

We continued on through the 1905 section, where the fire station was the biggest hit, before stopping for ice cream. It was extremely hot by this time, and the kids were on their third coating of bug spray, and extremely tired, so we moved over to the midway section. Xander really wanted to go on the ferris wheel, but I hate heights and Sandra didn't feel like going, so Carol agreed to take him up on it. While he was up there, Evan and I went for a relaxing spin on the carousel. I was so tired by this point that I almost fell asleep during the spinning. I had two ride / game tickets left at this point, so I figured I would try out the midway games just for fun. I went to the game where you knock down the bottles with a ball and managed to actually do it, so I won a prize. One of the prizes was one of those little styrofoam airplanes, so I picked that and gave it to Evan, who was with me. This created a problem, as Xander was still on the ferris wheel and would want his own airplane when he got off. I had one ticket left, so I really hoped my aim was good. Unfortunately, it was not. I only knocked down two of the bottles with the first ball and none with the second, so the kids will have to share the airplane. We avoided any fights today by telling them it couldn't be opened until we get to Auntie Colette's, but that is just avoiding the problem. If only I was better at throwing a ball...

We then returned to our hotel room and when Court, Carol and Kylie arrived, we grabbed some fast food and spent the rest of the night visiting. It was good to catch up with friends that we haven't seen in a very long time. Tomorrow we head out of the city and go to Loon Lake, where we will spend a few relaxing days at Rick and Colette's.

Family and Friends - Day 6

Before leaving Jasper, we stopped at the train station to visit the coffee shop, since it was a coffee shop / train store. It had a bunch of cool train stuff and we bought each of the kids a train shirt so that they had something to remember their vacation by. During the trip, Evan continued pointing out all the new mountains, but this time he kept exhorting Sandra to take a picture of each one. As she doesn't need a lot of encouragement to take pictures, we now have tons of mountain pictures.

Once we arrived in Edmonton, we made a quick stop at the West Edmonton Mall. Evan is the biggest Toy Story 3 fan and he really loves Jessie, so we were hoping to find a Jessie doll at the Disney Store to buy for his birthday. Of course, the front half of the Disney Store was packed full of Cars 2 merchandise, so the two older kids went a little bit crazy. Luckily, that was enough of a distraction for me to go to the back of the store, find a Jessie doll and purchase it without anyone noticing. I then took the boys to a small play area while Sandra when to Zellers to buy Jonathan a new hat, since he managed to drop his hat over the side of the stroller at Calaway Park without anyone noticing.

With those purchases out of the way, we made our way to our hotel, which is on the University of Alberta campus. While checking in, we met Rona, who had come to have supper with us. Our hotel room is a massive suite with a kitchen, living room and two bedrooms, and it is on the 15th floor, so we have a great view of the city.

After supper, Evan and I went to a nearby Sobey's to pick up some food for tomorrow. However, I was unable to buy one of the items we needed - baby cookies for Jonathan - because apparently baby food items are not a big seller on a university campus.

Family and Friends - Day 5

Evan woke up with his eye nearly swollen shut, which really made me feel bad, as I saw the mosquito sitting on his face while we were standing in line for a ride. However, it bit him before I was able to move over and get rid of it for him. I gave him a couple of doses of Benadryl during the day, and it looked much better by the end of the day, but I don't know if that is because of the drugs or just because the swelling went away on its own.

The plan today was to leave Calgary, visit the Columbia Icefield and then spend the night in Jasper. We wanted to get to the Icefield around lunch, but many things conspired to prevent that. First of all, I immediately got on the Trans-Canada going the wrong way and the first exit, which I took, was not a regular cloverleaf, but just a merge into another freeway, so we had to drive for 10 minutes around the outskirts of Calgary before I found a place to turn around. The second delay was the wonderful cash grab from the Government of Canada, since you have to stop and pay to get into Banff National Park, even if all you want to do is drive to BC. Of course, I picked a lane that was not moving. The third delay was when we stopped for gas in Banff. The first gas station had a huge lineup that was not moving, so we abandoned it and drove around trying to find another one. After filling up, we got stopped by a train leaving Banff. And the final delay was road construction. It's a bit funny - I expected traffic to be the biggest problem we would encounter today, but the roads were quite empty. The Trans Canada was a little busier than highway 11 normally is, and the Icefield Parkway was very quiet - at least until the Columbia Icefield.

Because of all the delays, we only made it to Saskatchewan Crossing (around 50km from the Icefield) at 12:30. The place is a regular tourist trap, as it has a restaurant, but since there is no competition, all the meals were around $20 a piece. Not wanting to spend that much money, I purchased buns, sandwich meat and a bag of chips and we ate lunch sitting in and in front of the car and admiring the mountains surrounding us.

