O, Canada

When I was younger, we took a couple of family trips to British Columbia and Alberta. I loved them, they were some of my favorite family vacation memories. Butchart Gardens where I saw a periwinkle rose "Blue Girl" for the first time and SWORE I would have them at my wedding (ha). The Empress Hotel in Victoria, a small rodeo in Calgary where I made friends with Ben (dreamy) and got to ride his Paint horse, the beautiful woods in Banff and the moose that wandered through town (for real). So we have been excited to be so close to the border and Stephen has been itching to visit Vancouver ever since we moved here.
So for Presidents Day weekend (Friday was also a day off) we went up. We forgot the digital camera and took pics with a disposable one, but blog.spot is not allowing me to upload pics right now- oh well.
Our border crossings were identical, and kind of funny. I had to give my drivers license and birth certificate since my passport has my maiden name.
Guard: "where do you live?"
Stephen: "Seattle"
pause . . .
Guard: "Why do you have Illinois plates, an Idaho drivers license and live in Seattle?"
Stephen: thinking "because we are lazy" aloud: "Well, we're from Idaho, we were just going to school in Illinois and moved to Seattle for a job about 6 months ago."
pause . . . sweating bullets
Guard: "Ok, have a nice day".
Vancouver is about the same size as Seattle, population wise- but incredibly international. I kept hearing all these different languages all around us and it reminded me of the Wal-Mart in Chicago : ). We stayed in the West End close to Stanley Park which is a fabulous place to explore. It was also a couple blocks from the beach and a trail to the water taxis that would take you to Granville Island- a super fun place to shop and explore as well. We took a really long drive on Sunday while the girls napped after church through Stanley park and over the Lions Gate Bridge to North Vancouver, then back through downtown, Chinatown and Gas Town, a very cute part of the East end.
The street our hotel was on (Denman) was incredible. There were so many places to eat, we could never decide! The Ukranian restaurant was close to the African restaurant, which was flanked by Mexican, Thai and Chinese retaurants. There was Greek and Middle Eastern, hamburger joints and fish houses and a just dessert restaurant and a cream puff shop and cupcake shop and gelato shop and chocolate bar . . . oh the list went on and on. It was incredible- all we wanted to do was eat, but we still weren't feeling 100% from being sick the days before and of course the girls didn't get to try most of the food we got- too spicy or rich (see previous post).
Before we left, Odessa saw us packing her swimsuit and got so excited that we were going swimming. She insisted on holding her swimsuit the whole trip up to Vancouver. We wondered what the border crossing guard thought of our 3 yr old in the back seat waving her swimsuit at him "see?! It's got a fish on it!!" But when we got to the hotel, there was a form letter in our room saying the pool would be closed for remodeling Feb 2nd through the 16th (the day were were leaving). Oh man, so bummed. Well, it reopened that Monday morning, so before we checked out we went for a swim. The girls were pretty funny about it all. Ada would only really sit on a step in the water and run back and forth between the hot tub and pool. Odessa took whale rides on the back of Dad as he cruised around.
After leaving Vancouver, we headed 30 miles east to the Greater Vancouver area Zoo which was ok, not stellar by zoo standards. But the girls loved it, so that was good. We got to see almost everything because the animals were out and about- I hate being disappointed when they are inside sleeping or something.
Traveling with kids is a whole different ball of wax. They are big enough now that we have to generally gear our activities around what will be enjoyable for them. No art museum and dinner at an intimate Italian restaurant, you just can't do that with kids. The result is that as we drove away from Vancouver, Stephen said "well, Vancouver, we'll have to come back". There were so many things left to see and do. Highly recommended to everyone- regardless if you are close to the border or not.