Canada 2013

We hadn't been to Canada in the Summer since the summer of 2006. We were so excited to go.
Thursday June 27th, in the afternoon we left at 1:30 pm and headed to Rigby Idaho to spend the night with Aunt Donna. First leg of the the trip 5 hours. Took an hour longer due to an accident.

Sweet little man sleeping peacefully until 1:30am and was up on and off the rest of the night.

June 28th, We left Aunt Donna’s house at 9:30am and drove an hour and a half to Beautiful Yellowstone.  
Enjoying our first Huckleberry shake of the season. Our favorite.

We spent 3 hours driving around Yellowstone.
First stop; prismatic springs. Breath taking. See for yourself.



Second stop; scenic stroll. You can’t deny that there is a God when you are surrounded with his creations.

Third; artists paintpots. Ryker wouldn't leave the car unless he had his Octonaut ship.

After Yellowstone we drove 2 hours to Bozeman, Montana and stopped to eat at McKenzie River.

On our way out of Bozeman to head to Helena for the night, just an hour and a half away. We were stopped at a red light when suddenly we heard and felt a big bang . We were involved in a three car pile up. My first accident since I started driving. I called my dad in tears and I am so grateful for him to help me through it.  We got the least amount damage and thank heavens we were able to drive off.

June 29th,Saturday morning, we left Helena Montana at 9:30am and off we went to finish the last leg of the trip. It took us 8 hours with stopping at the border which was a pretty quick stop.

Sunday Ryker woke up with a fever. I stayed home with him and Dave went to church with his parents. We had a big family gathering for dinner then we went to the park to have family pictures.

Nana and Papa with there grand-kids. All the kids did really well due to the fact that we were being eating alive by mosquitoes.

Canada was having a huge heat wave [97 degrees] and we were all dying of heat since the house doesn't have A/C. With 14 people, the house heats up even more and at times outside felt cooler then inside.

Monday July 1st [Canada Day] afternoon we went to Midnapore Lake [a community lake] and spent 4 hours playing. Ryker loved having his independence with his floaty.  We came home and ate delicious homemade hamburgers {made from Doug}.

Tuesday July 2nd it was still blazing hot so off to the lake we went.
Ryker and Lincoln were best friends the entire trip. Too cute.

Ryker helping Dave put in a Loonie [dollar coin] in the cart to release it. Once we were done we returned the cart and we got our Loonie back. It's pretty smart of them because it keeps all the carts in one place.  We of course bought food that we can only get in Canada like; Maple cookies, white cheddar mac and cheese,  ketchup chips and HP sauce.

July 3rd Wednesday afternoon we went to Disciple Me 2 with the Shipley's. He was glued to the screen. This was his 2nd time going to the theaters.

Before I could grab Ryker, he was outside playing in the water with cousin Lincoln and Maddie. It was a cloudy and cold day but that didn’t stop them from having fun.


On July 4th we went to Calaway Park and played for 5 hours with the Shipley’s [Heather and Dan], then Linda and her gang met up with us an hour or so later.
Ryker's first ride, he wasn't quite sure.

This was one of Ryker and Lincolns favorite rides. Dave said Ryker would say, “up up up" and "down down down” as it went around.

Dave took this gem of a picture.  Happy 4th of July, America!


He rode this ride 2 times in a row. The second time he rode with cousin Maddie.

Riding the boats with Lincoln, Maddie and Landon.

We found the bumper cars last and we wished we had found it sooner. He loved every minute of it. We all came home exhausted. It was a good day.

Saturday July 6th , Dave had a VMT meeting with some investors at 10 am. I dropped Dave off and went to Ben and Linda’s house and played.
Ryker wasn't afraid of the Dragon Lizard at all.

He thoroughly enjoyed watching it move around on the wood floor.

He then showed us how the lizard moved on the floor. Silly boy.

And… this is the reason why we don’t live in Canada. A huge hail storm in the middle of July.

Sunday July 7th,  we went to Sacrament meeting and then spent the afternoon at Cindy’s house.  At 5pm we went to Grandma Sefcik’s house. She made a wonderful meal. We always enjoy our time with Grandma Sefcik.
 
