A big surprise

Thursday night was the start of our big surprise. The four of us piled into Babcia & Dziadek's Ford Excursion, along with Babcia & Dziadek, and we drove the 1200 kilometers to Edmonton to surprise Ciocia Natalya and Wujek Daniel with a visit. They knew Babcia & Dziadek were coming, but they didn't know the four of us were. It was quite a surprise for them!

We left at 10 p.m. and luckily Lily and Lukasz slept through the night in their car seats. What awesome kids. Even when they woke up, they didn't complain. We stopped for breakfast and to stretch our legs at a Tim Hortons just past Jasper. I woke up when we were still in Jasper. So beautiful. Towards the end of the drive Lily got restless, so we popped some Polish cartoons into Babcia & Dziadek's built-in DVD player and she was happy. TVs and DVDs are great for times like that (but not much else, really).

We arrived Friday afternoon and Ciocia Natalya cooked us a delicious dinner of salmon, halibut, asparagus and potatoes. Then we went for a walk and saw their neighbourhood, watched the amazing lightning storms...

...and chatted until it was time for bed...

On Saturday they took us to the West Edmonton Mall. Holy Cow. What a mall.Roller coasters whizzing right over our heads as we walked through the amusement park part.

Loop-de-loop-de-loop and a half! And a crazy drop ride. You couldn't PAY me to go on that!

Dziadek and his wnuczek (vnoo-check... sounds like a Dr. Suess character to me :)

Awesome looking merry-go-round!!!

We didn't go on it. I'm too cheap. That mall is expensive.

Wild swing ride. Erk.

HUGE water slides and one side of a....

... very large pool. The pillar in the centre of the deep end is for bungy jumping.Free sea lion show (as seen from just above Lily's head). She loved watching this. I think he's taking a bow in this one.

And in this one.

Gorgeous make-a-wish boat.

Enormous clamshell just under the...

Ship! In the mall. Bizarre.

This dragon was so neat... unfortunately it scared Lily. Kinda scared me, too. This music comes on, lights flash, it starts moving and then it shoots fire out of its mouth! Twice! It was hot. We were standing right in front of it though. My face got toasty. Ciocia Natalya took Lily farther away so I could do my tourist thing and get a video. :) Can you believe this dragon does this every 15 minutes?



Awww.. we took Lily to this pet store and right in front was this little guy, snoozing away:
In the evening Natalya cooked us another amazing meal of chicken and roasted vegetables. Yum! Then we all watched The Bee Movie. Pretty cute. Lily thoroughly enjoyed it. And stayed up waaaaaaaaay past her bedtime. Oh well. It was a treat.