Last Saturday, Max, Mya and I headed to Edmonton to meet up with Chris to look at houses and schools. This trip was a big deal for me on many levels. I have never flown alone without another adult. So not only was I not flying with another adult, but I was flying to another country with my two kids! We flew out of Cedar Rapids and then had a connecting flight in Minneapolis. Besides getting into CR in a blizzard and trudging through the parking lot with 2-3 inches of snow on the ground and pulling 2 suitcases while carrying 2 backpacks, and making sure 2 kids who were not wearing boots were following in my footsteps, it was a breeze.
All ready to go with their bags full of goodies. They were pretty excited about their new bags my aunt made them for the trip!
working on some travel books together
The flights went well and we landed in Edmonton at 10:30 mountain time which was 11:30 for us. I had to wake both kids up and for a second, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to wake Mya up! So they reluctantly got off the plane and began the loooong walk to Customs. A friend of mine who has traveled quite a bit told me she thought I needed a letter from Chris stating that he knew I was bringing our kids across the border. I thought that seemed kind of strange and then decided that I had a special immigration person from Toronto helping make sure I had all the right paper work for entering the country, etc. that she surely would have told me I needed that, right? WRONG. First thing the guy asked for was my letter from my husband! I couldn't believe it. Anyway...to make a long story short...we got through, got our luggage and met Chris! I didn't have many first thoughts because it was so late.
Note to self...next time we go there, we need to get on an earlier flight!
Sunday morning we got up late and ate a nice breakfast followed by some hotel swimming. Afterwards we headed to the mall to check it out and grab lunch. After lunch we met up with our relocation specialist Michelle, who would be helping us with house hunting, school hunting, drivers license, bank account, healthcare cards, etc. After we spent a little time chatting, we went and looked at some houses and drove around neighborhoods. Sunday night the wait for dinner was over 2 hours at every restaurant we tried, so we settled for Chuck E. Cheese and I vowed to never go again in all of my life.
Shenanigans in the hotel room
Monday was a holiday in Canada (Family Day) so there wasn't much open. We decided to go to the waterpark at the mall. The world's largest mall has the world's largest wave pool inside of it! It was really fun and the kids did great. I realized I was never meant to be a lifeguard (kids hanging on me in deep water with waves crashing made me really clausterphobic!) Chris got enough courage to try the pink loopy slide and in true Max fashion...his favorite slide was the one he cried on and insisted he would never do again. (ala Everest at the Animal Kingdom) We looked at a couple more houses Monday afternoon and spent Monday evening having a really really nice dinner at a restaurant called The Keg.
(this pic is dark, but Mya has her hand up)
(top picture below is my meal and the bottom is to show how spoiled rotten our kids were on this trip. They were sipping from a shirley temple in one hand and a strawberry smoothie in the other)
Tuesday we got a lot done. We looked at 6 schools, Chris got his social insurance number, his Alberta Healthcare card, and we opened a bank account. I really liked the schools, but the size kind of scared me. There were 900 kids in on elementary school and 700+ in most of the others. There were a couple of smaller ones that I really liked, but like around here, you have to live in certain areas to go to certain schools. Speaking of houses....we were not able to find one that we liked. The rental market in Edmonton is almost non-existent right now. Hopefully we can find one soon. Luckily, we have a few more months until the kids and I move up there. They're hoping it picks up as the weather gets nicer.
Tuesday night we had dinner with our guide Michelle and her family. They have 3 kids (ages 4-8) so I feel like I'm in really good hands. We had a great time. It was a wonderful way to end the trip.
Wednesday we had an early flight out and other than running through the Minneapolis airport, it was pretty uneventful. It was good to get home and see Ivy. She went up to Decorah while we were gone and unfortunately got sick. Big thanks to Aunt Amanda for watching over her when she was semi-healthy and to Grandpa Rog and Grandma Pat for dealing with a pretty sick little girl who ended up with her very own nebulizer at Grandma's house along with some prednisone, antibiotics and lots of ibuprofen along the way:( She's still coughing, but is otherwise doing okay.
My first thoughts on Edmonton.....
1.They love their hockey and ice skating. Every pond/lake/creek I saw had been shoveled off and people were out skating. If we don't teach our kids to skate in the next three months, there's a chance they will be the only 1st and 2nd graders in their school who don't skate.
2. The city is huge. Huge comes with some positives and some negatives. The shopping is a positive. The traffic is a negative.
3. We will not have a yard. These people put 3 houses on a lot that we would put one on. Their houses are mostly 2 story narrow houses with 2 car garages and no yard. There are houses right to you and behind you. I have a feeling this will get old...
4. We are going to have to get ourselves familiar with the metric system right away. Just simple things like knowing how deep the pool is to knowing how fast to drive! Also, some knowledge of celcius would be good too:)
5. Our kids are going to do great. By the end of the trip they were picking up on different words that they use in Canada. (Max asked where the washroom was, they referred to 2nd grade as Grade 2, etc.)
6. Not nearly as many people used the "eh" as I thought would. And I wasn't even that annoyed when I did hear it.
7. Our road plows are 100 times better than theirs. We really should not complain.
8. Alcohol (among other things) is pretty expensive. A bottle of barefoot wine ($4.99 here is $15 there. A 24 pack of Coors Light cans was $40 there)
That's all I can think of for now! Stay tuned...I'm sure there will be more thoughts in the near future:) Chris comes back tonight and will be here for a week and a half before he heads back to Canada. Yippee!!
