St. Albert 2011 pre-Jasper

Our yearly Edmonton trip this year coincided with Matt Hage's wedding in Jasper. We stayed with Jen and James as usual who took the first week off work. We began the trip with 3 days in St. A. Grandma Val had to go on a business trip right away so the day we arrived there was a small birthday party for Paige with presents and cake. Everyone enjoyed playing with Lizzy's toys and Lizzy seemed to be amused by her cousins.

Our day started on time as for once we left for the airport right on time. The journey to the airport was uneventful, and we even managed to stop for a small lunch at Tim Hortons at the airport. As we were buying magazines I checked the time and realized it was 15 minutes after boarding started!!! How does this happen to us?! What were we thinking?? We got to the airplane at last call! The plane took off right at Rose's nap time, which really was a problem since she would not settle down and sleep and was really fussy, crying, and squirmy the whole time.

Anyway, when we landed in cool mosquito-y Edmonton we were met by Uncle James who drove us back to their new house!

One of the things Paige talked about for a year was going on the Dragon Wagon at West Edmonton Mall. It was a ride she tried to go on last year, but was too short. She knew all year long that she needed to be 36 inches to go on the dragon wagon. After we sorted out the babies naps we headed over to WEM and bought tickets for rides.

Paige is in the front row, camera side. Her expression on her face melted my heart. She was so so so so happy and excited.

Another thing we did before leaving for our Jasper trip was visiting the pool at Servus Place. Paige loves the waterslide there and goes down with an adult. She went at least once with all 4 adults. Rose loved playing with balls in the water, and could actually touch the bottom in the kids part. She manouevered her little floaty thing around the water chasing the balls. Cute.

Besides these couple of activities we were seriously stuck inside. The mosquitoes were so bad that we were forced to run in and out of the car. The weather wasn't great--a lot colder than home, but definitely park worthy if it wasn't raining. The mosquitos pretty much kept us away from the park though. Good thing Paige got lots of crafts and stickers for her birthday. These kept her busy. And of course both the girls loved playing with Abby. Rose was scared for the first day but quickly warmed up and was super excited every morning to see her and learned how to say Abby. Eventually Rose was opening the cupboard and hauling out the cheerios box to feed her.

She had a bit of trouble with the box this time, but she tried to do this a lot.

Anyway, after our few days in St. Albert we were off to Jasper!