Dirty, Dirty!

For the last month we have spent much of our time getting our house ready to be listed. It has been a crazy month of painting, fixing, finishing touches, clearing out and just generally being busy around the house. One of the things that did take a back seat to all of our busyness was cleaning. Sad, I know, but somehow it seemed more important that the tile was grouted, the flower beds edged, and the lights be replaced. So needless to say there was a little more dirt and a lot more dog hair in corners and under beds.

The clean-up started in earnest on Friday when Scott came home with......wait for it.....wait for it.....a DYSON!!!! It was nearly an all out fight who was going to use it first, we were both so excited. Our previous vacuum has suffered along with a very annoying, high pitched scream for the past, oh, seven years! And it didn't do much in terms of picking up the dirt.

Scott won out in trying it first but he did satisfy me with a glimpse of the very full canister when he finished the first one square meter of carpet in the basement. Dirt, sand, dog hair and I'm sure some other nasty things were all swirling around in its see through canister. It's a lovely, lovely machine that vacuums carpet, hard floors, and even has a great dusting attachment (no more do I have an excuse for why my shutters are so filthy!). I think we would've slept with it in our room if that wasn't super weird.

So that's it......my latest "Greatest Thing Ever" is a vacuum cleaner. And I don't care if it is weird that I love it that much. It may even get a name one day.

Technology

We just introduced two new pieces of techno gear into our house and so far I am loving it! And so are Scott and the boys.

AppleTV and Netflix. They are just plain cool. I am loving getting to watch podcasts and flicking on a TV episode and watching it quickly. The little boys are finding new shows that aren't typically on TreeHouse or CBC Kids. Scott is, of course, loving the movies and we are beginning to explore the long list of documentaries.

Could this be the end of cable in our house? There is a very real possibility that it is!

Grassi Lakes

I needed something to restart my venture into blogging and what better day than Father's Day. Celebrating a wonderful father and husband!

We decided that a hike in the mountains would be a great trip for the whole family - dog included. I was picking the hike and right up until Friday afternoon I had no idea where we would be going. We haven't taken the kids on too many hikes at this point but we do know that they always take much longer than the hiking guides tell us! Before I had a chance to seriously panic about where we would be going, a girlfriend of mine, who had stopped in for an impromptu afternoon visit, suggested a quick little hike above Canmore. I ran with it and on Saturday afternoon we headed off to Canmore to hike the Grassi Lakes trail.

I had managed to do a quick bit of research before going so I knew that there were two routes. An easy route and a more difficult route. The more difficult route apparently had the better views so we decided to tackle that one. It was not an overly difficult route - the most difficult section had a somewhat steep set of rock stairs. Both boys navigated the stairs "all by my self" just fine (with a little hand holding at the really tricky parts). And lets just say that the difficult route certainly gave us spectacular views!

Owen and his Dada

In Front of The Falls

At the top of the trail there are two crystal clear little lakes and loads of rock climbers on the rock face behind it. There were also places to sit and just enjoy the view and being in the mountains....which we may have enjoyed longer had it not been for the hovering grey clouds and occasional drops of rain. We opted to take the easy route down as we were hoping to avoid getting totally drenched! The easy route didn't have the spectacular views but we also didn't have to worry about a kid falling off of a cliff :)

We deemed this as a gem of a little hike - amazing views, not too challenging for little legs, and a few great benches along the way.