And finally....Montreal!

Alright, now for the last of the pictures. Unfortunately, my mom got really sick so she didn't really get to see any of Montreal and we also didn't want to do too much, because we hated not having her around, but we did do some sightseeing and something very fun on our last day of the trip, but I won't spoil the surprise!

Here is Montreal's most famous cathedral, Notre Dame. This was where Celine Dion was married so naturally we had to go! :)
This is a picture of the inside of one of its chapels. The architecture was amazing!
After a tour of the cathedral, we walked around and found this great little ice rink nearby. We all decided that we needed to go for a little spin. I was mostly excited because Tyler decided to go and he has never been before. I had so much fun skating around with him helping make sure he didn't fall. I also got to show off some of my moves from my ice skating class. I had forgotten how much I loved to ice skate!
Montreal hosted the 1976 Summer Olympics so we went and visited the Olympic Park. We definitely had to see the pool for Travis.
Here is Travis outside of the Olympic stadium. That huge tower had a funicular where you could ride to the top, but it cost a lot of money so we just admired it from afar.

And now for our last big, fun outing. Nearby Montreal is this ski resort called Mont Tremblant. It was such a cool little town and it had just snowed that night so it was a serious winter wonderland. My mom had booked us the most amazing experience, dog sledding! This is the first thing that we saw, all the sleds attached the line and we could hear just a ton of dogs barking. They put us right to work and we were responsible for getting a dog and taking them to a trainer who would attach them to the sleds. It was madness! They then gave us a crash course it sled driving and I think when he finished and none of us really understood anything that he said, did we realize that we were going to be driving! I was terrified, but luckily I got to be the passenger for the first leg of the race while Travis got used to driving!

Here are our sled dogs! They were so amazing!

The scenery was amazing. It was so peaceful and quiet. We were right in the wilderness. It was perfect!

This was my favorite dog. She kept looking back at us which made me feel like she was checking up on us to make sure we were doing ok. We found out later that she was really nervous around humans because one tourist had accidently stepped on her foot and hurt her, but I still thought she was adorable.

We stopped for a rest and the dogs definitely took advantage. They rested for a few moments but then they were ready to start up again. They loved leading the sleds!

I got to switch with Travis and start driving, which was so much fun! I think I was a natural so next stop, the Iditarod.

Here I am with some of the dogs leading our sled. We really had the most amazing dogs, I wanted to take them home!
We also got to see the little puppys and we got to hold them. Here is Emily and Taylor with two of the puppy's. They were about four months old and would be leading the sleds next winter!

Here is Travis with one of the cute puppys. It was definitely one of the highlights of the trip!

Here is a short clip during the sled ride so you can get a feel for what it was like. Sorry about the quality, our battery was about to die.

Well, that is our trip to Canada! It was so much fun and of course, I want to thank my parents for an amazing trip. We had such a great time and the memories are priceless!

Driving to Montreal

Since we had to drive from Quebec City to Montreal, we decided to take a couple of side trips. Here are some pictures to one of the most fun days of the whole trip:

Right outside of Quebec City were these waterfalls called Montmorency Falls. They claim to be larger than Niagra Falls. I have never seen those, but these were pretty impressive.
We rode a gondola up to the top of the falls. Here is the amazing view with the river behind us. It looked like it was completely frozen.
Here is my mom and dad with the falls in the background. The scene was so picturesque.
Here is Tyler and I a little bit closer to the falls. Our next stop was the bridge over the falls which you can see in the background of this picture.
Here is Travis at the entrance of the bridge. I was a little nervous. We were so high and I was just hoping that the bridge was nice and steady.

Here is a view of the falls from right above it. It was so cool!

I just thought this was a cool shot. Tyler is being very pensive. :)

Here is our family shot, sans husbands. We had such a good time being all together as a family.

We rode back down the gondola and my mom and I took one last scenic picture with the falls in the background.

We drove over to this little island where there was a small chocolate shop which sold the best homemade chocolate in the area. It was pretty good, but I have definitely had better.

Now for one of the highlights of the trip. We found this brochure for this place called Valcartier Valcances or something. It was one the most unbelievably fun places that I have ever visited. Imagine a ski resort but with inner tubes. There were all these different runs and they all had a level of difficulty, the highest being double black diamonds. It was so much fun! The best part was that I never felt unsteady on the tubes when we were going down. I was so nervous because I thought we were going to catch air or something and crash and kill ourselves! It was also fun because you could all hook together and go down the hills together. We went at night so we didn't get a lot of pictures but here are a few:

Here we are getting ready to go down our first hill. We were a bit nervous because we honestly had no idea what to expect.

Here is Travis and I on our tubes after coming down the hill. Luckily we brought our ski clothes so we could stay dry!

They also had these huge rafts that we could all down together. This one is called the Tornado which when it would hit the side of the run would spin round and round really fast. Here is everyone getting ready for take off.

The expression on Travis' face on the Tornado exactly fits how we were all feeling, terror and excitement!

Here are the boys after our last run. As you can tell, we all had such a great time!

Well, our driving trip to Montreal was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. We got to see so many amazing things and we definitely looking forward to the last leg of our trip.

