Reminiscing About Canada

With Christmas a few days away, and seeing everyone on facebook posting pictures of a beautifully white Christmas, surrounded by all your friends and family, makes me so thankful that we got to visit with our loved ones just a couple of months ago.

We didn’t post much about our trip in Canada because, well, we were busy. Our main reason for going back was that Eben’s youngest sister Cyra was about to have her baby. And we saw this as a great opportunity to go “home”, meet the newest member of the family, and visit everyone else. Honestly, it had been almost 2 years since our last real visit to the country, so we were due.

I have to admit that I was slightly jealous, thinking that we were going back to Alberta and that I wouldn’t get to see my mom and extended family who are in Quebec, but our bank account can only support so much. But then the stars aligned and some crazy, wonderful things happened.

In our one two-month-long visit, it seemed that all the “bigger” events were happening and we would be able to participate in them all. My uncle, on my mother’s side, was getting married, so she and many of my aunts and uncles flew to Alberta for the wedding. I got to see them after all. My jealousy was appeased. Then it was Eben’s grandparents 66th wedding anniversary. We got to celebrate with them and watch them goof off with their great-granddaughters (our girls). Then his other set of grandparents were in town, whom we hadn’t seen since Arias was a baby. And my sister moved to Alberta, so we got to hang with her, a lot. Of course, there was also the birth of the newest family addition and that brought ALL of our family together. And this is on top of our whirlwind trip of driving back and forth across the province visiting with as many of our friends as we could cram in.

Being in Canada was also an eye-opener to the joy’s of having a family/friends unit around, to hang out with, and raise your kids with. And the incredible thing that is the backyard. Being able to say “Go play outside” and know they were safe just running around in the grass. That is so cool. Made us think that maybe we are nearing the end of our sailing time and wanting to look for a backyard of our own.

We had an amazing time, and although we totally were not in “boat brain” and forgot to buy a ton of boat stuff while it was accessible, we are glad we went and have been hitting up eBay since we have been back in the DR.