What a crazy last few days!!  If you saw me, you would see the proof.  I have beach hair (crazy tangled...nothing sexy about it), a slightly sunburnt face, and exhausted, but I've had so much fun.  I really just need a few hours to myself to recharge and do nothing.

so  here's the scoop.  My mom and dad went to this BBQ with the whose who of Prince George.  They were going to have lobster and ribs sounded amazing, but we went to my auntie Laura's for supper and she made us the BEST supper that my girls could have imagined!  It wasn't fancy, but to my kid's corn on the cob is the ultimate and she had a rounded bowl full.  There was also ceasar salad, which my girls also love.  She made a three cheese casserole which is a tomato base with parmesan and cubes of cream cheese hidden inside and a baked with a crispy cheddar crust on top.  Emily had thirds of the corn on the cob AND the casserole.  She doesn't like cream cheese and I wasn't going to tell her that was eating it.  we had the first dessert (yes, first!!) watermelon and then second dessert (!!) was fresh stawberries and peaches with vanilla whipped cream.

     We then went to the park around the corner from her house and I found a whole bunch of saskatoon berry bushes and showed them to the girls.  They aren't usually ripe at this time of year, but with all the rain, they were the biggest, plumpest saskatoon berries that I have ever seen.  Ally went crazy and had purply-black lips and thumbs because she would squeeze off the tops.  It thought it was interesting that she would do that.  I just always put the whole thing in my mouth and ate.

   We came back to her house and had 3rd dessert!  Maple walnut ice cream and she made tennille and I her special iced coffee.  i got to take home some of her homemade coffee syrup!!  I can't wait to try!  The kids went downstairs to watch a movie and Tennille and I played "Sticks" with Auntie.  Sticks is a card game where you have a bag of sticks and you have to get what's on the stick and discard to win that stick.  The person with the most sticks wins.  My sister has had so much good luck at that game, and me..not so much.  But that night I won! I won 9 sticks!  Everyone else had 7 - it was close though.

  I woke up at 6:00 the next morning to drive home, minus one special girl.  Emily gave me some long hugs.  She's staying for 10 days with my mom and dad.  I got to Jasper at 11:00 am and that was better than I had hoped for. But realized that there are more passing lanes going east than going west, so I didn't get stuck as much.

I realized that acoustic guitar music really does fit the Rockies.  When I was a kid, dad would play Simon & Garfunkel.  It was so relaxing.  I ended up finding a Simon & Garfunkel CD and put it on my ipod and that's what we listened to.  I didn't rush getting home.  I liked being able to listen to my favorite satelite station - The coffeehouse.  They do all acoustic, and have musicians come in and do acoustic versions of their songs.  My favorite of the trip was "everybody wants to rule the world - tears for fears" and "half of my heart - John Mayer"
Travelling with my girls gets so much easier each time, less bathroom breaks, less emergencies. All around, it was quite relaxing and we had swarms of mosquitoes to greet us while waiting in constructions just outside of Edmonton. wonderful.

    I went to see brian at work and he took the rest of the day off.  He went and got supper while I went to crash in bed.  I don't think I was in bed for 30 mins when he wanted to get me up and take me to a movie.  I told him I was TOO tired...but since it was Telus tuesday and I'm too cheap to pay full price we went to see Harry Potter.  Our movie started at 9:00, but then realized for only $5 more we could see it in 3D with reserved seating we waited till 11:00.  So we had 2 hours to kill.  We walked across the parking lot to Indigo books which was closed, and then went to the arcade.  He was going to buy overpriced tokens if I REALLY wanted to, but I couldn't let him do that.  So I let him buy me a frozen yogurt and we just sat and talked for an hour.  It was nice.

    The movie was amazing and I want to see it again.  AMAZING!!  We didn't get to bed till about 2:30 and brian woke me up at 7:00!!  We were going to drive 2 hours north to Long Lake to spend time with his hunting buddy and his family at the lake.  i was skeptical...but when we turned the corner into the national park and saw that there was so many trees, and the beach was so sandy, this just might be a nice alberta lake!  The Nortons camp every year right on the water and the locals are all jealous of their spot.  They made us the best breakfast with big chunks of black forest ham and slice of cheese and an egg on a hamburger bun.  SO good!  I had two and half (what ally didn't eat).  Went swimming and I pulled out my snorkel set.  I didn't care how ridiculous that I looked, it's fun.  I'm so out of practice though, and I didn't really see anything.  algae.  but not as bad as pigeon lake which had big gobs of it floating in the water, but you swim anyways because you just crave water.

  Went fishing for wall eye and haley caught 7 and one jackfish!!! Brian and I caught two, but mine were bigger.  haha. it was fun, and brought back memories of fishing with my dad and uncle.  Ally didn't want to fish, she just wanted to touch them when someone brought them in.  Darcy then showed us the lake and went really fast.  Ally put her arms up like it was a roller coaster and "whoo hooed" all the way.  We had supper and I had to chug a drink because I lost track of time!  Ally and I slept in back all the way home while.  And I didn't get out of bed till 11:00 today.  It was nice to just have some quiet and not have to be somewhere or work with someone else's schedule.    I really have to do some work now, because I haven't worked on pictures for a whole week, and I'll probably go at it for a whole week straight on and off to catch up.