I find the end of August creeps up on us far too quickly and suddenly, it’s your birthday and I’m not even sure what happened to summer. Such as it is this year, and we’re in Banff.
It wasn’t even a plan as such, we just looked at you, and you said: “Banff!” Which, in all honesty, is a lot easier than doing a birthday party. (Next year will be a bigger challenge … the big 1-8.)
So, off we went with little more than a couple of bottles of water, we found ourselves in Lower Bankhead just before noon. We’ve been here a few times now, so my regret at not discovering this place sooner has waned into “we go here a lot”. Still, pictures of you as a little girl might have been cuter. But I definitely wouldn’t have liked you climbing up some of the concrete walls, so … actually, yeah, I think we went at the right time.
We attempted to recreate some pictures from your past. I even took a photo of the hallway picture we have of you and Choo Choo, from what feels like a bazillion years ago. We’ve tried a couple of times to get it the same, but you and your sister are now so much larger … and you don’t take direction all that well, either.
We skipped Park, our typical haunt, as we let you choose where you wanted lunch. And that was at Banff Brewing. We keep going back to pubs, I find, not that I’m complaining in the slightest. I just wish we had more pubs like they have in England and Scotland.
We wandered Banff Ave. for a bit, but we didn’t linger long. I suppose one advantage of Banff being as near as it is means we don’t have to feel like we need to stay all day to make full use of the distance we’ve travelled.
We finished off the day with dinner and presents at home.
I’ll admit that today seemed a bit more subdued than years previous, but I’ll also chalk that up to no specific plan or party. And it’s not like we didn’t ask you what you wanted, it just ended up being … quiet.
Perhaps, the quiet before the storm…
