The house in Golden

Isn't Golden a nice name for a town? I'm a little more uncertain whether or not I like "Blaeberry," which was the name of the river running by the back of our rental house. But it was a beautiful place that felt so very remote! It's always so hard to judge distances just by looking at maps—I mean, you can look up travel times and so forth, but you just can't get a FEEL for how far apart things are going to seem! At least I can't. And this place was farther from Banff than I probably would have chosen, had I realized it, but I'm glad I didn't because I would be sad not to have stayed here!

It was a good compromise, anyway, because the kids always just want lots of time to play in the woods or lie around in the house reading and playing board games with each other—and not have to be constantly dragged off to See The Sights. Sam and I love to go out and drive and hike, but we definitely appreciate the down time too, and having a house that was so far from everything forced us to really evaluate what we DID choose to go out and do.

This is the driveway to the house. It was so bumpy that Ziggy's head would wobble crazily back and forth in his carseat every time, which he thought was hilarious. It looks kind of spooky and mysterious here. Well, it was kind of spooky and mysterious, in the fog!

We arrived pretty late the first night, and didn't get into the house till it was completely dark, so all we could see were the dark looming trees around, and a big mass of fog out the back windows. The next morning I went out running early and saw that there was a river running practically right through the backyard. (This is not the river above, but a little stream that branched off from it.) It was so cool and foggy by the water, and it felt SO NICE (we had been dying of the 100-degree heat back in Utah, so we loved the moderate temperatures on this trip).

As it got lighter, the clouds cleared off a little and I was so surprised to see huge mountains peeking out nearby! They'd been completely invisible.

Here's the river. It had that blueish tinge of glacial meltwater, but you couldn't really tell unless the sun was out.

These early mornings out alone might have been my favorite.

The house was spare and modern-looking, which is how I would make MY house if I didn't have any budget constraints. Or children. Or possessions. And if we ever bought anything on purpose and not just because the old thing broke. I liked how this place still felt kind of cozy, in spite of being open and empty-ish. Our house feels so FULL sometimes that it felt restful just to sit and look around at the emptiness in this one!

Don't worry though; we soon cluttered it up. They had some fun toys!

I'm not sure what this picture is–just Goldie being cute while she told me about something.

The house had a mouse! One night I was up going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, in the mostly-dark bathroom, and suddenly I felt some FEET walk across one of my feet! It scared me TO DEATH and I thought I might actually scream. But I didn't. I gasped my breath right out of my chest, though, and ran back to bed VERY FAST and hoped very hard I had just imagined it. I was trying to talk myself into it being a spider or something (I don't know why that seemed better, but there was just something so...FOOTLIKE about the feet that I'd felt. Like, I could feel tiny toes. And that seemed scary. I would have rather had spider feet) but the next morning we heard some little nibbling sounds, and looked into this plastic bin and saw…a cute little mousie! Teddy and Ziggy liked him SO much that I didn't have the heart to hold too much of a grudge about those nighttime FEET. Oh, we didn't WANT him in the house necessarily (if it had been our OWN house I'd have been not nearly so philosophical about it all) but there was something quite sweet about it. I will not tell you or even think about the sad ending to this story.

The mousie liked that blue bin and spent lots of time in there (you can see the little hole he had nibbled, or at least enlarged, to get in and out of it) so the children could go and get a look at him multiple times a day. They loved it.

The border between British Columbia and Alberta runs along the Continental Divide in Banff, and we were so confused because our car clock kept automatically changing back and forth (they are in different time zones) so we were never sure what time it was! It turns out that there's a small secction of BC that ISN'T in a different time zone, but we didn't know that until we looked it up later (there was no wifi at our house).

I don't know why I mention that little detail except that it was a weird thing and added to this place feeling like it was somehow in a world of its own. And so did this waving tin man that we passed on the way to our house every time we drove down to Golden (we were not really IN Golden, but 20 minutes outside of it). What possessed someone to make him?

I went out a few times with Teddy and the girls in the afternoons to play by the river, and it was so peaceful and lovely. It's so rare to just…sit somewhere, isn't it?

We found the prettiest river-rocks (and took a few home to polish in our rock tumbler!).

We built rock-people and rock-families.

Even teeny ones, of course, for Daisy.

Junie and Goldie made these little sand-penguins for Daisy, too.

The group heading out on another day.

And a tag-along!

After I took this picture, Daisy said, "Mommy, would you like us better if we were in rainbow order?" She knows my preference for everything in rainbow order. Well…

now that she mentioned it…yes. Yes, I DID like them better that way. 

You had to cross this little log bridge to get out to the shore of the real river, and in four days NOBODY FELL IN. I couldn't believe it.

There was a spot by the river where someone had outlined a bunch of intersecting pathways with borders of rocks. The kids immediately began to play that it was their little home, of course.

Daisy is holding a tiny pinecone in her hand here.

Another bridge, this one just large enough to fit a troll underneath it.

Daisy found not one, but TWO four-leaf clovers on this trip! One in Edmonton in Rachael's yard. And one in the backyard of this rental house.

The days were quite changeable, weather-wise. The mornings often started out with a low fog, but the sun came in and out throughout the days too. The house and surrounding woods had such a different character under the blue sky!

Sebby built a fire one day—mostly for the entertainment of his little brothers.

They liked it.

And the house had a hot tub! It took us a couple days to get it heated up, but it was so fun once we did! We could even all fit in there together without too much trouble!

And finally, here's the Blaeberry River in all its turquoise glory. I'm not sure how far away any actual glacier is, but the water definitely has a tinge of that distinctive "glacial till" color once you see it under the sunlight!