Cookies and Crayons

We were so excited to be able to get out to Vancouver to visit Scott’s parents. It is a lot easier now that it’s just an hour flight!!

The weather wasn’t ideal, but we found some great inside things to do.

Grandma picked up some gluten-free cookie mix and Dougie, Daddy and Grandma all made cookies one afternoon.

Gathering around getting things going

Watching the mixer

Adding more mix

Almost ready for the next step

A few rolling instructions from Grandma and Dougie was off

“Okay, I’ve got this”

Daddy and Grandma step in to apply a bit of pressure

Taste testing before we start cutting

More direction from Grandma on the next steps

And Dougie can do it almost on his own

Let’s just be sure it still tastes good

Sprinkle on some sugar

Trying some different sprinkles

Our visit wasn’t only about sprinkles and cookies though. Connie got some good quality time with her grandparents. She’s changed a lot since the last time they saw her so it was fun for everyone to get to know each other again.

Dougie taught Aunt Judy about Thomas trains.

We had a great time! We took a lot more pictures but unfortunately, we dropped our camera while we were there and it broke the lens and the remaining pictures didn’t come out at all.

Now that it’s getting warmer and people are starting to come out of their houses, we decided that we need to start experiencing more of Alberta. Who knows how long we’ll end up being here and there is so much to see! So, we decided to make a day trip out to Drumheller – it’s about an hour and a half drive from Calgary.

For those not familiar with Drumheller, it’s most famous for its dinosaurs. We thought Dougie may enjoy it since he sort of likes dinosaurs. Well, I should more accurately say he used to “sort of like” dinosaurs, now, they are his favourite thing on earth!

This is the largest dinosaur on earth

Sitting on the dino’s foot

For $3, you could climb up into the mouth of the dinosaur. Of course, we had to do that.

Dougie at this point was so enthralled with everything dinosaurs that it was hard to get him to look anywhere else.

They just have these things on every street corner.

There is more to Drumheller than dinosaurs, it also has some of the most impressive Hoodoos in the world. Of course, we had to stop there.

Mum and Connie in front of one of the hoodoos.

Daddy and Dougie with a different hoodoo

Notice we didn’t totally escape the dinosaurs.

From the hoodoos, we went to an old suspension bridge that took us over to an old mining area. The bridge isn’t used for that anymore but it’s maintained by the province for tourist use. I was not a fan. We climbed a reasonably large hill there to get a better view of the area. We didn’t see the mine but it was a lovely little excursion.

After a long day, we were all very ready to get home. We didn’t hit all the sites we were hoping to so we’ll have to go back. We decided to let Dougie drive home, he has to learn sometime.

Happy Half Birthday to Connie!

It’s so hard to believe that 6 months have gone by already. She has changed so much and yet it seems like it was just yesterday she was born.

We started solids with Dougie when he was 5 months old. We decided to wait a bit longer with Connie. Now that she’s 6 months though, it’s time.

She looks ready, don’t you think?

We don’t really have what we need here to make our own foods, so we decided to buy food this time. I let Dougie pick which food we’d try first, he selected sweet potatoes.

Why yes, that is a shot glass of sweet potatoes (I did tell you we didn’t have everything we needed for this – I was lucky to have remembered the right spoons)

WHAT did you just put in my mouth?

Hmm, not sure what I think of this…

Okay, maybe this isn’t so bad

Sweet potatoes are a success and we’re off to a good start with this food stuff. Hopefully, this trend will continue.

We are back in Dallas for Connie’s six month check-up. Actually, she’s a week shy of 6 months but Scott had a golf tournament so we opted to come in a week early. The doctor went through all the usual questions to see how she is doing developmentally and she is right on target.

Her latest stats:

Connie did so well with her shot! She made a brief cry, realized it was over and then stopped.

We’re all back in Calgary now! Unfortunately, it’ll be a while before we get back to Dallas but we had a fun time while we were there. Until then, we’re just hangin’ out and enjoying our time in Calgary.

Editors Note: Pardon some back logs, we’ve missed several posts over the last while and are getting caught up.

I’ve often heard that when you’re a parent, your children’s happinesses are your happinesses. If that’s true, this would be the happiest day ever.

Today, we went to see Thomas. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Thomas, he is a stream train and Dougie loves him.

We had a ride on the first train out in the morning. We thought to grab a few pictures with Thomas while Scott and Connie held our place in line. Since I didn’t have anyone helping me with him, the engineer sat with Dougie.

After we did the “formal” pictures, the engineer took Dougie over to see Thomas better.

The train ride did three laps of the park. It only took about 20 minutes. From there, we got to enjoy the park and the various Thomas areas they had configured. Dougie found the train tables pretty quickly and started to play with those (you’d think we didn’t already have one at home).

After a while, Sir Topham Hatt arrived to take pictures. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Thomas, Sir Topham Hatt is the controller of the railway.

After listening to a story, watching a video and spending a bit of time walking around the park we headed out. Dougie had the time of his life!

It was Mummy’s time after our fun morning. We all piled into the car and drove to Canmore to do some geocaching along the river. It was a bit of a mixed day, sunny, snowing, warm, cold – we had a fabulous time and a nice walk with a great view.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mother’s in our lives. We hope you had a magical day as well.