Our vacation - November 2007

Plain and simple.... we had fun.

We stayed with Jen and Mark. I got to know these people when I started to work with their son Matt. Matt is a great young man who has Cerebral Palsy and is confined to a wheelchair. Anyways, they moved off to the Greater Toronto Area, I got married and life somewhat changed. Anyways, Jen is one of my friends where it is easy to just pick up where we left off. Nice to have that.

Anyways, they were gracious enough to let us use their home as "home base". They have this HUGE dog named Bear (appropriately enough). Their daughter is off at University, and both boys are still at home. We arrived Monday night and just had a nice visit.

Tuesday and Wednesday we were off to the Royal Winter Fair. Justin slept in a bit late on the Tuesday so we got there a bit late. I had forgotten to pack his stroller so first off we picked up a cheapie one at Zellers. We made Tuesday Justin's day to just explore and play. We went through the various Children's exhibits -- the animals, the crafts, and the Hands on stuff. Justin had a blast. He saw pigs, chickens, lambs, cattle, goats, llamas and so forth. He tried very hard to climb into various exhibits.


I can climb up! Really I can!


Jim and I both thought it cute that Justin wanted to introduce his beloved Tagu to the various animals that he met.

The colouring was a huge hit as well. :) He had such fun organizing the crayons and markers and then choosing just the right picture to colour. The area that they did this in had all sorts of really nice posters that we could bring home as well. We spent a fair bit of time here. In the back part of this exhibit they had children painting horses. Justin wasn't quite old enough to do this and he probably would have wanted to just take everyone else's horses anyways. So we kept him away from that. :)

And then it was off to see some exhibits. Booths with food, free samples, interesting items and people. Just stuff to look at and sample, or in Justin's case...to play in. :) Here he's playing with farm equipment in a sandbox of canola seeds. While he played, Jim wandered booths and I chatted with the sales rep. Nice man, farms canola out in Alberta and is an elder in a Baptist church out there. He started to get tired 530 ish so we headed off 'home' again. It was a nice family day.

Day two. We got there fairly early in the day. Spent the morning walking through booths since we didn't see most of them the day before. Justin started off his day convincing his mommy that he really, really needed her to buy "Bertie". it was a bus at a british display....looked much like Bertie the bus from the Thomas the train show. A good day long amusement for a little boy.

I started getting a bit tired so we went over to the horse arena hoping to catch a show. We did! Justin enjoyed the horses...watched carefully until being a toddler caught up to him. He got away from me at one point -- crawled an entire row of seats and out the other end. I made people smile when I walked around the seats saying "looking for a toddler" and here he was little head grinning at me from under a seat. :) I took him up around the top so he had a good chance to run around like a crazy boy. Fun fun! we made four big loops until he started to walk a bit drunk like. So back down to our seats where I cuddled him in my lap and he promptly fell asleep. He had a good 2 hour nap.
And I got to watch a horse show in relative peace and quiet. :) We saw jumping, big horses pulling carriages, and carriage derby practice and much much more. Lots of fun.

Overall a very good day.

Home again, we all crashed after a visit with Jen and Mark.

Thursday we went to IKEA in the morning. had lunch there as well. Justin ate well, I was quite pleased. Home to our home to just relax a spell.

Friday off to London so Justin could visit gramma. We first stopped at the doctor because Justin's been saying owiee and crying and I wanted to know what was up with that. Plugged ears (too much ear wax) was the diagnosis. Not fun. So oil drops and see if it comes out. He missed our weekly gramma time so this was important to him. He had fun. Jim and I went out for a really nice dinner. Gramma brought Justin home for us so we could just take our time.

Saturday we had a nice supper at Judy and Henry's. Judy, my sister, is a good cook. Meatloaf with boiled egg in the middle, potatoes and various veggies. Becky was there but soon headed off with a friend to go shopping, and Shane had a friend over. Justin played with trucks and various small animals. A nice visit for all.

Sunday morning Justin was TIRED. He had a cold, and there was no way I was getting him out of the house. No, stay home day, stay home day? Was his plaintive request. So Daddy went to church. Mommy and Justin stayed home.