Banff, Canada

So I was scared to death to leave my two precious little boys for our first vacation alone, how in the world would I survive without them??? But am I sure glad that we did it! They survived just fine- in fact they LOVED the time that they got to spend with their grandparents, and I actually came home feeling extremely rested and rejuvinated.

We had a great time and met some great people that hopefully we can stay in touch with!

We stayed in a beautiful hotel (castle- built in the late 1800's) right at the base of the Bow River. The view from our room was gorgeous. Banff is a small town right in the middle of a national park in Canada. We were right in the middle of the Canadian Rockies- and I know that we live right in the Rockies...but these mountains were HUGE- and just went straight up. They really were beautiful.

All of the rivers and lakes that are there are fed from glaciers on top of the mountains. When the glazier waters melt it takes with it the sediments from the limestone mountain, leaving the waters this beautiful turquoise color. They said that the water is the brightest in the spring time, and then as the sediments settle on the bottom of the lake floor the water will slowly loose the color and by fall time it just looks like normal water. I have never seen water as beautiful- I can only imagine what it looks like in the spring!



We went on a white water rafting trip and had quite the experience! The other raft that was with us tipped in the first rapid and dumped five people off (there were two that stayed on). Among the rafters that fell in was a 70 year old woman. She wasn't quick enough to grab onto the raft and started down the freezing river to the next rapid. Our raft tried throwing her a rope, which she missed. as the other raft was still trying to get the rest of their people back on we had to chase her down before she hit the next set of rapids. We caught up to her and Jeremy pulled her in the boat. She honestly thought she was going to die...and we were a little scared for her also. She was completely white, and couldn't breathe. We got to the side of the river where she could relax and rest a little. She ended up being fine- but it was definetly a scarey experience!

(sorry about the pictures that are sideways...it's a challenge for me even to get a post off- let a lone figure out how to change the way the picture is...could someone who knows how to do this explain it to me in computer/photography illiterate terms???)

Got Insurance?

Last night I had a baby shower for Alicia, Jeremy's sister, over at our house. Jeremy took the boys out for a night out at the park. He came home about 7:45 and said that we needed to go up to the office right away, that someone had run their car through our building. He didn't have any more details. We pulled up to this...

That is Jeremy's office. If this happened while he was here my wonderful husband would be gone!!! I was sick when I saw this. The guy driving the van went into a diabetic seizure and hit his foot on the gas about 50 yards south of our building. He crossed four lanes of traffic on State Street, without hitting anyone, and ran into our office building. When the police got there the man was still seizing and his foot was still on the gas so the car's tire was just spinning on our carpet (the car was pushing Jeremy's desk up agains the other side of the wall in his office). Notice in the first picture how close the van is to hitting the natural gas pipes! We could have exploded! To say the least I feel EXTREMELY blessed today that things turned out as good as they did. Jeremy's been wanting a new front to his building- I guess now's the time to do it! Thank goodness for insurance!!

(The police told us that the man is ok- that the accident didn't injure him, and that they were able to get his blood sugar to get the seizures back under control.)