West World

With all the changes in the past year, we were sorely missing someone — someone we hadn’t met yet. My sister had a beautiful baby girl 10 months ago, and we were overdue for some baby cuddles! So trip #3 for the year was out west, to resolve that problem.
Having changed jobs on average every 3 years, I’ve not accumulated much vacation, so it was a stretch to pull off a third trip this year. Fortunately my team rocks, so we made it work and bundled the clan onto the cheapest flight we could find — having used up all our Delta SkyMiles already! And since we were heading back toward the west coast, we also lined up a couple visits with friends from that part of the continent. We even managed a quick visit with my parents as we all were stopping off in the Toronto airport at about the same time!
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Thanks to Facebook’s memories feature, we remembered that we’d gone camping with those same good friends exactly 2 years earlier — to the day. Seems like the start of a good tradition. We borrowed as much camping gear as we could beg from my siblings, vacuum bagged the rest into a duffle bag, and upon our arrival, squeezed it (and us) into a fairly tiny rental car for the 6+ hour drive from Calgary to BC. We camped on Lake Fintry and had 2 gorgeous, and 1 rainy, day in the beauty of that province, where the kids caught up with their buddies from Seattle — and we resolved to continue exploring the west coast with our friends every couple years. The rain gave us an excuse to go out for dinner with some old friendsĀ from Ontario who had moved that way.
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As we have every other time we’ve driven through Banff, we stopped at Lake Louise to take in the scenery, and save for a potty emergency or two, the kids were the sturdy little road warriors they’ve always been. When we got back to Calgary, we got to spend a few days with my sister and brother-in-law, her two awesome little kids, and even got some time with my not-to-be-too-tied-down younger brother. Our kids loved their time with their cousins, and Nicole and I loved playing with our nephew and holding our new niece — who has a lovely, content little personality, and only screamed at me once (when I somehow screwed up nap time!)
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That about does it with the travel budget for the year, but we wouldn’t have traded any of these experiences for all the money in the world. We love that Nic’s family are a lot easier to visit now, but its also a real joy to be able to visit family and friends in other parts of the world. Next year we need to spend some of our discretionary funds on household improvements, but we hope that travel and loved ones in far-away places are always a part of our kids’ childhood.
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