Recap of February

We started the month in Niagara Falls with my parents.  It was so much fun.  None of us had ever seen the falls in the winter, and they were breathtaking.  We also spent a bunch of inside time at a water park, which we all thoroughly enjoyed.

As you can imagine, the kids were more than exhausted after all that fun.  They both fell asleep within five minutes of starting to drive back home.

 

John & I went to Canoe, called "the best restaurant in Toronto," while they were here.  The food was delish, the view was amazing, and the company was excellent.

After grocery shopping one day, Benjamin helped empty the clementines!

John attended our church's men's retreat one weekend, so all us moms & kids had our annual sleepover.  We totaled 4 moms and 7 kids this year, and all of us went to play in the snow the next morning.  We made quite the sight as we walked to the park!

Another walk in the snow :)

The kids moved from pattern block cooking to pompom cooking.  They now have a Pompom Cafe Menu and play this every single day.

Benjamin had no fear feeding camels, llamas, bighorn sheep and donkeys.

Last but not least, the annual Yorkville Ice Festival.  It has been such a treat to be just 3 blocks away from this fun winter event.  This year's theme - Egypt.

St. Catherines

We all traveled with John while he attended a conference in St. Catherines, located a few hours away from Toronto.  It was such a great long weekend.  The kids and I just played, drove/rode in the car, played, shopped, and played some more.  John was able to join us for a good portion of our fun, so that was an added bonus!

The best part of St. Catherines, in Helena's eyes, was definitely the carousel.  It's an old carousel that continues to cost five cents per ride.  Helena rode nine times with Benjamin's rides totaling four.

The best part of the hotel for Helena - either the pool or the TV.  Helena doesn't watch much at home, but we let her watch a good bit while at the hotel.  As you can tell, she was enthralled.

The shopping wasn't their favorite, but the kids loved riding in shopping carts together.

Please note this cart from Target was over half the length of our car!

Picnics at the parks were some of my favorite moments of the trip.

Enjoying the natural beauty and all the grass was wonderful.

It was fun to just have time together, away from all our responsibilities.

Helena was absolutely zonked on the last day.  We carried her into the mall to the food court and ate lunch, then carried her back to the car and strapped her in, all while she was sound asleep.

Royal Botanical Gardens

We usually really like living without a car but there are a few things that are just a bit more difficult without one, such as grocery shopping and getting out of the city.  So, another reason we love to have Grandma visit is...drum roll please...she brings her car!

One day we piled in her car and drove to Burlington to visit the Royal Botanical Gardens.  The outside gardens were still completely empty but inside they had a great feature called "Savage Garden, Nature's Ninjas."  It was all about carnivorous plants and animals with interesting defense mechanisms.

They had gigantic sculptures of three different carnivorous plants, so the kids could really see and understand what each one does.  Above, Helena is practicing the instant clamping of a Venus flytrap.

It was awesome.  The myth that chameleons change color to match their surroundings was debunked.  NO chameleons do this.  They actually change color to send messages to other chameleons.

We saw a 7 foot python eat a dead rat.  It was gross yet amazing.

Then, after the show, the animal instructor told us he was there all day, so if we wanted to see any of the animals up close or even touch them, just let him know.  What a treat.  Here's Helena checking out the caiman, which ended up being her favorite animal to touch.

Helena & Grandma's selfie

Thanks so much for taking us to Burlington, Grandma!  We're definitely willing and wanting to go back again with you when the gardens are in bloom.

Ottowa

As previously mentioned, John and I were gone for part of Millie's visit - we went on a babymoon!  This was the first time we'd been away from Helena together, and it was so good and looking back, so necessary.

 

We took Millie's car east, to Ottowa and then Montreal, two cities we'd never explored.  Of course any good car trip starts with an Iced Capp from Tim Horton's.

We got a little nervous about our navigation skills when we crossed the Mississippi River!  A quick check on the GPS told us we were still in Ontario, so we kept driving :) 

Ottowa is the capital of Canada, so a tour of Parliament was on our docket of things to do.

 

  

It was beautiful inside, as you'd expect.  The most beautiful part was the library, as the walls, the shelves, everything were wood with beautiful carvings all over.  It was the only part of the building saved from a fire in 1916, and I'm so glad it was saved.  (Sorry, no pictures were allowed!)

The main doors are flanked by a lion and a unicorn.  The architect had a sense of humor or I'm missing something, as I've never seen a unicorn with it's tongue hanging out in front of an incredibly important government building before!

We also visited the Royal Mint that afternoon.  One of John's side hobbies in the last year has been researching and learning all about the Gold Standard and such.  Unfortunately we weren't allowed to see where the gold is refined and then made into bars, but John was allowed to hold one weighing 28 pounds (more than Helena!) - and worth $700,000 on that day.

Here are the three things we really took note of in the city of Ottowa:  1) There are statues everywhere, statues of government related things and then statues like these - different parts of trees with little kids' legs holding them up!  2) There are trails everywhere, making it a very accessible city for those who don't have cars.  3) The signs that are supposed to help us tourists are pretty horrible.  For example, we were following the tourist information site signs for 20 minutes, going back and forth past the site without knowing it!  Signs directed us to the place, saying three minutes this way, but there were no signs to show us that we were actually there  and needed to go inside (it was inside a mall).

