An AMAZING Weekend...and a big announcement!!!

Hello All-

First of all...HAPPY EASTER!!!!!

Craig had the long weekend off, and we surely made the most of it. Friday we ran errands and laid low at the house. Yesterday Craig decided to take Hannah and I for a drive. I hadn't been south of the city yet, so Craig thought he would show me around.

We headed down to Fort MacLeod, home of Head Smashed In-Buffalo Jump. It is a historical site that is considered to be as important to history as the Statue of Liberty, the Pyramids, and other special monuments and locations. The long and short of it is that back when the Natives lived on the land, they hunted the wild buffalo. This place is where they would hunt the buffalo and by dressing like a coyote and baby buffalo they would trick them into their drive lanes. Once there, the lanes would narrow down and by the time the buffalo would realize that they were being hunted, they would come to the cliff's edge and fall off. It sounds pretty nasty, but it is quite genius of the hunters. They would then kill the wounded buffalo and save the meat for the winter.

The location was named not for the buffalo that fell, but for a young Native who wanted to see the hunt first hand. He was pinned by the buffalo and fell to his own death alongside them.

I am not really into Native history, but this was really interesting. Here are some of the photos that we took...

This is the cliff that they used in the hunt.

They still used this method right up until 120 years ago...they said that there are still bones from the last jump down at the bottom in the kill site. Archaeologists have done many digs in this area and many of their artifacts are on display in the museum.

While there, they had signs up warning visitors about cougar and bear sightings. We didn't see any of those, but we did see a camera-shy gopher.

Once we left the museum, we took off on what we thought was a highway...instead it turned into a dirt road. At first we were going to turn around, but thankfully we didn't!! We soon came upon the Largest Wind Farm in Canada. It was amazing!! There were windmills as far as the eye could see.

While were looking out the sunroof at the windmills, I pointed out what looked like a really big bird flying overhead. Once it passed over us, we were able to clearly see that it wasn't just any bird...it was a bald eagle!!! We think it was hunting some of the many prairie dogs we saw living along the roadside.

We also stumbled upon the Oldman River Dam. It was really cool...the water above the dam was beautiful dark blue and the water below the dam was a gorgeous green-blue color. We had to stop and take a few photos.

Next, we drove through a town called Frank. Back in 1903, the mountainside fell and buried the homes, people, everything. The miners managed to dig themselves out, but 70 people died in the accident. The weird thing about the areas is that nothing has grown there since the accident. There is no top-soil, so there is no vegetation or anything. As Craig says, it looks like the moon. Here is a photo of the area.

Then it was off to BC. Craig wanted to bring us across the border, so that's where we went. In doing this, we also went over the Continental Divide. Pretty cool, huh??

We noticed many signs along the way to BC that said to be careful not to hit Rocky Mountain Sheep. Right after Craig said that it would be cool to see wildlife like that, I looked up and saw these guys hanging out on the side of a cliff. They aren't Rocky Mountain Sheep, but they are Rocky Mountain Goats!! I am posting the large versions of the photos so you can see them...they blend in really well with the rocks. I still cannot believe that I just looked up and saw them!!

Here is one of them eating...

And here you can see at least three of them...they are all looking right at the camera...two standing and one laying down.

On our way back to Calgary, we went up the Cowboy Trail and saw so many oil rigs. They are plopped all over the farm fields. There are also a bunch of natural gas well heads all over the place too. It is pretty impressive...

So, on to today, our AMAZING Easter! Hannah got up and unwrapped her Easter present...a Little People playset. After that, she gave us the most wonderful present...SHE CRAWLED!!!!! This video isn't the first time she did it, but it is one of the better videos of it. We do have the actual first crawl on video too...I can't believe that we caught it all on camera.

We spent the rest of the day at home having some family time. In the morning we tried blowing out eggs...I gave up and Craig broke one. We decided that we were better off hard-boiling them instead.

After Hannah's nap, we dyed the eggs. Hannah got into it a little bit, but she was having more fun being a bunny and playing with stickers.

Here are the finished eggs in the ferris-wheel we bought to show them off.

Finally, we ended our great weekend with a bit of playtime on the swings.

To those of you who are still reading, thanks for sticking with me through such a long post. It was such a great weekend that I didn't want to forget any of the details.

I hope you all had as great of an Easter as we did...we miss and love you all!!!

~Sharon~