The mosquitoes are bad this year. Not Manitoba bad but the worst we have seen them here for a very long time! I haven’t had to use bug spray on the kids very much for years so this year is weird as we use it all the time. Poor Adam has really reacted to his bites. Look at this one!
So much fun. The kids both had great instructors this time around and both of them did really well ! 
Adam had a bad experience with swim lessons last summer and he was so scared of the deep end. I am not sure what happened but it has been a long year of getting him to relax and have fun in the water again. Finally the last couple of times leading up to lessons have been so much better. Lessons were awesome, treading water and swimming 25 metres, such a relief and I am so proud of him. He is going to stay in Swim Kids 4 but only needs to keep his ears out of the water when treading water and to get his arms out of the water while doing his front crawl and he can move on.
Isla is doing extremely well and her teacher did not have anything that she needed to work on. She passed with flying colours and had a fantastic time! Our little fish! She has now passed her Crocodile and only has Whale to do in the Preschool program.
One of the best things about swim lessons is that they are exhausted after. Ed dropped us off on his way to work a couple of mornings and we walked home. One of those days we took the long way home and stopped at TIm Hortons and picked up a few groceries. Apparently that was too much for little legs, they were both very mad at me. It didn’t take long and I was forgiven but I am not sure I will try that again!
Do you remember how cold the first dip in to an outdoor pool is? Maybe this well help you remember!
The kids have been at camp at Sunnybrook farms this week. They have been long days and they come home exhausted. They seem to be having a good time but I think that the highlight has been the parade.
Sunnybrook farms puts in an entry every year and the camp kids get to ride in the wagon. They were supposed to dress western so we made a quick trip to Value Village and found some cute stuff for them. The picture below was on the Red Deer Advocate’s (our local paper) website. Aren’t they cute! Ed and I and my mom and dad all watched the parade so that we could see these smiling faces but we happened to be on the wrong side of the street so we could not see them very well and I didn’t get any good pictures. So I was thrilled when I found this one!
This is the after picture! The spent the day at Rotary Park and Kin Kanyon, eating hot dogs and playing in all the parks. They walked back to Sunnybrook farms, quite a long ways for little legs. They had a great time!
They got gatorade. Can you see the moustaches?
My girl got to go to a birthday party. Doesn’t she look pretty!
These are mostly girls from Isla’s Pre-K class. They all went bowling and had a fantastic time! It is great to see her having such a good time.
We have a bit more practicing to do but stay tuned!
Now, here is the video that Isla took. I love it!
This is the holiday destination for Ed for most of his early years. He took his swimming lessons here and he where he became a lifeguard. It is also where he kissed a girl for the first time. Can you just imagine him as a 14 year old Casanova?
We stayed in our tent, where we shared a site with Ed’s mom and dad and his sister’s trailer. Michelle was in Banff still so her kids stayed there “supervised” by Ed’s mom and dad.
Here are the boys, applying heat. We always joke about how when a guy barbeques he gets lots of compliments on his supper, when really there has been some marinading, some salads, potatoes prepared etc etc and all he has done is apply heat. So here they are applying heat.
Here are Mark and I making bush pies. These were pizza ones that we all gobbled up.
And then we moved on to dessert. The best one was, peanut butter, chocolate and some caramels. Wow, I am salivating just remembering!
The boys were able to golf a number of times. The weather was not very cooperative and rained on them really hard one day and the wind was really strong the next day. It doesn’t make for the easiest golf game but for Adam who does not shoot the ball to high up in the air it didn’t hurt his games. He just loved driving the golf cart.
Isla got to go to a crafting and activity place each afternoon. She was thrilled and brought home treasures every day.
Ed and I went in to Gravelbourg one afternoon for a date. We went for lunch at a wonderful little cafe there and found a gem of a gift shop, I found an avocado slicer that I should have bought. It peeled and cut it at the same time, I should have bought it! I have been thinking about it ever since. I really should have bought it.
Ed bought himself a present when we were there. Do you want to see it? Here it is…..
He says he will open it when the win the Grey Cup next. So, I think that means we could be opening it this fall or sometime in the next 50 years!
