Family Vacation

Last weekend we took the kids on a mini-vacation to Toronto. Don’t tell them it was only a mini-vacation, because we passed it off as a real one:)  We’re doing so much traveling this year that we decided a long weekend in Toronto doing all the fun things there would be perfect for the kids vacation.  Up until this year it has been our tradition to go to Florida with my parents.  They rent a house with a pool and it was awesome when the kids were little.  The past few years, we realized that the kids were sort of growing out of this vacation.  Getting a little bored.  And we were hating the drive.  Then last year’s disaster happened.  First of all, the weather was terrible.  We were on the beach and I think we spent a total of an hour there the entire week it was so cold.  Then the promised pool heater didn’t even exist.  To top it all off, we all got sick.  I’m talking really sick.  We didn’t have a single day where we were all well.  At one point I said, “This is ridiculous!  We’re going to the beach!”  So we all put on long sleeves over our bathing suits, wrapped ourselves up in towels and determined to enjoy the beach.  After about 15 minutes, Arianna asked in a feverish, little girl voice, “Have we been here long enough?  Can we go back now?”  So we spent 90% of our vacation sleeping on the couch with the tv on:)  This is what it looked like....

This year was much better:)  We hit the zoo the first day.  It was an amazingly gorgeous day!  I took this picture of Emma with a Zebra because she asked when we were going to see them about every ten minutes.  Of course they were at the end:)  The zoo was Arianna’s pick and it was her favourite stop.

We checked into our amazing hotel in Vaughn which had a huge room and a warm swimming pool:)  The next day we went to the ROM.  This one was Jonathan’s pick and ended up being his favourite too.  We took this picture there because it says The Currelly Gallery above their heads.  The Currellys are a family in our church and the name on the gallery is the kids' friend’s great uncle.  Or something like that:)  Anyways, they thought it was very cool and wanted to save it for last so they could remember all the details and tell their friend all about it:)

Saturday was the annual Blue Jays game with the Holmes family.  They won so that was awesome!  It was also awesome that it didn’t go 18 innings like last year!! Just my luck to happen to be at the longest baseball game ever:)  Ok, I googled it and according to Wikipedia, it wasn’t exactly the longest, but it was forever!  Anyways, we had a great time with the Holmes family and went to dinner after.  The Blue Jays do a Jr. Jays game when they’re in town on a Saturday so the kids had a blast participating in that.  I think they won about 10 baseball cap piggy banks so they were kind of bummed that they didn’t win the other prizes, but still enjoyed it:)  They got their faces painted and ran the bases after.  It was another gorgeous day.  Which is pretty much my favourite part of baseball:)

Sunday we went to church and got to visit with some wonderful people in both the morning and evening services.  Monday was Canada’s Wonderland.  We told the kids that we didn’t think we should go since they’re all afraid of rides:)  They begged us to still go since all their friends go so we told them this was a trial run!  I think they went on rides solely so they could go again next year:)  But they did have a lot of fun.  I can’t say too much, since I mostly chicken out when looking at rides too!!

All in all, it was such a wonderful weekend.  I’m completely exhausted, but it was worth it.  It was a joy to watch the kids faces as they experienced all the new sights, learned new things and pushed themselves to try scary things.  Maybe I shouldn’t have forced Arianna to try the new roller coaster that she had to be let off of because she was totally freaking out before we even started.....but other than that, it was great:)  Oh, and there was the time we walked through what I think was a marijuana protest because there were about 40 people all smoking joints outside the convention center.  But, considering we spent five days in Toronto, I thought we did ok:)