Edmonton and some dear people

Rachael and I have been friends so long, we don't even remember becoming friends. It's just something that has always been, like the sun rising every morning, or spring coming after winter. In first grade we were excused together during learning-to-read time to do "independent projects" (we were already strong readers, and our teachers always trusted us…though I remember making slippers out of stapled-together paper towels for one of our "projects," which I'm not sure is quite what they had in mind). In sixth grade we were cast as best friends in the class play, at which everyone rolled their eyes and said "of course!" In high school people used our names interchangeably or just called us both "Rachael-n-Marilyn." In college we majored in music, played recitals together (she on violin, me on piano) and lived together in her grandpa's house. And then…she met a nice Canadian boy and married him, and I married Sam, and suddenly we had to face the idea of being apart.

Thank heavens email was just starting to be mainstream, and we saw each other most summers as she came to Utah to visit her parents, picking up right where we'd left off every time we managed to snatch an hour or two together. Once when Abraham was very young, Sam and I drove up to visit Rachael and James in Raymond, Alberta, and it was dreamy. But for the most part Rach and I built our lives and our homes in separate places and had to be content with catching up every now and then. But there's always a little Rachael-shaped hole in my life. So a couple summers ago when we got to hang out at my house with our kids…AND our kids totally hit it off even though they are way past the time where you can just tell them to play together because they're the same ages…it made me so happy. And then when I asked the kids if there was anywhere particular they wanted to go for our family vacation this summer, and they said, "Canada! To visit the Spencers!"—I was even happier.

The scenery all looked like this, from the Canadian border nearly to Edmonton. Lots of beautiful yellow canola fields.

Rachael's family had moved farther north, way up to Edmonton, since we'd visited all those years ago. 16 hours sounds so much more intimidating than 12! But it really wasn't too bad, getting up there. We drove 13 hours to Calgary, stayed in a hotel overnight, and then it was only 3-4 more on to Edmonton. We were there by lunchtime of the second day. We met Rachael's family at Elk Island National Park, which is a beautiful area 30 minutes from their house. Rach had made the best picnic lunch for us.

Our kids picked up right where they'd left off, chattering and laughing and playing volleyball and frisbee and that game where you throw poles at posts. There was a little ranger station where you could borrow a net for scooping things out of the lake, and then pour them into little trays to look at them. The kids LOVED it. They caught tiny fish and lots of little bugs and some LEECHES, which I've never seen before. They were horrifying. They could squinch themselves up into balls and then s-t-r-e-t-c-h themselves out as long as earthworms. *Shudder*.

We stayed in a rental house in Edmonton so as to not COMPLETELY overwhelm the Spencers. And it was a cute little house (furnished in 100% IKEA, if I'm not mistaken…) But we didn't end up spending much time there. We were at Rachael's house from morning till night every day. She and James were the best hosts! Rachael had all kinds of fun ideas of things for us to do, but in the end, all the kids wanted to do was hang out together, playing board games, or swinging in the hammocks in the backyard. And Rachael and I just wanted to cook together, adapting recipes just like old times, and talk about everything in the world. So we kept it low-key and it was PERFECT that way. 

We did go to the West Edmonton Mall water park one day (for 7 hours…we have NEVER lasted at a swimming pool that long before, because whoever the current baby is always gets cold, but this was indoors and Zig stayed happy the whole time! And the other kids had the time of their LIVES) but the rest of the time we just hung out, walked to parks, went to church, played with Mae-Mae the hedgehog, and cooked enough to feed armies. William and Ryrie (Rachael's oldest boys…twins) set Abe up with a girl they knew and the three of them went out on a triple-date (Abe's first!). James made the best sourdough bread for us, and he and Sam made amazing pizza in the outdoor pizza oven. Ziggy learned everyone's name and rattled off animal sounds for the Spencer boys just like a performing seal.

The children floated homemade boats under a bridge and through the canal pipes, and we only lost one (boat, not child).

