When we were in Calgary, I got to spend a lot of time with my sister's kids and man, do I love them! One morning I took them and and my youngest three to the park to play. My big kids make fun of my Auntie Persona but being an Aunt is one of my favorite jobs!

A stand-out part of our trip - the Calgary Stampede parade! It was fabulous and I love benefitting from my sister-in-law's wild tradition of sleeping downtown overnight to secure seats. The kids are really just happy to show up to anything that includes cousin time.

We celebrated my dad's birthday with pizza and pie! My dad is a devoted grandfather and we all love him so much!

My parents have so much honey this year! We lucked out and were able to spend a day extracting honey from some of the frames while we were in town. Each of my girls really loved observing and learning about the process. And the smell! Yum, honey smells so good! I've wanted to participate in this process for a while so it was just great. Bonus, we brought home honey.

If you can believe it, we brought home a puppy! I can't really believe it still. But here we are, a family with a dog. He's a sheepadoodle (Old English Sheepdog + Poodle) and he's really sweet. He's little now, only 10 pounds, but will be about 60 pounds when he's full grown (oh my gosh, what did we do!?). Here are some pictures of the family picking him up and bringing him home.