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We arrived home yesterday night. It is good to be home!

Here is a condensed version of our trip from Montreal to home, because I wrote a very long post about Montreal to (almost) home on Saturday, only to have the stupid program delete the whole thing, rather than post it. And no, I did not accidentally hit "delete," and yes, I had been periodically saving it throughout the writing process. However, the program had decided to time out on me, without telling me or giving me warning. Personally, I think that when it says you're signed in...you really should be signed in! Grrr...

Anyways, in light of that, this is the condensed (hopefully. I'm not very good at condensing things.) version of the end of our trip.

Montreal: We spent three nights and two days here. We had dinner at Schwartz's Delicatessen...smoked meat sandwiches, fries and giant pickles. It was delicious. That was the evening of the first whole day.

The second whole day, we walked around Old Montreal, and then went for dinner at a Greek food restaurant on Prince Arthur street. It was very nice...:)

Ottawa: we returned here to see Mosaika, the light show on the Parliament Buildings, because when we were there before, the show had been cancelled because thieves had robbed the production trailer. It was excellent. It's amazing what can be done with lights! It was about half and hour long and covered most of Canadian history...like a condensed version of my Socials class the last two years. So right from exploration all the way through to today! We definitely recommend it to anyone going to Ottawa!

The next morning, we took a tour of the Centre Block of the Parliament buildings. We saw the House of Commons, the Senate, the Library (my favourite room!) and the Peace Tower...the ceiling of the Peace Tower was exactly as I'd remembered it from when we went up it when I was small!

Toronto: We drove from Ottawa to Toronto (getting stuck in traffic on the 401. My dad has a little song about that. It goes like this: I hate this road, I hate this road, I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate this road!) for dinner with the Littles at Danette's.

The next day, we went to Auntie Miriam and Uncle Ken's house for lunch, then to the beach with Melodie, Taylor, Tristan and Jedidiah. (well, Mum, Craig and I did. Dad was on business.) It started to rain while we were at the beach, so we packed up, only to have the rain stop, so we went to the playground, only to have the skies open up and pour on us. We drove back to Auntie Miriam's in the rain, and were quite wet by the time we ran from the van to the house. It took my TOMS shoes two days to dry fully!

Later on, Craig and I went to Mel's house for dinner and swimming, while Mum and Dad went out for dinner with Auntie Miriam and Uncle Ken.

The following day was spent at Roger's Stadium with Michelle and Andrew, and Auntie Miriam and Uncle Ken, watching a Blue Jays game. I didn't die of boredom, miraculously, even though it was three hours long! I think that's because I was chewing gum the entire time, giving myself something to do. In fact, I chewed that gum for so long that it dissolved on my tongue. I didn't know it could do that! It was disgusting. Not nice. At all. I do not recommend it to anyone! And the Blue Jays didn't even win. So I sat there for three hours and had my gum dissolve for nothing...well actually, it was nice to see everybody. So I guess that's not nothing. Seeing family is a pretty good reason, actually, to suffer through a baseball game. I guess. I still say I should have brought a book. Or Courtney. One of the two.

On Wednesday, we went to Canada's Wonderland with Mel, her kids and Danette for the day, while Dad made more business calls. We had so much fun! We went on roller coasters, water slides and ate pizza and funnel cakes (mmm!)

We left Toronto the next morning and drove to Tober Morey to take the ferry to Manitoulin Island. We had a great time walking around the town while waiting for the ship, and then boarded the ferry for a beautiful evening crossing...it had been foggy the past three nights, apparently, but we had gorgeous weather!

From Manitoulin Island we drove to Nippegon, stopping at Batchawana Bay to eat and go swimming...in our clothes. It was sort of a spontaneous decision to go swimming, and none of us were wearing bathing suits. So we just went swimming anyway, and changed when we got back to the car. :)

We drove from Nippegon to Winnipeg, where we stayed overnight before driving to Niverville for church with David, Melissa, Merci, Leigha, Josiah and baby Tobias. We had lunch with them and then headed off to Minnedosa.

We had dinner with the Kingdon family at Mum's cousin's the first evening. The next day was spent with Auntie Joan and Uncle Charlie. They showed us the Minnedosa Heritage village and we got to see how it had changed from the last time we were there. They also took us for a drive around the area and to the lookout tower to watch the sunset and see the town from a higher vantage point.

We left Minnedosa and drove to Swift Current to stay overnight, and then headed to Shaunavon to visit Paige, Jason and their three little girls. We had lunch with Paige and the kids, saw their store, and then headed out to the farm, where Jason's dad gave us a tour. From there we drove to Calgary, where we had dessert with our family friends, the Manns. We had breakfast with Auntie Penny and Uncle Brent the next morning, as they were in town so we'd missed them in Shaunavon, and then we headed to Head-Smashed-In buffalo jump UNESCO world heritage site. We walked around the museum and around the site, and then we got back in the car to drive up into the Rockies and back to BC. We stayed in Cranbrook overnight, and then drove the next day to Grand Forks via Nelson, Castlegar and Christina Lake. We spent Saturday there. Craig and Dad went fishing and I wrote the original version of this blog post...only to have it deleted on me! Grr. We also sat by a river for a while, and just relaxed.

We drove home from Grand Forks yesterday, stopping at Tinhorn Creek Winery in Oliver for lunch, as we've done several times in the past few years, and at Tickleberry's for ice cream, as is tradition. We've stopped at Tickleberry's every year since I was in grade eight, I think.

We arrived home yesterday evening and are currently settling in and planning to go out to run a few errands, and go to the Chiropractor for a much needed adjustment. (Thanks again, Campbelton Sobey's kiwi peel! Grrr...) I am very excited at the prospect of having my back aligned properly for the first time in four weeks! :)

It was an incredible trip...we have so many great memories. We visited a lot of wonderful people, saw some pretty amazing sites and had an awesome time overall. Thank-you for sharing in it with us through this blog.

Much love,
Kelsey

PS- yes, this is the condensed version. I think. I'm pretty sure the original was longer. Then again, maybe not...:)