Vacation!

Greg and I have been married almost a year and a half and had never been on a vacation longer than 3 days! Greg has always been in school and had done 7 straight terms. He finally had a break though! He took summer term off and it has been awesome. I haven't been to Canada in almost two years and I was getting extremely home sick. So we decided to take advantage of Greg being out of school and go to Canada. We had a rough time getting everything ready because of more bad luck with cars, but it only set us back a few hours for our trip. We got to Calgary at about 1:30 AM Saturday night/Sunday morning, however you want to look at it, exhausted and relieved we made it safely. The week was filled with enjoying the scenery, eating tons of delicious food, lots of shopping, and visiting some really cool spots. We stayed with my grandparents and had so much fun with them. If you have ever seen Everybody Loves Raymond, you will feel like you know my grandparents. They are so much like Frank and Marie it is hilarious. Not quite as bad haha but just enough to be funny. It was really cool to be able to talk to both of them about working in Norway, how they met, and coming to Canada. On Monday they took us to Banff. Banff is one of my favourite places in the world. It is breathtakingly beautiful.

On top of gorgeous scenery, there is the cutest little town in Banff. It is very quaint and European feeling and there is tons of great shopping.

Not my best picture, but it has my grandparents in it :)

Tuesday we got to go to the Calgary Temple with my grandpa. Greg and I got to go to the open house of this Temple when we were dating so it was great to go back. It was so beautiful. Alberta is known for their wheat and for having tons of wild roses. They really incorporated that into the temple. The handles all had the wheat and the stain glad showed it too. So beautiful.

Wednesday was a day full of shopping. We spent less on gas than we planned so we got to go crazy shopping. The conversion was also in our favour which was awesome. There is a store in Canada that I always go to. They always have amazing deals on shoes, jewelry, and other accessories. I bought 3 pairs of great shoes for $15! I was quite thrilled. My grandma and I also made her chocolate chip cookies. THEY ARE THE BEST COOKIES EVER. My grandpa doesn't even like cookies that much and he ate like 6 in one go. She also made us Norwegian pancakes which are my favourite. They are like crepes but a littler thicker, which makes them more delicious. Thursday was our last day in Calgary so we did some candy shopping. The chocolate in Canada is sooo good. We stocked up. My grandparents also took us to an Asian fusion buffet. One of my favourite things they have in Alberta is ginger fried beef. It is so good. I love Chinese food, but for some reason it is better in Canada. I ate about two platefuls of all sorts of delicious things and then had 3 helpings of just ginger fried beef. I felt sick after, but it was totally worth it. I promise I'll be hitting the gym now that we're home... Thursday night my uncle Erik took us to a movie. We went and saw Guardians of the Galaxy. I loved it! It was super funny, and a bit of a tear jerker. When we got home from the movie we stayed up talking to my grandparents until about 2 AM. We had planned to get up early and leave but talking with them was so great we decided it was well worth it and just left a little later than we planned. Friday morning we got up and loaded the car, said our goodbyes and headed out. Another thing you have to have in Canada is a Slurpee. I don't know what makes them better up there, but they are better. So before we left Calgary, we stopped and got Slurpees. So good! We wanted to stop and see some people on my mom's side of the family too so we were driving down to southern Alberta. We wanted to go to the Cardston Temple but we just missed the session so we just walked around it and took pictures. It was such an awesome looking temple! The bit we saw inside was awesome too.

After the temple, we went to the Remington Carriage Museum. My great grandpa, Don Remington, was a cattle rancher and in construction. As a hobby, he restored old carriages. He had about 50 of them and before he died he donated them to the Canadian government for them to open a museum in his home town of Cardston. Since I'm a descendant, we got in free which was nice. It was so cool to see all the things he built/restored, put his initials on, and hear about all the people who rode in his carriages like the Queen of England and her sons, a couple prophets, and a few Olympic athletes rode in them when the Olympics were held in Calgary. When we went into the Restoration part of the museum it was awesome to see how they fix them up. The guy working in there made me a prairie diamond ring. He told us when pioneers were crossing the plains they had no way to get an actual ring to propose with so they would take horseshoe nails and wrap it around to make a ring. It actually looks pretty cool. It was pouring rain and cold when we left the museum so we decided to make a stop at Tim Horton's, another must go place in Canada. I guess their coffee is really good, but we stuck to the hot chocolate. Man was it good! I crave their hot chocolate sometimes because it is so creamy and rich and chocolatey. Their doughnuts are also super good. We drove on to Lethbridge and went to my Uncle Wayne and Aunt Barbara's house. They are my mom's aunt and uncle. They had a delicious dinner and dessert for us and we played games with them and our practically family friend Inge. It was a blast. That sadly, was our last full day in Canada. We got up and left pretty early in the morning. Everything was going well until about an hour outside of Helena, MT. We were driving along and it felt like something kind of slipped, it's hard to describe, and then the check engine light came on. Uh oh. It kept slipping occasionally but Helena was the only place we could stop so we had to keep going, praying the whole time. We made it and went to an Auto Zone to have them read the check engine light code. Unfortunately Greg's car was too old for them to read it so we had to find a mechanic that was open. There was only one open on Saturday. We drove over there but they couldn't check it either because they didn't have an actual mechanic there either. The guy helping us was a really nice LDS guy though who was going to let us stay with him if we needed to stay there. But we decided to chance it and drive on. So we drove over to Costco to fill up gas. I ran inside to the washroom and when I was running out to the car I saw a car with a license plate that read "HVE FTH" and I thought, "Ok, we'll have faith then. I felt very calm and knew everything would be ok. So we got back on the freeway and when we stopped 4 hours later in Idaho Falls to fill up, the check engine light went out! We are so blessed and glad that Heavenly Father was watching out for us and for the tender mercy of the license plate. I also love that I know I married the right person for me. He was so calm during everything and handled everything like a pro while I freaked out. And after spending 30+ hours in the car for this trip and being together 24/7 for 9 days, I still wanted to spend time with him and we still text all day when we aren't together and I am so glad to have such a great man in my life. I couldn't have asked for a better husband.