earl morning reading

Toronto trip Part II

We stayed Sunday night in a nice two-bedroom suite at an extended stay place outside Toronto, chosen because of its proximity to the zoo and its indoor pool. We found ourselves eating dinner really late after a nice long swim in said pool, and could not find a non-Asian restaurant until close to 8pm. We ended up with takeout in the room very late, when no one was very hungry. The kids dropped off to sleep almost immediately. Vom-a-palooza began a few short hours later and continued through the night. All I'll say is that whatever they bill us for the cleanup of that room is NOT ENOUGH. We came home as soon as everyone was healthy enough to get in the car for the ride home. Only one vom on the way home, but it was epic, leading to a stop at the Bishop Family Martial Arts studio to do a complete change of clothes for Reed and to wrap his carseat in garbage bags. Still, the stench in the car after three more hours of driving was enough to make us all sick. The carseat went directly to the garbage.

We will have to return to Toronto some day soon to enjoy the zoo!

Toronto Part I

President's Day weekend we took a mini-trip to Buffalo and Toronto. Initially planned as a way to get out of town after the Democratic designation, when Jeff would either be honored to be chosen as the party's city court judge candidate, or humiliated and mad not to have been, we also wanted to take advantage of the long weekend and spend some time in a new place. Saturday afternoon, after a difficult and stressful morning awaiting the counting of ballots, we left for Buffalo. We met Auntie Alexis and family at a YMCA for fun in their "adventure room," which involved lots of shrieking and building with giant foam blocks and running around. Back at Alexis and Max' house, there was lots of pizza eating and video game playing.

Sunday we left for Toronto. On the way I realized that the zoo was going to close earlier than I'd thought, and that we wouldn't have much time there, so we detoured to Legoland in a beautiful fancy new mall outside of the city. We had a most excellent lunch and then hit Legoland for a few hours. They had a fun family ride, lots of cool Lego displays, and lots of hands-on stuff to do, including a station to make your own stop-animation video, a Lego car racing track, and lots more. It was totally packed because it turns out that President's Day in the US is "Family Day" in Ontario, so it was a holiday weekend there too. Oh well.

This is the boys watching a movie on an iPad together. Because this is the most normal possible way to share watching a screen, right?

MLK Day

On MLK Day we spent the first part of the day wrapping diaper bundles for CNY Diaper Bank. Beckett, as always, was my faithful worker bee, taking to the instructions and relishing improving his skills at the task at hand. Theo and Reed worked hard for a while too, but ultimately the toy area called them over. It was fun to do something tangible that the kids could understand and help with, for moms and babies in our community. Thanks to neighbor and friend Emily for organizing a crew of neighbors to go help!

After diaper wrapping we went to the mall to ride around on giant stuffed animal ride-on toys. Theo's cheetah was faster than Beckett's zebra, but unexpectedly fastest of all was Reed's ladybug, which was so terrifyingly speedy that it had to be adjusted by the workers.

Theo let me take a ride with him.

Fancy parties

For back-to-back weekends in January I attended very fancy parties. One had a dress code (black and silver--I wore black) and the other was black tie (I wore gold). I will admit to being nervous about getting all dressed up and whether it would feel too stuffy, but both nights were really fun. The first night was the SMAC (Strathmore Men's Athletic Club) banquet with Jeff and THEN, right after, the birthday party of Common Council President Helen Hudson. My mom was invited to Helen's party so she was up all afternoon, so she came along to the SMAC dinner with us and had a great time, of course, meeting our neighbors. Helen's party had an awesome band and horrible wine but we had a great time there too.

The next weekend was the mayor's ball, a fundraiser for Mayor Ben Walsh. He comped me tickets or else we wouldn't have gone but it certainly is a good party, with lots of folks we knew. We ended up straight up closing down the 500+ person party with good friends Leah and Jon, then went to the hotel bar with most of the rest of the party to close out the night with more drinking and eating. It turned out to be a super fun night and I might even go again!

Happy Morning!

We are seeing more and more smiles every day. As you can see from the picture, Beckett was particularly happy this morning.