We then made the short trip to the Icefield, where we found all the traffic. The parking lot was very close to full and the information centre was packed full of people. We drug the kids through the people and stood in a slow moving line to purchase tickets for a bus tour of the glacier. Children under 6 were free, provided they could sit on their parent's lap, but the girl only charged me for two adult tickets, so I was a bit worried that all five of us would have to stuff into two seats. The tour starts in a regular bus, which takes you on a short trip up to where the fancy glacier buses are and initially we all packed in to two seats. However, it was obvious that the bus was not going to be full, so we were able to spread out (and we got a $24.95 discount, since Alexander rode for free).

The glacier buses have six big tractor tires on them, so that they get good traction on the ice. The first part of the trip involves going down a 32 percent grade to the glacier, which is scary even if you know that the buses are designed to make the trip. Once on the glacier, Xander was obviously intrigued, as he kept watching the water flowing past the road - it was a bright blue colour. After a short trip, you get out of the bus and get to walk around on the glacier for 20 minutes or so. There was a channel of water running all around the parking area, so I stuck my hand in to drink some of the water - it was extremely cold. Each of the kids also got to stick their hand in, as did Sandra. After posing for some pictures and letting Jonathan explore the ice, we boarded the bus and returned to our car.









Since it was late, I tried to hurry to get to Jasper, but there was now a lot of traffic on the road, including a lot of people more interested in the view than in maintaining the speed limit. However, we made it into to Jasper just after supper time. We got settled in our hotel room and then walked through the tourist section of town after eating at A&W.

The drive today was very nice and scenic. The kids really loved the mountains - Evan kept pointing out each new one he saw, and he kept calling the mountain with the glacier "our mountain". I was once again reminded of the fact that Canada got the good part of the Rockies, since the mountains up here look much nicer than the ones in the US, especially the farther south in the US you go.

Family and Friends - Day 4

Lesson #1: I am not to be responsible for putting suncreen on the children.

Lesson #2: Sandra is not to be responsible for putting sunscreen on herself.

Odd Fact: Evan got a mosquito bite over his left eye. The swelling has caused that eye to look like Odo from DS9. Freaky. (Actually, after sleeping on it, I think his eye looks like a Minbari eye from Bab5. Regardless, I reiterate my freaky comment.)

Too Cute: During the old fashioned car ride, with Evan in the front "driving" and myself in the back, I was busy talking to Evan when he turned to me and said "Quiet in the car, Dad!"

Lesson #3: Kids love amusement parks. 'Nuff said.

Family and Friends - Day 3

Today was a simple and relaxing day. We started the day by going to church and then I took my wife to Taco Bell for lunch, since that is her most favourite fast food restaurant in the whole world. After lunch, the kids played in the backyard while Jonathan and I had a nap. Jeff and Amanda have a trampoline in the backyard, so Xander had a lot of fun jumping on that. After our naps, we took all the kids to a nearby play structure. All of the kids had fun playing in the rocks, swinging on the swings and going down the slide. There was an abacus on the one side of the play structure, so I showed Xander how to count with it. He then stood there and counted to 121 on it.



After the park, we went to visit Jimmy and Juliane. Despite the fact that they don't live far from Jeff and Amanda, and the fact that their house is not hard to find, we still ran into minor problems during the trip. Initially I turned one street too early, since I wasn't paying enough attention to the GPS. However, in my defence, the GPS was using an old map, since it wanted us to turn left on 42nd street, but there was no way to turn left on 42nd street due to the presence of a large wall. We ended up going to the next set of lights and letting the GPS figure out an alternate route to their house.

With that small adventure out of the way, we met Jimmy and Juliane, got a tour of their house and had some appetizers. We had a great visit and a great supper, though the Rider game did not turn out as well as we hoped. The only problem during the evening was that Jonathan was overtired and very cranky. It has been too many days without his proper naps, which is likely to continue for the next few days. Hopefully he can get some sleep in the stroller tomorrow at Calaway Park. (Not likely, but I can hope!)

Family and Friends - Day 2

Today started off with a trip to the Calgary Zoo. We got out of the house right on time and easily found our way to the zoo and arrived well before any of the crowds did. Even so, the lineup was a bit long, especially as one of the tellers had forgotten to change the closed sign to an open sign, so people were avoiding the one entrance into the zoo.

The first few animals we stopped to look at were still sleeping, but the boys were excited to see them. Who isn't excited to see a tiger? Even one that is fast asleep? The first half of our time at the zoo passed by in a bit of a blur. Evan was once again super excited to see the monkeys, but the kids had the most fun in the butterfly enclosure. It is essentially a greenhouse full of butterflies of all different shapes and sizes. Xander kept pointing out the painted ladies (the only butterfly he knows), while Sandra tried to get a picture of a large butterfly that had a deep blue wing colour.

