Jasper Part 1

A few days into our vacation we loaded up everyone into 2 of the Pugsleys vehicles and took a long drive to Jasper. It's probably about the same amount of time as driving to the cottage minus the traffic jams. So 4 hours straight rather than 4 hours up to the cottage including slow traffic and stopping. The other major difference is that there are literally no rest stops for hours. We are accustomed to available rest stops at least every 30 minutes. So on the way to Jasper when Paige had to pee "so super bad" she had to hold it for a long time. (On the way home a similar "so super bad" episode occured and we tried to pull off the road where she refused to go--she could hold it a bit longer). There was literally no where to stop from Edmonton to about Hinton, which was at least 1.5 hours. Like literally nothing...not a Tim Horton's or even a gas station in sight. Luckily we hadn't stopped for our usual long-drive coffee.

While Jen and I were booking our hotel for Jasper we soon realized that dreams of a big family cabin were squashed by our late booking. Instead we settled for us Turcsanyi's booking a suite at a basic hotel with a full kitchen in it. That way we could conveniently eat meals in our room without having to eat out, and all of the other people (Val, Bruce, Tyson, Jen, James, and Elizabeth) could congregate in our room too.

There was a chess table in our room which quickly became a craft station:

We had a gigantic sauna in our room which we never used:

Paige slept in the bedroom with the king bed. We would have taken this room but Rose's playpen that the hotel gave us was a large square and didn't fit in the room.
Paige was mad because we told her she could have the room with the 2 Queen beds. When we told her she would have to sleep in the King size while Mommy and Daddy shared a room with Rose she made this sign and stuck it up on the door of her preferred room with a sticker. It is a sign indicating it is Paige's room and the X means "No Rosie's allowed":

Paige running around in the room:
Rose and Lizzy playing in Paige's toy suitcase:
On Friday, the day before the wedding, we had a full day to sight see. We decided to go to Jasper's most popular summer attraction, the Jasper Tramway (a tram car ride to the top of a mountain). After driving way out of the way (yet seeing a bear) and turning around, we found the attraction was not very busy as it was cold (about 10 degrees!). We weren't dressed very warmly and they told us the temperature would be 3 degrees on top of the mountain. Paige and Rose got bundled up as much as possible, and Rose is the proud owner of some new Jasper socks. Mike is the proud owner of a new Canada sweatshirt.
The girls had an apple while we waited for our departure time:
Paige was freezing:
When we got to the top it was FREEZING!!!! There was a small loop around the tram building where you could look at the views and take pictures. We took a very fast whip around, took a couple pictures and then bolted into the restaurant:Mike enjoyed a wine, and the rest of us had water:The town of Jasper down below:MMmmm....piping hot poutine!! Can't believe that piping hot anything would be welcome in July, but alas it felt just like early Winter up there. On the journey back down the tram. As there was no scheduled departure time, it was less busy in the tram and Paige got the prime spot right up front. "Everyone down there looks like ants!" she kept saying. Rose liked to feed Lizzy food all the time:

While we were at the Tram, the Pugsley's went for a boat cruise. We couldn't coordinate the girls schedules to be able to all sightsee together. Such is life with 3 young kids I guess. In the afternoon the rest of the gang arrived and checked into the hotel. Mike had a rehersal dinner to attend but Val and Bruce came to my room and cooked dinner for the whole family! Yum! Since Mike was out late that night (and the other nights too with wedding obligations) it was nice to have the girls confined to bedrooms so I could just watch tv, read and eat our vacation late night staple--peanut M&M's.

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!

Happy Birthday Paige!

Beautiful, fun, funny, caring, tiny little Paige celebrated her 4th birthday yesterday.

She got what she wanted..."Triceratops and Baby". Her favourite things are still dragons and dinosaurs.

To Paige's extreme surprise, we had hired Tinker Bell to come to the party through a company called Fantasy Fables. They have all the Princesses too. I think it's the same 1 or 2 people that do the characters. We had heard great things, and she definitely delivered. She sang songs, played games (Follow the leader, hot potato, Fairy freeze), read a story, gave them bracelets, and played with them for an hour. There were also photo ops at the end. She had a beautiful singing voice, and was "Disney quality" as Mike said.

Paige was super shocked and barely spoke or smiled at all. She really didn't know what to make of it all. She was having fun for sure, just really shy and very surprised. It was so great to have the hour of organized fun, then go straight into lunch, presents, and cupcakes outside.


After the party we let her wind down and play with some gifts while we packed for our Edmonton trip (leaving this morning). We ate an outdoor dinner of all-you-can-eat leftovers from the fridge, and then watched some of her new movie "Tangled".

Love you Paige! Happy Birthday!