2011 New Years Vacation

Last year for New Years we took this awesome trip. I wrote this blog and kept it as a draft with the intentions of adding pictures...since i havent been on here since, i decided there was no use wasting a good blog! haha so this was 1 year ago! Next I will be posting a little update about our year away from the blog, 2012. There may not be many pictures since that is the most time consuming portion of blogging and im on time constraints 99% of the time! haha

Thanks for following us and wanting to keep up with our lives. I will attempt to be better at updating, but promises in the past have not been kept, so i wont promise, but will do my best with what little down time we have. :)

So, back to LAST YEAR!

We decided to take a week long vacation over the New Year holiday and chose to spend that time in Canada! We left Wednesday after Christmas and flew back Jan 2nd. Elise and Jeremiah along with Casey and Tiffany (Jeremiahs younger brother) spent the week with us in a wintery wonderland! haha
Radium Springs is the town we stayed in. The cabin was beautiful and scenery to go with! Our vacation was a good mix of activity and rest, but most importantly, quality time with our friends and fantastic food! So, here is a little about our trip.

We flew in to Calgary and rented a car. Drove that night approx 3 hours to Radium Springs. On our way, we ran into a bathroom issue and had to use an outhouse, literally. We laughed so hard during our 10 min pit stop, that those who didnt need to use the bathroom, ended up HAVING to go!!

When we got to the cabin, after eating yummy pizza, we unloaded the cars and settled in, picking our rooms and making plans for the week.

The next morning, Elise and Jeremiah did the grocery shopping and we all decided to make that day a sight seeing day that would be both fun and relaxing...sort of. :)
The lake was frozen and everyone goes down there to play hockey or ice skate, some ride 4 wheelers and snowmobiles, but beyond all of that, it is surround by the most amazing view of the mountains. We did a little skating (some in our shoes, other on skates), hockey and just relaxing in a swing taking in the beauty around us. Next was lunch in town...the food was good, but the experience was different. haha. Then, on to night tubing/sledding!! It had rained on the mountain the night before, so the runs were slick and fun for tubing. I hadnt ever tubed or sledded on a REAL hill, so this was a ton of fun for all of us. Of course, we had several races and wipe outs, but it only made us that much more excited for the next day. Snowboarding!

Panorama is a beautiful mountain/ski area and 5/6 of us boarded, while Tiff chose to stick with Skiing. She enjoyed watching us have pile ups on a regular basis. :) I hadnt boarded in a couple of years, so it took a minute to get comfortable again and  I was surprised at how easy it was to get going this time around. Radium Springs has a natural hot springs pool that helped us unwind and try to prevent as much soreness as possible, not that it really worked. LOL

New Years Eve was spent mostly at the cabin playing games and goofing around. A few of us went into town for a little shopping while the others went to the rec facility playing racquetball. We played games and ate a big dinner and watched the ball drop and count down 2 or 3 times, but overall we were pretty tired and didnt stay up much later after that. (I had come down with Strep the day before we left, Jonathan had a sinus infection and everyone else had traveled a lot for the holidays - so we were beat!)

New Years Day we traveled back to Banff for our last night in Canada. Shopping, coffee, good food, good company and a genuine sleigh ride was a fantastic end to our winter vacation. (I must mention that the sleigh ride was blistering cold, but totally worth it).

Jonathan and I loved spending time with our friends, but ultimately, all parents know that you long for the love and hugs from your babies, so we were excited to get home and have Liam back in our arms!

This may not be an annual trip, but will def be a repeat trip every couple of years. We truly enjoyed some down time and play time. Something we dont get a lot of here at home in the 'Real World'. haha.