Around lunch, we stopped at a table and ate the food we brought along. To our amazement, Jonathan asked for and ate some watermelon. For those of you that don't know, Jonathan will not eat solid/chunky food. He will spit it out, or even force himself to throw up if he gets it to the back of his tongue. Today, though, he willingly ate watermelon, so there is hope for him.

After lunch, the zoo was much busier, and we had to fight our way through large crowds to look at the gorillas. Things got really insane when we arrived at the indoor part of the giraffe and hippopotamus enclosure. Right when we arrived, they rang a bell to let the animals know that it was feeding time. The area was already quite full of people moving through, but once the bell rang, all the people who had already gone through turned around to come back in, and the area got quite crowded. I was stuck in one spot with the two strollers (and Jonathan), while Sandra and the older two boys tried to find some spot where they could see anything. I don't think they were successful. The rest of the African area was just as busy, so it was difficult to see the zebras and lions, but we managed.

We then walked through the prehistoric area, which was a nice walk filled with concrete dinosaurs. It wasn't as busy, likely because concrete dinosaurs are not as interesting as actual live animals. Xander was cute, as he was only interested in the dinosaurs that were represented in the DinoBots. After the dinosaurs, we tried to get Evan to play in a little drumming session that was occurring in the zoo, but he was tired and we could not get him to participate. The most he would do is sit on my lap while I played. Before leaving, we let the two boys ride a small pretend train that took a short trip around the park. They had been asking to go on it all day, and we got the biggest smiles when they got on.




After leaving the zoo, we headed over to the Chinook Centre so that we could visit the LEGO store. The biggest problem we had was trying to find a place to park. Not only were there no spots at all, but the parking spots were extremely small and all the parking rows were very close together. We found one spot that I could not get the car into, simply because there was no room to turn in. After finally finding a spot, we went into the mall and found the LEGO store.

Xander had been saving his allowance for months for this trip, and we decided to kick in a little more money for him, since it isn't likely that we'll get back to this store for some time, plus we couldn't leave without buying the other kids (and Dad) something as well. The kids loved the store - Xander quickly found a few things he wanted, while Evan discovered the Toy Story 3 LEGO and impressed the store workers with his "I LOVE TOY STORY 3 LEGO" exclamations. While we were shopping, I got each of the older kids to build a LEGO minifigure at the minifigure bar. Xander created a pirate with glasses. Evan created a girl race car driver, while I created an airline pilot. I did not have enough time to look at it too closely, since the store was extremely busy and I had three small children to keep track of, but some of the LEGO City sets were configured so that you could hold them up in front of a camera, and then watch yourself holding a box with the build kit on it on a TV screen. Very cool.

At the end of the day, Xander purchased a small Star Wars LEGO set, a small LEGO city set, a green base and five bags of the series 4 minifigures. Evan (and Jonathan) purchased a Toy Story 3 set with Jessie in it. I purchased a small container of bulk bricks and two bags of the series 3 minifigures. The best part of the store was the reactions every store worker had to my hat, which is my Boba Fett baseball hat that Steve & Jodi bought me for my birthday last year. I'm pretty certain I could have traded it for a LEGO kit without any trouble at all.

After finishing shopping, we returned to Jeff and Amanda's for a wonderful supper and a relaxing night. Tomorrow is our visit to Jimmy and Jules and the Rider season opener!

Family and Friends - Day 1

We have made it to Calgary and I am currently relaxing after putting the kids to bed. We got out of Regina around 9:00am and had a quiet drive to Maple Creek (where the gas price was $1.24/L). We stopped at the Saskatchewan visitor's centre near the border for lunch, as we had brought sandwiches and fruit with us. After lunch, while Sandra took Jonathan into the bathroom, the other two boys and I wandered around the visitor centre. The lady working there gave the boys Canadian flag pins for their jackets and maple leaf cookies, since today is Canada Day.

After that, we drove into Alberta (gas price - $1.10/L - 30km from Maple Creek) and took some pictures by the big sign. As an interesting sign of the times, another tourist stopped and offered to take a picture of all of us, but he couldn't figure out how to use Sandra's camera, which is a DSLR. That means you look through the view finder (I know, old school) rather than hold the camera at arm's length and squint at the LCD screen.

The rest of the drive to Calgary was choppy, as we stopped for coffee, stopped at the side of the highway to calm down Jonathan and then had to stop at a sketchy gas station for Alexander to use the washroom. In Calgary, we drove all the way through the city, as Jeff and Amanda's house is on the west side. I even got to drive through a traffic circle, which brought back memories of our trip to France. After the traffic circle, I managed to take an incorrect exit, but after performing a few traffic violations, I got on the correct road and found their house.

Tomorrow we are going to go to the Calgary Zoo and then we will go to the Chinook Centre, where the LEGO Store is. That should be a LOT of fun.