Happy Anniversary

As I eluded to previously, Tyler and I decided we needed a little RnR and time away so we booked ourselves into a hotel for the night and sent the kids off for a fun sleepover with Grandma and Papa. We stayed at the Acclaim Hotel in Calgary by the airport, which is only about 6 months old, so everything was really fresh and nice and clean. It was a great little hotel, and close enough to the major amenities of the NE that we had a great time. Tyler's favorite part was the TV in the bathroom. A nice feature that we actually used a lot of times, which you wouldn't think. It was even helpful for the few moments of getting ready where he was watching football in the bedroom and I was able to watch TLC in the bathroom. It made for a no-arguments and no hard feelings anniversary weekend. We enjoyed a quiet dinner at Joey Tomatoes (because Tyler love the ribs there) and decided to try and tell each other things about ourselves that we didn't already know. It's a short list and took us a bit of thinking to come up with anything. Afterward we opted out of dessert at the restaurant and decided instead to go to A&W for rootbeer milkshakes, something I've enjoyed for years, but Tyler was only recently introduced to (and has subsequently become addicted to). We got some treats from London Drugs and a few movies from Blockbuster and headed back to the hotel. I wasn't feeling to awesome, which was a damper, but a comfy hotel bed, chocolate, candy and a good movie goes a long way. We slept in (for the first time in years) and then enjoyed a complimentary breakfast at the hotel and headed to the Cross Iron Mills Mall as it was only a few minutes away. It was busy and huge and again, I wasn't feeling too good, so we didn't stay long. We were there about an hour and covered only a 3rd of the mall, spending most of our time in the Big Bass store, or whatever it's called. We came home to our kids playing with Grandma and setting up a candy store for all of their soon to be customers. It was a short but sweet getaway...and I actually survived being away from my kids overnight...for the first time!

Because we're still kids at heart

We made arrangements this week to have Grandma and Papa watch the kids overnight Friday night so Tyler and I could get away for our anniversary. The plan was to have them either go camping with the kids in our new motorhome, and stick around home and play with grandma and we were heading into the city for a nice dinner, some time together and a night in a comfy hotel. Well, the camping plans fell through and on Friday morning we decided it would be fun to take the kids to Calaway Park. Tyler and I decided to postpone the beginning of our anniversary weekend so we could join them. Because the Calgary kids were already back in school, the park was fairly quiet. It was cheaper to get in, and it was open for a shorter time, but still until 4pm, which was plenty for our kids. We had an awesome time. As we walked toward the gate, we heard fun music playing over the speakers which made us reminisce about Disneyland. There were a number of rides that the kids could ride on, so we focused on those. The kids went for a ride on the hot air balloons with Dad, because he's good at spinning. Our next stop was at the airplanes, which Max was vocally disappointed he wasn't big enough to ride. Lucy had a quick turn, while Dad and Max scoped out the next fun ride we would go on. Lucy, naturally, chose a pink plane.Next we went to the egg ride, where Max rode with Papa. Lucy and Grandma had to wait for the next ride, and because there was a short line, Max got on again with me. My first ride.The kids took a break from rides for a few minutes in order to play at a climbing gym. This one was made for kids a little older than them, so Dad went inside with them to facilitate the climbing.Max spotted a ride he was interested in, as they were all small go-karts, motorcycles and the like. He was actually to small (just barely), but the girl running the ride gave him the go-ahead. I was definitely grateful and made Max promise to hold on tight and not get up on his own, he had to wait for mom or dad. Lucy jumped on beside him just before the ride started and as they were going around and around, she asked him to hold her hand, but he refused because "he had to hang on". What a good listener.
We raced over to the train for the kids to have a ride around the track and they made sure to say 'choo-choo' and blow their horns every time they went past us.
The kids went on the cloud climber with Dad and Papa after they saw Mom, Dad and Papa go on a racing sky scraper of a ride. Bad idea for a mom who is also a mom to be. I was dizzy for a while after but was able to shake it off. I guess I'm not 18 anymore!They played in the kiddie climbing tugboat for 20 minutes and then we raced to two more rides before the park closed. The strawberries, which look cool but are very hard to get a good picture of, and finally the carousel. The kids love the Backyardigans episode "Ridin' the Range" so any horse they see they dub with names from that episode. Old Paint, Princess and Harvey. They had a pretty awesome time, and so did we. It was fun to post-pone our coupledom stuff in order to see our kids have fun at Calaway. We split ways in the parking lot and the kids headed off for more fun with Grandma and Papa, while we headed to our hotel. Ah romance!

