Pumpkin Carving

We carved our pumpkins yesterday. The boys all did their own pumpkin, and for the first time the older boys didn't need any help. Mason really got into it too. Although he wasn't sure about sticking his hand in there. We'll get night pictures on Halloween.

Pumpkin Patch

Today we headed out to the Haunted Pumpkin patch nearly an hour away. It turned out not to be the best day to do it though. The temp is around 40 F and the wind is gusting up to almost 60 mph. Nothing like a cold hurricane! We did get out to a few things during slow downs, but we finally had to call it a day before even seeing the corn maze. We saw the haunted house and the haunted forest, a hay maze, playground, petting zoo, and pumpkin canon. The maze can take anywhere from 10 min to 2 hours to actually finish, and covers 7 acres. But we never even saw it. Here's what it looks like from the air....

On a nice day I'm sure it would be very fun. Too bad they built it in Canada where its cold. It starts in the summer though, so we might have to go back in the summer.

Bob the Builder

Mason went to see Bob the Builder at the mall today. He was very excited. Its great all the free stuff they have. We have to get it all done now though because every thing stops when the snow comes. This mall also has an indoor playground, so he got to play a while before we headed home.

Halloween Party

Last night we went to a Halloween party. We even had our own costume. I didn't get a pic of the big boys, so I'll have to do that on Halloween. Everyone had a good time, and the costumes were great.


"Fiona and Shrek"

"Fiona and Prince Charming"





Heather is a "Feelings Board" and Keith below is an MP3 player.







Mason wouldn't wear his costume to the party, he had worn it for most of the day. Here is an earlier picture of him.

Mason also went to the Scarecrow festival today with his friends. Then Angel and the Puppy.

Headed home

Before we headed home on Sunday we drove up to Miette Hot Springs. We weren't quite sure we would swim, but I really wanted to try them out, we just weren't sure about how cold it would be. Luckily it was 44 this morning. We stood at the viewing are and watched all the people in the pools. No one ran from the pool shivering and screaming. In fact no one seemed cold at all. There was a woman taking pics of her family and she told us all about it. She said the changing rooms were very warm. Told us where to keep our towels and which pools were too warm for Mason. We decided we had to try it. It was awesome! I want a hot springs mineral pool in my back yard. It was so much better than any other pool we have been to up here in Canada.



When we told Mason we were going swimming he kept telling us "Too cold." Even at 2 he knew it was too cold to go swimming. When we walked out of the dressing room outside he screamed cold and ran back inside. I picked him up screaming, "no swim, cold" the whole way, but when he made it to the water he was so relieved. He loved it! There was a long wheel chair ramp and he could walk down it, then climb on the seats on the side of the pool, walk to the other end, climb out the stairs, walk all the way around, and then back down the ramp. Even though he was outside and wet he wasn't cold at all. He didn't want to leave. The water is 104 (39 C) and they have to cool it to that temp with water from the stream. It didn't smell like sulphur, but did have a different smell, but it was pleasant. If that were closer we'd have a season pass and go all the time.

And this year in Jasper there was hardly any snow at the top of the mountains. This would have been the year to ride the tram to the top. They had gondola's in both Banff and Lake Louise, but we didn't take any of them.

Icefield's Parkway

The next day we drove up the Icefield's Parkway to Jasper. The 3 hour drive took us all day. This is supposed to be one of the most beautiful drives in all the world. And it certainly was beautiful, but, for me, cold trumps beauty, so it didn't make for a great trip. It was 28 (-3 Celcius) degrees in the morning and it didn't warm up to the 40's ( 8 C) until the late afternoon. Had it been around 75 (23 C) degrees it would have been great for exploring, and we may have hiked a ways off the road, but at 28, the view from the car is nice enough.

We visited Glacier National Park, where we got to walk on a glacier. The area you can see is just 3% of the glacier and this is the largest glacier south of the arctic circle. In places it is deeper than the Empire State building is tall. We were at 7000 feet above sea level.

We also stopped at several of the falls that are fed by glacier melt water. The water is that color because snow forms around a speck of dust. As the snow/ice melts the dust runs off with it, but it is so fine that it does not settle to the bottom of the water. The suspended dust then makes the water look teal. It would be neat to see some of these falls and streams in the spring when things are just starting to melt.

Day 2

On day 2 we went to a boat tour, that turned out to be closed, so we drove around the lake. We went to Canada's oldest park, the Cave and Basin where the hot springs were originally found. Ate lunch in the city of Banff, shopped for snow boards, went back to the hotel for some swimming, and then went to a dinner show.

The "Oh, Cannada, Eh" Dinner show was very good. The Canadian food was good, although you had to add salt to make some of it good. They had split pea and ham soup, salad, roast beef, curry chicken, fried haddock, new potatoes, mixed vegetables, and marble cake with molasses icing. It was really some of the best food we've had in Canada. The show had lots of Canadian music, and a little bit of history, and info about the different regions of Canada. The actors were the servers as well. It was over 2.5 hours, and even Mason made it to the end, with a little break. Everytime he got bored they would bring out more food!

Mountains, Day 1

We headed out to the mountains for the long Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. We spent two nights at this Best Western in Canmore, just 30 min from Banff. We drove down Friday after the kids got out of school, spent the next day in Banff, then drove up along Icefield's Parkway and spent another night in Jasper. The last pics are the view out our hotel window. We were completely surrounded by mountains.