Shitty pants, 1000 mosquito bites and endless hours of crying..yay we're camping!

As a mom of 4 and full time parenting 3 under 6 I don't often get out of the house, my partner however has other ideas, which I don't mind, much, but now and then he gets an idea that although having good intentions never fully understands the repercussions of his actions until it is too late.

We went camping, for a night, with a 6, 3 and 8 month old. Now normally that might be enough said but let me tell you a bit about our adventures...

It started out innocently enough..wanting to get away for a couple of days. By the end we were ready to be home and we were only gone a day...

Packed what we could find for food and camping gear, not knowing if the air mattresses held air, (they didn't btw) not sure if the stove was going to work, not sure where we were going, we headed out..

We got to our first major stop at Rearguard Falls Provincial park BC. It is a spot I found a few years ago and continue to take friends to if I get a chance! I recommend you check it out. It is just a short hike down to the falls and it is not a big park not much to do there no picnicking or anything like that, just a lookout spot but what cool nonetheless. It is the furthest place up the Fraser river that the Salmon make it as the water comes to fast over the falls they cannot climb the ladder, depending on the time of year you might catch them trying to make it. This was a good spot for trying gold panning as Chase has found a new hobby, we think we might have even found some..not sure though as we don't really know what we are doing.

We thought we might find a campground near Jasper so we headed that way next, on the way we spotted a campground off the highway that looked pretty empty and an elk was standing right at the entrance so we saw that as a good sign and pulled in. Turned out they had room and was cheap $16/ night. We drove around and found our site and set up camp. We paid for our site and headed back to Jasper to get supplies as we didn't have much for supper stuff. I recommend buying your supplies beforehand as Jasper is not cheap, but a lot cheaper than the icefield's but I will get to that. We get back to camp and make dinner for the boys. While trying to build a fire I look over and see Jaxan standing funny and I ask him what's wrong and he proceeds to tell me that a big poop just came out of his bum. I check his pants and sure enough he is pooing his pants at the campsite. Luckily there was plenty of baby wipes on hand. I grabbed the boy stripped his pants off and cleaned him up right there at the campsite. I threw the pants and poop out as I was not going to try and deal with that mess in the van for the rest of the trip(the pants were old and ripped so I felt they were ok to throw out.) Got him in his jammies and things were all better. Took awhile to get the fire going so me and the boys went for a walk and checked out the lake and the area. We were in a pretty cool place, almost made the 1000 mosquito bites worth it. Did I mention to mosquitoes? They were huge! At one point I looked over at the baby and he had several of them on his head. ( I think they were trying to carry him away to feast on him at their leisure.)

After a sleepless night on a deflated air mattress and crying babies because he didn't have his purple blanket(Jaxan) we woke and I made breakfast, which turned out fairly well on our little camp stove and we ate and packed up camp as we still had a full day ahead of us. We planned on heading to Athabasca Falls and after that we were not sure. We headed back towards Jasper again and headed south to Athabasca Falls, along the way we hit a couple of geocaches and found some great spots for pictures. We made it to Athabasca Falls and took our time looking at the falls and taking pics. It is an amazing place and I am glad I took my boys to go see it! After the falls we had a choice to make continue to the icefields, or head north back home. We headed south and we are glad we did! When we got to the icefields it was amazing. I kind of remember going there as a kid, but to see it as an adult is something else! We told the boys they were visiting the ice age! They were looking for dinosaurs! We toured around on our own as we were trying to save a bit of money. Then we got hungry, boy was that a mistake. We decided to stop in at the Icefields building for lunch and $53 dollars later for grilled cheese sandwiches! We were none too excited, and the lunch was not that good either, if you are travelling there bring a lunch! We could have turned around again at this point and headed home or continue south and see more mountains and maybe visit with Sam and Lee. We chose south!

