Home Sweet Home

Ahhhhh. Contented sigh.

I'm home! The holiday travels are over, and it's time to sit, catch my breath, and get back to my regular routines. The holiday was lovely, but I'm ready for some downtime now.

We did the Central Alberta Loop (my name, not official) of Grande Cache, Jasper, Banff, Calgary, Edmonton, and home. The weather was mild (mostly just below zero degrees Celsius), and the roads were in excellent condition. Some skiing was done (at Sunshine, where Alec Baldwin was spotted enjoying the fresh powder on the slopes), but not by me. I sat with my Dad (yes, his broken leg kept him off the ski-hill) and drank way too much coffee.

My brother and his girlfriend shivered a lot - apparently coming to winter in Canada after summer in Australia is a bit of a shock. Who knew?

Here are Ivan and Emily acknowledging the proximity of dangerous wildlife. Of course, they're too skinny to be taken serious as bear bait - although a bear might choke on one of them trying to swallow.


Here they are playing along the Smokey River. Yes, that's ice. Yes, it was cold(ish). Yup, they're monkeying around skipping stones. This is all a novelty to them, as they don't usually find half frozen river beds in Melbourne, Australia. In a high rise. Near the beach. Poor little them.

This is Emily on the "beach" in Jasper National Park. The river widens out here, and is so slow and sandy that it appears more like an ocean vista than a river in the Rocky Mountains. Note the snow on the mountain peaks (it was December, after all).

And, here we have Ivan and Emily lounging around at the base of a small frozen waterfall. Later in the trip we drove by The Weeping Wall, which is such a large frozen waterfall that it had nearly a dozen ice climbers on it. Sadly, my camera batteries had died by that point, or you would be squinting at a photo of a huge wall of ice with teeny tiny way-up-high must-be-insane climbers dotted here and there on the ice. Oy.

So, I'm glad to be home, and will soon be back to knitting socks, binding quilted placemats, and cooking for DH. Oh, and keeping Peanut warm while she naps in my lap. Ahhh, life is sweet.