Summer Holiday, Part 1

Well, we're finally back from the first of our two summer holidays we have planned this year. At the risk of boring you with what is basically a vacation slide show, here are my favourite pictures from our trip.

Right before we left, Shae had her Grade 6 Farewell (aka mini-graduation) so I'm going to sneak in a couple of pictures from that first, before I get to our holiday.

Doesn't she look beautiful? Smart and beautiful, she's a lucky girl!

On June 30th, we headed down to Raymond, just in time for the annual Canada Day parade. The traditional red and white was worn, the parade was watched, candy was caught, and food was eaten. Topped off, of course, by fireworks that night.

After 2 days in Raymond, while Jess and I were on a drive to Cardston, our van broke down. The transmission had been acting funny for a while and all of the sudden, it just stopped shifting and we were stuck, we couldn't go anywhere. The mechanic in Cardston said he couldn't fix it so we had to have it towed to Lethbridge (NOT cheap!) Turns out the transmission was toast and it ended up taking 2 weeks to get it fixed!! Thanks to Jess's parents' generosity, we were still able to go places when we needed to as they lent us their van.

So, our faulty transmission ended up extending our holiday but that just meant more time with family so it all worked out.

The next day, I ran the Raymond 10k race. My goal was to shave off at least 5 minutes from last year's time but 10 minutes was my real goal. Well, I managed to cut down my time by 5 minutes and just barely. So maybe next year, I'll lose the other 5 minutes, we'll see. This is me cresting Temple Hill, the one "hill" in what is otherwise a nice and flat race.

And, crossing the finish line:

Later that day, we headed out to Waterton National Park in the mountains. Unfortunately, it was really cold and windy so we didn't do much more than throw rocks and sit by the water trying not to get blown away. Although Jess did give his arms a workout and took the kids out in the canoe on Emerald Bay.

Jess's younger sisters Caley and Bethany were both in Raymond at the same time as us. Neither of their husbands could come but they both have 2 sons so with their 4 kids and our 4 kids, there was never a dull moment. Shae had fun painting everyone's faces, she's quite the artist.

Maira wanted to be Spiderman too but of course, she wanted to be pink. I tried to get a picture of her and Shae but Maira wouldn't hold still for anything because she kept wanting to show me her superpowers.

Finally, I asked Shae to hold Maira's face still so I could get a non-blurry picture...

Hudson was sleeping during this picture but this is the best shot we could get of the other 7 cousins all together.

Jess took a belaying course at U of L so he could take the kids to the climbing wall there. Here's Shae climbing up the wall. It's 5 stories high.

And here she is all the way at the top:

And Connor's a great climber too, he made it over some really tough spots and made it just a couple metres from the top.

Later in our trip, we drove west into the mountains, to Kikomun Provincial Park in B.C. Caley and her boys came along, as well as Jess' parents and his brother John. This is the cabin I rented for me and the kids (Jess didn't come, he was working that week)

It was really lovely, the only drawback was that it was really close to the highway. Here's a picture out the back window, to show how close the highway is.

But it was a 10 minute drive to the beach so the location was really good.

The boys loved playing with Uncle John, especially when it involved pushing him over.