Our First Family Trip to Vancouver

For the past week, I’ve been saying to myself, “this time last week we doing this” or “we were eating this.” I’ve completely been in vacation hangover mode (and because of this it has taken me entirely way too long to write this post – so we’ve been home for more than a week now :P). We had an amazing time on our trip to Vancouver! It was such a whirlwind. Minus 2 days of travel, we were only there for 4 full days. Totally not enough time, I wish we could have stayed longer. However, I am not so sure how much more E could have put up with! She was such a trooper. She is 100% an adventurer and I absolutely love that about her.

My mom is from Vancouver and I was born there. She came with us for our visit (thank goodness for the extra help) and we stayed with family. Most of the family on my mom’s side still lives around that area, so we got to catch up with lots of family and my mom got to see some old friends. We also squeezed in a few adventures to places I have never been.

First of all, Evelyn did so good on the plane. She only slept for a little while on both of our 4 hour flights and was way more interested in playing with things like cups and emptying the contents of the diaper bag than anything I actually brought for her to play with, but we survived. She thinks my mom is hilarious, so Grammy is always hours of entertainment. On the way home, she even fell asleep on my mom for over an hour and I was so grateful for the nice long break. Between me, hubby, and my mom, she stayed pretty entertained and didn’t cry at all. Except for one time when she got mad because I wouldn’t let her pat the man’s head sitting in front of us. She really wanted to.

She also conveniently perfected her wave while on our trip. So yes, we had the pleasure of talking to everyone in our general vicinity, everywhere. EVERYWHERE. I realize my baby is the cutest thing you have ever seen, but seriously, I don’t have the energy to small talk about the baby with every single person. EVERY SINGLE PERSON. We even Facetimed with some lady’s kids, who was standing behind us while we were waiting to get off the plane. I know you’re just being a kind human being or like to reminisce about your kids when they were that age, but a smile and a wave will do. But of course, I am way too nice and just can’t ignore it! Whew. Sorry about that, rant over.

We squeezed a lot into our short trip, and I took a TON of pictures. I tried to narrow it down, so here are some highlights of our adventures.

It was pretty rainy our first day there so we decided to visit the Vancouver Aquarium for some indoor fun! Evelyn slept for a bit of it, even though she was fighting it. She doesn’t like to miss a thing! We got to touch string rays, saw a pregnant male seahorse, and had some sort of sea anemone grab onto my finger.

The Capilano Suspension Bridge Park was probably one of my favorite things we did! There was so much to do here and all different ways you could explore this coastal rain forest. It is typically pretty rainy here, so the rain didn’t stop us! It actually created a pretty cool mist and I even felt like maybe we would run into Edward or Jacob out here (for you Twilight nerds ha ha).

This very spot here in Stanley Park, is where some of my most favorite Vancouver childhood memories are. This was the first time Evelyn has touched sand and the ocean. I am such a sentimental person and it makes my heart swell that it was here <3

We also took a drive north up to Squamish and Whistler. The views were breath taking! So amazing.

We rode the Sea to Sky Gondola up the mountain in Squamish. There was another suspension bridge up here. Much scarier than Capilano. E didn’t go across this one and Stan almost didn’t either! I had to talk him into it and he wouldn’t even stop to take my picture! But he made it, and we survived.

We had such a fabulous time and made so many great family memories! It was so nice to see lots of my family again and for them to meet Evelyn and even my husband. I hope we will be back someday. It was odd being in Vancouver without my brother, so it would be nice to go with him and his family sometime.  There is so much more on our list that we didn’t even have the time to do. Most importantly though, I did come home with bars and bars of Canadian chocolate and some cookies you can’t get here! First big family trip was a success!