Return of the Aftermath

At Jason and Ali's wedding, Sarah, Janeen, Tyler, and Matthew (Sarah's boyfriend) found some lyrics to a song that Jason had written and decided to put it to music to perform and dance to at their wedding (without their knowledge of course). They worked for weeks and weeks on the very 'interesting' dance moves and found ridiculous spandex and fluorescent costumes to wear. Brad Duce introdued the group at the wedding to great applause. It was a big hit and a great memory. They called themselves Willy Aftermath - a name that was generated b some website. So at Brad and Angie's wedding (Tyler's cousin's), they decided to reunite the group and perform again (minus Matthew who is on a mission). This time we didn't have a song written by the bride or groom to mock, so we had to create our own, and put it to the tune of Superman by Five for Fighting. The song turned out great...a real hit at the wedding. They had tried to do a blacklight dance to go along with it, but we couldn't black out the gym enough to do it. They had a great time practicing, writing and performing. Brad was sad he had ever had any involvement in the first performance as it came back to bite him a bit.
Tyler was also the emcee for the wedding reception and enjoyed preparing his jokes for the night. He did a good job keeping things light and giving Brad enough of a hard time.

Ramada Lethbridge

We traveled down to Lethbridge this weekend for Tyler's cousin's wedding. We stayed at the Lethbridge Ramada and had a blast. They had a great pool and waterslide and the kids would have spent all their time there. The waterslides had tubes for traveling down (if you wanted) and so most of our group tried to figure out the many hundreds of ways they could get down the slide and the many different combinations of people. I spent most of my time at the bottom taking pictures. It was like a miniature wave pool, and the water was fairly warm. They even had a kiddie pool with a pirate ship and slides and Captain Jack (as my kids called him...he looked more like Hook) standing by.

What a Sight

On our trip down to Lethbridge for Brad and Angie's wedding, we took our slow jaunt through Nanton and came across one of the funniest things I've ever seen. This lady must have been 70+ years old, driving a trike motorbike with purple tube top (yes, I know, which you can imagine did not do much for her 'girlish' figure), helmet with purple flames, and short shorts. The clothing allowed us to see her multiple tattoos - shoulder and upper thigh. It looked like she had forgotten her dentures at home, as her mouth was a bit...how do you say? limp. And her glasses looked like plastic framed coke bottles. We took a picture from behind because we didn't want to be too obvious with our amusement. We kept joking that she must be quite the sight when she gets up to speed!

Camping - the 2nd time

We went camping again (spur of the moment, because that's the way Tyler runs). It was a short trip, but with much nicer weather, which was fun. We took our bikes and went for a little ride around the campground. We had more fun outside and playing at the park (the kids enjoyed actually sliding down the slide, instead of just looking at it). We played tag and went fishing again and Tyler made arrows out of twigs so the kids could use their bow and arrow for practice. It wasn't much different than the first time, except for the weather, which really made all the difference.

Visitors

Because my sister had a hair appointment in Cochrane today, she dropped her kids off here for a little visit and cousin time. It pretty made my kids life for the week. Nephew and Max love playing together. It gives Max a chance to play boy things like cars and sword fighting. Lucy loves playing with niece because they're both girly girls who like to take care of pets and play 'pet store', which is Lucy's favorite game right now. Here's a few shots of Nephew and Max having a battle to the death. They were Sir Lightning McQueen and Sir Mater and the girls were the queen and princess to wish them well. Max (Sir Lightning McQueen) won the battle against the evil Mater and won a kiss from the princess (Lucy). They had a pretty great time and it was difficult to convince Max to take a nap.

