Happy Hour at the Grandparents

Sorry for my delay in getting this post out there. I've had to do some work on other things. Thanks to those who are hanging in there.

First stop! Salmo! Wahoo. For those of you who do not know, Salmo is located in southern BC, nowhere near Vancouver and nothing like Vancouver. It's a half-hour from Creston, BC where, incidentally, I was born and Kokanee beer is brewed. (Thankfully, Kokanee and I have little else in common.) My grandparents live in Salmo, or rather, just outside of Salmo. They have lived in the same house since (I think Grandpa said) 1962. This is slightly insane to me because I have lived in at least 19 places since 1976. It is also incredibly comforting because the earliest memories of visiting my grandparents are in the same house where we go to visit them.

As far as I can tell, Salmo is incredibly un-cool. The only thing it's got going for it is my family, as far as I'm concerned. Sure, now there's a Subway at the Esso and a free sani-dump by playground, but other than that, there's very little going on in Salmo. As far as my grandparents are concerned, we don't visit enough, which is fair since we have little ones that are growing so quickly and they don't see enough of them. They are always welcome up at our place and we'd be more than happy to sleep on Zoe's floor in exchange for their company for a few days (that's for you, Grandma!).

Even after our layover in Red Deer, we managed to get into Salmo around 10:00 PM, which wasn't so bad, considering. When I called Grandma from Fernie to tell her where we were, I asked how far Fernie was from Salmo (having not done the math in my head yet and figuring she might just have this information on the tip of her brain). She tells me, "Oh, it's about 5 hours." Immediately I knew she had her numbers off... or she thought we were walking or something, but I didn't say anything because there's not much point in arguing and we'll get there when we get there. When we arrived, everyone was just settling in to go to bed and they got us set up in the new (well, new to us) guest cabin that my grandfather built. It's great! We eventually got the kids settled down and managed to lay still all night while hardly sleeping until 5:30 AM, when our children decided to wake up.

The days were spent almost entirely outside, which is a welcome change for us. Outside here means the buzz of traffic, various people yelling at each other (though this mostly happens in the wee hours of the night or the wee hours of the morning), and the pfffffffffffffff of the bus in front of our house. So it is nice to settle into my grandparents' backyard, which backs on to... a mountain. And no, not like those "mountains" on PEI, where you get to the top and are still looking around for where this mountain is supposed to be, but like serious Rockies: trees and rock climbing and bears maybe 100 feet from the back door. Sure beats a fence.

And who knows what life is like at my grandparents' place when we're not there because every time we go to find out, we spoil it by showing up. When we're there, though, the days are usually spent outside on the deck, with our glasses full, at least from 4-8 PM... happy hour. Simon was also able to join us in happy hour, as Grandpa left his partial can of beer at his height. He was more than happy to oblige and sweetly toddled around the deck duping us all into believing he had an empty can until he attempted to take a swig and mopped the deck with it.

Grandpa made pancakes for us all twice during our stay, endearing himself to Zoe, who loves pancakes. Breakfast is Zoe's favorite meal. Often when I ask her what she wants for lunch or supper, she answers, "Can we have breakfast?" As a child, I remember Grandpa making Jennifer and I pancakes in all sorts of interesting shapes. I requested a moose on Zoe's behalf. Apparently not everyone has this vivid recollection of Grandpa's animal shaped pancakes because my request only required further explanation and got almost no laughter... (sigh)

My sister, husband and darling son were also in Salmo for most of our visit. It was great to spend time with them, too.

We all slept rather horribly for those few days in Salmo. We had a hard time coordinating naps so that both children could sleep in the afternoon and we could get a break, so we didn't get a break. I tried to work on knitting a pair of pants for the son of the girl who cuts my hair, but I ended up ripping it out twice because I couldn't get the stripes to look right. When they're finished, I'll post a picture of them here.

The memory of the visit at my grandparents is becoming less and less vivid, so I should probably post this before I forget even more.