Spring Chicks!

We are all recovering from our hours of driving! We had some fantastic caretakers of our house while we were gone and our seedlings, new strawberry  plants, and new raspberries look fantastic!  Our grass is growing amazingly where the pigs did all of their pooping during their last weeks with us.  We wish we had thought to spread it around the yard a bit more.  

Our baby chicks have arrived!  This year we ordered 8 new layers and 25 meat birds.  We have never kept meat birds this year, so this will definitely be an experiment.  Hopefully at the end of 8 weeks we will have a freezer full of chicken meat! This years names include: Feathers, Egbert, Chewbacca, Jill, FN2183, Darth Vader, Yolk and Jack & Annie.

May 2018 Road Trip Adventures- Lake Placid, NY

Today was a long day of driving, but it was beautiful driving through western New York.  We made it to Lake Placid , checked into our hotel room, did a little swimming and ate breakfast for dinner in our room.  We followed it all up with a stroll downtown and found some great deals in the shops.  We are grateful the weather continues to be gorgeous! 

Saturday morning we took on all things Olympics.  Our first stop was the ski jump complex where we watched the Canadian team practicing their jumps.  While there, we headed up the hill to the top of the 120m long jump tower. This was another gorgeous view from the highest point in the area.  Next, we visited the bobsled/luge track and had to walk to the top. Normally you would get to take a bus to the top, but since it was the off season and literally no one else was there, we were on our own.  The kids were troopers and it was really spectacular to see the whole track from the top.  I visited Lake Placid in 1998, I think, and this new track was installed in 2000, so that was a bit bizarre!  We got to walk down for a ways in the old track which was neat.

For lunch, we went back to the ski jumping arena to watch the Russian team practicing their jumps. Finding parking was difficult in downtown Lake Placid because of a few other events happening at the same time, so we ended up walking to the Olympic Museum from our hotel. This was a bit underwhelming, even for us, so we were glad we didn't make special plans to see it.  The kids loved the bobsled simulator in the stadium though.  We had a nice dinner at a local brewery followed by a ride around Mirror Lake and to see the actual Lake Placid (which is not the lake in downtown Lake Placid). The weather has continued to be warm, so we finished our trip with a stop for ice cream!  Heading back home tomorrow:)

May 2018 Road Trip Adventures- Niagra Falls

Thursday we left Toronto heading to Niagra Falls, Ontario, which turns out to be just over an hour away.  We didn't arrive until later in the day because we (I) just HAD to stop at Ikea.  Noah is too big for the playroom there, but the other three were still short enough and they had a ball playing while Noah, Gabe and I shopped.

It was unseasonably hot today, sunny and near 90 degrees, so as soon as we arrived at Niagra Falls we didn't waste any time.  We took the Hornblower cruise into the falls first.  It was warm, but very windy.  We had all gotten our rain ponchos on and were waiting on the boat when Gabe says to me, "Are we really going to get THAT wet?"  Having done this before, all I could do is laugh and say, "That is like white water rafting and asking if you will get wet!"  It is quite apparent from the pictures how wet we really got.

After the boat ride we walked along the river for some spectacular views of both falls.  This brought us to the Behind the Falls Tour.  We learned some of the cool science and history of the falls before getting a shower outside beside the falls.  By this time everyone was exhausted so we went back to the hotel for some dinner and swimming.  We all stayed up much later than we intended because, from our hotel room, we were able to watch as both sets of falls were lit up with changing, colorful lights.  Tomorrow is a one of our longer driving days as we head back to the United States and Lake Placid, NY.

May 2018 Road Trip Adventures- Toronto

On Sunday we made the drive across to Toronto. The weather wasn't great so we didn't explore too much along the way other than to the A&W "restaurant" for lunch, which was better than we thought, and they served all drinks in a frosted mug.  Since we arrived earlier than we could check into our condo, we stopped first at Casa Loma, Toronto's castle. This was quite an impressive place. When you get down to it though, it was built by a rich man who always wanted to live in a castle in the early 1900s. He lost his fortune during the depression, the home became a hotel, then was abandoned for a number of years before a local rotary-type group who have revived it into the tourist attraction it is today.  It has also been used in many hollywood movies.  The favorite feature of everyone was the long underground tunnel that took you down the block to the most elaborate carriage house and horse stalls around. That evening we settled in to our new home and were treated to an beautiful view of the Toronto skyline.  

Monday, we headed out early to visit the CN Tower.  To be completely honest, I had no idea that the CN Tower was the tallest building in the world for over 30 years.  It was built as a radio tower, so there are no offices or companies within it except for the restaurant and other tourism related entities.  We spent a few hours up on the observation deck which had a glass floor that allowed you to look down to the plaza below. James, Ben and Audrey were unphased by the floor and were dancing on it. Noah, however, was scared to death of it given his fear of heights.  We were so proud of him though, because he wouldn't give in to his fear.  By the end of our time he managed to walk out on to the glass all by himself!

After we finished we were taking pictures outside at the CN Tower sign when a group of Chinese tourists joined us.  Ben wasn't paying attention while we were yelling for him to get out of the way of their pictures. But, instead, they insisted that they wanted him in their pictures and started taking turns posing with him.  Before we knew what was happening one of them came up and took Audrey to be in their picture too.  We realized too late that we should have given Audrey the choice to say no, but they whole thing was just so bizarre we went with it:)

Across the street was the Toronto Railway Museum with a real round house.The museum itself was closed, but there was still lots to see in the yard.  We ate lunch at the Amsterdam Brew Haus on the water.  We spent the afternoon at Ripley's Aquarium. This contained a really long moving sidewalk to take you through an enormous tunnel under an aquarium. The coolest thing we did was to get our nails and cuticles "cleaned" of their dead skin by the prawns. Also, at the base of the CN Tower was the Rogers Center, the home of the Toronto Blue Jays. We had dinner at home then drove down to check out the beach and the over 100 beach volleyball courts.

Tuesday was a bit dreary so we explored the Royal Museum of Ontario.  I can only liken it to parts of most of the Smithsonian Museums under one roof.  There were exhibits of dinosaurs, ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, lots of sculptures, a bat cave and amazing modern architecture. We drove through Eaton Square where the Eaton Center was, but decided it wasn't worth parking and getting out to explore. Instead, we went back downtown to check "eat a bever tail" off our list. We had one with Nutella, peanut butter and Reeses pieces. The other one had cheesecake icing with Skor bar bits... they were awful...;)

Wednesday morning brought our trip to Canada's Wonderland. It was a large amusement park something like Six Flags.  The characters known at Wonderland were the Peanuts gang which the kids got to meet a few of.  Everyone tried out at least one roller coaster and had a blast riding all of the rides.  They even let us leave the park to have a picnic lunch outside, then come back in.  Needless to say, spent the entire day here.

There were a few things we didn't get to experience in Toronto we wished we could have.  We weren't able to go to Toronto Island because of flooding due to the high water level of Lake Ontario. We did get to see the flooding from the CN Tower and it was pretty impressive!  We also tried to go to the zoo, but it was closed because due to a workers strike.  Despite those set backs, I am not sure we could have fit anything else in!  Tomorrow we are heading out to Niagra Falls, but not before a stop at Ikea... Gabe is super excited about this stop;)