Waiting in Walmart

We all took a ride in Papa's big red truck into Home Depot and they dropped Max and I off at Walmart to pick up a few things.  We raced around trying to get everything we needed before they got back from Home Depot and ended up waiting around in the entrance to Walmart for about 45 minutes for them.  To entertain Max we started trying on cowboy hats.  He loved wearing it and waving at people walking by, but he insisted that I keep a cowboy hat on the entire time as well.  We decided to take pictures of ourselves since we looked so cute.

Solitary Confinement

At least one time everyday Lucy puts herself voluntarily into solitary confinement.  She goes into her room and shuts the door and Mom, Dad, and Max are not allowed in.  She usually plays with her dolls and reads them stories, makes bottles for them and puts them down for naps.  Most importantly she is freed from her brother who is constantly trying to play with her and interrupt her games.  Max usually gets pretty upset at these times because her door shuts right in his face, as he is always two steps behind her at all times.  He cries at the door and knocks and then tries to look underneath to find her.  He's a far cry from reaching the doorknob so it's a good system for her.  I allow these times to happen because I figure since she rarely has naps anymore she still needs a little downtime everyday.  Dad tried to go into her room the other day during one of these moments and even he got turned away.

6 - 18 months

This week we were at canadian tire and noticed a backyard pool that would be fun for the kids.  It came with a sunshade which I thought was particularly important for my fair skinned, redheaded children.  The box said it was for children ages 6-18 months, but I thought: hey, my 18month old and 3 year old will be fine.  Well, as you can tell, along with the 2 dozen toys they brought in with them, they are at capacity.  They had a fun hour in the pool on a hot day, and then came inside to dry off and have a freezee.  It was fun.

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.

Edmonton Day 2

On day two of our Edmonton Adventure, Tyler was up early in order to get to the school by 9:00am.  The kids slept GREAT in the hotel, which was a bit of a worry.  We were planning on testing to see how our kids did on this mini-trip to help us determine what we needed to plan for on our bigger holiday to the coast in August.  I'm glad to say that Max slept fine in the playpen instead of his crib which is great news.  The kids and I got up and got ready and ate breakfast and then decided to go outside for awhile.  Because our hotel was downtown (to be close to the UofA), there weren't many parks or green spaces within walking distance.  We walked around downtown for a little bit trying to find Sir Winston Churchill Park, but were unsuccessful.  Mostly because the kids were tired of walking.  We found a street that is similar to Stephen Avenue in Calgary and spent some time there.  The kids had a snack and looked at some statues and smelt flowers.  

We headed back to the hotel for lunch (leftover pizza) and Max's nap.  After lunch we jumped in the van and headed to the science center.  We were fortunate to be able to get in free with our Calgary membership, which I was grateful for because it wasn't much compared to the science center in Calgary.  I imagine for kids 5+ it's great, but they didn't have much for little kids.  

We enjoyed sitting on a police bike and Lucy got to pretend to forecast the weather. 

 Upstairs they had a little kid section where we spent most of our time.  They had a giant piano that you had to stand on to make it play and they really enjoyed that.  

After the science center we went home for Max's nap and to meet up with Tyler.  We decided it was a good evening to spend back at WestEd to do some shopping.  

Grandma Janielee had given each of the kids some money to spend at the mall.  Lucy had decided she wanted to get a Mrs. Potato head because her friends Seth and Eli have one.  We looked at a few toy stores but couldn't find one.  I had noticed there was a Build-a-Bear store and told Lucy that there was a place where you got to choose your own bear and stuff it, and kiss the heart and put it in your bear and then choose clothes for them and name them.  Her eyes got really big and said, "I want to do that!"  So we headed off to the Build-a-Bear store.  She chose a white bear with pink highlights.  She carefully stuffed it and kissed the little heart.  Once it was stuffed she took it to the bath and brushed her hair.  Then we chose a pink t-shirt with a princess crown on it for her to wear.  Her and dad went to the computer to chose a name.  At first she said "Patcha" which is her first choice of name for anything.  Dad said it wasn't really a name, so she paused and then said, 'Ok, Linda."  I don't even know where she has heard that name before.  

