The last two days of our road trip to Cold Lake were good…but very busy!  We are here now and although I am happy to have finally reached our destination and be finished with long days in the car, I am still not quite sure about how I feel to be living here.  I’m sure it’ll get easier with each passing day as the sights and sounds of Northern Alberta become more familiar.

To update you all on the last to days though, here are some pics!

The Calgary Zoo is a great zoo!  We had a tone of fun checking out all the animals with Josie, Trevor and their little boy Ben.  It was an absolutely perfect zoo day – early September, warm and sunny and at 9:30 it seemed like we were the only people there!  It was actually kind of cool in the morning and so all the animals (like this Red Panda) were moving about and even playing!  It was one of my best zoo experiences ever.

Seeing this Gorilla baby was definitely one of the highlights of the day.  Her motions in sleep looked so much like Nate’s it was unreal and totally adorable.  She looked to only be about 8-10 lbs, but was completely content curled up in the straw all by herself and I couldn’t resist taking about a million pictures.

The Snow Leopard was just chillin’ in her hammock.

Josie, Ben and Trevor were awesome zoo-visiting companions!  They just moved to Calgary a week ago and so totally understand the ups and downs of moving across the country with an infant!  I met Josie online through her Dad and her sister and we started communicating when she began reading my blog, we’ve kept in touch for months now and I’m super excited that we finally got to spend a day together and meet eachother’s significant others and little ones.  Thanks Josie!

After the zoo we were invited over to my cousin Heather’s house for dinner with her family and my cousin Wendy’s family.  It was our first time meeting Heather’s little girl Keira, and Wendy’s youngest boy David and their first time meeting Nate.  Dinner was great (we were so thankful not to be eating in a restaurant!!) and the kiddos all had fun stealing eachothers’ toys and playing in the playhouse and on the slide!  I’m sure you all know how challenging it can be to get a picture of 4 busy little bodies…so you’ll forgive the photo quality here!

Our 6th and final day on the road was a long one.  We left Calgary just before 7am and headed North to Edmonton to pick up Grandma Campbell (Dale’s Mom) at the Airport.  She is staying with us in Cold Lake for 10 days to help with Nate and the unpacking – for which we are exceptionally thankful!  After a quick stop for lunch in Fort Saskatchewan we pushed on Northeast towards Cold Lake.  The only other stop we made was to capture this photo-of-the-day overlooking the beautiful North Saskatchewan River:

The bright fall colours and lush view of the river valley were a welcome break from the seemingly unending fields of wheat and straight stretched of highway.

And now here we are in Cold Lake, anxiously awaiting a call from our Realtor telling us that we finally have possession of our house and the keys are ready to be picked up.  Unfortunately, even though our furniture and boxes will be delivered today, they are not coming to unpack us until Monday, so we still have 3 more days to wait things out in a hotel, which I could certainly do without.  On the bright side, we should have some time to paint the bedrooms this weekend and get at least that stinky chore out of the way.

So this concludes my road trip updates, but look for 1st Birthday post coming your way very soon…and new-house pics as soon as I can take some!