When Leigh and Parnell Pinette and their five kids left Williams Lake for a weekend waterski tournament in Washington on Thursday July 6, they thought they'd be coming home that Sunday.

Instead, because of the wildfire evacuation orders, they've been away from home for close to a month.

"On Thursday we started driving down to Blaine, Washington… and we've been gone since," Parnell said. "We got a bunch of texts on Friday asking 'how're you guys doing'… and that's when we found out [about the wildfire evacuation].”

Since they couldn't go home, the family spent the following weeks hopping from waterski camp to waterski camp sleeping in their camper and wearing the clothes they packed for their three-day trip.

"Leigh's been doing a couple loads of laundry and we've just lowered our standards, I guess you could say," Parnell said.

They stayed in Washington for two weeks after the first tournament before heading up to Kamloops for a waterski camp for the kids. While they were there, they checked in at the evacuation centre.

"It was really humbling to see how much support there was from the City of Kamloops, and then to see all the people that are now homeless from William's Lake are safe in Kamloops," Leigh said.

CTV caught up with them in Abbotsford on July 30. They were there for the Canadian Western Water Ski Championships. Afterwards, they're planning on driving home to William's Lake.

Leigh says her kids have seen the prolonged evacuation as some kind of summer vacation – their dad has never gotten three weeks off before.

"It's been really fun with all the skiing we've been able to do," Lucas Pinette said.

"I just started skiing last summer. And definitely this three weeks I've improved a lot because that's all we've been doing," Liv Pinette said.

Leigh considers it a blessing that her kids weren't in William's Lake for the evacuation order and didn't have to see all the smoke.

"With the five kids they're more concerned about their stuff and their house," Leigh said. "We said don't worry, we can always get new stuff."

With a report from CTV Vancouver's Breanna Karstens-Smith.