Max bought an airplane because he is obsessed with airplanes right now.  We headed back to the hotel after that and Lucy cuddled Linda all night.

Edmonton Day One! (emphasis added)

Last week we headed up North to Edmonton for our first family vacation. We have been on holidays many times in the last 5 years that Tyler and I have been married, but this was the first time we went as just our little 4-person family. We had a great time! Tyler had to be in Edmonton on Thursday and Friday for a conference at the UofA, so we headed up wednesday to spend some time together as a family and enjoy a little R&R. We didn't get much R&R because we tried to pack so many things into our 2 1/2 days, but it was worth it nonetheless. We arrived in Edmonton at about 2:00pm on Wednesday after a fun ride. The kids each had a nap in the car which made for a more pleasant drive and afternoon at WestEd. Lucy kept noticing fields of yellow flowers as we drove and we told her they were canola fields, so each time she saw one after that she would yell out, "CANOLA!" And fortunately on the ride from Cochrane to Edmonton you see Canola fields about every couple of miles. We headed straight for WestEd and had some lunch - a McDonald's happy meal for Lucy (she shares fries with Max) and the BEST wraps I have EVER had for Tyler and I. It's a little place called WestCoast Wraps and Smoothies and I had the teriyaki wrap, and tyler had the Thai wrap. It's a complete meal and SO tasty, and you don't walk away feeling like you had "Mall food". If anyone is headed there, I HIGHLY recommend it. (I don't like use exclamation points very much, so instead I capitalize my words for emphasis). After lunch we headed to the Sea Life Caverns to see the penguin show at 3:00, the snake show at 3:30 and the Sea Lion show at 4:00. The kids loved it. 

There was a huge aquarium with sharks and sea turtles that we got to watch swim around, and we got to watch two Corn Snakes each eat a mouse. My description of it would be very disgusting, but it was actually very fascinating. Because it takes a snake so long to swallow it's food (opening it's mouth up to 150 degrees) they can actually push their windpipe out of their mouth so they can continue breathing while they eat. It's like snorkeling basically. We learnt that a corn snake eats one mouse, once a week, the larger boa snakes each a rat about once a month, and larger snakes like anacondas will each something like an antelope once a year. So don't catch them on the wrong day! After the snake show we went upstairs to get our seats for the Sea Lion show which was amazing. The two sea lions did a bunch of tricks for the audience and after the show was done, we got our picture taken with one of them (the female, who is only 200lbs, the male sea lion weighs in at 650lbs!)

We were all pretty exhausted by then so we headed to the hotel to check in and order some pizza for dinner. I was still so full (and satisfied) by my wrap that I only ate 2 pieces of pizza, whereas the rest of my family devoured a lot! 

We took a quick drive to the UofA to make sure Tyler knew how to get there in the morning and then went to the pool in our hotel for a quick swim before bed. Well, our quick swim was REALLY quick because the pool was up to Tyler's waist at the shallow end and FREEZING cold. Max played for 2 minutes and Lucy and I refused to get in, so it was quickly up to the hotel room and into a warm tub and off to bed. Lucy was excited to have her own bed at the hotel (a hide-a-bed couch) and went to sleep quickly after a busy day. Tyler and I stayed up a bit with Max and relaxed before heading of to lala land ourselves. Stay tuned for details on Day 2!

Gymaniacs

There's a great little kids gym in Cochrane next to the Post Office that the kids love to go to.  We went most recently when there was a lot of rain in July and the kids were getting kind of tired of being inside.  

They have every jungle gym arrangement you could possibly hope for, and the kids can spend a good 2 hours at least without getting bored.  Max's favorite area to play in is the ball pit.  Lucy enjoys the little houses and castles and taking toys in to play with on her own.