After doing three weeks of nephrology call, plus and additional office double booking because a locum fell through, I took one week of vacation off in July. This week turned out to be one of the worst time offs I’ve ever had. The only thing good about the trip was seeing family, but everything else in between was a horror!
We planned to go out to the farm to visit Shannon’s family, which is all good. We do this about once a year, and each time ever since Everett was born, it has been a horrible drive out there and back. I think we just forget that that’s the case and keep doing it.
We did relatively well all the way out to Medicine Hat where we had a nice visit with Shannon’s grandmother. There we met up with Doug and Julie and got to stretch our legs and have Everett run around and Sierra out of the car. Then we plowed through and drove up to Fox Valley.
The farm was great. Jolene & Jeff were there with their kids along with Karen & Jeremy with Haley. It was Haley’s 3rd birthday, so we had a little celebration. The kids were great and the age spread had them getting along quite well together. The older ones did a great job looking after Everett and Haley, allowing the adults to visit.
Sierra ended up crying the whole night which made it impossible for Everett to sleep in the same room. So we moved his bed to our room, so you can imagine how that goes with Everett in the same room as us. I vaguely recall this happening last time with Everett crying the whole night.
I had thought we were going to stay at the farm a little longer, but plans changed and we made off to Saskatchewan Landing National Park, where Doug & Julie had a year-round campsite. We ended up camping for the next few nights.
I had never seen a “permanent” campsite before and some of the sites were impressive. People would spend $50k on landscaping, decks and infrastructure to surround their RV getaway.
It was super hot out this weekend, with temperatures soaring up to 36 degrees. We explored around the campsite area and cooled off in the RV. We got the back room which expanded into two bunk beds of both sides. Sierra was in a Pack n Play in the center and we took a mattress down for Everett on the floor so that he wouldn’t roll off and hurt himself at night.
Again, the next three nights were torture by sleep deprivation. Sierra would cry all the time. The Everett would act up. You couldn’t really do anything with Sierra, but because Everett was getting old enough to understand, we really did want to wring his neck once or twice every night.
We did enjoy ourselves the next day out of the lake taking Doug & Julie’s pontoon boat out for a ride. We beached it on a bank and went for a swim. Everett had an Orca floatie on and he just went in and started swimming with it. Good job! I was impressed because I would have thought he’d still be afraid of the water.
The next day, Doug headed out to a farm equipment auction, and the water was not as nice, being overcast and a bit cooler, so we just played at the park and around the campsite. Then the hail came. Baseball sized hail shot down from the sky like meteors all around. Guess which car we drove out. Yes, my new Mazda CX-5 got pummeled, with no shelter around.
On the way back, we made it as far as Medicine Hat before we called it a day and rented a hotel room. It had a swimming pool and waterslide which the kids quite enjoyed. Everett didn’t have his floaties of course, but he didn’t really take that into account when he went straight in the deep parts of the pools trying to swim. He got a couple mouthfuls of water before I fished him up, but fortunately, that didn’t phase him too much.
Sleeping in the single room was an ordeal as Everett wouldn’t lay down to bed until around 10pm.
We drove up to Calgary where we met up with Erin and Edwin to briefly check out the Calgary Stampede.
I think the kids were still tired from the traveling and combined with the heat, the Stampede wasn’t enjoyable at all. (Despite these photos…)
Basically, Everett whined the whole time except for when he got a huge cup of lemonade which he downed in a few minutes. We ate only junk food before finally getting home.
To this day, about a week after we left of the trip, the sleep is still bad. Sierra is actually not too bad considering. She doesn’t really get up in the middle of the night anymore. However, Everett does, and every night at around 3am or 4am, he comes over to our room asking for snuggles, or to go fake pee or poo, or some other excuse.
Overall, poor travelers and especially bad sleepers. The kids did relatively well in the car, but just traveling has been such a chore. Good visits with the family on the other hand.
Here’s a video of our good little boy reading a book in the car. No iPads!
