Vertically Inclined

While we were up in Canada Jakob and I met up with "more-than-facebook-friend" Kayla. I love this girl to bits! I hope one day she will start a blog. Her life is crazy!! While thinking of fun things to do back home she came up with the idea to Rock Climb. I was stoked. It was so much fun! Jakob and I are thinking about getting some gear so we can climb here at Red Rock!

Jakob and Kayla were the racers. Some words of wisdom to anyone going climbing. DO NOT WEAR FAKE NAILS!! They are the worst!!! I am totally scarred of heights so that plus the inability to grip onto things didn't make for a swift climb. Jakob and Kayla would race though and she rocked it!

Sarah, another good friend of mine, is scarred of heights as well. She wasn't a fan of the straight up wall but she was great at bouldering (moving horizontally along the wall). Some of the people that do this are just so fluid. It's amazing to watch. Sarah was getting pretty freaking good at it too.

Pappa van den Berge tagged along as our photographer. Here he is trying to pull himself up on the ladder. It is super tough!! I had such a fun time! Hopefully when Kayla comes down we'll go out to Red Rock. I got my nails taken off so there is no excuses this time! I can't wait!

Flash Back

For Grandma and Grandpa's birthdays I decided to gather up a box full of memories. 2 years ago for my Grandmothers birthday the 12 grandkids each gave her a rose and told her their favorite memory of her. I wanted to capture that on paper for them since all of their children are scattered throughout the States and Edmonton.

G-ma's was fairly simple. It went to this site and found the cards for free, along with the purse that was available for purchase. Adorable, quick and reasonably priced! My kind of gift! I printed and cut out all of the cards and mailed them to all of the grandchildren and parents in California, Texas and Edmonton. For some it took 6 months but I got them all back and organized them according to family.

For some reason however the tabs that the website supplied were too short so I made my own. I ended up liking the yellow better anyways!

G-pa's was a horse of a completely different colour! They didn't have cards or a box for him. I ended up deciding to make his box a family tree. I got the box from Michaels along with all of the embelishments. I painted the word "Grandpa" and glued it to the top. On the tree I wrote all of his Children's names along with their spouses. On the leaves I put all of the Grandkids names including Jakob.

I made all of the cards from scratch. If anyone would like them they are lake themed and I can upload a pdf file for you. They look very similar to G-ma's cards. It was a lot of work but they were so pleased with the end result. I hope that they liked having a little piece of us to read when they miss us.

Great Pickins

Don't those just make your mouth water? Just one more thing I miss about Grandma's house... her raspberry patch. Whenever I would come over I would always race to the backyard to get some fresh raspberries.

As you can see we are clearly committed. It was a little early in the year for raspberries so you had to hunt. Sometimes it took a little team work.

Here's Kayla with her finds. Yumm yummm yummmmm! It was a great family affair hunting for raspberries in G-ma's backyard. My Mother phoned me yesterday to inform me that they just picked 6 cookie sheets full of them. Very jealous... enough said.

Fresh, Friendly, Farmers

Every Saturday morning from 8- 3 my home town of St. Albert has a Farmers Market. This is something that I dearly miss down here in Vegas. Just look at how beautiful those are! Yumm! I ate enough fruit back home to last me a lifetime! These cherries were to die for! They were HUGE and so sweet! If only customs would have let me bring some home.

Picking out some organic baby carrots. I love the taste of fresh carrots. The store bought ones just don't compare. If you've never had a carrot straight from the dirt I suggest you partake.
The farmers market also has Jewelry, home made crafts, decorations and baby clothes. I had a lot of fun snooping around at all of the treasures.

Place of Love & Beauty

I love being able to go to the temple with my family. I have only ever done baptisms in the Edmonton Alberta temple so I was excited to go thorough a session.

I've only gone through the Vegas and Salt Lake temples so I was shocked to see how tiny Edmonton's was. Even the change rooms were smaller.

Jakob likes this picture just because it looks like he's about to body slam me. Good thing no one was down wind they'd be able to see my bottom swinging around. I had a very peaceful evening at the temple. I cannot wait to hopefully have all of my family together there someday.

Birthday Boy < 3

Jakob has celebrated his birthday in Canada for the past 4 years. And after this last one I think we'll stick to the states for his 24th. It started out like any birthday with presents in the morning. Jared and Christopher got Jakob aviators. He's Maverick I'm goose.

From the rest of us he got a 40-20 Nixon Tide Watch. He's had his eye on this baby for a long time.

For all of you Nixon watch fans out there. Get it on eBay! Wonderful deals! I'm hooked! But this is about Jakob.

Mom, Dad, Birthday Boy and I went out to Montana's for dinner. It's a lot like Claim Jumper, with large portions. It took all 4 of us to finish the fajitas Mom and I shared.

I love this picture. Like father like daughter and Mom just plays along.

Yes he is standing up in our booth, wearing moose antlers, conducting his happy birthday song. He's kind of a big deal. Upon finishing our meal we found out that my great aunt was very ill and Mom van den Berge enlisted Jakob & Dad to give her a blessing. We drove 45 minutes out to Weslock and didn't get home until 11 p.m. Part 2 of his birthday was postponed until Sunday.

