Hi everyone! I’m so exited that you here and I can’t wait to share little snippets of our life journey’s with you! So I thought it would be suitable to share our most recent family journey which was to Banff, Alberta Canada. I’ve been there before with my family but I was too young to appreciate the beauty because everything about Banff National Park is beyond beautiful. The clear turquoise water, the jaw dropping rocky mountains and the cutest little village with some of the best food I’ve ever had. If you haven’t been I highly suggest you add it to your bucket list! Robert and I are already planning on going back next year because we loved it so much!
But before I share all the beautiful photos, let me start with the traveling part of a trip. This was by farrrrrr… I mean by far the most stressful traveling experience my husband and I have ever had and I would like to also think in the world.. I know that sounds crazy but I’m not joking! We had so many hiccups along the way I was sure God was trying to tell us to stay home… which honestly we both thought was going to happen. We started off with a 6 hour drive to Denver. I of course waited till the night before to pack so I stayed up till 3am packing in panic, not sure why I always do this to myself. So I was so tired driving to Denver but the kids were so good, Jettler literally slept the entire time and Kyden was so patient. We got stuck in traffic as soon as we hit Denver but we planned on that so we weren’t afraid of being late for our flight. Well… traffic was really bad and we clearly didn’t plan enough time because once we got to the airport and got our luggage we were running to check in.. which I’m sure was a sight to be seen because hauling 3 bags, carryons, 2 car seats and pushing a stroller with a newborn and toddler was a mission for us. When we got to the ticket booth we had trouble because they couldn’t find my confirmation number in the system.. even though I had the e-mail pulled up on my phone.. literally handed my phone to the agent so he could see, still for some reason it wasn’t showing up on the airlines system. No joke, after 45 minutes of back and forth and from being sent to different counters and agents (also having an agent accidentally steal my cell phone) finally they found it. By then I was done.. our plane was about to start boarding. And I clearly didn’t do enough research before traveling with a 2 month old, when I googled what was needed to travel to Canada with a newborn, I saw birth certificate.. noooo thats if you are driving across the border but if you fly you need a passport for the baby! I feel like everyone I’ve told this story to knew that but I guess I’ve been living under a rock. Maybe I’m an idiot and I should probably know all the border rules by now you’d think since I’ve married an American but I totally messed this up. I felt so bad! So we weren’t flying out but the airline let us rebook our flight for free because even if we had Jett’s passport their system issue with my confirmation would have made us miss the flight anyways. But by this point I was just done, Robert was working with the agent to see how we could get an emergency passport, Kyden was sitting on the floor by our feet playing with his cars and trucks and Jett was crying because he was hungry. I have never felt comfortable nursing in public (not that I’m against it, it’s just not something I’ve personally been comfortable with) but by this point I truly didn’t care who was around or who saw, my baby was hungry and thats all that mattered! Soo.. after all the chaos settled a bit there we were packing up our 3 bags, 2 car seats, stroller and children only to take them back to our car!!! Guys… it was so awful! I can’t even explain it in words. But we decided to stay the night in Denver and prayed we could get Jett an emergency passport in the morning.
Good news we got his passport in 2 hours with Gods help! (however at the passport office their fire alarm went off, firetrucks showed up and thats literally when I thought, God really doesn’t want us to go on this trip haha but thankfully it wasn’t anything serious!) We headed to the airport, got checked in, got to our gate and than I realized I lost Kyden’s blanket somewhere after security. NOOO! So I ran to put in a claim and the guy told me to retrace my steps.. so I did. I went back on the train and completely assumed it would let me off right before security where we got on by security.. however it didn’t, and I ended up outside security! Obviously I reacted in the forms of ” You’ve got to be kidding me combined with panic”, the train never announced hey… if you don’t get off now the next stop you won’t be able to get off where you got on originally and it will take you out of security! I called Robert trying to word what happened in a way where he didn’t think I was a complete idiot especially after my passport fail the day before. And I’m sure all the people on the train thought I was nuts because when the wrong side of the train doors opened and the side I needed to get to were closed forcing me out of the secure side.. I started freaking out! I had no I.D. on me. All I had was my cell phone. Soooo here I am again… I run to the ticket booth tell them what happened (they acted like it was normal so I had a feeling I wasn’t the only one would did this.. I hope!) they give me a new boarding pass and tell me to explain it to security.. well the security line now had about 300 people in it…which was probably a good hour wait. I decided to sneak into the pre approved lane because well when your adrenaline is going and you had the past 24 hours I had, you just get brave and don’t care. Finally after pleading with security officer who seemingly didn’t care what happened to me and had no sympathy at all as I was crying, yes I started crying (given yes security needs to be stern for safety) but I was so thankful his supervisor came over and helped me instead. (Both our kids were sleeping at the gate and I didn’t see how Robert was supposed to carry them plus all our carryons back to security by himself) After answering a ton of identity questions I got cleared. I literally ran back to the gate and was so relieved to see Robert and the kids waiting for me! Thankfully we got at the airport like 4 hours early that day so my little mishap didn’t make us miss our flight. PHEWWW! I must say that through all of the challenges we faced, Robert remained so calm and kept positive the entire time. I swear he never gets stressed out! Unlike me.. I was a wreck until we got on the plane!
From there we truly had no more problems until the end of the trip where Robert lost his wallet! haha (No one should probably travel with us) but the stress was over, we made it to Calgary, grabbed our rental car and totally scored a free upgrade on it and drove to Banff. When we booked our trip we found a beautiful mountain view condo on VRBO for our trip that was affordable. (places are so expensive there, definitely suggest booking over a month in advance to snag a good place that won’t break the bank) We lucked out, the owner was beyond helpful and so gracious to us our entire stay and he even offered us an extra night to stay for free since we missed our first night. I can say that even though getting to Banff was a disaster, it was truly one of the best family trips we have ever had, if not the best! Banff was so peaceful and relaxing, truly what we needed!
Day 1 we went to lake Louise and Banff Village. Lake Louise is probably one of the most beautiful places in the world, so stunning!! Kyden loved every minute of it, he was so cute and friendly that day and all the tourists loved him, he was giving out high fives and waving at everyone. He insisted on bringing his travel airplane bag with him everywhere we went and he loved all the attention he got from it haha he truly was truly the cutest. If you follow my Insta stories on Instagram you know he’s obsessed with rocks so he was in heaven picking up all kinds of rocks and throwing them into the water. It was a bit cold that day and we found cute coffee shop inside the Fairmont Hotel that we went to and grabbed snacks and coffees to warm up. Kyden got a giant cookie as big as his head haha he was in love! Jett was all bundled up cute in the stroller sleeping the whole time (he’s such a good baby and looked way to cute to disturb!) and I remember Robert and I walking looking at each other and smiling thinking.. all that travel craziness we went endured was worth it just to be there with our two boys. God took care of us along the way even when we both felt like cancelling the trip, he made it all work out, every time we encountered a situation there was always someone there to help us out! And if anything I think we appreciated the trip even more because of it all.
I’ll share more posts on our trip but here’s a few pics from our first day Xo
P.S. We did get Kyden’s blanket back & Robert just got his wallet back in the mail last week 🙂
