Rachel visits!

My friend Rachel came a week and a half ago for a visit! She and I met on the first day of college in the fall of 1998 and have been friends ever since. We played tennis together for 4 years and then lived together in the twin cities for a year after college. It was so awesome to see her and spend 5 days together! Ivy and I picked her up at the airport and when she got into our car Ivy said, "My grandma lives here too!" (as in at the airport!) We picked the kids up from school, dropped Mya off at gymnastics, met Chris at the house to switch cars and we hit the road! We spent two nights in Banff and despite it being freeeeeeezing, we had an awesome time and got to see some cool stuff. Here are a few highlights!

Instead of going straight from Banff back to Edmonton, we drove the Banff/Jasper highway also known as the Colombia Ice Fields Highway. It was so beautiful and something I've been wanting to do for a long time, but with kids in tow, it makes it tough. It's about 3.5 hours out of the way and it always seems after a weekend away, we don't have the energy to spend that much time in the car with restless kiddos! It was totally worth it even though the weather didn't cooperate as much as we would have liked,  (it even snowed for a tiny portion of our trip!) it was totally worth it.

We got back to Edmonton Sunday evening and just hung out the rest of the night and Monday. Monday night we cooked out and played bean-boozled with the kids. I have a love/hate relationship with that game, but the kids loved it. They were laughing so hard and spitting jelly beans out left and right. Chris did a little trampoline jumping/flipping with the kiddos and we watched the Bachelorette together which was so fun!

Tuesday afternoon Chris came home early and we hit up a Fifa World Cup game! We caught the 2nd half of Cameroon/Switzerland and the first half of Australia/Sweden. We were not dressed appropriately (it was sunny and hot when we left home and cool and raining when we got to the game!) but had a great time. We are so glad Auntie Rach came and spent some time with us!