We saw the HUGE Edmonton bunnies, which in spite of being enormous still managed to look like rocks when they sat still. But seriously! They were as big as dogs! Rach says they turn white in the winter.

We celebrated Seb's birthday.

Ziggy was DOTED ON by all. Perhaps even a little spoiled. :)

We went to Rachael's cute library.

Rach has a bunny on her mailbox!

I really didn't even take that many pictures (argh! Why didn't I get one of all of us together?!) but it was heavenly. Just heavenly. All the kids wanted to stay longer, and if I hadn't known that Rachael's family had Regular Life to get back to, we could have so happily stayed for weeks and weeks. Everyone gets along so well, it's like magic. James is the nicest person in the world and the best husband I could imagine to take care of Rachael. I'm so, so happy that she and he got married and had such darling, smart, friendly. polite, fun kids. But—how I wish, wish, wish they lived closer! I was feeling very bleak and sad and teary as we drove away on the last day at 5 a.m., heading toward Jasper National Park. It was so hard to say goodbye.

But the morning was beautiful and misty. 

And we had so much beautiful scenery ahead of us! So it was okay.

*****

And now I'm going to skip ahead to the END of our trip (don't worry, I will of course fill in with more posts later, hee hee) when we were driving home, by way of another dear friend's house! She lives up in Coeur d'Alene Idaho, which is on the way to precisely NOWHERE (every time we drive north I check), but which miraculously lined up with one of the routes home from Golden B.C., where our second rental house was.

It was a beautiful drive from Golden to Coeur d'Alene. Even prettier than the Helena-to-Calgary way.

I was super excited to see Jessica (I met her when I was on Study Abroad to London, and we became even closer when she transferred from Ricks to BYU) and amazed that it has been TEN YEARS since we last got together. Jess and Seth fed us a delicious dinner and found places for ALL of us to sleep, and we stayed up till 2 a.m. laughing and talking while the kids played Clue. I wished we'd had another week together!

Jessica's oldest daughter Lydia was starting college at BYU in a couple weeks, and we got to take her with us part of the way down to Provo! That was really fun. Lydia is darling!

Teddy and Megan became instant friends. Why can't all these wonderful people live next door to us?!?

Daisy was pretty excited that one of Jessica's kids had a matching pillow pet! (Coincidentally, so did one of Rachael's kids. Apparently we only stay with people who have penguin pillow pets. And who have husbands who teach institute. And who are bishops.)

The view from Jessica's deck. Amazing.

We did SO MUCH DRIVING on this trip. It wasn't just the 32 hours up and back. There was 5 hours over to Jasper, and 6 or 7 between Jasper and Banff, and then lots of back-and-forthing in Banff and 6 more hours from Golden to Coeur d'Alene and 11 more to get home. So maybe 56 hours or more total? And the kids were good. Amazingly good, especially Ziggy. He sat watching the road for hours at a time and pointing out every…single…truck. He was mostly sweet and adorable. But…the home stretch was rough. We were soooo close to home. And first he threw up, and then a few hours later he just LOST IT. Crying and screaming and inconsolable. But then Seb stepped in. He was a STAR. He read Ziggy a million books and gently talked him into happiness again, like magic. Oh we were all so grateful. And we did make it home eventually. And we were so thankful to be there (even if we were feeling a little sad that our grand adventure was at an end).

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The Solar Eclipse

I don't want to put too much emphasis on how worried I was that something would Go Wrong with the eclipse (or, with our ability to see it, more accurately), because I did try to rein my worries in and think Coping Thoughts. Yes, this was something I'd been looking forward to for a long time, but it wasn't the MOST important thing EVER, and it was only two minutes out of a lifetime, and we could always look forward to 2045, after all! We would have a fun time being together as a family even if it was cloudy…or smoky…or there were apocalyptic crowds and gas shortages and so forth. I had reserved the rental house and ordered the eclipse glasses a year early (plus we had the ones my brother's family gave us for Christmas…) so everything was as ready as it could be and there was nothing else I could do! I told myself all of these things repeatedly, but I also lay awake worrying more than once in the months leading up to August. I was also somewhat concerned that I'd have the baby right during the eclipse and miss it that way.

