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!
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!