Camping - our first attempt

So as I mentioned a few posts ago, we bought a motorhome. I know, I imagine that to be the purchase of a semi-retired couple, and not semi-starving students. I say that, only because it's the stereotype...we are hardly starving. (don't worry mom). But as Papa would say, Tyler must be semi-retired because he doesn't work nearly enough, so i guess it works for us. We decided to take them out on our first excursion and chose the rainiest weekend the summer has seen. It ended up being a fun time anyway, because the kids were more interested in spending time inside the motorhome anyway. After Max's nap, Dad and the kids started a fire in the fire pit so we could roast our hot dogs and marshmallows for dinner. They had a great time learning the proper way to start a fire, and to sit in their wet lawn chairs roasting our dinner. I think our kids ate the quickest and best they have in months that night. Maybe it's something about cooking for yourself. We roasted marshmallows for a bit and went for a walk around the campground to explore. We found the park, but it was too wet to play. (we could not go to the park on this wet wet day). We came back after a while and set up the motorhome. We danced to some tunes on mom and dad's bed for a while, and then decided to watch our movie so we could settle down. We had bought Jumanji because I had remembered liking that movie with I was younger...well, obviously I wasn't 2 or 4, because they were a bit intimidated from the first moments when the boy was sucked into the game. We made it through the movie, however, and settled in for our first night in the motorhome. The back half no longer had curtains so Tyler and I had to hang poster board to keep out the early morning light and onlookers. We had a pretty awesome time. The kids slept reasonably well, as did we, and we awoke to have some breakfast and go exploring again. We found strawberry bushes all over the paths as well as mushrooms. Lucy loved finding the mushrooms and would point out every variety, which Max sat on his dad's shoulders, mouth open waiting for strawberries. We came back to the motorhome and had some warm applecider to warm up while the kids practiced their photography skills. We decided to try out our fishing rods just before we headed home. Again, it was cold and wet, and we didn't have much luck, but it was fun to attempt. The kids are really looking forward to catching something. We made it home mid afternoon and vowed we would do it again. And we have! How's that for a city girl?

Joining the Circus

It's been a long time since I posted and I couldn't decide whether I would put a whole bunch of updates into one blog or if I should spread them out. Some only have a few pictures, but others have a lot, so I thought, a couple of blogs. You can read them all if you want, or not, it's mostly for my own memory keeping.
On August 10th, we realized that Circus Ghatti was only in town for one more night, and we thought it would be fun to take the kids. They were really excited to go to "MAX"bell center to see the show. The only idea of a circus they've ever seen was on Dora when the lion wants to join the circus and they have animals doing everything...cartoon expectations lead to real-life disappointments. Lucy enjoyed the whole thing, especially getting popcorn and cotton candy. Max was only interested in the animals, so when any 'people' acts came out he was pretty frustrated. He kept asking me, "who are these people?" so disgusted. They had a few dog tricks, pony tricks, and concluded the evening with elephants, which were pretty great. Lucy enjoyed watching the dancing and magic show. Tyler and I enjoyed the tight-rope walker. By 'enjoyed' I mean that we sat with our breath held and a nervous pit in our stomach as this guy did crazy things way too high up in the air, with nothing but 4 spotters, who were only half paying attention. At one point he kind of stumbled and I thought he was going to fall. I'm not sure if that was part of the show, or if actually did stumble, but he got me. I definitely did not want to watch this man fall to the sheet-covered concrete floor of the Maxbell arena. It was dark in the arena, so it was hard to take pictures. We had a fun time, and were glad we got the discount coupons from Extra Foods so it only cost us $20. That's a pretty cheap family outing I think. Oh, and it was a highlight to see the Mason family...Tammy's sister, husband and their kids. It was especially fun to see Kristy run out of the arena with their 2nd youngest daughter covered in puke and shake our heads for poor Ian, who had received the brunt of it. I'm sure that was NOT the highlight of their evening out.

Rockstar

On Sunday as we prepared a surprise for Brad and Angie's wedding and were listening to music, Max decided to make his rockstar debut and picked up one of the "Guitar Hero" guitars and showed us his stuff. He put on his signature 'rock star' face (which is very similar to his bad guy face). He impressed all of us with his coordination and then pulled out the 'ROCK ON!' fingers and we all laughed. What a showman. Tyler has visions of a healthy rock star income in his future.