Saturday July 16th

Saturday, July 16th Today was an extremely early start for Nicholas has he had to be at McMahon Stadium for 7:45 AM to try on his football equipment so he could participate in a Calgary dinos junior football camp from 9 to 4 PM Saturday and Sunday. We had signed Nicholas up for this camp a month ago before he got excepted for a job at stampede and with late nights, early mornings and serious tackle football he would sure to be in great shape by the end of the weekend. Krista was not so impressed that she had to drive him early in the morning as well while I got to sleep in. :) When Krista arrived home after 9, we sat down and went through our itinerary for Europe and made numerous changes as well as book some tickets to different tours and events all over the place. It was an extremely productive review of our holiday and before you knew it it was time to head down to the stampede. It was pouring rain again once I got off the train and had to do the mad dash under the umbrella and 1000 people to get in the gates and off to work.

 Nashville North was jampacked with several thousand people and another thousand in line who would wait anywhere from 3 to 5 hours to get in. People are crazy. Time flew by as I prepped tons of beef and buys him as we went through hundreds of burgers and Smokies between 5 and 10 PM. Krista picks Nicholas up from football at 4 PM and came down to the grounds to drop him off for work and proceeded to go to the chuckwagon races after touring the Barnes and the horses with Jacob. They wandered around for a while and then met Nicholas and I are headed back to grannies place to pick up the van. I somehow managed to talk the family into staying for the fireworks and we watched it from the top of Scotsmans Hill Park. It was delayed for 10 minutes but then the 15 minute show was more than worth the wait as it really was exceptional to watch it with the grandstand show in the background with the music while looking down on stampede Park from above. You could see all the fireworks shooting out of the waggons set up all over the back infield and the amount of smoke filled the sky it was quite ominous. By the time we walked back to the van and got home it was after midnight but Krista and I still have to go and retrieve my car from the Ctrain station at Bishop O'Byrne high school. Very exciting day that was enjoyed by everyone.