This is one of the dishes we are making, Chicken Cordon Blue casserole. I made it the last time I freezer cooked and it was a raving favorite! We are definitely making more of these! Yummo!
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| A free invitation card by Smilebox |
This past weekend, Sept long, we jumped in a truck with our friends, Trudy and Wes Dombroskie and headed off North. Our destination? Liard River Hot Springs and anything in-between!
It was a lot of driving to get there, we went the first day to Fort Nelson and that was our main base for the weekend. We got in early in the evening and went for dinner and then called it an early night. The next morning after a fantastic free continental breakfast we hit the Alaska Highway and went further North than any of us had every been before!
Right out of Fort Nelson the scenery turned to gorgeous foothills and then eventually mountains. It took us almost 4 hours to reach the hot springs but we were stopping all the time! We saw lots of wildlife on the trip: elk, goats, bears, a fox, ravens, and an owl. We were hoping the see a grizzly but that didn’t pan out, we saw 2 black bears instead.
All in all we had a great time and the springs were very nice, not at all commercialized like in Radium or Miette. Still natural and not concrete!
Here are some pictures from the trip! These ones were taken right outside of Fort Nelson, maybe 50kms away.
I was so excited that we got to stop at Muncho Lake! I had heard that it was gorgeous there and I was not let down. The water is jade green from the stone below leaching I think copper into it. It was so clear, clean and just as gorgeous green as you see in the pictures!
Liard River Hot Springs. It is a short 5 min walk through the woods to get to the springs but as you can see it is as natural as you can get! The only man made stuff are the walkways and a small waterfall you can see in the top right picture that also dams the hot springs to the top pool. There are 3 separate pools to these springs but you can only go into these two. The other one is apparently 34 feet deep and upwards of 70 degrees Celsius! I’m pretty sure I’m okay with not jumping in there!
Randy did the “Rite of passage” at the springs though. He was told about it by some guys at work. Apparently you take a small rock from near the man made waterfall and walk it to the other end and see if you can make it all the way to the end to place the rock on the ledge above the hot spring itself. Well he did it! He said the last couple of steps felt like boiling water pouring on his legs though! I couldn’t go in them as much as I wanted since I was pregnant and had to be careful so I stuck to the lower pool where the river starts and the water is like bath water temperature. It is so amazing that these sorts of things exist!
It was a fun trip, something I can see us doing again! We talked about some possibilities for the next trip but nothing solid of course. Randy and I will be grounded at home for most of next year with our new little one so sneaking off without kids will prove to be a bit more difficult!
Week 2 at the lake was very laid back. It was just Ethan and I from Tuesday to Friday hanging out until Randy came up for the weekend. We mostly just played at the park, read books and played trains and enjoyed some peace and quiet. I read something like 7 books on this vacation, it was AWESOME!!!
When we were home in GP for the weekend I picked up a little hibachi BBQ for the RV since our main one was missing parts that I couldn’t buy. Of course it came unassembled…well armed with a butter knife and determination to have BBQ I assembled it myself on one of our first days back to camp. I was so proud of myself, LOL!
We came up every weekend for the rest of July and for our last night at the lake we were invited to a HUGE beach BBQ party down at our beach. We were thrilled to be included! It was an early celebration of the camp owner, Harold’s birthday. They had slow cooked a giant prime rib all day and also had lamb chops and pork chops and tonnes of salads and sides. Of course I was suffering from the worst case of pregnancy related I HATE ALL RED MEAT ever so I didn’t join in on the food. The best part of the whole night for me was that Ethan made a fast friend, Ben, and they played ALL night! I literally mean ALL night! We had to pry them apart at midnight to go to bed. The next morning they both were up for 8am and itching to play again…it was so cute! They posed for some pictures for me, check out how cute they are!
Randy and Harold also posed for some pictures! Harold was our host for the whole month and is the owner of the the Marina.
This was a great summer vacation for our family. Admittedly it was a bit hectic to go there every single weekend and I sure missed just being home but it forced us to go out and enjoy the summer and our family and not just sit around the house. Or worse yet, renovate all summer! Will we do it again next summer? We’re not sure yet, if we do it won’t be to go ever single weekend, that was a bit much and quite exhausting. We really liked the lake and the people, no question to that! So we will see, life will be busier next year with a new little one joining the family in January…
I do know that I could get used to watching my little man and his soon to be sibling grow up from this view:
What a wonderful vacation we had this summer! We made it to the LAKE! We enjoyed a great visit with my best friend of almost 20 years, Melissa and her son Caleb for the first week. It was a busy, active week and we crammed in a lot of activities.