Christmas in Canada!

This Christmas, my parents took the whole family for a vacation to Canada! It was an amazing trip and we had such a great time. We left on Christmas Day, spent three days in Quebec City and then spent our last four days in Montreal before coming home on New Year's Day. We took about a million pictures between all of us, so I am going to spare you and only post those that I think are important. So, here we go!

These next bunch of pictures are from Quebec City which was very similar to a small city in France. Hardly anyone spoke any English and we all agreed that we the plane had actually taken us across the Atlantic Ocean and dropped us off in France. It was so great!

Here is proof that it was freezing!! We spent the entire trip bundled up. There was a lot of snow and it was like a winter wonderland. :)
Quebec City was a small, quaint city. Here is a picture of a ice skating rink right in the middle of the city. It was so much fun!
This is my brother Tyler, my sister's Emily and Amy, and I posing for a cute picture. This was the first family vacation that we have all been together at in a long time! It was so much fun to be all together.
Here is Travis and I on one of many cool tiny streets in Quebec.
We went to this hotel called Hotel Frontenac which is the most photographed hotel in the world. Right outside of it was this huge toboggan ride. Here is Travis and I on our toboggan getting ready for this ride. I was actually quite nervous.
This is the top of the hill. It looked a lot scarier in person.

The boys had a big race and Taylor and Nate were the big winners. But then I pulled out the proof that Taylor cheated!! I declared Tyler and Travis winners by default!

The must do for when you visit Quebec City is to walk this great little street called le Petit Champlain. It has all these amazing little shops and they are making maple candies outside on tables of snow (hot maple that they pour on ice and wrap around a stick, i didn't really like it but my sister's loved it). We had so much fun walking around and then we had an amazing dinner at one of the local resturants.

To get down to the Petit Champlain, we had to take a funicular. The tracks can be seen in the background of this good looking picture of Travis.

Since it was around Christmas, they had lots of market that sold all sorts of different things. We went to a huge inside market that had so many people selling some cool crafts. Here is a picture of one of the booths.

My mom, sisters and I found a new boyfriend! Unfortunately we couldn't figure out who was lucky enough to take him home so we had to leave him there. :)

We took this huge boat across the river and we actually were breaking through ice as we traveled. It was so amazing. I have never done anything like it!

Going across the river was a perfect picture taking moment!

Here is a picture of that Hotel that I talked about above from across the river. It is a pretty bad picture but you can see how huge it is. It is definitely the focal point of the whole city.

Well, Quebec City was amazing. We had so much fun walking around and seeing all the sights. There are many more pictures to come!

Christmas with Payton and Owen

Since we were in Arizona having Christmas with Travis' parents, we decided to swing by my sister's house to give Payton and Owen their gifts. They were also opening a bunch of presents since they were going to Las Vegas for Christmas. Here are some pictures:

Here is Payton unwrapping her gifts. She was so calm about the whole thing. She was so excited about everything!
Owen still wasn't too sure about the whole Christmas thing but he did love to watch the singing snowman and penguins! It has a button that you press to make them sing and move and he kept pressing it over and over again and laughing! He loved it!
I made Payton a flannel princess blanket. I think she was pretty excited, but then again, if it has any princess on it, she gets pretty excited!
Here is Owen with his sports flannel blanket that I made him. I know he loved it, he kept laughing and laughing. I think the softness of it made him giggle. So adorable!

We were so happy that we were able to stop by and see these two!

Christmas in Arizona!

Travis and I were lucky enough to have Christmas come early this year! We drove up to Arizona to spend the weekend with Barbara and Morris and we celebrated Christmas. It was everything that we could have asked for! We had such an amazing time and I can't thank them enough for making it as wonderful as it was! Here are some pictures from our Christmas in Arizona:

We had an amazing dinner of Prime Rib and mashed potatoes and asparagus! Mom, I actually ate asparagus and found that I liked it! Be proud! But seriously, the food was amazing and the ambiance was perfect. We had some delicious sparkling apple/cranberry/grape (I don't know which) cider and great food on fine china. I can't wait for next year's dinner!Surprise, we had a baby! Haha, just kidding. Here is our niece Lilian! She is just so precious and we threatened many times to take her home with us and pass her as our own child! :)
We were all definitely spoiled this year with all of these presents!
Charlotte had a good time opening all of her presents. Here she is opening up her dress up chest which had so many fun dresses to dress up in. We even got her some fun dress up shoes for her to try on with these dresses!
Travis and I had fun this year thinking up something for his parents. They traveled to San Francisco during Christmas so created this travel bag of fun for them to take on their trip. We got them a book on San Francisco, magazines, books, a scarf, some gloves, a luggage lock, and of course, the essential travel neck pillow! We hope that they enjoyed using all of our stuff on their trip. (P.S. we want to see some pictures!)
Teagan and Shaun got a great new laptop computer! Yes it is actually green!
I was lucky and I got to hold Lilian while her parents were opening their gifts...my favorite thing to do.

Well, we definitely had an amazing Christmas this year. Thanks again for everything Barbara and Morris! We both look forward to what next year brings!