Happy Monday! 

I hope you had a great weekend. Ours was very quiet. We are three weeks into lockdown 2.0 and it's mandatory to wear masks whenever we are outside (except for when Tj goes for a run). 

On Sunday they announced that we are moving to stage 4 restrictions for at least another six weeks. It's not entirely clear what that means (that should be announced on Monday) but it seems like retail shops will be closing and there is a curfew from 8:00 pm - 5:00 am every day. It is not the best news, but seriously, what are people doing that cases are going up and up? This sucks. We are mostly in good spirits but looking for ideas to occupy our time. Any Netflix recommendations? I just really hope that things start improving and we can get back to a "new" normal soon enough. 

Since we can't go anywhere anytime soon, I thought I'd re-live some past traveling and go all the way back to 2010 when we went to Banff, Alberta. I had to pull out my old external hard drive to dig out these pictures so fingers crossed the photo quality won't be too bad. 

We were only there for a few days. We had a night in Calgary (I vaguely remember watching an Ottawa Senators playoff game at the bar) and we spent some time in Banff and Canmore. It was not enough! This was my first time in Alberta and I was taken by the natural beauty. And those mountains! I would love to see mountains like that every day. It looked like Canada straight out a textbook.

Most memorable moments: 

• The animals! I saw wild goats, coyotes, deer, and bison (I think it's a bison?) without even trying. There were animals everywhere! I didn't see any bears though, which is probably for the best. 

• Chocolate lava cake - we went to dinner with my aunt and uncle and I had my first molten chocolate lava cake and it was amazing. As soon as I got back to Ottawa I made these for my family and Jacob had a friend over who said it was the best dessert he ever had!

• Lake Louise - is any trip to Banff complete without a stop at Lake Louise? We ran out of time but had to squeeze this in. It meant I almost missed my flight and had to take off my shoes and run through the airport but I thought it would be worth it. Well, even though it was May, the lake was still frozen. So while I was expecting the beautiful clear blue lake in all the tourism pictures, I got a lot of snow. Not quite what I was expecting. All the more reason to go back again one day I guess. 

Have a great week :)

Stay safe.