Monday July 8th; at 11am we went to Shakers Fun Center with Ben and Linda and their kids. Ryker had fun climbing up and then going down the slide. We ate pizza and had dippin’ dots.


Monday evening we left little man with Nana and Papa and went to the Stampede. We walked around and met up with Ben and Linda. We walked around the shopping area then we ventured out.
Our first stop was watching a ski doo show.

Tried some interesting foods, top on the list was a deep fried snicker bar. Very interesting and good at the same time.

We stopped to watch ghost dancers. {they are people dressed up like white horses dancing} It's that type of dance where it is extremely bad but you can’t keep your eyes off of them. We did end up leaving after about 5 minutes.

We sat in row 20 and right in the center of the stage.

Enjoying some wild Chuck Wagon Races.

Beautiful sunset over the saddle dome.

The pre-show entertainers.

At the Calgary stampede show. This show was full of surprises and they had young singers, a piano and horses flying over our heads and towards the second balcony.

We got to experience KISS for the first time. The main signer and guitar player would play a couple of strings and then throw out his guitar pick. Wild if you ask me.



Tuesday July 9th, another day at the lake. Midnapore put this water trampoline and Dave and Issac {Nephew} jumped off.

Getting our feet scanned for orthotics  from Dr. Ben Sefcik.

This picture was taken before, Ryker hurt his leg.
The story;
Ryker was jumping with his older cousin Josh when he jumped into Josh’s crease and quickly grabbed his knee and wouldn't bear any weight on it and cried a cry I never heard him do. We went inside and he continued to hold his left knee and wouldn't calm down. He finally stopped crying after about 20 minutes and took some Tylenol. We were able to drive home, but he continued to hold his knee. We thought all he needed was to go to sleep and sleep it off… 

He woke up at 11:30pm crying and wouldn't calm down. I told Dave to get his dad for a blessing, Dave came down and said we should take him to the hospital. We arrived at the hospital at 12:30am and we filled out paper work and sat in the waiting room for 2 minutes. We were called back and we talked to a nurse then we took him down to the x-ray room. We came back and waited for 1 and a 1/2 hours for the x-ray/doctor. About 3:30am the doctor came in and confirmed that he had a toddler fracture. [a crack in the bone] The nurse showed him all different colors for his cast and asked him for his favorite color and he chose green.

About 4am Ryker was asleep on Dave’s shoulder when the nurse came in to put on the cast. We woke him up and he wasn't happy at all. I held his right leg while Dave held his arms down and the 2 nurses quickly put on his fiber glass cast. I couldn't keep my emotions in and I cried the entire time. It’s the hardest thing in the world to watch my helpless boy and there is nothing I could do.  

We were finally able to leave the hospital. While we were driving home Ryker fell asleep in my arms and we got to see a gorgeous sunrise at 5 am.

He really believes that I put on the cast since I was holding his leg and he didn't like me for the first week.  All he wanted was his daddy.

It’s only been a couple of hours since he got his cast on and he's trying so hard to be happy.

Friday July 12th we left Calgary at 9am and stopped at the Cardston temple.



Dave trying to cheer him up and acting like his leg is broken as well.

One of my favorite pictures.

It took an hour to get across the boarder. We drove through Glacier National Park. It's Breath Taking.




Stopping at our usual stop in Deer Lodge, Montana to stretch out legs and eat. We ate pizza from Pizza Hut, root beer from A&W, and sat in the grass next to McDonald's.

He loved getting the minions from McDonald's. He is showing off fart gun minion.

Ryker's cast was hurting him when we got to Pocatello he was done with all the driving and we still had 3 more hours. Dave held him until he calmed down and he was finally content enough to let Dave sit in the back next to him for the rest of the trip. We rolled into our drive way around 9pm.

This was a fun long vacation. Even though we started out the trip in a 3 car pile up accident and ended it with Ryker’s broken leg.  The middle of the trip was fun and we did enjoy ourselves. It was such a nice change then seeing white snow, we got to see what Canada has to offer during the summer season, lots of mosquitoes, heat waves, rainy days, hail, black squirrels, scary looking rabbits roaming around and really green scenery.

Until next time Canada.