Family Vacation 2012

Back in September, we realized that Sean had a week of holidays coming up.  We mulled around a few ideas of what we could do when we finally decided that we would get out of town for a few nights.  The plan was to spend a night inWhistler, and 3 nights in Vancouver.  We redeemed a ton of Air Miles and were able to get our hotels paid for, as well as admission to the aquarium and the zoo.  Last Monday, having packing the van to the top, we set off on our little adventure.

We really enjoyed our time in Whistler.  The hotel was perfect to accommodate us and we enjoyed wandering the village, playing at the park, and going on the peak-to-peak gondola.  We would love to go back again and spend some more time exploring.

{Bears climbing the trees in Pemberton}

{Top of Whistler}

{We took the peak-to-peak from Whistler to Blackcomb.  After the first picture, the rest were taken from Aiden as I wasn't really into looking around too much!}

{Love this picture....too bad Aiden cut Sean's head off}

{3am}

{Coffee, sippy cups and TV.  What else do you need at 6am?}

Tuesday we started heading towards Vancouver.  We stopped at the Britannia Mines and everyone enjoyed this, especially Aiden.

My Mom met us in Vancouver and we spent the night downtown in English Bay.  We enjoyed walking along the sea wall and playing at park.

Wednesday we went to the Aquarium in the morning and then visited my grandparents and Metrotown in the afternoon.
 This is around the time that Sean and I started to feel the exhaustion set in.  The kids had been to bed after 10 each night and up before 5 each morning.  We had been in 3 different hotel rooms in 3 nights.  We were going from morning to night and the kid's were getting cranky and difficult to manage.  It was because of all this that we made the decision that we would head home the next day, a day early.

Thursday morning, we packed up and stopped in at my grandparents for dougnuts and coffee and to sing Happy Birthday to my 97 year old Grandpa!

As we were driving along the highway intending to stop in at the zoo, we looked behind to discover that we had some very tired children!  We kept driving and made it home before dinner.

Because we came home a day early, we decided to make Friday our holiday at home day.  We spent the day in our pyjamas, watched TV, ate good food, and just enjoyed some downtime in our own home.  It was heaven and I think we are going to make this a monthly tradition!

All in all, our adventure was grand.  We have learned some things that we will do differently next time (pick one hotel and stay there, do less each day, etc.) and discovered what things work.  Although the memory is still too fresh to think about our next holiday, I'm sure that it will be just as great as this one...........plus we still have a zoo admission to use up:)