New Brunswick Trip - June 2016 - Mini Trip Report
I was born and raised in New Brunswick, so it is very important to me to get back there at least once every year. Flights in this country are crazy, and if I can get a flight for under $600 return it's a good deal - otherwise I would be going much more often! (I did end up going back to NB in August, but it cost me a LOT to fly on short notice like that).
Anyways, we decided to go in June this year because I had not one, not two but FIVE cousins graduating high school - all from the same one (and its the school I graduated from, and my mom graduated from, and my dad graduated from...). We flew there on a Thursday, and my dad picked us up from the airport, about an hour and half away. My uncle graciously offered us his car while we were home too, so we didn't need to get a rental car this time - that was a huge savings! (He also owned a truck, so don't worry, we didn't leave him stranded). We had flown red-eye and didn't sleep much on the overnight flight so we didn't do much this day - Luke decided to go for a nap and I followed soon after - and ended up sleeping through the night (I think I slept like 16 hours straight
).
Friday after I finally woke up I went to see my hair dresser. I refuse to pay the crazy prices they charge in Edmonton, so I get my hair cut once a year - when I'm back home. Plus, she does not even bat an eyelash when I tell her whatever crazy thing I want to do with my hair this time - the first time I went to her shop, I was like 15 and I had the ends of my hair bleached off and dyed bright blue (I was a huge Toronto Maple Leafs fan growing up, and this was during their playoff run in the early 2000's...I could probably do an entire post on my hair over the years
- it's been brown, black, blonde, red, pink, short, permed, multicoloured...). I went to my appointment this time with my own hair dye in hand - through trial and error I've figured out what works best for my hair! I refuse to touch bleach myself though, and I'm not great at doing foils on my own head. I handed over my violet and turquoise dye and told her to have fun - she also decided I needed some pink. I did tell her I wanted my roots left natural, but the rest bleached out.
You can see it better in other pictures I'll post farther along.
We did some visiting - spent a lot of time with my grandma and her adorable cats.
We went for supper with my dad at one of the local mom-and-pop restaurants for some greasy goodness:
Luke had the fish and chips, I had the hot turkey sandwich. So good, and so cheap! Luke's 2 pieces of fish and fries was $7.99, and my meal was $12.49. Spoiler alert - we ate here like 3 more times during our trip haha (but I don't have pictures of all of those).
Saturday night was the high school prom - where the graduates dress up in fancy dresses and suits/tuxedos, march around the school while hundreds of people take pictures of them and then they go inside the school gym for their last ever high school dance. I hadn't been to watch the Grand March since my own a decade ago, so I was excited about this! (For anyone wondering - my prom dress was rainbow coloured and purchased on Ebay
). My little cousins all looked amazing, here's one of them:
Yes, I am ten years older than her, and a full foot shorter...
The next few days were just visiting family and friends, and hanging out. I always enjoy going through the random things in my childhood bedroom as well - my room at my dad's has basically been untouched since I moved out (my parents split when I was in my early 20's, mom moved to Alberta to be closer to me, dad stayed in the house). It turns out I had a Minnie Mouse diary when I was young, which I used to write very important things (I also struggled to spell the word Awesome apparently...)
My roommate in university was a Fine Arts student, so at one point I asked her to paint me a picture of a sparkly rainbow unicorn - this is what she gave me. It's been hanging on the wall in my NB room ever since. It makes me smile every time I go home
One day we didn't leave my dad's house, since I was not feeling great due to my Crohn's. Another day we drove to the airport to pick up another one of my little cousins who was flying home from Ottawa (her younger brother was one of my cousins graduating).
A week after arriving in New Brunswick, on the following Thursday, it was graduation night. We were ready a little early, and went to one of my cousin's houses to see the graduates and take 4 million pictures of them. At one point, a cousin snapped this pic of Luke and I that I absolutely love
The next night, Friday, I celebrated my 10 year grad reunion. I had a very small class, there were only 42 of us and 23 of us ended up hanging out that weekend. One of the teachers from our school had found a time capsule my class had created when we were 13 years old, and gave it to a classmate (who is now a teacher herself). Oh man, this was entertaining! Our assignment was to write a letter describing our future partners - most of the other girls in my class wrote about their future millionaire/movie star/doctor husbands, and then there was me -
Yep, I was an interesting child haha. Surprisingly, Luke actually has a lot of the traits I mentioned in that letter, I guess I did get pretty lucky!
We spent an evening sitting around a bonfire with some old friends, whom I had known since I was 5 years old.
I attended a few grad parties, where I got to catch up with A LOT of family. There was a live band playing in the park in the middle of my hometown on the Saturday night, so I went to that with a bunch of my friends. Luke had decided to sign up for a 10km race the following morning, so he skipped going to see the band, and went to bed instead. My dad and I walked home after the show around 2:30 in the morning - needless to say, I did not go to cheer Luke on the next morning!
I've known those girls in the picture above for 23 years now... the one in the white tank top was my best friend in Kindergarten!
You basically got 2 for less than the price of one so that's awesome!
The text conversation was as follows:
We did have to drop our lunch reservation for Rainforest Cafe, but both of us were fine with that (and we knew it would probably happen anyway). Besides, we can always eat at Rainforest Cafe on our 2018 trip!
That was almost the size of my entire school! (I think there were 520 students in the entire K-12 the year I graduated).
