Edmonton Day 3

Our final day in Edmonton was quite adventurous. Tyler was up early again and off to the school and the kids and I had to prepare to check out of our hotel by noon and head to the Royal Alberta Museum for the afternoon and finish the day off by picking Tyler up at the University to head home. We were up and moving quickly and started packing up all our luggage. Our van was parked down on the L7 floor of the parkade so we headed down and brought our van up to the front entrance. I borrowed a trolley from the hotel to load all of our luggage on and took it up to our room. After loading 2 large suitcases, a playpen, a sleeping bag, Tyler's briefcase, 3 pillows cereal boxes, a rubbermaid bin of toys, a box of fruit cups and bottles (etc), our trolley was pretty overloaded and heavy. It was difficult to maneuver so I sent the kids out into the lobby of our floor ahead of me, so I could control the heavy hotel door and push the trolly. I headed down the small corridor with the trolley in front of me. Lucy was so excited about pushing the elevator button every time we went into the elevator (which was often since we were on the 22nd floor). So as I am maneuvering this heavy cart in front of my I hear the distinct *ding* of the elevator door and knew that my kids were alone in the elevator lobby with the door open! With a heavy trolley in front of me I got to the lobby just in time to see the elevator door closing with Max inside. I ran to stick my arm in the door to stop it, but to no avail. The door closed with my 16 month old son inside, and Lucy and I outside. I could hear him crying on the inside and Lucy was in tears on the outside. I stood there thinking to myself, "My son is in an elevator by himself. Who knows where he will end up in this hotel!" Of course, I pushed the elevator button to get the process of finding him started, when the elevator door opened to reveal him. Fortunately he isn't tall enough to push any buttons and no one called for an elevator at that moment. Our little threesome was reunited with a happy hug. At that moment, someone from the hotel got off another elevator and asked me if I needed help. We gladly took it! He pushed our trolley and I took the kids. Down in the lobby I headed to the concierge desk to check out and as the adrenaline subsided I realized the humor of the situation and just started laughing. I'm sure the lady behind the desk thought I was bizarre. I just smiled at her and said, 'It's been a busy morning.'

We drove to the Royal Alberta Museum which shares property with the Government House. Max fell asleep in the van, so we let him have a nap, while Lucy and I had a picnic lunch on the grounds. There was a cool Korean arbor on the property that was donated from Korea.

We smelt flowers and looked at the flags and played Star Catcher.

Soon Max woke up and we headed into the Museum. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take any pictures inside, but the kids had a really good time. They have a special Dragon display on right now with lots of cool images and statues. Lucy got a Dragon necklace made for her, and Max was so fascinated with a life-size Dudley the Dragon. Not because he was big, or green, or a dragon, but because he was wearing shoes. He kept pointing to Dudley's shoes and then his own saying, "Shss! Shss!"

They also have a Wild Alberta section which has dioramas of wildlife in Alberta including, Mountain Lions, Bears, Mountain Goats, Big-Horn Sheep, Wolves, Coyotes, birds birds birds!, Buffalo, Moose, and Deer. Upstairs in the museum was an Aboriginal Section which was really neat, but the kids found boring. And then it was on to the Earth through Time. This section was their favorite as it had a fossils and gemstone rocks section as well as a Dinosaur room. There were dinosaur noises over the soundsystem in that room and Lucy grabbed my hand to ask me what it was. I had to reassure her that nothing in there was real. She was excited to see all of her favorite dinosaurs: a brontosaurus, raptor, t-rex, and most of all the triceratops. There was also a "bug room" in this section which we founds most disgusting. There were huge tarantulas, cockroaches, millipedes, grasshoppers, crickets...you name it, they had it. Gross! There were huge display cases of butterflies (much like at the Calgary Zoo) so we looked at those for a while. We were getting tired and ready to head home so we said goodbye to the museum, stopped in the gift shop for a stuffed Dragon for each of the kids, and went to pick up Dad from the UofA. This was another adventure in itself, which I will save for another post.