The Rockies Tour, with a rocky run up.

[jocat]

Just a few days after we booked and paid for our non-cancellable flights, our daughter announced that she and her boyfriend of 8 years were expecting a baby, our first grandchild. She’d only found out that morning.

This was obviously wonderful news, and even more so as due to a medical condition she has, she was told that she’d probably need medical intervention when it came to getting pregnant. We were so relieved for her that this wasn’t the case, as going through fertility treatment can be heartbreaking for couples.

Her timing could have been a little better though – her due date is the 22nd July, which is the day we go on holiday! This has caused some tremendous indecision with us. Do we try and postpone or just cancel our holiday? Can we sell our flights to our friends? Do we go as planned and feel enormous guilt for the rest of our lives? Perhaps a bit over dramatic, but that is how I felt.

We decided to hold fire and not make any decisions for a few weeks, let the news sink in and then discuss it with her at a later time.

The early weeks of her pregnancy were not worry free however, and everything else went out of the window while she wasn’t in the best of health. That initial panic has thankfully now passed and she has reached the 20th week of her pregnancy today. Her health has improved dramatically too and she can actually enjoy her pregnancy now.

We rang BA to double check what our options were and discovered that as expected, we could not cancel without forfeiting the entire cost, nor could we change the passengers travelling so that our friends could go instead. However we could move our flights to a later date, which was more than we’d expected. When we looked at other possible dates though, the only thing we could do was move them back by a couple of weeks - as I work in a school I am obviously unable to take my holidays in term time, but Martin could not change his dates due to others having holidays booked. As the changed flights would have to be taken by November, there was actually no other option. It was either cancel completely or go on holiday as planned. It actually also makes no difference to us financially if we cancel now or leave it until two days before we travel.

After lots of discussions between the two of us, and then similar discussions with DD, we have currently made the decision to go on holiday as planned. DD felt very strongly that we shouldn’t cancel. Her boyfriend will have two weeks off work, and his mum also works in a school so will be around to help if they need it initially. Then, when we’re back off holiday, I’ll still be off work for 3 weeks and can help her when she needs me to. If we’d moved our holiday dates back a couple of weeks, I’d perhaps have more chance of being around when the baby was born, but wouldn't be available to help when she needs me. I’d rather me be the one that’s upset at potentially not being around for the time of the birth, than her be upset that I wasn’t there for her when she wanted me to be.

I’m praying that the baby arrives a couple of days earlier than the due date, which would be the ideal solution.

This news though has changed our planned itinerary, with Vancouver Island being the casualty. We need to ensure we have good wifi where possible, for as much of the holiday as we can! We definitely want to be able to Facetime to be introduced to our new grandchild if they arrive after their due date.

We’d also been having a little bit of wobble about the length of the travelling back from Ucluelet to Kamloops. It shows on Google Maps as 8 hours 30 minutes, which we just felt was too much. It would be different if we were visiting Vancouver Island first, but we did not fancy that long in the car.

With the decision made, we started looking at an alternative destination, and have opted for Whistler. We understand that Whistler can be very busy in the summer months, so instead of staying there, we’ve chosen to stay on the outskirts, in a place called Creekside. As well as being cheaper, the accommodation is much more spacious than most in Whistler Village too.

We have a one bedroomed suite with full kitchen at the Evolution, and it has a handful of restaurants nearby if we don’t feel like driving or catching the bus back to Whistler to eat.

We’re disappointed about losing Vancouver Island from our plans, but as we hope to do an Alaskan Cruise in the future, we’ve decided that we’ll tag Vancouver Island onto that trip.