Canada Vacation

Whew! This was a lot of pictures to go through, but I did it! After Mike finished his boards we headed to Canada for two weeks for a break. For some reason whenever Mike and I fly or travel there seems to be major problems. I'd honestly say 8 out of 10 times that we travel we don't make it there on the flight we were supposed to or the highway gets shut down or we get crazy border patrol agents. Anyway, this time the highway to Omaha that our GPS took us on was shut down because of floods. Luckily we made it in time to check our bags, but unfortunately our plane was stuck in Minnesota because of thunderstorms and we missed our flight to Canada that day. Luckily we found a hotel to stay at because Aubrey and Morgan didn't sleep much and were wide awake at midnight. We flew out the next morning to Canada without problems.

Mike's father passed away the end of November and since I was very pregnant at the time and Mike didn't want to leave me to go to his funeral. His siblings decided it would be nice to do a memorial in the summer after Mike finished his boards. Because our plane was delayed we missed the memorial which was kind of frustrating. But Mike got to say some words and read a poem for the memorial because everyone waited for us to arrive.
Mike and his siblings from his dad. Mike, Steve, Dave, Chrissy, Angie. Reverse order for age.

After the memorial we drove from Calgary to Fairmount, British Columbia where we would be staying a week in Mike's parent's time share. It was such beautiful place. I got tears in my eyes when I saw the mountains. I didn't realize how much I'd missed them having not seen them for 2 years. There were mountains on all sides of us and they were so green. On the way up we saw bears on the side of the road. That was pretty crazy to see them so close and my hands were shaking while I was trying to take pictures of them. I'm such a scaredy cat.

We spent a lot of time here at the water park at the resort. It was really fun and Morgan got to go down a really big slide all by herself. The first time she went to the water park she went with her grandma and aunts and she ran off and jumped right into the deep end and freaked everyone out. I guess she was able to swim enough to keep her head above water until they could run in and get her.
Morgan and Makayla became best buds while we were there. Here they were playing hide and seek from Chrissy at the splash pad. But, the water came on while they were there and the water was freezing!

There were a bunch of parks at the resort. This was Morgans first time on a teeter-totter. Mike and his brother Dave, who are both young at heart, had a lot of fun on the teeter-totter as well. :)
Racing down the slide. Morgan kind of cheated and her younger cousins didn't really know what it meant to have a race. She had an unfair advantage. :)
One of the days the ladies went shopping at the overpriced tourist town of Invermere. They had some cute shops and Morgan got some ice cream.
Because Mike went golfing at the beautiful golf courses in Fairmount, Mike's mom and my sister-in-law Kristi went and had a massage. It was Kristi and my first massage ever and it was heavenly! Too bad we can't afford them on a regular basis. :) Before the massage we got to soak in a natural mineral hot springs pool that they had there. What a relaxing 1 1/2 hours that was. I was spoiled for sure!
The day before our anniversary we went to eat at a golf course's restaurant that advertised "All you can eat seafood." That sounded great and thought it had great potential. The food was probably the worst we'd ever eaten! We were pretty shocked but had a really good laugh about how nauseous we felt. At least our 6 year anniversary will be memorable.

The best part of the trip wasn't the golf or the spa, it was hanging out with family, playing card games late into the night and having all the cousins get to know each other and just have fun!
On the way back to Mike's parent's house in Alberta we made some stops along the way in Banff. Everything was so beautiful and I wish I knew how to take better pictures because the pictures definitely don't do it justice.

Finally at Grandma and Grandpa Rode's we had a lot of fun hanging out and Morgan had fun playing around the campground. It rained a lot while we were there, but I was grateful to be in chilly Canada while the rest of the US was having a major heat wave. While were gone it was in the hundreds! We went on a hike and got pretty muddy, that's why Chrissy is washing Morgan's feet.
Morgan did some pretty cool jumps into Grandma's pool. She is getting so good at swimming on her own too.
The campground has a petting zoo with goats, alpacas, sheep, pigs, donkey's and a duck. While were there the sheep got out and was ramming some campers. Mike and his mom were in charge of getting it back in the pen and it was pretty funny because he kept trying to ram them. Unfortunately, these were probably the last pictures of the sheep alive. While we went out to lunch some coyotes scared the sheep out of it's pen and ate him. It was pretty crazy and we all went to see the remains. There was nothing left of him but his head and hooves! Morgan kept asking if he was going to the hospital. Poor girl didn't quite grasp that he was never coming back.
Of course Morgan has a lot of fun with her Grandparents! She misses them so much while we are apart but she has so much fun with them while we are there. Here are some pictures of Morgan and Makayla catching bubbles.

We had so much fun and were sad that it was so short, but have such great memories!