We were in Regina to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of Ed’s Uncle and Aunt. It was an opportunity to visit with all of the Turgeon side of the family. The kids had a fantastic time dancing and playing with all of the other kids at the party. We didn’t leave the party until after 11pm and the kids were still going strong and were not ready to stop dancing.
Adam dancing with his Aunty Yvonne. She drove all the way from Kelowna!
Yvonne and Kelsey.
I think that Mark grew again since we saw him last. It won’t be long and he will be taller than Ed! Where is Michelle in all of this partying? She was in Banff at an Music For Young Children Conference. She was sad to miss it and we all missed her. 
Ed’s mom and dad sat at the head table. Laurie was in the wedding party, he was 19 when they got married, he looked a lot like Ed when he was young. Isla thought that it was her dad in the wedding party picture. We had a good giggle at that!
This is the happy couple. Looking pretty good for being married for 50 years!
We met some of Ed’s friends at the Science Centre in Regina. They had moved down to South Carolina and we hadn’t seen them since Ed and I got married nearly 10 years ago. Again I didn’t get any pictures of them. But look at these cute kids, but someone really should have washed that little boys face!
This trip we headed East. We stopped for a visit with my Grandma in Rosetown, I can’t believe that I didn’t get one picture of her, not too smart. We spent the night and in the morning we had a play in the park and this was the nicest day of our trip. It was about 27 degrees and a ton of mosquitoes so we were glad we were not camping here.
We went out to DQ for lunch my Grandma’s favourite place to eat. Her and my grandpa used to eat at DQ all the time so she is always happy to come with us for lunch there. She gets a cheesburger and a coffee and then an ice cream for dessert. We had a great visit with her! Then we were off to Regina.
We were only home for a few days before we headed out again. I worked a little and had our friend Emma over for a few days too. Aren’t they cute all dressed up! The kids played really well together and it was nice for them to have someone new to play with.
We didn’t spend too much time in Mom and Dad’s trailer,
but we were so glad we had it! It went down to –2 at night and that would have been too cold in the tent.
Remind us not to travel on the last day of a long weekend again! The dumping station took over an hour and then we got in to a traffic jam on Highway 1 and were going 20km per hour. It was a long trip home! We left at 11am and got home at 5pm and it should have only been a 3 hour trip.
Did you know that Banff was founded around this hot spring? Well it was! We came and did a tour and had a nice walk around but the weather was not cooperating and we were all quite cold. 
I have fallen behind in my blogging so I will try and catch up soon.
When we were staying in Banff we went for a swim at the hotsprings in the morning and then for a hike at Johnstone Canyon. You see, we had bought some Trail Mix and Ed really wanted to be on a trail when we ate it.
Johnstone Canyon is beautiful, incredible and wonderful place and would be even nicer if there weren’t so many people that felt the same way! It was a crowded walk and the trail was narrow and we all wanted to stop and take pictures which backed things up so it wasn’t the relaxing hike that we thought it would be. Oh well, we got some great pictures and got some exercise so that we could eat more smores!
Our first full day in Banff was Canada Day. What a great place to spend Canada Day. It just felt right somehow! I suppose Ottawa would have been even better but this was awesome! The grounds are beautiful there, and check out the beaver. It was from the closing ceremonies of the Olympics, pretty cool!
It started with a pancake breakfast and music and face painting. It was a really long wait for face painting at least 2 hours but it was worth the wait! Check out these two!
We went back to the campground for lunch and a little break and then off again to see the parade. We took the bus from our campsite which was very cool and an easy way to get downtown. No searching for parking! The parade here in Red Deer does not allow throwing of candy but they do in Banff. Lots of fun!
See the flower in the horse poop? A clown came and put that flower there but it did not help the smell at all! And then the truck ran over it which created a lot of stir in the crowd, the poor driver of the truck had no idea what was going on. Adam insisted that I take a picture of this truck, I guess when you are 7 this is very cool!
Aren’t they looking patriotic?!? The kids made those shirts at a friends birthday party. Great timing!
