The last day of Summer....

Last Sunday we popped into Banff to enjoy possibly our last warm and sunny weekend of the Summer.  Neil and the big kids rented a canoe and had a paddle on the 

Bow River while Silas and I enjoyed a riverside stroll. As it turned out the next day, September 8th, we had an unseasonably early mega dump of snow which I still cant quite get over by the way. Autumn isn't even supposed to be here yet let alone winter! The kids had a great time, its certainly something we'll do again and at least we really made the most of that last summer day! 

If there was a competition for eating the most snow, I know who would win......

Despite a few warm and melty tease days, spring is refusing to stick around here in the Bow Valley. I'm finding this more frustrating that usual this year mostly because I'm running critically low on clothes that fit around my ever-expanding baby belly and each cold day that I find myself venturing out becomes more of an ordeal in the wardrobe/comfort department. I'm also a little too heavy, waddlesome  (if that is a word) and generally off balance which doesn't work well with slippery snow and ice. Yesterday I walked the dog with the kids without having to wear a coat, hat or mitts, across snow-free wet, brown grass and thought that maybe, just maybe we were done with the snow. Alas, we woke up this morning to a big dump of the white stuff. Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves we ventured up a mountain to a place where the snow was even thicker and fluffier and tried our best to embrace the never-ending winter. 

The boys excitedly went tubing at Mount Norquay while I drank hot chocolate and Bel ate a heck of a lot of snow. 

Although I was a bit sad that I couldn't join in with the fun, it was quite invigorating just to be out in the fresh air and to watch these two squeal and laugh their way down the slopes a few times. 

Fresh snow. Yum. 

 She did squeeze a hot dog in along with all the snow. At least the sausage part anyway. 

As nice as it was.....I still want it to be spring now please.

Into the Badlands to see some Dino's.......

 On Friday we drove to Drumheller in the Alberta Badlands. Neil had some work to do there and we figured we would make a day of it and visit the Royal Tyrrell Museum to see some dinosaur bones. After a quick stop at the Drumheller Penitentiary (not usually included in Drumheller's top attractions) we made our way through the strange little town of Drumheller and out into the hoodoos and canyons to find the museum. Drumheller itself feels a little run down and a little too heavy on the garishly painted fibreglass dinosaurs that seemed to be staring at us from every street corner. Of course the kids loved this and Seb even suggested we move there! Erm, no thanks!

Once we arrived at the museum we were actually pretty impressed! It's a very nice, modern, facility and much more pleasant than the prison :) 

 The place was huge and full of amazing displays. The amount of dinosaur skeletons was mind blowing!

It was quite dark inside some of the rooms (apologies for some of the grainy photos) and this had Bel and Seb a bit freaked out at times. Secretly I think they quite liked the spookiness of it all. 

One of the most interesting things we discovered is that Alberta, 60 million years ago, looked quite a bit like Tofino looks now, a coastal coniferous forest of huge cedars and tree ferns! Who would've thought! 

They even had a humid cretaceous garden in a huge greenhouse full of luscious green leaves and lovely smells! I would've quite liked to stay in there all day to give a chance for the moisture to sink into my Alberta dry skin! 

I was fascinated by these dinosaur footprints in the sand. A footprint seems like such a temporary thing and it just blew my mind to think about how these marks have survived all these millions of years!  

It was a fun day and so nice to get a change of scenery. To finish up here's a photo of all (soon to be) 5 of us! Gives just a hint of the craziness that is our little tribe. :)