Once again...Long time no blog....woops! Life's been a little crazy, to say the least. But, we do have some fun things to blog about!

In August we made a road trip up to Alberta!!!!!!!!! We were mostly in Waterton, but spent a day or two in Calgary as well :)

Oh how we love Alberta!!!

And why do we go to Alberta?! So we can drink CANADIAN SLURPEES!!!!!!!!! We enjoyed about a half dozen of these in the week we were there...and most of the time we were not in a place with a 7-11 :) TJ had been asking me for months before what I was the most excited for, and I answered him Canadian slurpees.

Cute cute picture of Gramps at the cabin in Waterton.

We saw about 5 bears in Waterton! It's so fun to see bears, and to see them so close! This is taken without any zoom on the camera.

The main event in Waterton is hiking, and this is most of the group that hiked up to Crandell Lake

While we were at Crandell enjoying our lunch and throwing many, many rocks, there were a bunch of clouds that totally covered the mountains, but there was a tiny little break when you could see the peak of one of the mountains, and we thought it looked pretty cool.

And what would a trip to Waterton be without a weenie roast?! It was raining outside, but that didn't stop us!

This is little Kira playing with the Vortex. All the kids loved throwing this around.

Wall Lake was another thing that was a must-do in Waterton. Wall Lake is absolutely beautiful, and it's a great place to fish. This is how excited my dad was about fishing :)

Wall is a beautiful hike. This is on the trail just before you enter the clearing where you can see the whole lake, but you can kind of see the mountains that form the "wall" of Wall Lake in the background.

A view of Wall.

So we may or may not have got a lure stuck in the tree....haha! Team TJ and Brad to the rescue!

Michael (our little cousin) loved to smash all the mushrooms he could while we were walking on the trail, so we had our eyes open looking for them, and we found this purple mushroom! It really is purple. We took a picture so people really would believe us.

Bears Hump is about a 3/4 mile hike that is straight up the whole way, with stairs on the switch backs so you don't fall down the mountain. The hike is completely worth it, because you can see this when you get to the top! That's all of Waterton, and looking down the water goes right into Montana.

Us on top of Bears Hump.

There are TONS of chipmunks on the top of Bears Hump, and they're all little chunkers too. People think they're so cute, so they feed them their food and candy they have, resulting in the chipmunks being fat and not afraid of people. TJ had a lot of fun trying to get some cool shots of them, and this is my favorite that he got.

Red Rock Canyon! This was TJ's favorite place. He seriously could have stayed here all day. It's kind of like a slot canyon with water running through it. You can hike up through the water and it's a lot of fun. The water is straight from a glacier, though, so it's freeeeezing! But your feet get numbed in the first couple minutes and then it's not so bad! Tons of fun :)

Some parts get pretty deep, as you can see in this picture! TJ was pretty proud of himself.

Surry bikes!!! These are so fun. You can rent these and ride 'em around town. Mom is taking the easy way out, no pedals in the middle!

Sunday afternoon some of us girl cousins/aunt had a nail painting party.

Classic picture at Cameron Falls

We went up to the Prince of Wales at night, and TJ took some pretty cool shots. This one's my favorite.

Angie, Brad, Mom, Me, TJ at the lookout point hiking up to Bertha Falls.

Bertha Falls

Us at Bertha Falls

End of Waterton. :( The weekend after we got back from Waterton was graduation! I'm not graduated yet...but I'll graduate in December and they don't have any ceremonies then, so I didn't wanna wait until April to walk, so I walked in August! Here's me with my "diploma"

It was a really fun weekend! The whole family was out here for it. Mom and Dad drove down from Calgary and Sarah and Christian and their kids drove out from California to spend the weekend! It was a lot of fun getting to hang out with everyone.

This is a picture of me with Katie and Anna. I'm impressed they're both looking at the camera and smiling!

Mom and Dad. Thanks for coming and supporting me!!! You guys are the best :)

And my dear, sweet husband who supports me through all my crazy schooling. I guess he deserves a little recognition too :) Thanks, love, for all you do for me!!! (isn't he handsome?!)

So the wind picked up RIGHT when we were finishing taking pictures. This picture is proof of that, haha!

Thank you family for such a fun weekend! We don't have pictures of anything else we did, but we definitely had a lot of fun mini golfing, watching Star Trek, playing Wii, eating dinner at Brick Oven, picnics and just hanging out :)

Just FYI, no obligation whatsoever, I started another blog about the media in my life. I'm taking a class on Media, Family and Human Development and it is SO interesting, I love it. One of my assignments is posting 2 blog posts a week, just on a reaction to media in my life, so if you ever get bored, you can read it. The blog address is kristaandthemedia.blogspot.com

So feel free to read, but really, you don't have to and I wouldn't be offended if you didn't :)