A Daddy Kidnapping

Yup!  Go ahead and call the authorities.  We gave Pete a few days warning... and then we kidnapped him.  Life has just been so busy lately (for Pete especially) and we all needed a little reminder of how to have some serious family fun like the good ol' days.  I think we crammed as much fun as physically possible into 3 days and it was awesome (...and exhausting)!

We left at the crack of dawn last Wednesday and made it to the West Edmonton Mall by 12:30 pm.  We decided on the drive there that the first day would be spent at Galaxyland taking over the rollercoasters and rides... and that we did:

Leah and Josh warming up on the Merry-Go-Round

Pete and Ethan mid-ride in the Balloon behind ours

Ready to get their stomachs launched!

This is a spinning rollercoaster (the car rotates as you zip along the track) - in this picture, Ethan and Josh are in the seats across from Pete.  Josh loved this ride.  The verdict is out for the rest of us.

Leah and Josh Go-Kart racing

Bumper cars!  Ethan was big enough for the adult version so he and Pete ran over to tackle those while Josh and Leah enjoyed these ones.

An attempt at a family-self-portrait while aboard the train (sorry Leah!)

Ethan on his favourite rollercoaster

Leah and Ethan on the Dragon Express

By 4 pm we were all feeling the effects of our early start to the day and decided to head to the hotel to check in.  Little did we know the awesome slide that awaited us at the Wingate!  We rallied quickly and spent 2 full hours taking advantage of having the pool area completely to ourselves.  Four out of five of us were fast asleep by 8:30 pm....

Thursday was spent at the West Edmonton Mall's World Waterpark.  This was our first visit that wasn't spent with one of us having to hang out at the kiddie pool and dolphin slides.  The countless trips down the waterslide at the hotel gave Leah the confidence to tackle some of the bigger ones solo, which made the day far more enjoyable for all of us.  Before we left, Pete had a chance to tackle the new slides - check out the loop-de-loop one in this picture (you get loaded into a capsule standing up and then they launch you - it's insane!!).  I didn't want to risk losing or drowning the camera, so I found this one online:

After a yummy dinner at the Ol' Spaghetti Factory, we tackled the blizzard and drove to Lloydminster for a gross night in a smoking room at the Days Inn (they messed up my reservation and the hotel was at capacity - grrr!).  On the bright side, we had no trouble getting an early start Friday morning and made it to Table Mountain in time for a full day of skiing.  I know I said in a past post that we were going to wait another year or two before getting Leah up on skis, but when the opportunity arose for us to buy Megan's old equipment and another friend offered us their ski harness, it was hard to find a reason not to try her out this year.  I also had just found great deals on equipment for Pete and Josh so it was pretty awesome to have all 5 of us on skis with no waiting in the rental line up!  We had a fabulous day.  Josh, being only his 2nd time on skis, had no trouble keeping up with Pete and Ethan so the 3 of them were able to take on the bigger runs while Leah and I got ourselves sorted out on the bunny hill.  After only a few runs, Leah was eyeing the chairlift so we graduated to some green runs in fairly short order.  We all met up for lunch and then skied together for the afternoon.  I'm still in awe of how easy it's been to teach the kids to ski.  We're all looking forward to planning a trip to Calgary next winter to take on the big mountains.

Ok Mom, all ready!  Let's go!! (note those are adult goggles she's wearing - it was pretty cold that day and we wanted to cover as much of her face as possible)

Ready to ski with the boys after lunch!

Pete, Ethan and Josh on the chair in front of us.

 

An attempt at a self-portrait on our own chair.

Pulling Leah through the parking lot back to the truck at the end of the day while she was barking like a dog (it was soo funny!)

We called it a day around 3:30 pm in order to make it to Ethan's hockey game back in Saskatoon.  Apparently we hadn't exhausted him enough on our trip, as he played a great game and scored a hattrick!

Pete spent the weekend working around the clock to get caught up and left for site first thing Monday morning.  The kids and I have already put plans in motion for the next Daddy Kidnapping...