… she said lovingly. … *snort*.

Holidays, holidays, holidays.  Oh crap I need a holiday from my holiday.  I am buried amongst Mt. Laundry, I’m tired as hell, and damn well almost ready to go back and sit on the beach getting the best tan I’ve ever had (although not a healthy thing to do, I was warm!).  I was in a constant state of bliss with only smatterings of pissiness (usually at dh) with some sternness thrown in for measure (always directed at kids).

I saw Alberta wild roses just starting to bloom, I saw garter snakes slithering through the grass and then crossing a river to scare the bejeebers out of my girlie-girls (who btw ran screaming – who are these people? pick that sucker up!LOL!).  I saw cows on a mountain top, I kid you not.  Don’t believe me? Here.

Lovely picture isn’t it?  My pretty truck looking like a toucan, our lovely trailer with a small, still developing, mountain behind it.  At the tippy top, immeditately in the centre of it is a small band of trees.  To the left of those trees are little teeny specs, which are the cows.  We are on what’s called ‘crown land’ which means no one truly owns it but the government keeps it and allows farmers to bring their cattle here to roam for free grass.  And roam they do.

We spent a week at this location, complete with outside potty, built by dh (ain’t no shite-over-a-log situation here, we do a plastic covered wooden box – removable plastic for reusability – with toilet seat surrounded by tarps, add cedar shavings from the gerbil department of your local store and you have a lovely commode), outside shower, built by brother-in-law, and a beautiful river to raft down and that’s our week.  We got some rain, but it didn’t matter.  A camping day in the rain is better than a day at home in the rain.  We also had quad troubles, but you always do when you camp in the back country as that seems to be the only place the many of them can go (and there is a lot).

The next location is more of a popular place, a Provincial Park in B.C. called Kikomun Creek.  A beautiful, yet small, lake nestled in a large valley between the Rocky and the Purcell mountain ranges.  The lake has fishing, and turtle spotting (which is super cool), and also has a beach and nice swimming area.  We had only 3 days at the beach the entire 7 days we were there.  Of course being that the first and last are travelling days it usually pops available days down to 5 but we can often sneak in beach time on the first day for a total possible beach days of 6.  We arrived and set up in the rain so sneaking to the beach wasn’t going to be an option that day.

Sweet Pea was an absolute blast to watch and witness his learning and playing.  He even slept well while we were there, which was awesome since he didn’t sleep hardly at all the last time we were there.  He did have quite a few temper tantrums, that thankfully didn’t turn into seizures (I guess he decided to save that for home since he had one already this morning).

We let go of a bit of control this time too and let out the responsibility for the girls this time.  Any trip previously we had to know where they were at all times and if they did a bike ride they were usually limited to a certain area and had to be back asap.  This trip was the first time they were allowed to do the entire camp ground on their own (well, with a cousin, but even if he wasn’t there they’ve still been able to go).

The only unfortunate thing about this entire trip is something we can rarely avoid.  Swimmer’s itch.  Oi, it’s a strange thing to have a parasite mix you up with a duck and die just under your skin to produce an itchy swell, especially when a sunburn is on top of it.  Sunscreen helps, but doesn’t work 100% of the time, and if you forget it like I did on the first day you get possible swimmer’s itch and a bad sunburn.

We were definitely ready to come home but a little sad too.  We didn’t spend nearly as much time as we wanted to at the beach, but we were tired of living in the trailer (especially when we keep finding more wrong with the lemon).  Although I had grand plans to get my novel rolling while I was gone, it didn’t even come out of the bag.  Not truly a bad thing because I don’t regret my time ‘wasted’ relaxing.

Oh, and you want to know what rocked the most?  No in-law invasion.  None, nada, zip, zilch!  Every year we go through the torture of wondering what kind of crap is going to go on when they arrive but they were pouting so much about my sil not booking the trip for them that they didn’t show up at all!  It was awesome!  I only hope we can piss them off next year so they don’t show up again!LOL!