Portraits

On Saturday (Aug 9) Kevin was kind enough to take pictures of my kids.

While these are not all of them, these are the ones I could download.

This collage is SO Ethan!!

These B&W are ones Kevin and Chritie polished up. Doesn't he do a great job?




Forget school pictures this year. These are so much better!

Thanks Kevin!!

On the road again... to Picture Butte (Friday Aug 8)

It was another 4 hours in the car, but the drive was so nice it seemed to pass quickly. It was the perfect time of year to be driving around Alberta. The canola is just beginning to flower and looked so pretty, the wheat is being harvested and the flax was beautiful.

It's funny how after driving this same road all my life, when I drive it now it still has a strange familiarity to it.

I took this pic as I was driving by this pretty wheat field

Have you ever seen so many bales? This field went on and on...

This field of flax was so pretty I had to take a picture

This is a picture of the old sugar factory where MY great grandpa used to work (and my grandma). It was always the first thing we looked for on the horizon as we got closer to Picture Butte. Once spotted we knew we were almost there!

We had a nice lunch with Grandma Reeder, Auntie Patti and Tobie's boys.Unfortunately Abby woke up with the stomach flu Friday morning and stayed home with gramma and missed the visit. It was a sweltering humid day probably close to 30 degrees, but Grandma Reeder made sure the kids had plenty to eat and popsicles and juice to keep them cool.

The kids tried to play, but it was so hot they didn't last too long out in the sun. We still managed to stay at the park for close to 2 hours though. I took a video of Ethan's favorite activity at the park

Grandma Reeder with a few of her "Great Grands" After our picnic in the park we went to visit Grandma Cook. She had a hard time keeping us all straight as we bombarded her tiny apartment and even remembered days later that we had come to visit.
I wanted to get a picture of this too, before they tear it down like all the others around southern Alberta.
It was good to go down to Picture Butte and see the Great Grandmas!

I took some video of the country side as I passed through Stavely.

Dawg days (Thursday Aug 7)

Finally a day to take it easy... sort of! We spent the afternoon by the river and floated down a couple times.

In the evening mom and I took the kids to the Okotoks Dawgs baseball game. The coolest part by far was when they let the kids run the bases at the end of the game and they got to meet the players. How cool is that? Christie's kids were excited to get signed baseballs from one of the team members and Ethan got his baseball cap signed. A perfect night for a ball game!

Calaway Park (Wednesday, Aug 6)

A trip to western Canada's largest amusement park would not be right without first taking a spin around on the dinosaur eggs.

See how excited the big girls are?
Patiently waiting for an HOUR!

The great thing about Calaway is never having to wait in line, so this was a pretty crazy long line! Yeah, they finally made it on!

Abby and Tori did 3 rounds on the bumper cars

Who are these cool dudes?
This is just before their 7th or 8th consecutive turn on this ride.
They LOVED it!
The next few pictures tell a story as Liza goes on "Chaos" for the first time.
As she stood in line you could tell she was watching closely and getting up her nerve

Here she is just after locking in
They're about to start the ride...
Whoo Hoo! The ride is over! I think she liked it. Poor Katie wanted to go on rides, until it came her turn, then she'd change her mind.

I think this was one of 2 things she was able/willing to play in.
The entertainment was "Fairy Tale Idol" These are my neices with Cinderella and Snow White.
Tori and Abby thought they were so brave riding the smaller version of the boat.
Aren't they so cool with their hands in the air like that?

Here's the best "cousin's husband" anyone could ever ask for!! :D

Kevin took the big girls around to the big kid rides ALL DAY!

('cause I surely wasn't going on all those rides)

Thanks Kevin... you're the best!!

After the Gravitron

Another LONG action packed day!!

Drumheller (Tues Aug 5)

Our first stop on our trip was Horseshoe Canyon The little tiny dots on the nearest green patch are my dad and the kidsZoomed in a little closer
These badlands are the richest fossil beds in North America, so Ethan was determined to find a dinosaur fossil here. Here they are looking
At the amazing Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology.
This is a full skeleton of a Tyranasaurus Rex they excavated nearby

You can actually watch them as they clean and prepare fossils here. Very cool!

The kids loved this ball launching area at the museum.

What it has to do with the museum, I'm not sure, but the kids loved it!!

But of course Ethan must use it for something other than it's intended use:

We of course had to visit the little church Seating 10,000 people.... 6 at a time.

The funniest part was the kids having a mock church meeting taking their turns at the pulpit. When I happened to look in I saw Ethan up front pounding the pulpit shouting "Have you been saved?!" LOL!

We also climbed up "the world's largest dinosaur"

See the kids on it's toe? Here we are looking out of it's mouth
And a trip to Drumheller wouldn't be complete without a trip out to the old mining suspension bridge.

The kids had fun swaying as they walked across the Red Deer river.
We stopped at the HooDoos too.
Phew! I'm getting tired just writing about it. We really packed it all in this day.
These sandstone columns are naturally carved by the wind
The orange and blue shirted boys are ours climbing around the hoodoos.
Wow! That was a long action packed day .

Cousins and a Photo Shoot (Monday, Aug 4)

On holiday Monday we got together with my mom's family for lunch at her place.

My Auntie Patti, Karl and my Auntie Laurie

My cousins Neil and Star and Star's boyfriend

My cousin Tobie (sorry the pics overexposed)

The boys

and the girls

After the crew left Kevin and my sister Christie took Abby and Tori out for a photoshoot.

These are some of the pictures from that trip: