Family and Friends - Day 17

We have made it home. The trip was uneventful, though we discovered that the few ants that were making their way through the patio door before we left became an ant army in our absence. The dining room and kitchen have a ton of ants that I now need to deal with. Just the perils of owning a house, I guess.

Xander has his own camera, so during the trip, I decided that I would put a bunch of his pictures on this blog entry, so that you could see our vacation through the eyes of a five year old. Unfortunately, when I grabbed his SD card tonight, it only had 17 pictures from today on it. I managed to find all of his pictures using a recovery program, but for a few minutes I thought his pictures were gone. I then went through the 1000+ pictures (including 500 of his shoes and the back of Evan's seat, since he would only really use his camera in the car) and picked out the best for your viewing pleasure.

So, without further ado, here is our trip, as Alexander saw it.

On the way to Calgary

 

 

 

 

At the Calgary Zoo

 

 

 

 

In the Mountains

 

 

In Edmonton

 

On the way to Loon Lake

 

In Loon Lake

 

On the way to Regina

 

 

Unknown

 

 

 

Family and Friends - Day 16

Today was our final day of vacation, though as my wife and in-laws have pointed out, yesterday was really my last day of vacation, since I don't normally work on Saturday. I spent the morning building LEGO with my oldest two kids and I built them a castle to play with. I thought it turned out well for just using regular bricks, but people did object to my lack of colour coordination.

After lunch, while the boys curled in the semi-final, we took our kids to the Turtleford Museum. Colette came down from Loon Lake with her kids, so they came along as well. The museum is located in the old CN station and contains an actual caboose that you can go into. We spent a short time looking at all the old stuff in the museum, and then had fun going through the caboose. My kids had a lot of fun, especially sitting up in the chairs in the cupola of the caboose.

Once everyone got back from the curling game, we took all the kids to the giant turtle to get their picture taken. A few years ago, we had a grandchildren picture taken at the turtle, so we decided to update it. Unfortunately, Tyler and Michelle's child wasn't able to be there, so the picture doesn't actually contain all the grandchildren. We may have to Photoshop him in.

We then had a birthday party for Allison and a nice BBQ supper. After supper and giving the younger kids a bath, I won my third consecutive Munchkin game this vacation. While we were playing, Grandma fixed up some mistakes on Evan's haircut and then used a trimmer on Xander's hair, so his hair is now super short. He kept saying that he wasn't Xander anymore, because he didn't look like him. After putting the kids to bed and playing a final card game, our vacation is pretty much officially over. Tomorrow we head back to Regina.

Family and Friends - Day 15

I did nothing substantial today. It was a great vacation day.

The kids drove around with Grandpa on the lawn tractor and played in a Toy Story kiddie pool.

Family and Friends - Day 14

Dear Blog Readers,

Good evening (or morning or afternoon). I hope you have had a good day (or night). We had a fun and relaxing day today. Grandma and Grandpa made us bacon and eggs for brunch and then we headed over to Jason and Allison's for the day. The kids played, while the adults visited. After lunch, we played a number of board games, some with the kids and some with the adults. I got to play Munchkin twice, since Emily enjoys playing a game with the adults rather than the children. I, of course, don't mind whenever I get to play Munchkin.



When it got late, we returned to Grandma and Grandpa's, let the kids watch the end of the chuckwagon races (sigh) and then put everyone to bed. I guess this blog has gotten boring, since we aren't doing anything more than visiting. If you are getting bored, feel free to reread the first week where we did all the interesting stuff, and hopefully it should get back to more interesting stuff next trip.

Well, that sums up our day. Tomorrow will be much the same. I'm going to bed shortly, so hopefully you have enjoyed this short blog post.

Jason



P.S. Sandra has complained that my blog posts have no beginning or end, hence the introduction and salutation in this post.

