Smiles & Giggles: Canada!

First stop: Vancouver
After an exhausting day of travel, two plane rides, a rather uneventful trek through customs, a challenging hour {or so} spent at the rental car desk, a short drive to the hotel, and a quick hotel check in; Ava was done!{What kid *or ADULT for that matter* wouldn't have been??}

I didn't even have the heart to wake her up to change her into her pajamas :)

DAY 2: Whistler, British Columbia
I fell in love with Canada, it was very beautiful and the temperature was perfect for this warm natured girl~

Whistler was the location of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. We were able to travel the Sea to Sky Highway and see some pretty magnificent views as we headed up the mountains.

We learned from a local gal that in some parts of Canada..."What do you do?" means your job... In the Vancouver area, "What do you do?" is more a question of hobbies (skiing, snowbording, sailing, boating, biking, etc). They are a very active society! It was quite inspiring to get my behind in gear once we returned home!!

The town of Whistler was bustling on this nice, chilly spring day. They had a gondola ride up the mountain, a BMX bike track, snowboarding, and skiing (yes, on May 22 they were skiing at the very top of the mountain).

We took the gondola ride up the hill... The skiers were riding up to the top to catch the ski lifts for the slopes. These gondolas had spots for carrying skis :)

The tram took us over the little ski village.

It was a bit foggy but the views were still breathtaking!

At the top we saw some really cold snow, a sniffle station (hehe) and some really TALL pine trees-

Avalanche Risk???

So, after enjoying the brisk mountain air and fear of avalanches {not really}, we headed back down the mountain.

Umm...it didn't look so high going up!

It was amazing to think the weather difference was so drastic that there was snow at the top of the mountain and tulips in bloom at the base!!

We took advantage of the sun coming out and decided to wander around...we were told that there was a really cool playground at the other end of town? Our journey through town was quite an adventure; we saw some pretty cool things:

First, the kids were having such fun. {Our shy little girl didn't want to participate tough}