We got to the campground on the Sunday night and got all settled in and had a campfire. On Monday we went into the nearby town of Chetwynd and checked out the visitor centre, wood carvings and had lunch from a food truck called “Everybody Loves Raymond”. The remainder of our day was filled with walking around the lake, playing at the park and relaxing at the campsite.
On Tuesday we headed to Tumbler Ridge, the place of dinosaurs and waterfalls! We ended up doing a 2km hike in the rain to see the dinosaur tracks…it was not fun for pregnant, out of shape me. Ethan looked so cute putting his hands into the dinosaur prints in the creek bed!
We stopped at Gwillim Lake on our way back to our lake…it was really nice and we took some pictures with the kids there.
Melissa and the boys had evenings of playing catch while we were there. We had stopped at Value Village in Grande Prairie before heading out and bought a ball glove for Melissa so she could play with Caleb. While we were there I found one almost the perfect size for Ethan so I grabbed it for him. Apparently my son is a natural at playing catch. To my knowledge he has never worn a ball glove before. He put it on and knew what to do like he was on old pro though! These pictures don’t do justice to how cute he was playing catch with them!
On Wednesday we headed to the WAC Bennett Dam. Randy, Ethan and I had been the year before so we knew what to expect. However we heard that the spillway was open and were so excited to see that! It has only been open 9 times in the last almost 50 years and we were going to get to see it! I was so excited!
It’s hard to grasp how big that spill waterfall is from the pictures…it was enormous! We ended up coming back up the following weekend to the dam with Randy just so he could see it…it truly was something to remember!
The week with Melissa and Caleb drew to a close on Thursday when they left to spend the night at our house in GP. Caleb had to be in St Paul, AB on Friday for provincial soccer tournaments. They decided to break their trip up as it was a long drive there.
After they left Ethan and I didn’t have a vehicle to tour anywhere…which I was very happy about! I was tired out from all the running and just wanted to relax at the campsite. So Ethan and I played in the lake, went to the play park, relaxed at the RV and just generally chilled out. Randy came up on the weekend to join us and our friends Trudy, Wes and their daughter Sydney came on Saturday with Trudy’s parents.
On Sunday we headed home for Grande Prairie as we had to take Randy back to work on Monday. We went via the Dam and through Fort St John so we could stop for some Vietnamese food at our favourite restaurant there. It’s a beautiful drive with some very scenic river views on the way to Fort St John. These pictures are from one of our favourite look out spots on the drive. The day was kind of hazy but you get the idea…the canola crops are bright yellow and there are fields of wildflowers everywhere!
Ethan and I stayed in Grande Prairie until Tuesday before heading back to the lake. We relaxed on our last week…other than going to the pool we stayed close to the campsite and just played and read books. I was happy to have read like 9 books in the two weeks!
Keep posted for Part 2 of our Vacation!
What a fun day! Curious Ethan had a blast at his Curious George party! I had lots of fun with this one…I bought the invites and thank you cards off or a great designer on Etsy…The Paper Giraffe Shop. Loved them!
I wanted to knock it out of the park and have some awesome decorations for his party so I bought a kit off another designer on Etsy…it was such a great deal and made the party decorations look awesome!
We had Monkey Tails for lunch (Hot Dogs) with Monkey chips, Monkey Chow, Monkey Cake, Tutti Fruiti Tray, Veggies and Monkey Dip, and Monkey Juice.
We had the usual crowd invited this year…unfortunately Aimie and kids from Ethan’s daycare couldn’t make it. We had Leanne and her boys, Wyatt and Morgan; Erin and Corbin, and new additions Trudy, Wes and Sydney. It was a blast!
We had some fun games we played…Pin the butterfly on the log, Curious George coloring sheets, and of course a Monkey Piñata! The kids had a blast and we enjoyed watching them play!
Ethan got some great presents from his friends…he got an awesome slip and slide from Morgan and Wyatt, some beach toys from Corbin and a Thomas the train Mega Block set from his little buddy Sydney. Grandma Grounds gave him a remote control helicopter. We gave him a Curious George board game, a Curious George stuffy, a bike Helmet and kneepads, and a 3D Glow in the dark color thingy. I can’t wait to play the board game…it won a Gold Award for best toy by 2 different groups! We are going to have our first game tomorrow night!
It was such a great day, the best part was sharing it with friends! We are so grateful to have such a great group to call our friends…Thanks to everyone.
Well this was a super fun birthday…what to do next year??? Hmmm I already have my mind ticking!