We studied eclipses for school, making models and so forth, in the week before we left for Idaho. This scale model on a yardstick (with the moon and earth correctly sized and distanced from each other) was fun. You can see the small dot of shadow that the "moon" (at the top of the yardstick) casts on the "earth" (by Daisy's right hand). That dot of shadow is the spot where totality occurs! Where it sweeps across the earth you have the path of totality.

When we got to Idaho I felt some relief that we were actually THERE in the right vicinity, but we were staying an hour away from the path of totality, so we knew we'd still have to brave the roads on the morning of the eclipse. We went to Yellowstone and had a fun few days, but I tossed and turned all night Sunday night, dreaming vague and foreboding dreams. As it turned out, we had no problem. The traffic was slightly more dense than usual for a Monday morning, but there were very few delays. As we got to Rexburg I finally felt like I could relax! We were in the right place and the sky was clear and I wasn't in labor. Yay!

We loved Bear World last time we stayed in Island Park, so we decided to make that our eclipse-watching base. It was a perfect place in which to wait around, because there are fun little rides for the kids to go on over and over and over, and bathrooms close by, and cute baby bears to watch.

While we were studying eclipses for school we also made solar eclipse shirts. Aren't they cute? It's only because I ran across a picture of this shirt and said to myself, "Hey, I bet we could make those!" I just cut out circles of contact paper in varying sizes and stuck one on the front of each shirt. Then I gave the kids glow-in-the-dark fabric paint and brushes, and they painted scribbly lines and rays of paint on and around the contact paper circle. (You can't really mess this up!) After the paint dried, we took off the contact paper circles and it left these lovely likenesses of the sun's corona shining during totality. Lots of people asked where we got our shirts and the children were very pleased to say "We made them!"

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Eclipse trip: the non-eclipse and non-Yellowstone part

We always become so fond of the rental houses we stay in. Teddy called this one our "Cabin House" and soon we were all calling it that. It was in a much less-wooded area of Island Park than the place we stayed last time, so it felt very different. This place had a wrap-around porch, with beautiful views of the sunset across the open meadows. We loved it.

One of the first thing the boys did upon arriving was to put up their hammocks. These were hung in many configurations over the few days we stayed here.

Triple-decker!

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Yellowstone: Island Park

We rented a cabin in Island Park, Idaho (about 45 minutes from the West Entrance to Yellowstone) for our trip, and we loved it. I love staying at rental houses so that we can all fit comfortably and have doors that can close off places for naps, etc. And the area was so beautiful! Mountainous and wooded. We were happy to have such a lovely place as our home base.

There were some pretty views of the Tetons, driving up past Rexburg.

I loved these bright yellow fields! I remember seeing this all over in England. Is it canola?

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Yellowstone: Bear World

Abe has always loved bears, and ever since he was little he's wanted to go to Yellowstone to see a bear in the wild! He did get to go on a bear-tagging trip with his Grandma once, but they didn't find many bears and the one he did get close to was sleeping. Safer, of course, but a bit disappointing for a bear-lover like Abe.

Anyway, summer is the wrong time of year to see many bears at Yellowstone, I guess—too many crowds. I think you do glimpse them occasionally but I wasn't too hopeful. Then 

Sam's parents told us about this place—Yellowstone Bear World—in Rexburg, and it seemed like a great way to make sure we saw at least SOME bears, for Abe's sake. I even signed him up to feed the baby bears!

And honestly, I wasn't expecting much. Maybe some sad-looking bears lumbering around in a pen, and a petting zoo or something. But as it turned out, we loved the place! Abe was in heaven feeding these little cuties their bottles. He got to pet them and snuggle them and everything! And they were such hungry, furry, playful little cubs!

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