Marc-Andre and Joseph made the amazing journey across the country to come and have some adventures with me, their favourite aunt! I picked them and their mom up at the Calgary Airport at 10am on July 16th. They'd been up since about 1am Mountain Time!!
We collected their bags and I whisked us all to the Calgary Zoo. We got to see a lot of animals and we had some ice cream too - after all it was 34 degrees out and my east coast friends weren't quite used to that!
We collected their bags and I whisked us all to the Calgary Zoo. We got to see a lot of animals and we had some ice cream too - after all it was 34 degrees out and my east coast friends weren't quite used to that!
After a brief stop at the playground at the zoo we made our way back to the hotel - where there was a pool AND A WATER SLIDE!!!! We spent a good hour attempting to drain the water from the pool and then went for supper. I had three weary travelers with me after day 1 of our adventure! Joe took this photo as we were getting ready for bed (pretty good for a 4 yr old).
Day 2 - led us to Drumheller, we made a brief stop at a playground on the drive to play Frisbee and grounders - I'm still not entirely clear on the rules.... Next stop - the largest dinosaur in the world! If you look closely you can see Rebecca in his mouth. After picking up some information and deciding that Joseph wanted to buy a snake we made our way to the Royal Tyrrell Museum to go see some real dinosaurs. We flew through the museum as we had to be ready to go on our Dinosite tour where we found lots of fossils (and ironstone too). Marc-Andre found a tooth and Joseph found some petrified trees! It was then back to the hotel to check out our second pool and water slide combo.
Day 3 - We did a bit more exploring in Drumheller, visiting the Hoodoos, the suspension bridge and Reptile World. Joseph found a pretty amazing snake that met all of his criteria - not poisonous, long, no teeth and no tongue! We also checked out the amazing spray park at the information centre. We started our journey back towards Edmonton with a stop in Big Valley to get some fudge and play some soccer and on the monkey bars before making our way to Camrose for the night. I highly recommend stopping in for some fudge at Granny's Fudge Shop or some fresh baking or lunch on the Jimmy Jock Boardwalk!
The pool and waterslide at the Camrose hotel proved to be the most exciting one yet! The slide didn't exit into the pool which meant that Rebecca and I didn't have to catch Joe when he shot out the end! We got up early Saturday morning and played in the pool for a while before we got on the road to go check out a Flyball competition in Calmar. The boys thought that it was pretty neat and decided that we could come back on Sunday with Seamus to see how he would do in his first competition - he did amazing!
Their dad, Jason, arrived on Monday after competing at Nationals for Mountain Biking on the weekend and we spent the rest of the week visiting spray parks, dog parks, playgrounds, city parks, WEM and Fort Edmonton Park. We learned how to shoot a bow and arrow, and a couple of boys got to go on their first roller coasters!! There were sea lions and a Disney store, a skating rink and an airplane ride. It was a lot of fun having my two nephews and their parents visit with us for the past 10 days and I look forward to their next trip out!