We had an awesome end of summer road trip up to Canada! I can't remember how or when we decided on this trip - I just know that I wanted to go international, Banff has been on our list of places to visit, and our friends, Edmund and Kathy, are from Calgary and offered up so many suggestions that we finally decided to go with them. We are so glad we did because it was lots of fun and we can't wait to go back when the kids are older to try doing other stuff that they were too little for this time around.
Our main destination for the drive was Banff, but since that's about an 11 hour trek from Seattle, we agreed to first make a stop in a lake town called Kelowna. Edmund has fond memories of going here as a kid for weekend getaways and we can see why. It's a fairly good sized city along the shore of the ginormous Lake Okanagan surrounded by vineyards, orchards and mountains. The city itself is okay, with a small downtown area but it's very culturally diverse and has a lot of public beaches and a waterfront multi-use trail. In our few days there, we did everything from watersports (Evie and I did stand-up paddleboarding for the first time, and Evie even went solo kayaking!) to mountain biking on a really cool old train path to wine tasting and orchard picking.
People recommend Kelowna and the Okanagan valley as an cheaper, Canadian alternative to Napa and we would go back in a heartbeat!
Walking along the lake-side path
Lake Okanagan has a lake monster named Ogi Poggi.
Orchard picking! We were able to pick peaches and plums.
The apples were not yet ready for picking.
Evie on the farm
Peach picking went fast - you pick 5 and your bucket is full!
The peaches passed Scott's taste test. They were so juicy!
The picking crew
Wine stop #1: Mission Hill. It was a beautiful view!
We bought a bottle and enjoyed it outside on the patio
Stop #2: Quail's Gate. This one also had a spectacular view!
and very pretty grounds.
Fancy lunch at Quail's Gate
Afterwards, we took the kids to a spray park to cool down
Popsicles!
We also biked around the downtown area. See the kids in their swimmies?
The next day, we went to the Myra Canyon Trestle "rail trail". It was awesome! 12 miles on an old rail route, over 18 trestles and through 2 tunnels.
We didn't do the whole thing, but did more than half of it.
Just one of the trestles we biked over.
Nora loved being on the back of Daddy's bike.
Coming out of the first tunnel
Her biker name was "wee ride"
On the way back we stopped by Winery #3: Vibrant Vines
All the labels are in 3D!
Hanging out while Mom and Dad did a tasting
The next day, we went to a bike skills park for the kids to get used to mountain biking. They are hooked!
And then cooled off in the afternoon at Rotary Beach, one of 30 (!) in the city.
We did stand up paddle boarding and kayaking! Evie even went on both by herself!
I had to do a quick trip to LA towards the end of July to say goodbye to my Uncle Pang, who passed away a few weeks earlier. I have fond memories of fun cousin time at his house in Palos Verdes and Uncle Pang taking us to the beach when we were younger. I remember how he delighted in making us kids squeal with laughter by pretending the car ride was a rolleroaster - we'd take sharp turns and all of us kids would slide to one side of his Volvo station wagon or he'd slow the car down to a roll and we'd all chant that we couldn't let the car stop and it would inch slowly forward at a stoplight. Although it was a sad reason to get together, I think he would be happy to know that the weekend was also a wonderful get together with family. Because it was fairly last minute, none of the kids flew over which meant us "adult cousins" were able to have long talks and linger over food. Kin and Meredith were able to host a summertime bbq at their house and we had a nice t
We got back from Japan about a week ago and we're still talking about what a great trip it was! Japan has never been super high on my places to visit but for a lot of reasons (I've never been, it's clean, it's safe, it's different) we took the plunge and booked it as our summer vacation this year. It helped that our friends, the Wongs, went last year, raved about it and loved it so much they were going again and we were able to coordinate so that some of our trip overlapped with theirs. It helped even more that the yen is at a 10-year low (maybe all time low?) against the dollar, which, aside from airfare, made everything quite affordable. Look how low the yen is! We lucked out that it kept falling after we booked our tix in Dec. Since this was our first big overseas trip since COVID and with kids (or, lets face it, SINCE kids), I dove into prepping for our trip - including trying to keep up my Duolingo streak of learning Japanese for at least a few minutes everyd
EEEK! We officially have a teenager in our house! I can't believe our little Evie is now 13 years old. I can still see her as a little girl saying "Swiper no swiping!" For her birthday this year, she and a few of the neighborhood girls went to get their nails done at the salon nearby. She doesn't remember the last time she got her nails professionally done ( back in 2016! ) so she was pretty excited about it. She picked a very pretty teal color. Afterwards, the girls had some cake. To celebrate her actual birthday, her ask was for tv time, shopping and sushi. So after a morning spent hanging out in from the tv, we headed to Bellevue Square mall where guess what? She got a phone! Technically, I got a new phone and handed down my old phone to her. We spent a good 3 hours doing all the transfers but she was very patient about it and grinning from ear to ear when we went to dinner that night. At 13, Evie has become a very stereotypical teenage girl - she loves clothes
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