A Trip Up North

For the Labour Day weekend, Ryan, Camia and I headed up to Smithers to visit his sister and her family. Camia had never flown before, and for me it was the first time in a little over 16 years. (I still feel awed that I can say something happened that long ago in my life that I have a vague collection of, it seems like such a long time ago.) I was a bit nervous for how things would go for Camia. Turns out, she did better than I did. Take off was hard for me, I don't really know why, but it scared me. The ride was a bit bumpy, so that didn't really feel all that reassuring as well. We had to leave our seat belts on the whole way up there. I took some other people's advice who have had young children flying and gave Camia Tylenol a half hour before take off and tried to make sure she was drinking her bottle on the way up as well as on the way down. In this effort, new meaning was brought to the saying 'you can bring a horse to the trough, but you can't make her drink'. On the flight home, take off was much easier for me, but not so much for Camia. There is this rule that mothers (or fathers, whoever is holding the child) need to have the baby facing you and you need to hold their head to your chest with one hand while the other hand is on the seat in front of you. Well, whoever made that rule has not met my daughter. My daughter loves to go, go, go. She does not like to be restrained even in a car seat. On the way down, we went down with her in fits of laughter while being tickled by me. She was way past her bedtime and when she is tired she gets even more crazy active. The poor girl was not allowed to roam and had to sit. The. Whole. Time. When she was sad, we whipped out the books since she loves books and bought us 15 minutes.

Then we whipped out crackers which bought us another few minutes. Considering all things, Camia did pretty reasonable. I was a bit envious of the mother whose children sleeping soundly behind us, but the time flew by. Perhaps it flew by because we were so busy trying to keep Camia busy.

For while we walked around in the airports, I decided that Camia should have a leash so that she could walk but not get lost or taken. I worked on it for a few days last week, and decided that I was going to get all fancy and put grommets and a belt buckle on it. I got so frustrated that it wasn't working that I tore it up and cut it to pieces. This is how THAT one turned out:

We were scheduled to leave on Thursday afternoon. I made another harness on Thursday morning, just plain and simple with snap closures. I don't really know why I wanted to go fancy when snaps were just as simple and, really, this was only an experiment.

Waiting for our flight to board for take off:

Some pictures from the plane on the way up (I decided to put my camera in the suitcase on the way home so we had less to carry on the plane, but now wish that I had taken it with me):

Straight from being picked up from the airport, we went boating with Richard and Allita and their kids on Tyhee Lake. The water was warmer than the air, and that gave us motivation to jump in and get wet.

It was so cold that the kids went into the boat where the life jackets are stored (sorry, I don't know what that part is called) to stay warm. It also became our towel warmer too.

Ryan wake boarding:
The sunset on Tyhee Lake, photo courtesy of Allita.
I went wake boarding too! AND went out of the wake. AND stayed up. AND even got some air!
Kisses for Daddy:
Donning her life jacket:

On Friday we headed to Moricetown to see the Moricetown Canyon where the natives have rights to fish for fish that are swimming upstream. It was pretty neat.

The canyon:

Observing:

Some holes in the rock:Watching the water, and looking for jumping fish:

Its hard to see, but Ryan managed to get one jumping on the picture:

While we were there, Camia got her first piano lesson. I hope she will play the piano when she gets older. She certainly enjoyed tinkering on Brittany's toy! But perhaps that is because it makes noise...

After visiting Moricetown, we went to go check out the 'shoe' house. Allita described it as looking like the house from the rhyme 'the Old Woman Who Lived in A Shoe'.

I thought this was to just get a picture in our heads what the house was SUPPOSED to look like. I almost laughed when I saw the house....It looked just the shoe in the story!

All in all, this trip was well worth our while. And, even though the flight was not a piece of cake, we were glad we flew out instead of driving for 16 hours (its usually about a 12 hour drive, plus 4 hours for stops to let Camia run. This doesn't warrant if we should have to stop for the night so Camia could sleep in a hotel room or something, although she does sleep really well in her car seat.) And despite the fact that she wasn't the world's greatest traveller, I would still do it again. And besides. Who says you always have to be the best? Camia is still as lovely as the day I met her. And she makes me smile.