Summer break has finally arrived, two weeks away from work for Jonathan and time together as a family for all four of us.
Once again, Canada has given us some new and exciting experiences – Jack is now the proud owner of some skates and helmet and can’t wait to try them out on the ice. His favourite game at the moment is to stand on pieces of cardboard and slide across the carpet screaming, “Look at me Mummy, I’m skating”. Not long now till the Ice Rink in Ralston opens.
Our leave started with the Medicine Hat Stampede and Rodeo. Comparable only to the Calgary Stampede in spirit this was a much smaller event, but that had its benefits – we got great seats for the rodeo, as the pictures testify.
The day after the rodeo, we packed the car and a trailer (see picture) and headed off to our rocky mountain home in Fernie. This was going to be a little bit of a bus mans holiday for us both as we’d decided to redo the kitchen in the basement suite. All the designs had been completed, cabinets bought, countertop fitters booked and so our rite of passage with a U-Haul trailer began. The road to Fernie is well travelled by us now, there’s some beautiful scenery as the landscape changes from badlands prairie to mountains, and one of our favourite places along the way is Highway 879 – mainly for its roadsigns (see picture).
Fernie is definitely one of Jacks favourite places in the world. He loves the mountains and can quite often be heard saying “they’re so beautiful Mummy”. However, after this visit it really does have a special spot in his heart – the council are completing rebuilding the road our house is on. For the adults this means being woken up by work noise at 7am but for Jack this means diggers and rollers outside his garden all day!
Although we were redoing the kitchen it certainly wasn’t all work and no play. Along with the ususal dog walks and runs along the river, we managed to fit in a visit to Fernie Firestation, a road trip out to Lake Koocanoosa where we found a beautiful secluded beach and Jack enjoyed some Timbits, a ride up to Island Lake Lodge and bit of whitewater rafting (toddler style) down the Elk River in Fernie.
As well as fitting the kitchen, Jonathan decided to take on an extra evening project. Having curtailed our plans to build a full deck outside he was still yearning to do something with wood, so the concept for a mini deck was conceived. Using the tree in situ he created a deck cum table cum chiminea stand cum climbing frame! Finished in time for our last evening in Fernie, we christened it properly with our neighbours, their three girls and the tenants upstairs with a fire and few beers.
The Travelling Haywards 