Just over one week ago we traveled by plane to Calgary, Alberta. We were en-route to where my family lives about 3 hours from Calgary. It had been two+ years since I was last there and about five years since Jimmy visited. The majority of my family had not met Claire & Rhys yet so it was an important trip that we were looking forward to.

We also timed the visit to allow us to attend a family reunion in Saskatchewan. Jimmy hadn’t met any of my family on my Dad’s side except for one cousin that lives in Texas so I was pretty excited for him to meet the Ukrainian farmer side of my heritage.

When we arrived to the airport we were walking up the ramp to get to the departures level and Jimmy saw a pro skater he recognized along with a bunch of other skaters. He looked again and saw his friend from skate camp days standing there as well. It was the Element team that arrived in Vancouver for their last stop on their cross-Canada tour. Jimmy’s friend, Levi Brown, is a pro skater and is such a nice guy. I met him years ago at skate camp in California. We really enjoyed seeing him again. How funny is it when you bump into the most random people at the strangest times?

Levi skating…

Levi meeting Claire & Rhys for the first time….

The plane trip to Calgary went alright. I was nervous that they would cry the entire time but thankfully even if that had happened the flight was only over one hour. Travel to the airport, checking in and take-off went great. We were able to all sit in the same row and had three seats to share between  the four of us. We wanted to travel this summer because the kids turn two in December and after that time we would need to purchase seats for all four of us which is expensive!

We fed Claire & Rhys apples at take-off so their ears wouldn’t hurt and once we were in the air we watched some cartoons and before we knew it we were ready to descend into Calgary. Now our descent wasn’t as great as our ascent…..Claire was like a wild raccoon in Jimmy’s arms and tried as hard as she could to get our of his grip. She cried hard and wore herself out by the time we were at the terminal. It is good to know that any future plan trips will involve our own space and no wild raccoons 😉

We arrived into the prairies and decided to break up the trip by staying overnight in Calgary before we drove to my parents home. Claire & Rhys fell asleep quickly once we were on the road in our rental van and the adventure continued…….