December Fun (with special guest appearances)

Yep. My Mum and Dad came to visit!!! They were so much fun and so cute all rugged up in winter woolies.. can't believe I got to share some of this adventure with them. I think they gave me some of my biggest laughs of the year!! The only problem was they made me laugh so much I never managed to photograph what it was they were doing that was so funny... ie. falling off chair lifts, running into each other on a downhill cross country skiing :)

This is the view from the gondola overlooking Banff.


Scenes below from our little day trip to Lake Louise... it was our first male moose sighting!!







It just had to be done. We had to go to Lake Louise, play in the ice castle and then have tea with scones and jam in the Chateau.. Daaaarrrling!

Cross country skiing. Well, what can I say. Mum got it... dad - didn't :) For a good downhill skier his true colours just never really shone on the trail. Hilarious!!!! I believe he'll tell you he doesn't like cross country skiing...

Dad and Josh bonded in the kitchen!! and produced some excellent meals..

Skiing with Mum and Dad!! Their first time in around 20 years.

I will laugh for the rest of my life when I remember Mum and Dad falling off their first chair lift in 20 years into a tangled heap (yep - one of the moments I was laughing too hard to record it on camera) and Mum 'just letting it go' down a steep slope and almost making it. It was so cold up there and Mum ended up wearing a balaclava (not a look I ever thought I'd see on Mum), Dad wasn't converted until his first frostbite spot on his nose!! Must say - my old Dad had some good form on those slopes.. I was following his tail most of the time.

Hilarious!!! and doesn't Dad look good in Josh's boarding outfit!

and what's a day skiing if not finished off with some hot springs action!!

Look at the bluebird day Lake Louise put when we took Dad there skiing..

Our trip to Jasper via the Icefields Parkway

That's Dad eating ice??? and me standing on lake Louise..


We did an icewalk through Maligne Canyon in Jasper. Pretty stunning stuff...

Josh is actually inside that frozen waterfall.. which isn't really a waterfall but water leaching out from the rock and freezing on top of each other..

Mum wasn't a big fan of driving in snow and ice..

Our second trip along the Icefields parkway was a different story this time.

We saw a herd of mountain sheep, Elk and even a wolf (and that will teach us never to leave the camera in the boot again)

For our work christmas party they booked out the closest ski field (Norquay) and we went night skiing, drinking, eating way too much and danced till we could dance no more!!

On the streets of banff just before Christmas.


Christmas preparations in Banff...

Ice skating is another 'one of the most hilarious thing's I've ever seen Josh do' times. Mind you by the end of the day he was the one doing the best leg lifts and corners.. This is on the river down the road from our house.

You could still see logs and air bubbles in the ice and really BIG cracks. There was lots of squealing but it's so strong you could apparently drive a car over it.


These kinds of cracks gave me the heebie jeebies!!