It was a great summer. We got out a lot - as much as possible and then some. We went to the Royal Tyrell Dinosaur Museum in Drumheller to show Jada the dinosaurs; we had fun going to park lake and Waterton; we went to the Calgary Zoo; I went SCUBA diving; we went swimming a lot; the girls had a blast playing with their cousins; Jada turned three and got a big girl bike; we turned a dresser for the girls from a smurf blue to a pale purple with butterflies. At the end of it all, we had a baby AND moved in the same week.
Jada thought the dinosaur museum interesting - for the first little bit. I think if we were to go back now, she would love it a lot more. One of her favorite shows on netflix to watch is called Dinosaur Train - its a cute show where this dinosaur family goes on train trips to see and learn about other kinds of dinosaurs. At Nana's house, they have a bunch of plastic dinosaurs, and Jada will spend a long time playing with those and the farm animals. So next time we go, I think Jada would have a lot more fun. Sadly, we forgot our camera that day, so no photos.
Jada and Makayla loved the zoo. They especially loved the penguins! Have you seen them? If not, GO! The girls probably could have spent hours in there if they could watching the penguins hop and swim. Because of demand, they currently only allow small groups in the enclosure for 15 minute periods. We actually went twice - once at the beginning of the day and again just before going home. Both times we were very lucky and were able to get in right away. There have been times when people have waited 2 hours plus to see the penguins. Just as at an amusement park, there are signs that say "approx x time from this point". I'm glad we didn't have long to wait!
The other favorite part of the zoo for Jada was the butterfly house. She LOVES butterflies! While Makayla was getting a diaper change, Jada and Dad waited in there. She would look at the butterflies, and then sat trying to get a butterfly to land on her. Sadly none did, she wasn't quite patient enough. As a butterfly would come close, she would get up and try to get it to land on her finger.
The other highlight of the zoo for the girls was the merry-go-round. We probably rode it 10 times in a row and each time they wanted a different animal. Again, we were lucky that it was not a busy day at the zoo so the girls could do things like this.
As I had mentioned previously, I have wanted to Scuba for a long time. I think I was around 14 when I did a discover Scuba pool dive in Calgary in a Young Men's activity. I was hooked then, but time and money, location and other things always seemed to get in the way. I finally had some extra money, some time and while maybe not the perfect location, I still had a location. One of my other friends recently got certified in Honduras. Waterton lake is a lot colder then Honduras, the bottom of Emerald Bay was about 5C. So hence the 7mm wetsuit, hood, gloves, boots. Plus I was wearing a dive skin underneath that - I decided to do that as I had trouble enough in class getting the boots on. The dive skin helped the wetsuit not stick to my skin. Anyway, this was a cool experience for me. Emerald bay's visibility is between 10-20 feet, and it has a greenish tinge to it (hence the name Emerald bay). So you can't see far and can see even less - like down to 2 inches - when the bottom silt gets stirred up (that happened a lot as the group of us were just getting certified). We dived the wreck of the Gertrude - an old steamer on the bottom. It really really neat following the instructor and then all of a sudden see some of the beams of the keel rise up in your vision! I'm definitely hooked. I've been able to go once more this summer after getting certified. Hopefully next summer I have some more chances, and I hope Chelsey comes along with. Her plans diving got put on hold when we found out Alayna was coming to join our family.
Jada Thought the gear was very interesting. Perhaps when she is 12ish she will go diving with me.
Our present to Jada for her third birthday was a big girl bike. She loves it! She has a lot of fun pedalling around the parks we go to. She still needs a little help, and gets scared if she starts going too fast on a downhill grade, but it is a lot of fun watching her.
A friend gave us an old dresser that was as I call it, smurf blue. Not the colour that we wanted for a girls dresser. So we spent some time getting that blue off. We used a paint stripper and sanding to do this. It was quite the effort, but finally got that blue off. Underneath the blue was white and pink on the drawers.
Our original plan was to stain it a neutral colour, but with the decorative edges, and the lack of experience and proper tools made it almost impossible to get all the previous colours off, so the stain made it look even worse then it did with bare wood or the blue. So we decided that if it is going to go in a girls room, why not paint it Jada's favourite colour - purple? We even let Jada choose the shade of purple. We added butterflies, and a bit of gloss coat to help protect it. So even though the dresser is still dinged up in spots (its been well used!) it looks a lot better then smurf blue.
You know, looking over all these photos makes us realize how much Jada and Makayla have grown and changed over the summer. We recently took them to the doctor for check ups, and found out that Alayna and Makayla are both in the 75th percentile for height and 25th for weight, while Jada is 75th for weight and 94th for height!!!! Over the summer we measured her up against her four year old cousin Claire. Claire only had about an inch over Jada! All the girls are happy and healthy. We had a lot of fun over the summer, and we will try not to make such massive posts again.
Enjoy the rest of the photos for fun!
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