You’re gonna have fun, and I’m gonna have fun… We’re all gonna have so much fucking fun we’re gonna need plastic surgery to remove our goddamn smiles! You’ll be whistling ‘Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah’ out of your assholes!
Clark Griswold
We do it to ourselves.
At about this time every year I write about the exact same freaking thing. Something happens to my kids.
Ungrateful, spoiled, over stimulated little monsters take over my children.
Did I mention ungrateful?
This week we planned our family vacation. Nobody was getting married and after our big trip to Vegas last year we decided to take it easy this year and explore our own province. We made it a short weekend trip. HBear asked if we were tourists and I said, “Yes Darling, we are tourists in our neighbour’s backyard.” 😄
HBear was in Karma Camp this week. Karma Camp is at the local belly dancing studio. They learn different types of dance, do crafts, go to the park and pick up litter, do a little bit of acting and go to 2 different retirement homes to make new friends with seniors. They also bring them crafts and ice cream! She loves it and I do too! Win win 😄 While HBear was at Karma Camp SBean and I did Mommy and Me stand up paddle boarding class! That is the way everyone should start their day! SBean loved it and it was calm and relaxing.
When she wasn’t doing paddle boarding we did painting. Everything is all sunshine and roses until Mommy says time to clean up LOL.
She also went to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party at the community center. It is a 2 hour program where parents leave. I put her into the summer to prepare me her for preschool.
On Friday afternoon HBear had her “recital”.
Early Saturday morning the minivan was packed and we were ready to go! We got 15 minutes outside of town and the fighting began 😁
Our first stop was Revelstoke! We drove up to the Resort and bought our tickets for the Pipe Roller Coaster! They have a pretty damn good system going there. You buy your tickets you take a number and then you check on your phone for updates of where the line is at. We were numbers 699-703. We had about a 2 1/2 hour wait so we drove back into town and went to the farmer’s market 😊
Our ticket to the roller coaster also included a gondola ride up the mountain. HBear was super excited to ride the gondola LOL I can’t wait till we take her to Banff! My tummy didn’t do so well on the gondola LOL I was pretty worried about the actual ride down! Damn children! I used to LOVE rides and now the swings make me vomit in my mouth!
Once we got up there we admired the view and then it was our turn! It was unbelievable! I highly recommend it! You control how fast you go so others went slower then some. I went with SBean and she was constantly telling me to go faster 😂 it was AH-MAZING! It was exciting, fast, gorgeous views, and worth every penny!
The girls liked the gondola so much that Ninja took them up again!
We had lunch at the Rockford Grill at the Revelstoke Resort. Delicious food, local beer and a breathtaking view!
SBean was so pooped she fell asleep with her book and marker in her hand lol.
We then drove back to Vernon and checked into our hotel. We stayed at the Vernon Atrium Hotel. It was awesome! All the rooms are in a square and inside the square is a restaurant, lush greenery, a beautiful little creek flowing through it and a pool with a hot tub. I thought for sure it would be very mildewy, stinky and humid but it totally wasn’t! SCORE!
After a refreshing dip we went for a walk. There was a cute little geocache right behind our hotel! We found it at BC’s smallest church.
We had dinner inside our hotel at the BX Creek Bar and Grill. We ended up eating most of our dinners and breakfast there as the prices were fabulous and the food was delicious! We had the same server and HBear begun to think of him as “her friend” because “he’s funny and because he always serves us I am familiar with him and I consider him my friend.” LOL
Ninja and HBear went for a late night swim and SBean had a bubble bath! Remember, we don’t have a bathtub so baths are a big thing when we go to hotels 😉
The girls had popcorn and a movie to end a very long 1st day. We didn’t have any bowls so we had to MacGyver it and use the champagne bucket.
After many hours of changing spots, putting legs on each other, and having overtired meltdowns… They finally fell asleep. They look like Angels… when they’re asleep lol!
Ninja and I took advantage of the 2 foot wide patio LOL and brought out our chairs and sat in the atrium and chatted and had a few wobbly pops. 😊
The next morning we woke up bright and early and we were off! We enjoyed a delicious breakfast before we went…
To the Atlantis Waterslides! Penticton doesn’t have waterslides… Don’t even get me started LOL so we had to haul our cookies all away to Vernon to give our girls the experience of real waterslides.
