Weekend in Banff

Two weekends ago was the annual Winterstart race in Banff. I signed up months ago when I was 5 or 6 months pregnant and in some pregnancy delusion, I thought that I would be able to run 8K (in snow, at night, the first half uphill) roughly 12 weeks after giving birth to a third child. Two weeks before the race I gave up the dream and we decided to head up to Banff for a family weekend anyway. Alan didn't have school and Isabelle had the Friday off so we went up on Thursday night and came back Sunday afternoon.

We had a blast!

We stayed at the Douglas Fir and the kids LOVED the waterslides. I was surprised that they even worked up the courage to go down but with a couple of life jackets on, they climbed the stairs and went down continuously. Isabelle was able to go down by herself but Kyla still needed Alan or I to go with her. We took turns while the other one hung out with Kendra in the not-too-hot-tub.

We also went up the Banff Gondola with our friends Casey & Bryce (and their kids Logan, Faith & Dylan - Boy, when you get two families together that each have three kids, it's wonderful chaos!) and enjoyed some hot chocolate & cookies at the top.

We did the usual Banff "stuff" like the Old Spaghetti Factory. We also tried to do the hotsprings but they were closed.

It was nice getaway that made us think that traveling with 3 small kids can be done as long as you are smart about it: Make sure the kids have a separate room (so Mom & Dad can watch TV & talk at night), make sure the hotel has something fun for everyone to do (like waterslides!) and order in as much as possible (after all, who wants to take 3 small kids in a restaurant while on holidays?).