Travels and Travails Part 1

October was a busy month, not like any other months aren't.  (At least this year, or so it seems, life has been very busy).  

We got to do a couple of road trips around this part of the province, and as usual, my kids proved themselves to be pretty good little travellers.  We are still working on the "don't distract Mom" rules, while I am driving, but it's coming along.  (And yes, I have actually said "Do you want me to pull over or are you going to be quiet?")

We welcomed my uncle and cousin from Germany and Evie and I took them down to Toronto and Niagara Falls for a quick trip.

This was the view from the top of the CN Tower, where we had a lovely meal. Somewhere behind my uncle's head, in the background of downtown, is the building that Bob and I used to live in, for several of our Toronto years.  (It was wonderful to be downtown then, and we only left when we started accumulating too many things and the place got too small.  But we did miss it.)  It used to be very visible with brightly coloured balconies, but seems to have had a paint job and I couldn't spot it.

Our dinner was lovely, and I only lost Evie a couple of times due to the revolving nature of this restaurant.  She'd be leaning on the window, looking out while I was chatting away in really bad German, and then I'd look over and she'd be at the next table....and would be just as startled to see that strangers were now sitting at the table she thought I was at!

OK, this glass floor has never thrilled me, but Evie went right out onto it, her innocent young mind unsoiled with thoughts of screaming bodies hurtling hundreds of metres downwards.  Obviously my German relatives are also made of sterner stuff than I.  Achtung baby!

On we went to our 'fallsview' room at Niagara.  It was very nice and the soothing sounds of the water at night was just the right touch of white noise....

That soothing sound was a roar of course, on our adventure on the Maid of the Mist the following day.  No found bodies (as was the case shortly after my niece had her falls tour last summer), but the wind was whipping up a tonne of spray and those flimsy plastic garbage bags they gave us to wear hardly did the job.  The other adventure was trying to translate "Maid of the Mist" to my relatives, as "mist" is a colloquial term for something you shovel out of barn gutters...

All in all, we had a nice time.

This is Evie at Thanksgiving, with her cousins (technically second cousins, but we don't get picky about it).

This picture also from Thanksgiving, as Skyler gets to show his cousin that he is up to his level now...no more holding Sky upside down Shane!