Back in St. A

After spending what felt like hours gathering up toys and crafts and food that was strewn all throughout the hotel room, we made the journey home to St. Albert...no coffee for the long journey, that's for sure. We saw an elk again on the way home. This picture is from the way up though. Mike's iPad really comes in handy for long trips...we discovered this on the way up to Jasper. After Rose has a nap we wedge the iPad in between the 2 front seats and put a movie on. They usually watch Despicable Me, which they've seen about 10 times now.

The following week was a work week for everyone, so it was pretty quiet around the house as everyone left and Lizzy went to daycare. Mike worked from Jen's house, although I don't know if he was working hard or hardly working. He spent a lot of time going to the gym. Good for him to just relax. I was able to visit with some friends, although it didn't feel like I had enough time with anyone. I saw Janice, Lisa, Erin, and Andrea. Great visits, and can't wait for more time next year. As a family we also went to Marilyn and Hal's house for a fun BBQ. Great to see the newlyweds Cam and Lana there too, whose wedding we had missed while we were at Matt's.

As Paige looooves "Auntie Booze's ride place" we went back for some more fun, bringing Uncle Tyson along. People think this picture is set up but she actually went on it. I included the video so you can see that it's not that crazy.







Here's Rose watching a show in bed while she was waiting for me to put her to sleep:

As usual there was a Turcsanyi potluck dinner. This time it was on the last night we were there as a bunch of the family had just come back from Hungary.

Here are Mike's second cousins Bailey, Riley, and Bella:

Avie had sure grown since last year. She wasn't crawling last year and now she's almost as big as Paige!
Here's Paige's 3rd cousin Ciara (I don't know the spelling I'm sorry!). Paige and her have the exact same birthday, and are the same age. they had fun playing with Paige's toys.
Mike's cousin Melissa:Mike's pregnant cousin Amanda, mom of big-girl Avie:So happy that everyone made it out for the dinner as I'm sure lots of them were still jet lagged. Auntie Sue and Auntie Judy brought back Hungarian dolls for the girls and Paprika for us.

Rose and Lizzy pose for the camera in their final moments together before we went home. The girls didn't play together really, as they don't at this age, but Rose learned a bit of sign language from Lizzy. Lizzy does the sign for "more", and Rose started to copy her and say "muh muh" while doing the sign. She did it at home for about a week and then stopped.

One final kiss for Abby:The face Lizzy makes when you tell her to give someone a kiss:

An awesome meltdown:

So fun in St. Albert. We also went to the Farmer's Market where Grandma Val bought Paige another painted rock and hair clip. I bought some chocolate bar stuffed brownies. Major yum!

Looking forward to next year already! Maybe the mosquitos will be better though, that really sucked! No pun intended.

Jasper Part 2: Matt's wedding

Matt's wedding was on July 16. The ceremony was at Maligne Lookout (not on Maligne Lake as numerous people assumed because of the name). The weather was beautiful that day and my fears of the girls freezing were calmed when the sun came out that morning.

I have a lot of pictures of Tyson and Rose. He held her for the ceremony and she was so good and calm and looked like she would fall asleep:

Grandma Val and Tyson with Paige and Rose:

Auntie Booze and Rose. Rose had an early early nap as she woke up super early. This made it possible for me to come to the ceremony--she would otherwise have been sleeping. James was back at the hotel with a napping Elizabeth.

Matt waiting for the big moment.

One blurry photo of the vows. All of the guests stood for the ceremony. We were near the back and I was having a hard time seeing, not to mention scoping out an opening for a photo. And our camera is loud.

Since Rose napped early I assumed she would have a double nap and be good to go in the evening. It was a win-win!! Too bad--it didn't work and instead she was a disaster. Here she is in the beginning of the evening before she spotted Daddy, AKA "Mommy" sitting at the head table. After that it was game over.

Not a great picture, but reminded me that at Paige's place at the table, along with all of the other kids, there were little gift packs with crayons, stickers, glow sticks and toys. This was awesome and Paige loved it.

Lizzy was melting down too:

Tyson doing "Le Tigre". We make him do this pose at weddings:

Our table chowing down. Luckily they let us go to the buffet early in the proceedings before the babies had a complete meltdown. Zaida Bruce brought Paige and Rose mounds of dessert. Hey, whatever keeps them busy at this point.

When Rose had reached her boiling point, somewhere in the middle of the speeches, and Paige was saying "I'm so tired and I'm not even sleeping", I took them back to the hotel for the night (8:30). After putting them both to bed I was exhausted. It was a long day not having Mike with me, not to mention the fact that Rose didn't nap past 11:00am. I had taken them to the town to look around in the middle of the day as well, so it was a busy day. Jen and I felt ripped off since she had to take Lizzy back too, but our hotel rooms weren't close enough to use a monitor or anything.

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!