Alberta, Canada

Last week we went to Alberta to celebrate our 10 year anniversary. We have been planning this trip since February, and have been so excited to go, and it was so fun! Thank goodness my mom was able to come up and stay with the kids for the 5 days we were gone. The kids had such a fun time with her. We decided to rent a car and not put the 2,000 miles on our car... and we didn't really want to drive the van on a vacation with just the two of us. When Clark went to get the car they didn't have it ready, so we ended up with a jeep instead. It actually worked out really well. We were planning on leaving about 6:00 am, but I woke up at 4 and Clark was awake, so we left by 4:30. We drove to Billings and then to IHOP for breakfast at 7:30. They we drove to the Canadian border. We got across and pulled into Cardston at 3:30. Then we decided to drive to Waterton Park and here is the view we got:



We walked around awhile and then stayed to get some more pictures while the sun was setting:


The next morning we did a session at the Cardston temple. It was beautiful and really busy for a Thursday morning:

From there we drove to Calgary (it was really busy) and then on to Banff. This is the hotel we stayed in. This was my most favorite day of the trip:

Friday morning we drove to Lake Louise: The water there was unreal. We wished we had rented a canoe for an hour, but it really was cold that morning:

One of the few pictures of us together...the people we asked didn't get the best pictures, but we like this one with the glacier in the back:

Then we headed up to lake morinne:

Here is another shot of that lake: It was hard to get a good picture because it was so cloudy:

We rode a gondola at lake louise and then drove the icefields parkway. Along the way we took a little walk to Peyto Lake. All the tourists on the buses could drive right up and get off, but they made all the passenger cars park below and hike. It was like this on several of the stops we made:

This is where we stayed Fri. night at the icefields centre. The bottom two floors are restaurants and touristy stuff, and then the top floor was about 34 hotel rooms. Luckily we planned enough ahead that we had one!! Then we drove another hour to Jasper to eat dinner and then drove back and hoped to see some caribou, but only saw elk, and a fox and a black bear.

The next morning we walked up to the glacier across from the hotel: It was cold and snowing. The whole time it was funny because we don't know the difference between celsius and farenheit to know the temperature or between kilometers and miles to know distances.

Then we crossed over the british columbia to see this beautiful waterfall:

Proof we were in British Columbia:

Then we drove back to Banff and rode the Gondola. It was sunny and beautiful on the way up... and snowy and freezing 20 min. later when we decided to go down:

The view from the top of the gondola:

After this we drove back through Calgary and onto Lethbridge where we spent Sat. night. Sunday morning we got up and left about 10:30. Drove all the way home and got here about 7:30. It was such a fun time. We have over 800 pictures to sort through now. We are already planning our next trip there.

Back to School!

My Ryan started pre-school last week. He goes 3 times a week and loves it:



Here is our first grader:


The kids at keyhole. We had to find a new spot to go this year because our regular place was flooded:

Friday night we went camping in sundance. Jared trying to blow the fire to get it going:

Mountain biking the next day: