Final Week in Canada

My final week in Canada was spent with my family in Winnipeg, and it was a great week. I left Edmonton bright and early on July 29^th, and made it into Brandon, Manitoba around supper time, which was perfect timing to meet up with my brother Darrin who was working out there for the week. We went to this place called Joe Beeverz Bar and Grill, and I had this fantastic baked maple onion soup! It had sweet onions caramelized in Bucktooth brew and maple syrup topped with French bread croutons and baked with Canadian cheddar on top. No wonder Americans make fun of us and eating maple syrup. After supper I was on the road again for another couple of hours. Made it to mom and Ken’s place around 10pm, unloaded a few things from the car and went right to bed.

The next couple of days I went for a couple of massages, went to the casino with mom and Aunty Wendy (and won them $450!), watched some baseball, and even played a couple games of baseball one night, as Allison and Blaine’s team were short players. That night was a lot of fun, as we had 6 girls and 3 guys on the team, and we ended up winning both games. As Allison said, “girl power!”  At one point, the catcher for the other team asked if we were on steroids or something cause she wanted to hit like we could, I just laughed as I walked up to the plate and told her that we all have played ball since we were about 5 or 6 years old.

Aaron flew in on Friday, August 1^st, and of course his flight was delayed by an hour. I think that for any future flights we might want to stay away from connecting in Chicago for a while. We went out to moms place where everyone was waiting on us to eat. Enjoyed some hamburgers and hot dogs, sat around the fire for a little bit, even played some bean bag toss, but then the mosquitos had got to be extremely bad that we ended up inside playing this golf card game for hours. 

On Saturday morning, Blaine, Aaron and I headed into Winnipeg for our jam packed day of fun. Started off with a couple of hours at the Winnipeg Zoo, where I was most excited to see the new Churchill Exhibit, which just had opened only a few weeks before.

Next stop was Smoke’s Poutinerie to immerse Aaron into some popular Canadian culture food. We shared a country style poutine, which consisted of the typical french fries, cheese curds and gravy, and then was topped with caramelized onion, mushrooms, chicken, bacon, and peas. One may think that is a weird combination, but it was so good. Blaine ended up getting the bacon cheeseburger poutine, which looked amazing. Perhaps that will be what I have to try on my next visit home.

After lunch we went to the Forks for a couple hours, where we went through a lot of the little shops and then went on a little boat ride down the river, so that Aaron could hear a bit about the history of Winnipeg. When we were done at the Forks, we went over to the Legislature grounds for a little bit, and then went to the cemetery to visit Grandma. It had been the first time for both Blaine and I to go and see the site since Grandma passed away. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be or even expected it to be. I think because Blaine and Aaron were with me, it made things a lot easier than going by myself. That evening we ended up at the horse races, where we met up with Aunty Wendy, Uncle Frank, mom, Ken and Sam. When we got home, we decided to play a game of Shanghai before going to bed.

The next morning we were up and on the road just before 7am, and crossed the border into the United States just before 9am. Again, I was a little worried that they may give us a hard time, but it was a breeze. The guard asked a couple of questions, shut the window for a second, came back and asked a couple of the same questions again, then told us to have a good day. To another year in the United States!!

We arrived home in Kentucky at 5:30am, where we immediately went to bed and slept for a few hours. Upon waking up, we unloaded my car, I went to a hair appointment, and then we started packing for Fort Lauderdale. As we were boarding a plane at 9am the next morning for the ADG Convention. I’ll get into that in my next post, which will hopefully be sometime this weekend. Try and get caught up with posts before school gets to be super crazy, along with all the volunteering and events going on.