With Zach being gone, and Zandra heading off to YW camp, we decided to take  the little boys (ok, I know that they aren’t little anymore at 12 and 14, but they are always my littles….) away for a bit. But before I get to that, here’s a little bit of the week leading up.

Gabe arrived home on Tuesday night last week, but unfortunately, Rob had to be away in Edmonton the whole week, so we didn’t see Gabe until Rob was home. (This is a huge downfall of being in a stepfamily; I would have loved to welcome him home (and get the airport pics)… but while the cat’s away, the one set of mice are confined to staying at home in isolation without interacting with the other set of mice . Haha. Hopefully it will get even better as the mice grow (as it is starting to). But I know people must wonder why Zach  and Josh have more frequent guest appearances on this blog (and I get things like airport shots with them), but it’s due to the flexibility of the schedule and relationship and I am around them a lot more to capture it all. 

Anyhow. Good to have Gabe home and it was super handy to also have him around to help build some new backyard furniture:)

We sure worked him hard: 

Josh and I had a really good time on our own during the week having dinner together, getting some shopping done, and he even walked Reggie with me!

I guess I worked them both hard too!? 

Aw. Reg.

Anyhow, we convinced Gabe to come away with us for at least the weekend (he wanted to be home doing some temp work while he’s in town for just over a month and then heading back to school to work full time on his off track semester. BYUI is a year round school and offers 3 tracks (semesters) per year.  He does 2 tracks/semesters between January and July and then has his summer 6 weeks off; then he has an off track where he can work).

We made our way up to the condo timeshare we had traded for. We had been there in the winter for skiing and had a good experience, so we figured a nice simple place would be good (especially with the US exchange rate, we were happy to stay in Canada!)

Side note: doesn’t Rob always look so awesome driving? 

We settled in and right away the boys headed off to play tennis. (Although I wanted to play, I have this crazy tennis elbow, plus I want Gabe to spend as much time with everyone as possible) We had a nice dinner, and then everyone just chilled and headed to bed.

The next day we started the day with more tennis. Despite the heat, the boys played for a couple hours (I just played a little bit, being gentle with my elbow).

We spent the afternoon at the beach area where we kayaked and pedal boated (I didn’t get any pictures the first day with Gabe, darn it!) and then the boys played their variation of volleyball and then had some dock jumping competitions.

Finished the day off with a movie and everyone to bed relatively early…

Gabe hung out with us all for one more day, then Rob drove him to Ottawa to catch a train home. The littles were sure happy to have their big brother around with them and we certainly enjoyed getting some quality and quantity time with him. It’s hard to nail these big kids down for some prime time!

The next few days included more of the same: we started the day with tennis, and often went back to more tennis in the afternoon! I’ll spare you more tennis pics tho….

I convinced them to go on a short hike.

We went out for a meal (the boys had three little piggy poutine!) 

We enjoyed time in the water kayaking and paddle boarding (which of course the boys used in creative ways; but since I was out on the water with them they will remain undocumented).

The boys were extra happy that I enforced reading time (heaven for me to read!), and we completed an online course together about “developing good study skills.” They were super excited to do it at the end of every day after the beach. The wifi was strong in my room so the bed became the study hall:) 

At night, we went by the fire for some smores too (after more tennis, of course)

We also had an awesome day white water rafting. Unfortunately no pictures of that since you can’t bring your phone or camera (I didn’t have my waterproof one as I didn’t know we would be going). So just some amazing memories to treasure! We got to do a ton of swimming too in the beautiful Ottawa river (including going down some rapids which was fun – but hard work!!) The boys decided the “High Adventure” rafting run would make a perfect future boys trip! Here’s the brochure. Pretend it’s us on the cover:

We had a bit of cloudy weather, so we headed to the indoor pool, where due to boredom, the boys succumbed to using some of the old blow up toys I still had and brought:

And of course, the hot tub:

And that just about sums up our adventure. We decided to head home a bit earlier to catch up on all the fun stuff like cleaning and groceries as we have an exciting weekend: Zandra comes home, Zach comes home and Gabe is home! And for a glorious 24 hours we will have just some CDF time! (Before we welcome some guests who we are super excited to have! )