Ottawa

We got back from a weekend away in Ottawa last night. It was a great mini-holiday. There were lots of beautiful big old buildings (Henry called them 'big houses') to see and loads of lovely walks along the river with lots of views of those beautiful old buildings. And we stayed in a nice hotel that even had a pool that Henry got to enjoy. Here's Henry exploring the hotel room.

We had lousy weather - lots of wind with occasional rain showers. But mostly we still got to spend lots of time out and about all day and we had some blue skies.

Poor Henry had to spend a lot of time in his stroller. We let him out a bunch of times but he was not in the mood to walk along nicely with us and with the nasty weather we were not in the mood to hang around waiting for him to be ready to move after stopping every few feet. But he was mostly pretty happy or at least well behaved most of the time anyway. Here he is ecstatic that he finally got to walk around a bunch at the Gardens at Rideau Hall.
Here are some views from the riverside walk. We would have liked to have done lots more walking by the water but the weather stopped us and we left early on our last day.

We drove into Quebec so Kevin could stock up on fancy Quebec beers that he can't get in Ontario.


We enjoyed some nice restaurant meals. Here Henry decided to copy Mommy and dip his fries into ketchup. Not all of our meals involved fries, we had a fancy-ish mexican meal the night before.

It was great to have a simple weekend city break. Took not too much more planning than booking the hotel and then we just got to walk around this amazing city. But we've been quite busy at the weekends for the past little while so we'll be staying in town for awhile I think.

Algonquin

We were in Algonquin Provincial Park for 3 nights this past weekend. We camped in a yurt there with my mother. It was great. We had absolutely perfect weather: no rain, not too hot to hike, warm enough for Henry to enjoy some beach time.

The yurt was great, with less stuff to bring we could fit the 4 of us in the matrix. And we didn't have to spend time setting up a tent. And we slept on thick mattresses and turned the heater on at night.

The hiking was great. Algonquin is a huge park with loads of it completely unaccessible by car - it's for the serious backpackers and canoeists. So I was surprised there was so much to do for us car campers. There were loads of hikes along the big road that runs through the park. And the hikes were great.

Luckily Henry liked being carried on Kevin's back so we were able to do lots of hiking. But a couple of the shorter ones he actually did himself. There was a 1.5 km easy boardwalk that he walked the whole length of himself and not too slowly either. And there was a 2.1 km tricky one with lots of ups and downs and loads of tree roots to scramble over that he did too. I held his hand at the tricky parts and he let me carry him up the steepest upward climb parts. But he loved hiking, he freaked out if we wanted to stop for just a minute, he just had t okeep plowing ahead.

And of course Henry LOVED the beach.

We all had a great time.

The Beach

Henry and I went to 3 beaches this past long weekend. I had been dreaming for months about taking my little boy to the beach this summer and I am very happy to report he loves it.


On Friday we went to Laurel Creek Conservation area, just 10 minutes from our house and it was nice other than the goose poo.

On Sunday we went to Kelso Conservation area near Milton with Aunt Eliza and Uncle Steve. That was the nicest beach for sure, very clean, lots of other kids to look at and the water was even pretty warm. Henry loved it there. We stayed for more than 4 hours and he was happily playing the whole time, he even went into the water up to his waist.

Here he is helping to bury Aunt Eliza's feet.
And Monday just Henry and I risked the high bacterial levels and pollution to dip our feet into Lake Ontario in Mississauga but Henry was in a bit of a bad mood that day and we didn't stay there long.

Summer Vacation

We just got back from a week away. We rented a cottage just outside of Tobermory, the tip of the Bruce Peninsula and did some hiking. It was just a 4 and a half hour drive from us. We had some rain but managed to get out and hike a bit each day. The Bruce trail goes for over 800 km so there was loads to do. It was a great area with lots of beautiful scenery. We took 651 pictures, here are a few of my favourites.

exploring the shore at our cottage
the flowerpots of flowerpot island
a shipwreckexploring caves

feeling the moss which we seem to have taught him is called "cool"

hiking along beautiful shoreline

Henry driving his train on Daddy's back while in the ergo, he also had most of his naps and plenty of snacks in there this week

playing at Singing Sands Beach

A glacial pothole at Lion's Head

the cliffs at Lion's Head

It was a great week, an awesome first family vacation just the 3 of us.

A day out in Kitchener

We spent the day in downtown Kitchener today. Wandered through Victoria Park, checked out our favourite thrift stores downtown, looked in the market and stopped for lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant.

We took these photos at the park, and the last ones at the restaurant.

Cheltenham Badlands

We visited the Cheltenham Badlands on Monday. A small area just North of Brampton. They were really cool to see. They were caused by erosion after over grazing by cattle. The hiking trail was closed and they weren't very big but worth the drive anyway, they were very cool.