Baby Showers and Cross Canada Adventures

Hello Friends!

The last 2 weeks have been a little bit crazy.  Leaving for vacation is always a mad-rush of getting things done before you go, packing and last minute running around.  In my case, the last minute running around meant getting caught in a torrential downpour at the beach with my stand up paddle board and Luna, and then having to carry my board 2 km back to truck, and a helping hand backfiring.  I'll fill you all in tomorrow with that story.  It makes me laugh just thinking about the ridiculousness of it but it's probably not actually funny.

The day before we left, we had a going away / baby shower lunch for a co-worker who left for a year of maternity leave.  The diabetes team at work was assigned a fruit tray for the pot luck and the 3 of us went in together for a gift.  Luckily I'm not the only crazy person on the team and others were willing to go all out.  Cue Pinterest surfing for all fruit and baby related items.  I have to admit, I was proud of our work!

Fruit Tray

Diaper Cake

The next day we were off to Toronto for a few days.  We had a 5 hour stop over in Yellowknife so we walked around and explored Pilot's Monument and went for lunch with a friend.

Pilot's Monument, Yellowknife

We were only in Toronto for 2 full days.  The mission of the trip was to pick up Earl and a car load of my stuff, and then to drive my sister's car back home to NWT.  She had the car at University in New Brunswick but it was too costly to insure in the city.  The Earl saga seems to be never ending! (Until now!).  We've tried a few times to get him here to the North but I couldn't find an airline that would let me take him.  Driving him up was really the only choice.  And it's about time too, my poor parents have been stuck with him at home for way too long.  Plus he's pretty awesome and I wanted to have him here.  I had acquired a 100 gallon tank for him since I moved here too which had been sitting empty in my living room for far too long.

Acquiring my sister's car was terrifying!  It's a standard, and I had never driven standard before.  So I had to learn while driving across the country.  I would have been nervous driving an automatic across the country, never mind a standard.  I'm not exactly the worlds best driver. Plus practicing and learning around my parent's neighbourhood was sketch, and involved a lot of stalling out in intersections and left me very, very frustrated.  I felt bad taking the car, I know my sister loves Speeder and was bummed I'd be taking it.  It also took an entire day to get a special permit for the registration in order to be able to drive it across the country. Which was unfortunate since we only had 2 days home.

Handing over the keys

Learning to drive...oops

We did get to do some fun stuff while we were home though!  We went for a nice supper at the CN Tower and explored the glass floor.  Chris had never been and I had only ever been once so it was fun to be touristy.  We also had lunch at Stoney's in Oakville, which is one of my favourite spots - they have the most amazing lamb sandwiches!  I didn't see very many friends, but we had a chance to stop in and see JP for a few minutes and then literally had to sprint to catch the GO train home.  After 2 days in Toronto, we loaded the car and headed to Ottawa for a night to see TJ and Lauren.  As usual we had a delish supper a la TJ, plus a nice walk through the experimental farm near their new house.

Glass Floor at the CN Tower

The road trip itself was fun...would have been more fun though if we had had Air Conditioning since it was about 40 degrees the whole way home.  We saw a wolf and a moose though while driving through northern Ontario.  We also stopped in Edmonton and got to meet our new puppy!  We've still got a few more weeks to wait until we get to bring him home though.  But we already love him and can't wait until he's home.  Fingers crossed Luna will love him too...at least as much as she loves Earl.

Moose

Wolf

New Pup (who's still nameless)

Luna and Earl...Love at First Sight

We also went to Drumheller, Alberta to explore the Dinosaur museum.  It's pretty unreal there.  You drive down into a valley and it's like driving into a whole new world.  The entire landscape changes so drastically and so quickly it's unbelievable.  The first thing I remember learning about in grade one is dinosaurs, so I've always had a bit of a soft spot for them.  Chris had been before but a long time ago and I figured if we were going to drive 5000km we might as well throw a little bit of vacation adventures in there.  The museum and entire town was soo busy! It was awkward trying to take pictures while dodging other tourists, plus trying to get GIANT dinosaurs into the picture frame was pretty much impossible.

Awkwardly posing with a T-Rex

Drumheller, Alberta