At the end of June, we flew out to Canada for Amy's annual work conference. The ultimate location was Mt Tremblant but we decided to take the opportunity to go to Ottawa first as we've never been there before to the capital of Canada. The weather was beautiful and while we were only there for one day we had a lot of fun!
First, we went to the Parliament buildings where we did a tour of the East block/House of Commons. They were getting ready for Canada Day and had a display of RCMP complete with bagpipes, so that was pretty cool!
 |
| All of the RCMPs in their red uniforms playing bagpipes! |
 |
| East Block |
 |
| Center block behind us - |
 |
| War Memorial |
They are restoring the center building (Center Block) and because of that they have taken a courtyard of East Block and enclosed it to make the House of Commons - it was really neat and the walls are of course the stone from what used to be the other walls.
After we went to the Parliament, we headed over to the Royal Mint for a tour and lifted a gold block that is worth between 750-800K! The mint tour was really cool - even for Zachary - and now the kids want to hit all of the mints around North America to see and collect the specialty coins!
 |
| She needed a little help from big brother.... |
We also did a boat tour of the river in Ottawa, where there was a mini waterfall.
 |
| Required selfie for Amy and Kaleb |
While we were on the boat, Addison got a chance to go up and actually steer the boat - she had fun doing that!
No trip to Canada can be complete without perogies, so we found a restaurant that serves perogies AND World Cup soccer - so everyone was super happy! Those perogies can't hold a candle though to the true home-made perogies!
After finishing up our tour, we headed out to Mt Tremblant which is in northern Quebec - where Amy had her annual meetings. It is a ski resort town and is very picturesque with lots of fun things to do. The only downer was the fact that there were insane amounts of mosquitoes and sand flies - and the sand flies would cut you so bad when they bit you that blood would stream down people's faces! Nasty flies. But, the conference hosted a ton of different activities so everyone was so busy there was no time to fret about terrible bugs!
Day 1 - t-shirt painting (Amy was jealous, the shirts turned out super cool but she was in meetings so couldn't do it!)
Day 1 afternoon - we went on the Luge track - where you sit on these sleds and fly down the mountain on a paved, winding track. Addison was even big enough to do it on her own -- this activity turned out to be the "voted most popular" for the week so we ended up doing it several times.
 |
| It was a bit grey and cloudy but it had originally been forecasted to rain, so we were just thankful for dry weather! |
 |
| Her helmet was so far tipped back I am not sure it was very effective, but thankfully she never needed it truly. |
 |
| And they are off! |
 |
| Luke, David and Zachary - these guys are all just growing like weeds! |
They also had a bungee jumping area that Addison and Kaleb enjoyed jumping and doing flips on
 |
| Kaleb could do front and back flips! |
Day 2 - we went rock climbing -- and it was truly rock climbing much to our surprise. This was the first time that we had ever done true rock climbing so it was quite the challenge. All of us (except Addison) climbed up the mountain -- even Amy for the very first time ever -- she normally just belays! (she made it about 80% of the way up)
 |
| Zach |
 |
| He stuck with it and made it to the top! |
 |
| Even Addison went up a little ways to give it a try |
 |
| Amy heading on up - karis does not appear to be paying too much attention to belaying her does he? |
 |
| Almost to the top.... |
 |
| cooling off afterwards in the shade near a stream... |
 |
| Vasti did not climb that day, but she took great pictures of us! |
 |
| Our climbing group - Biris, Zs, Didenkos. |
Day 3 - boating and tubing on the nearby lake in the morning. It was a big chillier than Florida to be sure..... That afternoon, Karis and the boys went white water rafting. Amy and Addison originally were going to go, but she started to come down with a cold so we decided to keep her home low-key and take a nap (and Amy wasn't too broken up about that either! :))
Day 4 - we had the whole day off, so we hooked up with the Reeves and went to an Escape Room, Virtual Reality, Laser Tag and yummy crepes for breakfast!
 |
| The escape rooms are super hard! |
 |
| Virtual Reality |
 |
| Laser Tag |
After all that, we headed over to the Luge track again to end our week as that had been still voted the most fun activity of the week
 |
| And one last bungee jumping session! |
On Sabbath, we stayed really low-key as Addison had a fairly high fever and slept off and on for about 24 hours - so Amy and Karis took shifts with her in the hotel room. After the morning services the kids swam for a bit in the afternoon and then a group of us rented a pontoon boat in the afternoon and toured around the lake.
 |
| Kaleb and Jonny |
 |
| The front half of the pontoon boat |
 |
| And the back half |
Once we got to the middle of the lake, the kids all jumped into the water to swim around. BRR!
With Addison being sick, Amy went several times to the pharmacy to get medicines - all of which Addison would deem unacceptable as she didn't like the taste....but she was almost croup-like (off and on, it was odd) with the fever so Amy would coax her to take the medicine. Thankfully it passed after she laid low for the full day because with that Saturday came the end of our time in Mt Tremblant and we flew out on Sunday for Karis' farm in Saskatchewan. More on that part of our Canada Trip for next week's post! :)