Heading south we saw some amazing mountains and stopped to take pics when we could, calling Lee to see if he was going to be home. No answer, we carried on. We couldn't hit any more geocaches as I didn't load any more on the gps device and we had no cell service, but regardless the trip was still fun! Even saw a frozen lake because we were so high up! In Banff we went to the Banff Fairmont Springs Hotel and showed the boys the big hotel. Found the Tim Hortons grabbed a coffee and headed to Calgary!

On the way Jaxan was complaining of a headache and owie belly so I asked him to rest and he tried but his belly was really hurting. We got to Calgary and stopped at Peter's Drive in as that is the place to get a burger and a milkshake. Jaxan refused to eat his still saying he has a sore tummy. We stopped in at Lee's place and Chase got to visit his puppy who he hasn't seen in a few years since he gave him to his brother to take care of. Sam freaked out seeing Chase! It was too cool! Meeting Lee was cool too! We didn't stay long as it was 8 pm by this point and we still had a 3 hour drive home. The drive home was nerve wracking because poor Jaxan cried most of the way because of his poor tummy but we would ask him if he needed us to stop and he would say he just wanted his own bed and his elephant. We made it home in record time and Jaxan went straight to the bathroom and let loose with an explosive bm that filled the bowl as the stench filled the air...poor guy. But we were home and all of us alive! We may even do it again some day!

my letter to my mla.

Dear Mr. Deron Bilous,

I am writing to you on behalf of Geo Mousef and his family. Geo is the little boy who was killed by alleged drunk driver Richard Suter, at Ric's Grill Monday night. I am sure you have heard the story. As a mother of 4 boys I am a huge believer in designated driving often times going out with my friends only to make sure they would have a designated driver and get home safe. Richard Suter is having a bail hearing tomorrow morning Thursday May 23rd at 10 am and if he receives bail he is then able to go out and celebrate with his friends and possibly kill another. We need to set a precedence with such a case and show Richard Suter and others who feel it is ok to drink and drive and kill babies that it is NOT OK! I hope you are behind the push to toughen the drunk driving laws and make it not ok for these dangerous people to get behind the wheel and hurt or even kill people. Geo will never know the freedom of being able to sit on a patio and enjoy a drink with his friends and family in a responsible manner like the rest of us. His mother will never see him graduate or tie his tie for his wedding. His father will never be able to show him how to shave and fix a car. All because a selfish man took his life. I invite you to join the group Justice for Geo on facebook and show your support for tougher drunk driving laws. You can view the group here:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/Justice4Geo/ . Mr. Bilous please show your support and Help us to stop mothers and fathers from ever having to bury another child due to someone else's selfishness.

Sincerely

Jodie Velthuizen.

The race is on!

Man am I glad spring is finally here! We love geocaching and with 3 little ones it is way easier in the months there is no snow on the ground. For those of you who do not know what geocaching is we like to explain it as treasure hunting all over the world. People everywhere have set out treasure boxes for you to find using a gps enabled device. We have been doing it for a couple of years now. I am up to 212 found! Today we set out to see if we could be the first to find on a couple but was beat by mere minutes. I found out about it a few years ago while planning our annual ladies weekend, my cousin gave me the idea and so me and my mom tried it a few times to see if we could make it work for our weekend. We did and it was fun (although some in my family still believe they don't exist simply because they didn't find one). A couple of years ago I got a gps device and we started looking for them as a family. Last year I got a membership and then I could get emails telling me when a new one had been published. This opened up a whole new game FTF! (First to find) We managed to get a few of them last year. One even had a nice FTF prize of a canada flag travel bug, it gets tracked as it passes through each geocache and people can move it around. Right now it is in Quebec so far it has travelled 1889.3 miles. We left it in drumheller! There was another cacher who would beat us to the FTF quite often so to get one close to home was a great feeling! Today we set out to find a couple new ones the popped up, but we missed both of them, one our friend found first..foiled again...lol It was fun looking for it. This one was disguised as a tree hiding in a tree go figure. Many more geocaching adventures planned for this summer, the great thing is you can get out and get exercise and find treasure! If you want to know more about it go here--->www.geocaching.com Maybe we will see you out on the trails!