Aya, Niamh & Oskar's big trip: Canada: 3rd

The 10 hour flight from England on Wednesday was pretty good, really, but the 5 hour wait in Vancouver pushed us beyond our wakeful limit, so by the time we got to Kelowna the kids were exhausted and fell asleep in the car back to Vernon. I immediately recognised Maria, my cousin who I hadn't seen for almost 30 years, who had come to collect us. We snuck into the house quietly so as not to wake Matthew (7) and Adam (3), as it was already 9pm, and I plonked my two into bed where they snored happily till morning. I said hello to Blair and took myself off to bed.

We had a marvellous week in Vernon. I love the place - it's in a wide bowl of a valley and has a lovely big sky that reminds me of my growing up days on the Canterbury Plains. We weren't able to ski/snowboard as there wasn't enough snow, but there was definitely enough for sledding, which we did on Friday (and Oskar went again on Saturday morning). Niamh unfortunately got sick so spent a couple of days in bed, but we had Maria and Blair's downstairs area to ourselves, including a family room with a huge TV, so Niamh wasn't too distressed.

Luckily she was well enough to come out on Friday night to an ice hockey game. That was a neat experience - the stadium was small enough so we weren't overawed and the game was engaging. Best of all, the home team won.

Blair and Maria's, and my kids got on remarkably well. Oskar and Matthew spent many a happy hour with heads together over the PSP, watching TV but also playing other games. Occasionally competitive, they seemed to work things out eventually. Adam was quite taken with Niamh, and the other way round, and I could see that my girl will be a great babysitter one day.

There were another couple members of the Hansen family around also. One was Blair's brother, who owns a self-contained suite on the ground floor of their house (next to our rooms). Uncle Lyndon was quickly adopted by my kids also, who followed their young cousins into his place without knocking! And there was Emmy, the beautiful but slightly nervous chocolate laborador. She spent the first day barking at us, but by the end of our stay was delighted to receive tummy rubs and ear tickles. She still woofed, but usually just in greeting by that stage.

On Saturday Oskar and I caught up with a writing mate of mine from the marvellous Dragon Writers online forum - Jim - and his wife Jen, and young Malcolm, who is one of the smiliest 7-month-olds I've met, as well as their two cats. They made us a yummy lunch and Jim, Jen, Malcolm and I chatted while Oskar played Super Mario!

I also went out on Saturday evening for some grown-up activity, with Maria and Blair to Maria's work Christmas event - an opportunity to see her secondary school teaching colleagues let down their hair a bit. All four kids were meanwhile looked after by two young ladies from Maria's recently successful volleyball team, and it was very nice to come home to a house of sleeping children.

Maria very kindly (and bravely) agreed to host an influx of my nephews and nieces, their mum and their partners, children, children's partners and grandchild (my oldest brother's family). We had a great catchup and pot luck lunch on Sunday. I think about 15 people turned up and I managed to get photos of everyone except Jorja! Sorry honey - I got the back of your head in one photo. :( It was wonderful to see these guys again. I grew up with them in NZ but had a gap of about 22 years when they moved back to Canada. And this was another 6 years since the last time we'd seen each other, so we're getting better. Maria had never met them so that was a new bit of family for her.

On Monday I started to think about moving on again, and repacked bags. We were flying to Vancouver on Tuesday so I organised suitcases so we would only have to get into one at my niece's house on Tuesday night. We made another trip out to the supermarket to stock up on provisions, and Maria made a traditional Hungarian dish for dinner, that both our mothers used to make - paprikas chirke (phonetic spelling there, it's chicken in paprika sauce). The kids enjoyed it and I observed the cooking closely so I can make it at home.

Tuesday it snowed, and the snow mountains opened. Too late for us, but we had the compensation of building an excellent snowman in the back yard. We said our goodbyes to Maria and Adam (we'd said goodbye to Matthew on Monday night), then Blair drove us to the airport in Kelowna. We saw some of the nephews and nieces (Denise, Shane, Jason and Linda) as they were heading back to Edmonton. We grabbed some lunch and said a fond farewell to Blair.

Another big THANK YOU required here to Maria and Blair for an awesome stay, for making us so comfortable and it was just really good to catch up. It was great to meet Matthew and Adam and is very special for my kids to meet some of my family as we are very scattered across the world.