Trip to Canada to pick up Uncle Brady from his mission

The girls had been so excited for a few months and finally the time had come that Uncle Brady was to be released from his mission in Toronto, Canada. My parents flew out and we drove up to Toronto. It was so fun to see Brady again and see where he served and meet some people he taught. The girls loved the trip, loved their grandma, grandpa and uncle Brady and the constant attention, and couldn't wait to "sleep in a hotel". Of course the girls thought that sleeping in a hotel was fabulous and were so excited to do it for 3 nights!

Besides Scott getting something that is illegal in Canada confiscated at the boarder the drive was fairly uneventful. Apparently you can not protect yourself with pepper spray and boarder patrol kind of treated him like a bad guy when they confiscated it all official like. Funny thing is that it's also illegal in New York state, but no one really ever asks us what's in our car here. Scott knew it was illegal but wanted me to have it in the car in case I ever got stranded on the side of the road. Guess we'll have to buy some more and illegally keep it in our car again.

It was pretty interesting to drive into Canada and have it feel mostly the same but suddenly speed limits and distances are measured in Kilometers and signs are in English and French. Luckily we were able to switch the GPS to kilometers so we would really know how long until our next turn off. It had a little different feel than the US but really not very foreign feeling. The grocery store was different. One major difference is that you buy milk in liter bags. The grocery store that I went to with my mom was pretty nice, but my parents said they went to one that made them feel like they were in Mexico.

The first night we drove into Toronto at about 7:30 and met up with my parents and Brady at a very authentic Chinese restaurant to eat with a really sweet Chinese family that Brady taught in one of his first areas. Their family has 3 boys, I think they were 7, 4 and 1 1/2. Natalie had fun crawling all around and chasing the 1 1/2 year old boy. He thought she was pretty fun and the played together a lot. He kept rubbing her fuzzy little head and I can' blame him, it's soft like a little chick. We were there for a long time as they had ordered a meal that had a new dish brought out every 10-15 minutes. I have to say I'm impressed that my children ate many more very unique dishes than I did. Evelyn and Allison ate jelly fish, liked it and wanted more. They also ate shrimp, scallops, lobster, and a few other random fishes that they've never tried. I was impressed because the most fish we've ever had are tilapia, salmon and maybe haddock and cod. All fairly mild and not jelly-fishy textured. Then they brought out a few desserts. Some different cookies and then a big mango flavored, fish shaped jello-ish dessert that was served with cream. It was pretty good, but a little interesting. Natalie loved it and ate tons of it while sitting on Grandma's lap. My mom has the pictures but really she would dive for the spoon as soon as my mom scooped it up. It was pretty cute! We were there until after 10:30. It took at least half an hour to get to the hotel then to get checked in and situated....it was really like 11:45 before the kids were in bed and by then they weren't acting tired anymore and didn't fall asleep until about midnight. It was late! They were troopers!

It was such a great trip! So fun to be with family! Natalie was trying to start walking so that was fun for my parents to see her start taking her first few steps. Now she's a pro!

Natalie just chillin' on the floor at the Science center in Toronto. It was really huge and so much bigger than our science center here in Ithaca, but our science center membership got us in for free and saved the at least $50-60 it would have cost for our families admission. They had some pretty neat exhibits that we visited before heading to the children's play floor that of course the kids loved!

Pretty fun and somewhat interactive ball machine. Evelyn is lifting a ball up let go of it and rolled it down and had it drop and bounce and come back for her to lift up again. Natalie figured out that she could shimmy her little head and then body under the bottom rail and try to get into the ball machine. She almost got in like 3 times. Suddenly I noticed something in her mouth and pulled it out to see that it was a piece of a hot dog weiner. Yuck, gross! What was it doing on the floor by the ball machine. That was disgusting but she was kind of mad when I took if from her.

Kid sized car that the girls wanted to get into so bad that we had to wait in line behind a couple other kids.

She was taking a few steps. She thought she was pretty cool.

Natalie in a fun little mirror tunnel.

The girls LOVED this fun station. Not sure what it's called but it was fun because kids could push the little pin things from either side and back and forth.

They loved it!

Evelyn was throwing a fit so she had to cool down on time out. She ended up sitting there for quite a while. I don't think that going to bed at midnight the night before helped her remain reasonable. This was one of the less miserable looking faces she made while she was taking a break.

The girls, of course, LOVED the little play grocery store!

The also loved doing the cash register and helping each other buy the food.

Funny little thing to jump on and send a message down a tube to the other side where you could jump on the other funny little thing....hard to explain (kind of like the tubes at a bank) but Allison loved jumping on it. The problem was that she didn't really weigh enough to make it move much so I had to help her. I also had fun watching other parents help their kids jump on it since none of the kids really weighed enough.

Natalie just cruising all around.

