Maritimes: Flights and Day in Halifax

 We had a nice trip to the Maritime Provinces over fall break. It has a bit of an exciting start with Me receiving an email less than 9 hours before the first flight saying that the first flight was delayed. It wouldn't be arriving until after the second flight left. Did we want to do anything about it? Of course we did. The automatic rerouting did not work (not enough seats) but they eventually booked us on Air Canada flying to Montreal and then Halifax. We left later and got in about the same time. Thankful for the extra bit of sleep especially since it was a late night with a football game and flight rearrangements the night before.

U, Me and Matthew at the airport in Phoenix.

The flight we did not take.

On the first plane.

Montreal airport. We saw the Olympic stadium on our flight into the airport. We ended up being in the airport about 5 hours as we arrived early. We tried to switch to an earlier flight but they did not let us since we did not book with Air Canada. Good news is that Me understood the French!

Air Canada is very confused about where the Taj Mahal is located....

Me on the second plane. We had nice big windows!

We arrived late into Halifax, got our rental car and headed to the hotel. As we were driving, Megan commented that it was not very colorful. (Note: it was after 11 pm and completely dark.) We set an alarm for 9 am to make sure we could eat the hotel breakfast. Good thing we did! After a yummy breakfast, we headed to the Halifax Citadel. We enjoyed exploring the fort and learning about the 4 Citadels and the people who lived there. The magazine house could store 220,000 lbs of gun powder!

We took a guided tour. Megan commented that it looked like our guide was wearing a Scottish dress (aka kilt). We said that he was and that there is a lot of Scottish influence here (Nova Scotia=New Scotland).

Barracks where the enlisted men slept.

Our guide showing us different types of cannons.

Getting ready to fire the noon cannon. It is how they used to keep time as ships would use it to set their clocks, etc.

Megan and U with the noon cannon and soldiers. 

That's a big cannon!

View into the center of the fort from the walls.

U dressing up like a soldier.

It's a bit big on Me!

Megan tried on the hat.

Me, U and Megan with some of the guards.

Megan with a rifle.

Matthew ready for duty!

Lego version of the Citadel. This was of great interest to some members of the family.

Army bugle

Me, Matthew and Megan walking in the walls of the fort.

Hi Matthew!

We visited the schoolroom where these interesting math problems were written. Apparently, the soldiers did not really like school but the kids did.

Megan really liked using the "magic lantern." Lots of cool pictures.

Changing of the guard.

View of Halifax Harbor from the wall.

Old Town Clock

We ate dinner at Tim Hortons and walked along the harbor a bit while eating some COWS ice cream. Halifax Harbor is the second largest natural harbor in the world (largest is Sydney, Australia).

U, Matthew, Me and Megan

Me and Megan.  Matthew is in the D.

We drove by the Halifax temple.

Megan enjoying the grass.

Megan, Matthew and Me with the temple.

Angel Moroni

U and Me with temple.

Megan, Me and Matthew

U and Megan

We then drove a few hours to Moncton, New Brunswick. Exit numbers in Nova Scotia made no sense in our opinion. For example, it was 33 km between exit 7 and exit 11. And we passed the same exit number multiple times while on the same highway. New Brunswick made much more sense with exit numbers corresponding to kilometer markers.

The kids slept most of the way. Megan was funny about it: She told us that she was closing her eyes because the sun was in one eye so it closed and then the other eye followed suit. She could not help it and it was not her fault. But she would not sleep, she claimed. Famous last words...

Entering into New Brunswick. It's officially bilingual so signs are in both English and French.

BYU Education Week

 Me headed to BYU mid August to attend BYU Education Week. The primary reason for going was to see her dad teach. She also got to spend time with Cheryl-Lynn, Cris and her parents.

The flight on the way out. It was quite bumpy as there were some storms. The plane almost flew to Vegas instead of heading straight north, probably to go around the worst of it.

Hello Salt Lake! A sign outside the airport shows that Salt Lake is home of the 2002 and 2032 Winter Olympics. Impressive that 2032 in on there already since that was just announced.

After meeting up with Cheryl-Lynn once she landed, our cousin Jack picked us up and took us to the store for some groceries and to his home for a quick minute. This is a picture of his stick family. That's a lot of kids!

Hannah, the youngest and the only one I had not met before. What really stood out to me was her hair--it looks very similar in coloring to Matthew's.

Mark gave me a tour of the house and was quite excited to show off their gaming system.

Chickens

Jack, Me, Cheryl-Lynn and Kristen

We stopped by to see Noah and Leah at work.

Me and CL on the Frontrunner.

We met up with Cris. Cheryl-Lynn and Cris were excited to see the BYU sign.

Cris, Me and Cheryl-Lynn at dinner. We were a bit slap happy.

We nested.

Sunday, we wandered around campus, checking out where some of our classes would be and listening to zoom sacrament meetings (one mission farewell and one homecoming). We went to our cousin Amber's house for dinner. We did measurements of the dorm room for our cousin Kelly's daughter, Kate, who moves into the dorm building where we were staying. It was fun to discuss all the possibilities for Kate.

Cheryl-Lynn, Cris, Josh, Amber, Me at Amber and Josh's house.

Monday morning, we headed to dad's class. He taught 4 consecutive classes on adult development and choosing an empowered life.

Lindsey (and her husband Brian-not pictured) came for one of the classes.

Cris, mom, Luke (via video call), Cheryl-Lynn and Me before the first class. Luke listened to the whole class.

Dad prepping for a class between sessions.

Dad teaching. He really is a good teacher.

Cris, Me, Dad, Cheryl-Lynn and Mom after the classes

We went to Josh's office to see his Legos. Josh teaches organic chemistry at BYU.

The Millennium Falcon. My kids now want one.

Josh had Legos strung up around his office.

Nice view from the office.

Tuesday through Friday, we attended a bunch of different classes during the day. I enjoyed the philosophy class where we studied different philosophers. I like how they all tried to find truth. I also attended a helpful class on neurodiversities, learned about good short stories and Cinderella stories, listened to some excellent music and learned about different cultures. I also attended dad's marriage class and his conflict class each day. After, we would talk about the classes and how they went. There was definitely a lot of learning!

Our seats at the devotional where Elder Andersen of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles spoke.

I went out to dinner at the Bombay house one evening with U's siblings. We ate family style. The food was delicious!

Chris, Allison, Me, Emily with the one building in India...

Thursday evening, we went to a concert with Vocal Point and Noteworthy.

Dad, Mom, Cris, Me, Cheryl-Lynn

The two groups took turns performing. Here is Vocal Point.

Noteworthy

Cheryl-Lynn and Me before we left with President Brad Wilcox of the YM General Presidency behind us. He sat two rows in front of us.

Cheryl-Lynn, Me, Dad, Cris and Mom after dad's last class.

We went to the art museum.

Cheryl-Lynn and Cris with a cool rainbow art behind them.

Brian Kershisnik had an exhibition at the museum. I especially liked his art that related to women and motherhood.

There were also some works by Andy Warhol.

Me and Cris with Marilyn.

Saturday, it was time to leave. It was sad to say good-bye and yet good to be going home to our families.

Cheryl-Lynn and Me in our room.

Keycard

We saw this snail on our morning walk.

Waffles and fries from Bruges at the airport. Yum! I brought home some waffles to share.

We had some nice views of the Grand Canyon on the flight home.

Overall, it was a very nice week. I'm really glad I got to go see dad teach. Someone asked us if we were dad's granddaughters. We thought that was funny. Someone else told mom that she did a good job raising dad. She was a bit taken back by that until we explained that they likely meant raising him as his wife, not as his mom...