Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Braden's 1st Stampede & The Heat Wave

It is the 100th anniversary of the Calgary Stampede and we decided to brave the crowds and the heat and head out on the first day, which was last Friday July 6.
Braden's 1st Calgary Stampede 2012
I love the midway! I could walk up and down, people watch, and eat all the crap food all day long! A corn dog, an ice cold rootbeer, and mini donuts are on my "must eat" list and we indulged in all three!
 I have to say that Braden at mini donuts for lunch. Not my finest parenting moment, but when you have a cranky-because-he's-tired-and-hungry toddler whom you had to force feed the first BITE of a DONUT to...you just do what you gotta do. He also requested and received a smoothie. He probably drank about 1.5 litres of smoothie all by himself. It was a healthy smoothie at least! Let me just back track a bit and tell you why we decided to go on the first day of Stampede and why we missed usual lunch time...

Well, we really wanted to take Braden to Stampede this year and it so turns out that Thomas & Friends had a show on the Coca Cola Stage, but they were only there the first day that we went, and today, which we were supposed to be coming home from camping (more on that later!). So we just had to go the first day. It was to start at 12:30 PM which was perfect. I time-budgeted us 3 hours to get there. 1 hour drive to the city plus 2 hours to get to the park via public transit...plenty of time to get there, have lunch and walk around a bit before Thomas, right? WRONG. Dead wrong! Here is what we learned:
  • never go on the first day - it is probably going to be the busiest
  • try not to go when there is a heat wave starting in your province
  • make sure you have a LOT of snacks in case you are running late for a meal
  • do not try to get to the grounds at the SAME TIME the Stampede parade is finished - oops!
  • if you get stuck at the train station for over an hour, like we did, just WALK 10 minutes to the grounds - thanks to the officials for NOT suggesting that sooner!!!
Anywho, here is an exhausted Braden by the time we finally got to the grounds:
Braden's 1st Calgary Stampede 2012
We were running REALLY late and didn't think we'd catch any of the 12:30 show, but we got there at 12:45 and he was happy to see this:
Braden's 1st Calgary Stampede 2012
 I got some apple juice in him and he was THRILLED when Thomas came on stage. It was just a sing-a-long and he really liked it...but probably would have liked it even more had he had lunch BEFORE it started like we had planned. I'm really glad that we got to see even part of the show, because the next show was at 3:30 and I really didn't think we could make it that long!
Braden's 1st Calgary Stampede 2012
So we got our smoothie and lunch after the show and walked around a bit. He really perked up and Jay wanted to get him a cowboy hat at Stampede...doesn't he look adorable? Just love my boys to bits!
Braden's 1st Calgary Stampede 2012
Braden's 1st Calgary Stampede 2012

Then Jay had to show Braden the Budweiser Clydesdales, he's just fascinated with them!
Braden's 1st Calgary Stampede 2012

Braden's 1st Calgary Stampede 2012
Braden liked the agriculture tent. He got to see some sheep and a pig feeding her little piglets. Here he is playing in some canola...no big deal for this farm kid!
Then we went into the kid's midway and paid $5 so Braden could play a fishing game which he loved, we may have cheated without even realizing it, and he won a little stuffed lion and he was so proud! He'll even tell you he won his lion by "catching 2 fishies", he's just getting smarter and smarter by the day!


Then we looked up to the sky, the forecast calling for thunderstorms was right...and we headed back. The only good thing about leaving the grounds on the first day around 2:30? Everyone else is trying to get in so it was a much less stressful trip back to our vehicle! It started pouring as soon as we shut the doors to the truck and Braden fell asleep almost instantaneously and had a 1.5 hour car seat nap on the way home!
Braden's 1st Calgary Stampede 2012
Speaking of heat wave, the night before we went to Stampede, so Thursday July 5, we had a tornado watch in our area...and you'll be able to see why after these pictures!
 Tornado Warning July 5, 2012
Tornado Warning July 5, 2012
Tornado Warning July 5, 2012
Jay was outside mowing lawn and saw these really neat clouds to the north, above our house, and wanted to take a few pics...
Tornado Warning July 5, 2012
Tornado Warning July 5, 2012
Tornado Warning July 5, 2012
Luckily this is as scary as the cloud got, the "tail" of the tornado never really appeared as it was moving quickly to the east, south of us, and it produced about 3/10 of rain, but luckily we didn't get any hail.
Tornado Warning July 5, 2012
Tornado Warning July 5, 2012
Tornado Warning July 5, 2012
What? You don't finish mowing your lawn with your parent's dog when there's a big scary tornado-like cloud above your head?

As soon as Jay was done mowing, the rain started...good timing! And, one more random picture that I know Jay will want on the blog, when we were on our way into Calgary the next day for Stampede, we stopped off the highway to watch a bit of spray plane action!
Spray Plane
Phew! Long post...thanks for sticking it through if you did! Our heat wave is supposed to continue well through the week as far as I can see. For my American friends, we are getting temps in the high 80's & low 90's...we rarely get this hot, never mind for so long and Alberta is setting record breaking temperatures! Lots more to be blogged this week - keep coming back!
Sarah

9 comments:

  1. Looks like its been very eventful week for your family! The record high temps are reaching us down here in Oklahoma too. We are running 100-110ish pretty much every day with the heat index! Stay cool!!

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  2. those cloud pictures are SOOOOOOO AMAZING! thanks for sharing! we just ended a heat wave last week; we had a day where it hit 101 [most summers, we are only over 90 for an average of 5 days total]. it was super yuck.

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  3. What GORGEOUS pictures. AMAZING!!! Here we had a huge heat wave-I am so done with it! Your house and property is beautiful!!

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  4. Those clouds were AMAZING!! OMG! How scary and beautiful at the same time!!!! WOW!

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  5. I love those pictures of the clouds! Amazing!!

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  6. Ok, so I wrote this whole long comment and it got deleted/didn't post...whatever..lol.

    Anyway, BEAUTIFUL house, I think I've said before, but it's gorgeous.

    Braden looks like he a lot of fun (and yum! midway food)!

    We live in tornado alley and get lots of watches/warnings every year...do you not get very many?

    p.s. I promise I'm going to get my ad up soon, I'm just losing my mind lately!

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  7. Those clouds to the north of your house are called 'mammary clouds' because they hang down like, well, boobs. They show up when it's unstable. So quite often when there's tornado warnings they'll be around.

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  8. Those clouds are great!! Love little man in his cowboy hat!!

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  9. I wish we had a stampede near us so I could take Judah to it! He would flip out with Thomas the train and playing with all the trucks. The pictures of that storm are incredible! Happy to hear it didn't produce a tornado

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