Uncle Brady was actually sick when we got to Canada. So when we got to the hotel in Niagara Falls on Sunday afternoon Brady crashed on the floor. Allison was having fun "walking on the green road" on the computer. That's what she calls doing starfall.com. The letter X has an ox walk along the green part of the screen. It took me a few days to figure out that when she asked if she could "walk on the green road" she was asking to do starfall.

We drove up to the temple and I jumped out and snapped this picture. It's a small, but pretty temple. It was interesting that the only windows on the whole Temple are what you see at the door. Not even stained glass anywhere.

I love pictures of the girls when they're are crashed together in the same big bed. I have one of Stacey and I when we were little and I think it's sweet.

Happy girl had lots of bed to hold on to and cruise around the room in the hotels. It was perfect for learning to walk. Soft landing everywhere.

Funny shot of her taking steps away from the bed. She's really trying to balance in the picture! She's such a cute little walkin' girl!

Evelyn and Natalie hanging out on the floor together! Natalie is so loved by her big sisters. It's a good thing she's fairly unbreakable now days. The girls think that she should be able to totally keep up with them since she's gotten so big.

Natalie's crawling right out of her tights that are still on from church.

Frozen Niagara Falls. It's pretty incredible that we were right there at the bottom where it's all frozen, just a few months ago (in July). The big tall frozen chunks of ice were incredible! They were like 3/4 of the way up the falls. This is the horseshoe falls from the Canadian side.

American falls from the Canadian side. I think a lot of ice had started to break up and melt because it had been over 32 degrees for a few days. Glad we had a little bit warmer weather for the trip.

Pretty incredible view of the horseshoe falls. The water is really a neat color, it's really pretty.

All the girls in our family in front of the horse shoe falls.

My handsome husband and all of his sweet little girls in front of the horseshoe falls.

After leaving Niagara Falls we drove back to Ithaca and Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Brady got to spend the night and next morning with us before driving back to Buffalo to fly home. Glad they got to come here, even if only for a second.

1/2 frozen-ish Ithaca falls that had the most bone-chilling wind I had ever felt coming off of it! I was so glad that Natalie was asleep in the car with Grandma. She would have been sad and frozen! The path leading to the falls was solid ice and we were slipping all over the place to get to it. But as always, it's pretty cool.

Don't we look like we were freezing cold! Grandpa and Evelyn held hands and Allison and I held hands as we slipped along the path to the falls.

Evelyn was pretty into "holding" Natalie for a little while. Natalie tolerated it well for a while and then she was done. She's pretty much over being held by other kids now though.

Love this HUGE Read to Me Grandma story that we got at the friends of the library book sale. It's fun when it's actually Grandma that gets to read it to the kids.

Evelyn, uncle Brady and Allison liked playing the piano together. Evelyn can still play the song that he taught her. Oh, I guess Evelyn's little green bear enjoyed playing the piano too!

Hanging out at the science center in Ithaca for an hours or so before Grandpa and Grandma and uncle Brady left. Every time Natalie tried to get off Evelyn's lap, Evelyn would say, "it's okay, I can handle it, I can handle it, it's okay."

These girls loved the visit from Grandma and Grandpa and uncle Brady! It was so fun to see Brady again. We had not seen him for close to 3 years. Evelyn was 20 months and Allison 4 months last time we had seen him. Natalie had never met him! So they probably didn't remember him but they knew who he was since we had his picture on the fridge the whole time he was gone. They thought he was pretty great!

Isn't my mom beautiful! And she looks so young! I only hope I look like her when I have grand kids of my own! Dad looks pretty young too! Hopefully those are genes that I inherited! So far in my life people always think I'm older than I am. When I was like 13-14, people thought I was 18. Now I don't blame people for thinking I'm older than I am and I hope it's only because of the number of kids I have. I mean, I had my 3rd when I was still 23. Only for another 21 days but still. At least this month I'll turn 25 and then it won't be SO crazy that I have 3 kids......maybe. I'm sure I'll keep getting the "you sure have you hands full" comment all the time though.

Isn't Uncle Brady cool, he lets me crawl on top of this big thing?

She was not so interested in the picture taking but she really like playing with Brady.

She also got really fast at climbing the stairs! She went up all of them! She doesn't really get to practice since we only have stairs out in the stairwell and they are so dirty. The other day when I let her play and practice on them her cute little feet were so dirty when she was done. At least these ones looked cleaner...

Natalie loves playing with the ducks and water at the science center! Somehow she still manages to get pretty wet even though I put a smock on her.

Allison and uncle Brady trying to stack the nails on top of a standing nail.

Natalie giving Grandpa one last snuggle!

And one last airplane ride.

Natalie watching the ball machine. She's pretty fascinated by it.

One last snuggle for Natalie and Grandma. They look related, don't they?

Last kiss for Natalie from Grandpa.

Allison and Grandpa give each other Eskimo kisses. So sweet!

Evelyn giving uncle Brady a good last hug and kiss.

So glad we got to see and play with you guys for a few days! We loved and and miss you lots!