I went down twice. I found the slides very very very slow. Like there wasn’t enough water. I took SBean down a super big one and we stopped 3 times going down! I was exhausted from just trying to push ourselves down the damn slide lol. Of course I had my favourite sunglasses on because the line was huge and I didn’t want to stand in the sun for that long tearing. I held onto them when we went down. However, because I had to constantly use my hands to push us down I ended up putting them on my head. When we finally dropped off the end of the slide my glasses fell off. It was a really small pool so I quickly moved SBean out of the way and turned around to get them.
Gone.
The lifeguard gave me goggles to try to find them below the 4 slides and I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my goggled face! It was so murky and the water was so filled with the oil of sunscreen that I gave up and never found them. For the rest of the trip I had to use my cheap Wildstone sunglasses from the colour run that I just happen to have left in the van consul. Granted, as soon as I got home and checked my sunglass holder in the van and realize that my Coach sunglasses were there all along LOL.
HBear loved the slides! Her and Ninja were up-and-down all morning! SBean… Not so much LOL. I was hoping the waterslides would help her get over her fear of going down the slide at the community pool, looks like that didn’t happen LOL. She was quite content to swim in the “hot tub” it actually wasn’t that hot it was more of a kiddie pool with a lot of kiddy pee in it keeping it warm. Perfect. 😜
So I’m going to tell you a secret. I am a bad mom. 😜 I bought a small tub of cotton candy from the Dollar Store and I used it all weekend! “If you are good you may have some cotton candy.”
I have learned.
The past 3 FUN filled holidays with my children have taught me one thing. Bribery will get you everywhere.
We love geocaching. We found some fabulous finds this weekend. On our way up to explore Silver Star we stopped at this small park and underneath a massive prickly tree, hidden way at the back, was a little Fairy house! What a fun little cache.
In our hotel, as I mentioned, a little creek ran through it. It’s called the BX Creek. While sitting there having a few beverages the night before Ninja and I questioned the creek. So we googled it up LOL we found out that the creek actually begins at the BX Falls. So, we drove up to the Falls and took a hike. It was absolutely gorgeous! The stairs were a bit precarious to get down to the bottom of the falls but it was well worth it!
After our hike we drove up to Silver Star! What a cute little village! I had no idea. We got there just in time for the last run of the summer tubing hill. So much fun! Ninja could totally get into that lifestyle, mountain biking in the summer & skiing in the winter… If only we could win the lottery 😜
Back to the hotel for dinner and a swim. The girls fell asleep much faster the second night LOL Ninja and I bought a bottle of wine and sat on our “balcony “. It was much quieter on the Sunday evening and we joked that we closed the place down LOL.
In the morning everybody was sad to pack up but more adventures were out there for us! We started at Polson Park. The girls brought their bikes and we walked around the entire park collecting 4 caches, enjoying the Japanese gardens, playing at the park, taking in the duckpond, playing with the exercise equipment and snapping family photos!
By 10 AM it was already sweltering! So, we headed over to the gorgeous Kalamalka Lake! I have always loved this lake. Driving by it every summer as a kid, was a highlight for me. It is the most stunning lake I have ever seen, it is green and blue and turquoise and teal and it just calls your name… “Kristin Kristin jump in me” LOL On the way back from our Honeymoon Ninja and I did just that! We stopped and we walked to the end of the dock and we Hail Mary jumped in LOL this time we let HBear do it!
After we enjoyed the water we went up to the lookout point and found the Kalamalka geocache and enjoyed all the colours that the beautiful lake had to offer.
We slowly made our way home and stopped at Predator Ridge. An amazing golf course that Ninja and his Dad are going to attempt this fall 😳
We also stopped at Gray Monk Estate Winery. We tried some phenomenal wines and brought home a couple bottles. The views were outstanding!
We stopped in Peachland and had dinner at 91 on the lake. A fantastic way to end our mini vacation!
We had a great time exploring Vernon, Revelstoke and the natural beauty of British Columbia.
We are so very lucky to call this place home.
You can always measure the success of a trip by how quickly you fall asleep when you hit your own bed… ours was an outstanding success because we all fell asleep as soon as the van was unpacked… with smiles on our faces 🙂
The perfect dressing is essential to the perfect salad, and I see no reason whatsoever for using a bottled dressing, which may have been sitting on the grocery shelf for weeks, even months – even years. – Julia Child
Having Multiple Sclerosis is like trying to drive a car with a broken steering wheel and faulty brakes. You never know what’s going to happen next — Jamie-Lynn Sigler
