Randomness from the last few days

The ferry coming in while we enjoyed a sunny day at the beach!

Docked - but un-docked!

Yo! Pig! Outta my face! But you can wait until I wake up from my nap!

So snuggly!

Sunshine and laundry

Wishing I had an outdoor clothesline!  As is the usual after convention I have a HUGE laundry pile!  And today I also have sunshine!  Wishing I could hang the clothes out - especially the towels and let them dry in the sun!  I should open the tent up!  And then it could be folded properly, too!  Hmmm......  Anyway, the laundry isn't finished with me sitting here!

Just a thought...
"Believing and knowing aren't enough....It's in the doing!" 

What's the moon phase?!

If I didn't know better I would guess it's a full moon today!  At work this morning a woman dropped a couple of things.  There were two women near by the items and so I asked the one closest if they were her's.  They would have OBVIOUSLY come from the same person since they were so close together and what would be the chance that two different women would drop two different things in the exact same spot?   As I pointed the items out, I made it a point to vacate the area immediately after.  Well, she looked down and retrieved the one item but not the other.  I came back out of the back, the lady was gone but  -- her thong underwear remained on my lobby floor.  AWKWARD!!  As though I were picking up after my pooch, I removed them using a plastic bag turned inside out!  Good grief people!!!  Later we went to Grocery Outlet to buy some bottled water for convention this weekend.  Well, if that wasn't entertaining!!!   The lady in the next lane over was watching the screen LIKE A HAWK!!!  If ANYTHING was rung up incorrectly she would have a fit!  Her friend accidentally rang something up twice and boy did she get after her!  And then she wanted all of her stuff put BACK in the fridge/freezer because she would pick it up after her appointment, but before she went home to her backwoods home far away.  She would be back after more than 2 hours!!!  Then something wasn't ringing up correctly, well, at least not according to what the sign said, and so she wanted it for FREE -- like they do at Safeway!!  This is GROCERY OUTLET where everything is much cheaper anyway, they're not going to give it to you for free!!!  While we were there the manager was called over at least 2 times and I'm sure he just gave up and stood by from that point forward!  Tiana wanted to get some popcorn and just sit and watch!  Would have been worth it!  Crazy!! :)

Photo links fixed!

For whatever reason, the embedding language wasn't working so I put different links into the pictures from our trip!  Try again!  Hope you enjoy a peek at our vacation!  We are home and as soon as I toss one load of laundry into the dryer, I'm off to bed!

It's been awhile!

But there's a mighty fine reason for that!  We've been on vacation!  Woohoo!!  We flew up to Calgary one fine a rainy morning to be greeted by grey skies there, too.  As is the frequent case in the prairie, though, give it milliseconds and it changes!  We had bits of sun and even a soaker or two throughout the day.  The first day we just kind of drove around and were lost.  Enjoyed some frosty A&W rootbeer in a frosty mug, had some poutine (OF COURSE!), and in general just chilled a bit. We also enjoyed a delicious dinner at Gnocchi Ristorante!!  The next day we decided it would be a fine day to take a 2 hour drive out to Banff.  I could have spent the WHOLE vacation there!  I didn't bring proper gear, but the hiking would be so incredibly awesome!  We took a stomach-unsettling gondola ride, enjoyed fresh mountain air and managed to feed the Canadian economy a light snack. Thursday, well, that was icky.  Most of the day was searching for a- or in the- doctor's office trying to find out if Tiana had an infection.  It's a long holiday weekend for Albertans so we wanted to make sure before everyone took the weekend off!  We only saw one place that day and that was Lougheed's Mansion.  We did go to a really lousy mall, but it was right next to Chinatown, so we went through the cultural center and then had a bit of dim sum to fill our bellies.  That after taking a gander through a really pretty park.  Felt good to walk in fresh air!  Friday - now that was a good day!  We spent the bulk of the day walking through the Heritage Park Historical Village.  This is a place that I remember visiting when I was 4 years old.  Amazing that some of it even came back to me when we were there!  The only thing we forgot to do was go back and get ice cream at the parlor I remembered the best!  Straight from there (after a Starbucks stop of course!) we drove the 3 hours or so north to Edmonton.  I'll save that part of the trip for another post.  If you wish to see the pictures from each day, click on the the words associated with them!

Edmonton

Driving into Edmonton we would have been hopelessly lost if it weren't for the GPS we borrowed from Kent's boss!!  They are doing massive road construction and they had completely removed the exit to our hotel!  Anyway, we wound our way around and found the hotel.  It was pretty late at night so we just relaxed and got ready for the next big day - WEST EDMONTON MALL!!!!  Ok, so the exclamation points are really just for Tiana, but...  This mall was, for the longest time, the largest mall in the world!  It boasts 200 stores, an ice rink, waterpark with wave pool, aquarium, submarine rides, 2 mini-golf courses, bowling, amusement park with stomach-emptying rollercoasters, restaurants, Asian grocery store, and probably much more than I'm missing.  We spent a full 8 hours walking around the shops and looking at the attractions!  Amazingly, the only thing I bought was 1 postcard! Kent bought 3 nightshirts and Tiana managed to put a sizable dent in her birthday money.  I didn't actually take any pictures, but I figured she wouldn't mind if I shared part of her album!  Sunday we went to Meeting with a fine group of people and then made our way to another Historical Village.  This time it was the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village.  It depicts the life of the Ukrainian settlers in the early 1900's and since my own great-grandma came from the Ukraine, I found it fascinating!  And they have this truly settled out on the prairie giving a pretty accurate feel for what the day would have felt like.  They were tougher than I!  Beautiful day, though, and so quite fun to wander around.  They could do well to have a bit more labelling of places, but still fun to see.  On the way there (and back), but of course when my camera wasn't with me, we saw a large herd of bison standing on the side of the road in Elk Island National Park.  I've seen plenty in Wyoming, but fun to see them this far north, too!  Later that evening I met up with a woman that I have "known" for many years, but only online via stamping/scrapbooking sites.  What a sweet woman!  We had dessert at our hotel and chatted for a couple of hours!  So fun to finally meet her!
Awww!!  What a GLORIOUS! day!!!!  We went to this beautiful park and enjoyed Edmonton's Heritage Festival.  It was awesome!!  It was like the Bite of Seattle - only BIGGER!  They had over 60 booths serving over 80 nationalities worth of food!  And they had small shops or displays about each country as well.  So fun, such good food and lovely sunshine to give us all a bit of color!!  A bit of shopping, a light dinner and some relaxing before the long trip toward home!

Phew!!!

There's been so much going on I haven't even had time to pop in here!  A busy, full work week, a 16th birthday and a weekend away!!  There's more to come, but I thought I'd leave you with at least a little something new!!

Birthday Candles!!  Sweet 16 surrounded by friends!!

Kaylin, Tiana and Mom and Dad at Enchanted Forest in Oregon.

When we have a better internet connection, I'll upload more pictures from the birthday and our trip to Oregon!