Our Trip to Canada

A couple weeks ago my sister Mckenzie, my mom, and I drove our grandma up to Canada to visit her husband. I know that sounds pretty strange... here's the deal. My grandma married Sid, my step-grandpa, last August. He was born in England, moved to Canada and has been there ever since... needless to say he is a Canadian citizen. Before they got married the customs officers told him there would be no problem with his visits as long as he spent at least 6 months in Canada every year, so that's how they functioned. As they said, there weren't any problems. However, unbeknownst to us, the rules change when you marry an American citizen. He was planning on applying for a green card, but hadn't done so yet, when they took a little trip up to Canada. They got into Canada fine, but when they tried to come back, they US customs officers pulled the car over, took him into an office, interogated for 5 or 6 hours, and then refused to let him across the border until he gets his green card. The whole situation has been pretty rough for them both as they have only been able to see each other on and off since last October, but with luck he'll have his green card soon. ANYWAY... we drove my grandma up to stay with him for awhile at the beginning of August, and it was a great trip! We didn't take many pictures, but I'll tell you about it nonetheless.

The first night, following the joyous reunion, we went out to eat at Ricky's, and then went back to the mini-mobile and hung out, rested up, etc. etc.

The next morning we were originally going to go mini-golfing, but it was so hot we decided to go swim at the lake instead. Sid's dog Oreo played fetch with rock after rock... sometimes she'd come up with the same rock, sometimes a different one, and everytime she would bring up a rock she'd take it to the exact same place on the shore. Sid said she likes to build a wall... which is what it looked like after she had placed about 20 rocks in a line.

Then we drove down into Chilliwack where we looked at what we thought was going to be their new apartment (turns out it's in a horrible part of town... too bad because it was really nice inside), and then we drove out to Harrison Hot Springs, which is this gorgeous town on the edge of a huge lake with sandy beaches, cute shops and cafe's, and gelato! We ate dinner, had gelato, then relaxed at the edge of the water. There are hot springs there... but they are of course on the side of the mountain, a couple hours up, so we decided to pass and just enjoy the closer, more convenient leisures.

The next day was a little cooler, so we decided to go mini-golfing at the cutest mini-golf course I have ever seen. It was designed exceptionally... there is even a legend that describes how the golf-course came about! Sid was the winner, followed by my mom (who was thoroughly upset because she got TWO holes in one), then me, then Kenzie. My grandma was our score-keeper, and she even putted for Sid a couple times! After mini-golf we went to the Cultus Lake Waterpark, which is supposedly the biggest waterpark in Canada... although that shocks me because it isn't, like, overly huge. Kenzie and I were the only ones that ended up going because at that point the adults were tired, so they gave us some money, told us to have fun, left us a car, and drove home to sit around and have juice and relax. We went in and went on all the slides multiple times, had an ice cream cone, and went on all the slides again. We even went on the half-pipe thing, on which I managed to get whiplash, and our waterpark trip ended rather swiftly after that :)

We got there on Wednesday night, stayed Thursday and Friday, and left Saturday morning. Even though we did tons, there was still lots of time for relaxing, and I was able to squeeze in the second Harry Potter book in my down time.

I actually really enjoyed it there, despite various things that I've heard. There was tons of European culture... everywhere we went there were people speaking French, or with british accents, or speaking other languages. The people were pretty nice, and it's beautiful! It's looks like we'll be going up to visit again over labor day weekend, so I hope we have just as much fun!