Ottawa was a fun place to visit for the afternoon.  As we walked around, we chatted about how someday we'll take our kids to Washington D.C., but then we thought about our current life and realized we may be taking them to Ottowa instead!

Visit from Grandma/Mom/Millie

Last week we had a special visitor who is called many things, but in this sentence I'll just call her John's mom.  It was a bit of a strange visit, as John & I were gone in the middle of it, but it was still great.  On the days that we were all together, we definitely kept busy.

We spent lots of time outside in the nice weather.

We made our first trip this year to Riverdale Farm - a charming little farm in the middle of downtown Toronto.  It is a gem.  

During our last visit there, I learned that all donkeys have crosses on their backs!  Did you know that?  I had definitely never noticed that in all my time around donkeys.  The story is that the crosses are there as a reminder of Palm Sunday.

My favorite day was spent at Spencer Gorge Conservation Area, about an hour away from Toronto.  The park has two large waterfalls, easy dirt-pathed hikes to both falls, huge willow trees, lots of grass, and an old cobblestone bridge.

The bridge was simply charming.

It was such a GORGEOUS day!

We also had lots of fun playing inside.  One afternoon Grandma & Helena hosted a tea party for H's Mommy & Daddy!  Thanks so much for coming Grandma/Mom/Millie!

Maple Syrup for My Birthday

This past Saturday was my birthday, so we decided to live it up.  We went out to Bruce's Mill, a conservation area that has a large Maple Syrup Festival this time of year.  It was the most beautiful day of the year so far, so not only did we have lots of fun, it was most enjoyable to be outside.

A little bit of info about maple syrup for you: the sap comes out of the tree completely clear and has only a 5% sugar content.  It used to be collected in buckets, as seen below, but now the modern more efficient method is to have tubes connecting all the trees to a main line, which carries the sap directly to the sugar shack.

It takes 24 hours of boiling for the sap to reach a 66% sugar content, which is what you want for syrup.  The below photo shows how they used to do it; using three different pots was necessary because you wouldn't want to boil sap with a 5% sugar content in the same pot that you'd just boiled syrup in.  It would burn!  Notice the third pot - it's concave.  This was a recent development in the early 1900s which helped the syrup to boil and froth in to the pot, rather than bubbling out. 

 John & I found all of this really interesting.  There's so much about our food that we just don't know!

Besides being educated on maple syrup, we petted animals, Helena had a pony ride, and we all went for a wagon ride.  Oh, and there were rocks to find, snow to tromp in, sticks and leaves to dig in, and tons of mud that we tried to avoid.

Other especially fun things we did with our rental car were made a stop at Michael's (nearly impossible to get to on public transportation), bought a huge amount of groceries (which means I won't have to push/pull all of them home), and took a gander at this Slovak Byzantine Rite Roman Catholic former cathedral.

Its construction was started in 1984, when its cornerstone was blessed by the Pope, but it is still not completed.  And it is no longer a cathedral, because the church and the church foundation that owns the property could not hold a stable relationship. 

 The day ended at Banjara Indian Cuisine with one of the most delicious Indian meals we've had and then key lime pie at home.  An absolutely fabulous day - thank you John for my great birthday!

Prequ'ile Provincial Park, Take 2

Like last August, we went camping with our friends Peter, Christa & Holly.  The girls were mobile this year, which made it so much more fun!

 

Helena & Holly loved seeing all the animals.  In the above they're watching a caterpillar walk on the tent.  Overall, Helena accidentally crunched two caterpillars with her loving touches, kissed one right on its back without killing it, and got one to hold on so tight to her finger that I had a hard time getting it off!

The other major animal sighting was a frog.  It immediately hopped under a car, but the girls continued to observe it for a very long time. 

 

The beach is the big draw at Presqu'ile.  The guys played frisbee for so long that John got a blister!

The beaches have a beautiful white sand but our campsite was near a rocky beach, so we also spent time throwing rocks into Lake Ontario.  

One evening John cooked hobos and corn on the cob over the fire.  Best meal of the trip! 

Thanks for the hobo addition, Erinn - the sweet potatoes were excellent!

 
 

Helena had her first hot dog and first marshmallow in the park.  She loved both.

 One morning we went on the Marsh Boardwalk, which completely surpassed all our expectations.  It was beautiful and 100% not buggy.

 

One afternoon Helena danced and ran around with her shadow.  It was so much fun to watch.

Helena & Holly seemed to decide the front door to our tent was a makeshift couch for the camping trip.  They'd be running around playing and then both decide to go plop themselves down at the door, sit and play for awhile, and then get back up to run around some more.  This happened over and over and over again.

 

Every morning Helena would wake up with a huge smile on her face.   John & I loved being outside of the city where we could hear the leaves rustling, the waves hitting the shore, the birds singing, but even more we loved seeing Helena enjoy the outdoors so much.