Family Trip

Hey all, FINALLY got my camera to work. I don't know what I did, but it works now. As per usual, the technological reasons of things continues to evade me. On to the pictures!

My Uncle Dave drives the motorhome for the (first?) time and we eventually make it to White Swan Lake, Saskatchewan. It's a big puppy. Granpa kept telling Uncle Dave to turn up the air conditioning, and turn this knob and turn that. I slept most of the way up there. The beginning of many long sleeps that weekend. I slept an average of 11 hours a day. It. was. AMAZING.

My Aunt Jocelyn who made her 'see-no-evil-camera' face. Can you believe this? Anyways, Aunt J and I have never spent any time together whatsoever, and she came up to SK, and we just had a great time. She is such a great lady.

This is my grandpa, relaxing after a long hard day of, uh, relaxing. To be honest, he probably did the most work out of any of us because he walked everywhere, which was really good for him. He walked up and down steps, and we even carted him to the beach on the back of a quad. (This is pretty awesome because he's pretty weak on his one side now that he's had multiple strokes.) He told lots of dirty jokes, God bless him.

This is the Sasquatch. I mean, this is a UFO. Actually, it's that other mythical creature, my- older-brother-Tyler-at-a-family-event. It was like seeing a unicorn for a whole twenty-four hours! Terrific!

Here's Vita (my grandma) helping prepare a giant fish-fry. Wow, this time around we didn't do as much fishing, but I sure did as much eating of the fish. Holy mackarel.

Here is my Uncle Dave, looking relaxed. It was his cabin we all stayed at, (actually, Brennan, the 'Prince of Dubai' as dubbed by my Aunt J, slept in a private trailer in the back.) and we just had a blast there. I must say, it was kinda nice having my own little trailer like that. I think the comment of the day when my Uncle Dave asked me if it was ok if I slept not in a bedroom, but sort of by myself, I managed to muster a pretty nice red-neck accent as I replied, "Wuhl, I always wanted to live in a mot-ar-home, Uncle Dahve."

Aunt J made a scary face for the camera. We played quite a bit of crib over the weekend. I actually won a few games as well.

Now this is interesting, and sad. While tubing, my swimming shorts literally shredded down the side. Everyone had a good laugh, but personally, I was more happy it didn't split down the centre area. Whew. I'm sad I lost my favourite part of swim trunks though, they were super nice.

Here's my Dad and his girlfriend, Cheryl. Cheryl and I formed a PETA alliance over the weekend, saying that we would protect the fish by putting the wrong bait and lures on our fishing rod, and fishing off the wrong side of the boat. (Which basically meant we caught a lot less fish than everyone else, and just chatted.) Honestly, we would do PETA proud with all our catch and release tactics. Yup.

This is FINALLY the picture I wanted to get with just me and my Aunt J, but of coure, I wasn't smiling. Thanks for mis-operating my legacy style camera, Uncle Dave. Sigh.

Again, Aunt Jocelyn finds a way to mask herself. This time with a passport. Nice disguise, they'll never find you in customs.

I never knew my Aunt Jocelyn before, but I found I really grew to like her more and more as we got to know each other. She's a pretty fun individual, even if she does have 'rock star breakfasts' (she's about my uncle's age, and she parties like she's my age. She usually started drinking around mid-day.) and is a little crazy, but I think it's part of her being in PR, and that she's really seen the world, been through a lot of trying circumstances, like a lot of people in my family have. I really respect the Hansen side of the family (My Uncle Dave, Auntie J, Vita) because I think they've all been through a lot of hard things, and yet they seem to me to be the people I know most capable of loving people that matter in their lives. They're really positive people, even in the worst of circumstances. *Unlike me, captial hyper-stress-guy of the century and worrier extraordinaire* I learned a lot about seeing the positive in things and people over this weekend, and that's a life skill I can never take for granted.

Great weekend.