Family and Friends - Day 13

We started off the day by heading to Livelong to curl a game in the Livelong summer bonspiel. Sandra's family curls a lot and I was on a team with her father and her two brothers. I've only curled two games since grade school, and both of them were with my in-laws, so I wasn't expecting to contribute a lot. I managed to get some of my rocks across the hog line, and I think I managed to help out a bit with the sweeping. We didn't win, but I had a lot of fun playing. I even managed to put up a really good guard in the final end. While we were playing, the kids went outside and found a pile of frost that had been scraped off the ice, so they spent some time making snowballs and throwing them against the outside of the curling rink.







We came back to Sandra's parents for lunch and then put the kids down for a nap. Right after Xander was in bed, the power went out. Everyone was asleep in the house, except for Sandra and her mom, who were outside in the garden. I didn't think too much of the power outage until Rene got up and said that power outages were fairly common and due to the way the power grid is setup in northern Saskatchewan, if the power was out in Turtleford, it was also out in all the communities in this area. That meant that the power was off in Livelong, making it difficult to keep the curling ice frozen. The rest of the afternoon was a flurry of phone calls to see what was happening and to keep the regular member of the team (whom I replaced today) informed, since he lives a long way out of town.

We barbecued for supper, since there was no power, though the power did come back on shortly after supper and the curling games from today were rescheduled to tomorrow and Friday. Before going to bed, we gave the kids their baths and got Grandma to cut the boys' hair while they watched the chuckwagon races with Grandpa.

Family and Friends - Day 12

Today was another simple relaxing day. We let the kids play outside during the morning, had a nice lunch and then let the older two kids go to a local VBS program. While they were gone, Colette helped the two middle kids make cinnamon buns. My excitement for the day occurred when everyone left to go pick the kids up. I was in the house with Samantha, who was sitting in her chair on the floor, when the cat decided to walk into the living room with a mouse. I saw it coming and reached down to pick up Samantha while telling the cat to get lost. It decided that it was going to try and drop the mouse on the floor right on top of Samantha's play mat. I pulled the mat away from the cat, and when it dropped the mouse, I noticed the stupid mouse was still alive.

The cat spent the next half hour chasing the mouse around the big chair, while I tried to keep all the toys and electronics away from it. It did finally kill the mouse, a long time later, after everyone else had returned. After that excitement, we had a quick snack (the aforementioned cinnamon buns) and then drove to Sandra's parent's house in Turtleford. The boys were tired, so it took them a little bit of time to warm up, but by supper time everyone was having a great time. Xander got to go out to the garden and pick some of the onions that he helped plant at Easter time. Jason brought his girls over to visit and the kids all played well together, letting the rest of us visit.

After supper, Grandpa showed the boys the chuckwagon races at the Calgary Stampede and we ended up putting the kids to bed very late. Tomorrow I am actually curling and my entire family is coming to watch me. Should be fun.

Family and Friends - Day 11

Well, today did not turn out as I planned, but since I am on vacation, that is perfectly OK. Immediately after waking up, Evan started throwing up and he continued for the next hour or so. During this time, I was supposed to be getting ready to go curling, but it was a nice sunny day and I didn't want to prevent the other kids from having a good time at the beach. After some discussions, we decided I would stay home with Evan, so we phoned Sandra's Dad and asked him if he could find someone else to play. Of course, within minutes of doing that, Evan started feeling better. Kids rebound from illness so quickly, sometimes it is scary.

Evan and I relaxed for the rest of the morning and then we all went out to the beach after lunch. The kids immediately jumped into the water, which was quite warm, while I started building a sand castle. WIth the help of two friend's kids, who were also at the beach, we got the castle built around the time that my kids and Colette's kids were done in the water. So, we decided to build an even bigger sand castle. After all of that digging, I was pretty tired, so I just relaxed while the kids used water and feet to destroy the sand castles, which just proves that hill giants are the best war machine, ever.

