Oh Canada!

Our extended time together as a family is rare, so we try to make the most of it when we can. Brad had 6 days off (which is an anomaly), so we took a long weekend trip to Banff, Canada, a small ski village/touristy town outside of Calgary. Brad and I had been there before G came along. We remembered how beautiful it was and wanted to go back. We have so many great photos that I am going to make several slideshows so you don't have to watch one with 100 photos. Yikes! Yes, there are many photo ops. It was just so gorgeous.

After arriving in Calgary late the night before, we woke up and drove the 1.5 hour drive to Banff National Park. We signed up for a tour the next day, shopped for road snacks, and drove another hour or so to Lake Louise, where we were staying for this trip. We decided to stay at the Fairmont Lake Louise Hotel, which is located on a lake created by glaciers. It's the gorgeous blue you see due to the glacier sand that collects as the water melts and is pushed down the mountain. I believe the sand is mostly made out of limestone.

The next day we had three sites to accomplish, and they were all in Banff. We took the gondola up the mountain, we did a float trip, and we went to the Upper Banff Hot Springs. I would recommend all except the Hot Springs. I had originally envisioned this gorgeous rock formation with hot bubbly fresh water collecting in the bottom and the steam rising up toward the mountain. Uh. Nope. Brad and I decided it was one of the nastiest things we have ever done as far as germs go. Blech. It was just a hot pool with TONS of people sitting in it elbow to elbow. You could almost see the germs swimming and doing the backstroke in the disgusting water. Had we seen the springs before we bought tickets, we would not have wasted our money. So we climbed out of the pond of filth, bought a bar of lye soap and proceeded to remove the top two layers of skin. Well, not really, but we wanted to.

The last full day, we drove two hours north of Lake Louise and did a Columbia Icefield tour. The drive was a sight in and of itself. There were many place to stop and hike or just lookout and see the sites. We saw a few animals - bears. We did a short hike with G, and that's all his poor legs could take. It was hilarious as he decided that he was ready to go back to the car after the first big hill. Brad took him the rest of the way up on his shoulders. Poor daddy.

The glacier tour puts you on this bus mounted on Gigantic tires. It's able to drive across the snow. I felt a little bad about driving and walking on a receding glacier thinking that it wasn't very ecofriendly, but they have steps they take to make it as green as possible.

That night, we had yet to canoe across the lake in front of our hotel, so we decided that was our last adventure for our trip. You can tell in the photo that I was petrified of flipping the entire time. A little wiggler in the middle perpetuated that fear too. Since the lake is formed from a glacier, then it is constantly 32-35 degrees F. I didn't want any of us spending time in that lake (or my cell phone and camera). Burr!

If you want to see our first trip from 2004, follow this link.
http://www.thewhitehouse.cc/Images/Calgary/index.html
We didn't have our camera with us on the lake, so we used Brad's cell phone. Cell phone cameras have come a long way...

Viva Mexico!

I love Playa del Carmen, so much so that when my colleagues mentioned that I should go down there for work, I didn't hesitate. We flew down over 4th of July weekend and took G and mom. Brad got to go for one day but had to fly off to work. Even a friend of mine was in Playa the same weekend, and we got to spend some time with her too!

We stayed at the Fairmont Mayakoba just outside of Playa and rented a car. The car worked out perfectly, and I'm SO proud of myself for driving all over the place and got being run over or stolen.

When we dropped off Brad at the airport in Cancun, we found a place to parasail. Mom has wanted to go for a long time, so it was time to mark that off of her list. G is under the age limit, not because of safety reasons, so it was up to the captain to approve him. The captain spoke to him for a while and asked if he was scared, "No, I'm ready to go up!" G and I went up first, then mom was to go it alone. We had so much fun looking around and he wasn't scared at all. I saw sting rays and turtles even from those heights. When we landed, they were so impressed that G did so well that they offered to let him go up with mom again, no charge. Of course! So he went up to show mom the ropes. :)

The rest of the trip we either hung out at the resort or went into town to eat/shop. It was relaxing. I LOVE Playa, did I say that already?

It's Foamy

G and I had a craft day this weekend. It's too hot to go outside for extended periods of time, and we can't live in the pool. Ok, I guess we could, but I get a little wrinkly after several hours and need a break. :)

We made homemade playdough with Kool-Aid and the normal ingredients like flour, salt, cream of tarter, etc. Let's say that even though all of the ingredients are edible, DON'T eat it. It has so much salt that it burned our tongues...blech. Hee hee.

We also made foam snakes. I saw this in a kid's magazine and I was itching to try it since I could make it without a trip to the store. It's a plastic water bottle with the bottom cut off, an old towel cut into a square, a rubberband, and that's all you need! You wet the towel and then dip the whole contraption into a plate of dishsoap (I even mixed it with a little water as I was running low on the soap.) It works just as described and shown in the magazine. Fantastic. G got upset because the wind kept blowing the snake off of the bottle, but we were entertained.