Life With the Finch Family: August 2012

About a month ago, we decided we should take a vacation. We figured this would probably be the last time to take a big trip for a while. I wanted to go to Canada, but I didn't want to spend that much. We wanted to go somewhere that wouldn't take too much planning or stress, somewhere to relax. We were thinking about going to Florida because Derek's sister could give us her "buy one get one" tickets anywhere in the US, and we have never been there together (we wanted to be by the beach and we already went to California). But the money we would be spending seemed like a lot just for Florida.. so we thought well if we're going to spend that much money we should just get an all-inclusive trip to Mexico or something! But I thought about it, and I still really wanted to go to Canada. So we decided to go there instead since it would only be a little more expensive. We thought it would be worth it. We figured out our cheapest option was to use the buy one get one tickets to fly to Maine, rent a car and drive up to Nova Scotia. It was a quick decision, but luckily we were both able to get time off work even with such short notice. I was so excited! Derek had never been to Nova Scotia before (he has been to Calgary a few times). And I really missed it!

We were there for 10 days and had so much fun! We stayed with my brother, Hugh and his wife, Veronica and 3 pugs. The timing we chose was perfect, we got to go to the Busker Festival (a festival with street performers on the waterfront, I've gone to since I was a kid), my dad was there at the same time as us (which wasn't planned) so Derek met my dad and his wife, Susan, and he got to meet my dad's family in Cape Breton, also one of my Calgary friends was there visiting the same time as us so I was able to see her, and Hugh's dog had her puppies during our stay so we got to see them too! So I'm glad we went when we did. We went to the beach several times, Derek tried surfing for the first time and actually did pretty good! One beach had a pretty cool Sand Castle Contest going on. We went to Peggy's Cove, one of my favorite places! We went to Ovens Natural Park which was beautiful, mine and Hugh's first time even though we grew up in NS. We got to do a session at the Halifax Temple, Derek met our family friend, Fritz and some of my closest friends from Elementary. I showed Derek the small town where I lived most of my childhood, and showed him my shoe box school, hehe. We went on the Harbour Hopper which is a tour bus that drives around Halifax and then goes into the harbour and turns into a boat :) That was cool, we learned a lot about Halifax. AND I was able to eat some of my favorite foods that I missed, Yum! So we did a lot of fun stuff, we got to spend lots of time with family, we did a lot of relaxing, I had unlimited time with pugs, and I got to take lots of pictures which makes me happy! I'm really glad we went!