Summer in full swing

Summer holidays are typically a pretty relaxing time for us, this year was more of the same but was a little more travel-intensive!

We began at my folks in Fort Saskatchewan, hanging for the long weekend with Nana & Papa plus my sister Cass’ family as well as Uncle Kyle. Trips to the park, some family photos, and game nights were on the agenda. Cam and Scotty are getting so big, the kids all had fun together which was great. We moved on to Stettler for more fun with Grandma & Grandpa Boys, plus Auntie Wendy & Ruby! The kids were also happy to see the pups, Storm & Zander… plus Uncle Andrew & Sarah (I guess)! 😉 Unfortunately these two and their dogs had to leave shortly after we arrived, hopefully we’ll have a longer visit next time. Per usual, the kids had fun at the skate park and swimming pool, which are luckily within walking distance to G&G’s house! We also made arrangements to meet up with my family again at the Kraay Family Farm for a day of corn-related adventure!

After a few days in Stettler we hauled the kids back to Nana & Papas for some time without us there, as Jenn and I took off on a plane out East to Tremblant to attend our friends Alex. & Pierre’s wedding! It was a short – but sweet – trip for us, we had lots of fun for sure. The wedding of course was amazing, taking place on this scenic covered bridge called Le Pont Couvert (which literally translates to ‘covered bridge’). We drove there in a very sweet convertible Mustang from Montreal and stayed in this really quaint / fantastic BnB called Auberge Le Cosy (‘Cozy Inn’), about a 5 minute drive from the wedding venue (unless you had to go through Tremblant, which we did on the way there… long story, had something to do with the antiquated laws in the area relating to taxis). We spent a little time in Tremblant around wedding activities – the morning of the wedding we had a little exercise and hiked up to the top of the mountain from the village (pre-burning some calories?), and the day after the wedding we went back to do some luge-ing down the hill, which was awesome (the kids would have loved it for sure!). I was happy to take the 15 minute drive from our hotel in our sweet, sweet rental car. 🙂

Fancy!

Back West after the wedding weekend, we had Nana & Papa meet us at the airport with the kids to continue on for the last week of our holiday in Kelowna. Unfortunately there was a ton of smoke hanging around the area the entire week we were there from forest fires in other areas around the province and the US. The smoke put a bit of a damper on our holiday; the air quality was so poor at times that it caused the cancellation of the Apple Triathlon that Jenn was supposed to do, and we were forced to spend much of our time indoors. But we made the best of it and had some fun inside, and as the smoke would vary from day to day, we got in some outdoor adventures too!

We took a tour of our house that is under construction in Lakestone and went or a swim at the Lake Club, we hit the Kangaroo farm of course, and we spent a day out at Big White as well so Josh and I could do a little mountain biking while the girls did some hiking / exploring on their own. We also hung out in Kelowna, chilling at a nearby swimming pool, we went out for a few nice meals, had a few short bike rides, and near the end we did a little outdoor adventuring at the Okanagan Adventure Park. We were also happy to meet up with our favorite Canadian triathlete, Joanna Brown, while she was in town for the (cancelled) triathlon (we’ll hopefully see her in Bermuda next spring!).

The smoke ultimately caused the cancellation of our flight out of Kelowna – bummer – but after some phone calls and a day or so extra in Kelowna we were able to get out of Kelowna and fly to Vancouver instead (not the original plan) to spend a smoke-free day at Science World with Wendy, Ruby, and Grandma Diane (Tim’s mom), plus we saw Tim after work was done. Sweet!

We eventually got back to Bermuda after a few extra days off (‘fire days’, like ‘snow days’ I guess?). Hope everyone had a great summer!