7 Animal Adventure!

Well we are back at last, after 20 days of camping it is good to be home! Aah that feeling of FINALLY walking through your front door… that moment when you can smell your own house and it is actually quite nice… when everything seems so different and so wonderfully the same. Yes. Well as I turned the key filled with the expectations of home… we were greeted by a few trillion unexpected visitors that were waiting to welcome us back- fruit fly invasion!!! They were everywhere!  On every possible inch of cupboard space, swarming in the air, covering the fridge, lounging in the sink, up the stairs, in the bathrooms… It. Was. Ridiculous. We walked from room to room covering our mouths and marvelling at each new place the tiny little houseguests had overtaken.  Where did they all come from!?  I had even made special efforts to empty every garbage and to not leave any fruit out!  After searching in wonderment, I eventually found the culprit, a bottle of pina colada juice mix.  When I saw the yellow bottle through a tornado of small flying creatures, the memory of searching for the lid in vain the night before we left came to me.  Yep there it was. It had been left sitting there- inconspicuously hiding in the corner of the otherwise clear countertop- breeding untold malice. Sigh.  So, I quickly got on the internet to Google ‘fruit fly invasion’ and started to make two apple cider vinegar fly traps as prescribed.  My clever husband wasted no such time and went straight for the vacuum cleaner. Thankfully fruitflies- although plentiful- are not that clever and John was able to suck them up by the hundreds with each swipe.  He patiently manned the vacuum cleaner for over an hour and we were soon able to reclaim our house.   We checked my little vinegar fly traps after it all and between the two traps I had successfully caught one fly.  I think I need to get on to Google and tell them that the vacuum is the way to go! Now you know what to do if you ever come home to an invasion ;)   

So 20 days on the road pulling a tent trailer through the mountains- 3 adults, 4 kids and one minivan full of carbage.  It was an adventure and I have to say it was just wonderful to be outside so much.  With such a long winter here in Canada it only makes sense to soak up every minute of the summer that we can!  My husband is self-employed and can be flexible with his time off, so we decided to make it a BIG camping trip. Anyone who camps with kids knows just how much time and effort goes into planning and packing to go away.  And when you think about it, it takes about the same amount of pack/unpack time for a 3 day getaway as it does for a long trip so I figured it’s the way to go! Anything to cut down on that part of camping right?  So camp we did and like most things in life it was a lot of work but so worth it.  And of course it was made even more enjoyable with the addition of that 3^rd Adult...  Alex!  Alex is John’s niece from Ireland and she has just finished high school and decided to come across the pond to stay with us.  The kids absolutely adore her and she is such a delight to have around (love you Alex!).  We decided we needed to show her Canada at its most majestic and a trip to the mountains was simply in due course.  So we got a stick figure to add to the back of our van and headed out!

 

 We spent the first few days of our adventure at ‘’Ol’ MacDonald’s Resort’’ with some lovely friends who have 5 children- their last 4 are matching the ages & genders of our kids, so they really have fun together.  What a great place to camp with kids!  It had lovely camp sites, playgrounds, a petting zoo, the beach, pedal go carts to rent, a merry-go-round-swing where the kids were meant to see if they could throw their shoes into a bucket on their ride past,  so many kids running around dirty and smiling.  Aah summer- you're the best.     

          

We had only one rainy day on the trip and that was on the day John had to attend a business meeting so it all worked out in the end.  Alex and I took the kids swimming, so we had a truly wet day.  It made me think back to when we lived in Ireland and would take the kids camping and bring along Alex and her 2 younger siblings.  Camping in Ireland is a whole different ball game than camping in Canada.  You just expect it to be raining... and a lovely day would be when it only showered a couple times during the day and the sun acutally came out for a while!  Yet somehow we still enjoyed it and were strangely optomistic through it all.  And  we were in a TENT! Raining every day with a 6,5,4,2 and 6 month old. I still don't know how we did it...  there we were 3 years ago oblivious to the wet :)

 

We tried to split the journey up into managable chunks as we headed towards the mountains so that most of our car trips were not too much longer than 2 hours. My husband couldn't believe that he would get used to a 2 hour drive being a 'short jaunt' when crossing the entire country of Ireland from coast to coast would take 4 hours!  Yes we have found that car drives with little people require lots of music and lots of potty breaks. It turned out we forgot to bring our music ( woops!) so John picked up a 'best of the CARS' and we listened to that one CD -steady- for the last 20 days.  'Shake it up'  is now eternally intertwined with our memories of this trip.  Somehow it didn't get old!  Gabriel got to love this one song especially... and it didn't matter how many times we had already put it on that day, didn't even matter if he was fast asleep,  as soon as he heard those first beats starting, he just had to break into his little dance.  I often think of people passing by us on the road- as they pass our white van in a silent zoom- they just have no idea of the chaos and singing and crazy dancing they have just passed.   

                                   

 

 

  (to be continued...)