On our way to church. Isn't he handsome?

Jakob with his black forest cake that G-ma decided he HAD to have even though a boxed yellow cake would have done just fine. She likes to go the extra mile. Happy Birthday Babe, I love you dearly and I hope this year is filled with joy, love and adventure. xoxo

I Lika Da Sauce

Here it is! We had to take a picture for Mom and Dad Tobler seeing as how they are the only ones who have experienced Donair Pizza in all of it's wonder! What exactly is a Donair you ask? Jakob's definition: Awesomeness. But for those of you who need a little more detail ... Donair consists of a fried pita with shredded spiced beef cooked on a spit than covered in Sweet sauce (Condensed milk , Sugar and vinegar) with sliced tomatoes and onions on top. In the picture however, Nitza's Pizza has taken Donairs to an entirely different level and made Doniar Pizza. Wonderful!

Beauty

Welcome to Lake Louise. This lake is located approximately 32 miles from Banff. There are hikes to go on and canoes to rent so one can go exploring. It was well worth the drive to see how beautiful it is.

This was taken right at the mouth of the river. Don't let the pictures fool you there were people EVERYWHERE!

The water was sky blue and it was freezing cold. Jakob wanted to jump in but reconsidered once his fingers pierced the frigged water.

It is a very surreal experience being in a place so beautiful. For me at least it made me thank my Heavenly Father. How could one not be thankful in a place so stunning. I don't understand how people can see places like this and still not believe in something more. Not necessarily a LDS view but just a feeling that there is something bigger than they are. Something beautiful, something perfect.

I have never seen bridges with trees on them before. They are actually there to allow animals to cross. They're quite pretty as well.

The ice explorer. We are at the base of the gondola. It cost $30 a person to go up to the top which is ridiculous, seeing as how we would only take a picture and come back down. We also skipped out on the hot springs. It was a massive hot tub. That is all and we didn't feel like rubbing up against several "large" women for the tune of $8 a pop. So we continued on our adventure feeling satisfied about our choice to tour on. :)

This is in a huge field of Daisey's next to the "Hot Springs". It was beautiful.

Bow Falls. They were stunning... not as big as was expected but nevertheless... stunning. We skipped out on hiking at Lake Louise thinking that there was a hike to these falls. Much to our surprise one just drove up next to them. So we went adventuring.

Jakob decided that he wanted to cross the shallow but narrow river. The water was clear as crystal so we rolled up or pants and began our journey across, of course there was a foot bridge only 50 feet away but who needs one of those when your a man? Needless to say we got soaked. On the other side there was no one but us and a course full of golfers but we stayed out of their way. It was nice to have some place to ourselves without all of the people around us.

This is the southern most tip of the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel this thing is MASSIVE. I stole this picture from online just so you could see how big it is. Jakob and I called it Banff Castle. It has a shopping plaza attached to it. Rooms start at $489/ night.

We had so much fun on our trip and couldn't have asked for better weather. I would love to go back in the winter for Christmas. We could go snowboarding and ice skating on Lake Louise. I have never seen it in the winter I'm sure it would be stunning. It was perfect for our anniversary! I cannot wait to return!

Tranquility

I took a LOT of pictures on this part of our trip. I have some sort of craving or addiction: I have to capture the moment, place, or memory. Most of the time in my attempt to preserve I ruin the moment but my husband and all of the strangers I enlisted to take photo's of us were very cooperative. We made the 4 1/2 hour drive down to Banff Alberta on Wednesday. I have to break this post into two parts just because there is so much! Fear not there are many more pictures of Banff in all it's glory!

My brother Christopher had wanted to visit his friend in Calgary so we dropped him off on the way. Chris hates photo's unless of course he's holding a large gun or something equally cool. The only decent picture I could get of him was of him asleep. Oh how uncomfortable he looks.

One cannot visit Calgary without stopping by Peter's. It is a novelty. They have 30 milkshake flavors of which you can mix up to 3 of them together resulting in more than 4500 combination's. Oh the pressure! (Pay no mind to the car about to run us over.)

Peter's benches are all marked up with couples initials so I added mine and Jakob's to the group. For those that are appalled... I view it as a right of passage and I promise I will never defile public property again!

This was our adorable hotel! It had a cozy feel to it and was right next to the shops downtown. Excellent location!

So I have a confession I love moose's (what is the proper terminology?) and turtles but in Canada a moose is more common than a turtle. One day I will make a moose rocking horse... one day.

I also love to crochet. I made myself a sock monkey toque recently, absolutely fantastic. (I will post pictures and a pattern). I'm not sure if you can see it this size but this is a full wall of toques, with matching mittens and boots.

After reading my initial confession I'm sure you can guess which hat was my favorite. I had Jakob model it so I could duplicate it when I returned home. Oh, I have to have the mitts too! Fantastic.

It doesn't get much better than relaxing in a piping hot hot tub after a long day of traveling. I will post Day 2 of our Honeymoon/ Anniversary soon, I'm off to go rock climbing now.

To be continued...