We popped back to Colette's house for supper and then went back to the lake with the boat. I helped Rick launch the boat and then spent the rest of the evening taking the kids for rides in the boat or in the tube. Xander was extremely adventurous as he asked if he could ride in the tube alone and go fast. He ended up going for two rides and had a great time. We finally went home around 8:30pm, though it is hard to tell when you are this far north, because the sun hasn't even started to set at 8:30. I don't think we have any big plans for tomorrow, other than packing everything up and taking the short drive to Sandra's parents at Turtleford.

Family and Friends - Day 10

Today was another cool and rainy day, so we did nothing, which means this will be a fairly boring blog post. However, I do have a picture of the Rona in Loon Lake beside a field, because it is. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny, so the kids should be able to have some fun at the beach.

As for myself, I am going curling...

Family and Friends - Day 9

It was rainy and cool in Loon Lake today, so we just spent a relaxing day in the house. I spent the day reading the Malifaux rulebok (if you're reading this Court - I love the fluff, I think I need to see a game played to get a grasp on the rules, and I'm not certain about the models - probably need to see them in person). For lunch, Colette made bread and buns and she gave each of the kids a little bit of dough that they could use to make whatever they wanted. The kids played until around the middle of the afternoon, when there was a break in the rain and everyone went for a walk.

After the walk, Rick got out his quad and took all of the kids for rides. Both boys loved their rides, even though Evan usually gets frightened around loud engine noises. Auntie Colette tricked him by telling him how much fun it was going to be, and getting him seated on the back before the engine was started. Colette took Sandra for a ride and somehow convinced her to actually drive! Once everyone had gone for a couple of rides, Rick took Jordan on his first motorcycle ride. Xander watched him go and then decided he wanted to try as well, so Rick took him for a quick ride around the block. That is quite the improvement from the winter, when we could hardly get either of them on the small snowmobile.

For supper, we went down to the Dairy Bar for supper. Sandra used to work there as a teenager and the chicken and mozza sandwiches with gravy are extremely good. After supper, we had some ice cream and wandered around on the beach before heading back to the house to give the kids baths.

Family and Friends - Day 8

Today was the end of the adventure part of our vacation and the start of the relaxing part of our vacation. For the rest of our holidays, we are staying with Sandra's relatives and we aren't planning on doing anything more strenuous than going for a boat ride.

We had planned on taking Xander to a small amusement park in Edmonton that allowed five year olds to go on a go kart with an adult, but unfortunately, it started raining before we left, which made it impossible to go out on the track. Luckily, we had kept the entire thing a secret from him, because we were never sure if we would have time, or if the weather would cooperate, so until he is old enough to read this blog, he won't know what he missed.

We tried to get lost leaving Edmonton, since the road signs to the major highways could be improved. We were on Whitemud, which indicated that that it was highway 14 headed towards highway 16. However, at one point the freeway ends and you are expected to know that you have to take highway 216 to get to highway 16 without a single sign indicating which way should be taken to highway 16. We also had to fight our GPS, which was adamant that the way to Loon Lake was through a bunch of tiny northern highways rather than through Lloydminster.

Anyway, we quickly outran the rain and stopped at a giant Ukranian egg in Vegreville for lunch. It was a bit windy for the boys, but I was able to sit outside and feed Jonathan while everyone else ate their lunch in the car. After that, we drove all the way to Loon Lake, where we will be spending the next few days with Rick and Colette. After arriving and unpacking, I realized how nice it is to visit here, as our kids play extremely well together. All four of the oldest kids disappeared and we hardly saw them or heard from them until it was time for supper.

After supper we took all the kids to the beach. They immediately ran into the water and Evan was quickly soaked, but they had a great time. They built a big lake on the beach, filled with buckets of water from the lake. While all this was happening, Jonathan was sitting in the sand, eating large amounts of it. It seems like all my kids end up eating sand at some point. After a short time at the beach, we drug the extremely wet kids back to the house and put them to bed. Hopefully the weather is good enough tomorrow that we can do something outside - the forecast is for the rain we left in Edmonton to arrive here sometime tomorrow, though.