The Hodge Podge

The rest of our time spent visiting my family was very busy, and very much a hodge podge. It was such a fun time! It involved shopping for the girls, golf for the boys, lots of mouth-watering meals, visiting, crafting, reminiscing and of course about 800 photos on the camera. That's not bad for a 9 day trip!

The ladies met my Social Sister at Tim Horton's for her lunch break and Jack conveniently slept the whole time (with his pacifier hanging half way out nonetheless!)

Kit however, was a ball of energy as she often is!

Kit and Social.

Myself and Jack at the mall. He was in such a good mood!

Mom treated Kit to her first purchase from Claire's and I'm pretty sure all these tubes are empty now because Kit was basically eating the stuff. It was adorable to see it all over her face -what is it about girls?!

Jack and Holly

The Mr. and Kit. She thought The Mr. had great book readings skills!

My mom is on the far left. This photo is of the four C sisters with their grandparents. While at my Grandparents new condo, we got to look through their wedding photos and a few photos from my mom's childhood.

Playing crokinole.

Grandpa

The Mr. and I randomly stopped at a coffee shop one day and it happened to be decorated with a cool display of Anna's paintings. It was a neat surprise!

My mom put on an awesome rib dinner!!!! I can't stress how good this was!

Kit's cheeks and mouth look adorable when she drinks out of these big glasses.

We brought our croquet set and The Mr. set up a crazy course with lots of hazards.

I was basically the worst player, but in this case that was to my advantage, as everyone else became poison and either killed each other or went through a wicket accidentally, making me the official winner! It made my night!

I love prairie sunsets.

Holly made home-made vanilla bean ice cream and it was so amazing. I even had a gluten-free Oreo style cookie to eat with mine, what a treat. (Thanks for the cookies mom, they are long gone now! Mmm.)

One of the traditional summer stops during our time there is Regina Beach. Of course everyone had to go to the Blue Bird Cafe for fish and chips. It used to be owned by my Kindergarten teacher.

Social tried on a dress that my mom wore to my Aunt Gwen's wedding. Fun times!

One evening I took a walk around the yard at my parents house and just photographed everything I saw. My dad has a very organized yard full of bins, buildings, sheds, equipment (new as well as antique), and I had a lot of fun asking him about what all the old stuff was and where it came from.

This cart has a bottom that opens to dump whatever it is carrying.

The base from an old wagon.

The cement truck with it's layers of colorful peeling paint. It was used for a water truck on the farm and you can see some neat pictures of it in this post, which strangely is named the exact same thing as this post from just the other day, but the baby is Kit in the first post and Jack in the second. :)

Peeling paint from an old house that used to share the yard with my parents house. It had a root cellar and a garden beside it and I think it was yellow at some point, but I can't really remember. We used the root cellar to store our potatoes until it got so old that my dad caved it in. The garden was huge and my mom always filled it with all sorts of yummy vegetables. While we weeded, we would occasionally find pieces of broken china mixed into the soil. All I know is that my Aunt N lived in it way before she became my aunt and that it still had an old wood stove in it at that time. I wonder who lived there before? My dad could probably tell me.

Over at the barn, I noticed the sliders for the door had stars on them and my dad explained that they had originally come from a grain elevator. I think that's cool. Sliding doors are very trendy in homes, and how cool would it be to have these neat tracks.

Used to get water up by the bucketful from a well.

The stove from the old house.

A second, smaller stove.

Kit playing with The Littlest Petshop while holding Frankie captive.

Canola

On our way home we decided on a whim to spend the night in Banff, AB.

I love Banff. I've visisted there many times with my family and it was also where we spent part of our honeymoon. I think this was my first visit in the summer and it really surprised me to see how busy it was.

While driving along the highway, we saw a lot of cars pulled over and people snapping photos of something up high. After we went under the bridge, I turned around quick and blindly tried to snap this photo of a bear out our back window. It was so cool to see a bear!

I love the color of the water in Banff National Park. It is so pretty to drive through!