Medieval Knights

And finally a few photos from our evening at the Medieval Knights. We took advantage of a 2-for-1 deal to give Ryland the birthday gift of an exciting night at a 'medieval' castle, and were pleasantly surprised to see just how much all three of the kids LOVED it!!! The food was not fabulous at all, there was a fair amount of cheeziness and pushing of consumerism, BUT I was pleasantly surprised by how long and drawn out the story was, and how well the evening was orchestrated. Kea caught a flower from *our* knight, which thrilled her to no end, Tiegan loved the princess and the dramatic story and Ryland was COMPLETELY caught up in the moment of the jousting and fighting. I thought his full-body involvement in computer games was hilarious, check out his range of facial expressions during the fighting!!!! So much fun, and well worth the price of admission! :-)

And, as you can imagine, after these very full few days in Toronto, we were more than ready to come home to our quiet and relaxing piece of property!

Monster Doodles

In our various wanderings through art galleries and museums (aside from the two I've already mentioned, we also checked out the shoe museum and the traveling Tim Burton exhibit from MOMA) I made an exciting discovery. Ryland usually gets bored pretty quickly while we wander from room to room looking at one piece of art after another (he's odd that way!) so this time I packed along our set of Monster Doodles - each card is laminated and comes with a wipe-clean pen and you are meant to finish up various drawings. Some have you filling in the faces, others have you creating entire monsters, or drawing clothes for your monster, etc. When we arrived at the museum or art gallery, we would borrow a stroller, and Ryland would spend the entire time drawing away. It amused him at the time, and also seems to have hugely influenced an increase in his drawing skills. He's gone from arguing that he can't draw a circle and breaking down into tears over wanting to, to drawing sheet after sheet of all sorts of monsters and feet and castles and what have you!

So I highly recommend these cards to all those with the 3-5 year old set! The one major drawback that we have to say about them is that because they're designed to wipe off to use again and again, you can't actually keep the drawings. Ryland even set aside a couple of his favourites to show his dad at the end of the day, but by the time we got back to the hotel, the drawings had been inadvertantly rubbed off. But that is our only complaint about them - I'm now excited to try out some of their other cards!

Boy's Day Dress

We also spent a day at the Royal Ontario Museum where we explored the dinosaur bones, discovered various minerals and precious stones and saw a photographic exhibit by Edward Burtynsky. Of course, the most exciting for Ryland, my dress-loving boy, was the discovery of this boy's day dress - apparently in the early 1800's it was common for boys to wear dresses like this before they were 5....I was rather surprised to see how frilly it was, Ryland was excited by his thought that I should sew him one!!!!

More snippets of our Toronto days......

When we drove to our hotel in Toronto we passed by the CN Tower, and the kids had all sorts of questions about why the building was there and what was in it - and once they'd heard that you could take an elevator to the top of it, they were very excited to go! Jamie and I weren't planning on visiting the CN Tower, but figured it would be fun to follow the kids' lead. And well, it IS one of Canada's more iconic buildings, so we *should* probably go up it at least once:-) Of course, once we arrived, Jamie hyper-ventilated at just how much it would cost, and then we took the elevator up and Kea hyper-ventilated at how very high we were. ESPECIALLY at the glass floor portion - she tended to clutch the centre of the building and ask over and over again when we could go back down, while Tiegan and Ryland ran around outside and over the glass floor!!!!!!!








And here's a couple of shots from our hotel room - Jamie *was* here for work, so he had to spend some time working on his presentation, and part of the huge allure for the kids about a stay in a hotel is T.V.!!!!! So they enjoyed a chance to catch up a little on some of their favourite shows. The hotel also gave them a welcome pack, with backpacks, sun hats, create-your-own postcards, crayons and a world map - a big hit with all three kids. Between the TV and the swimming pool, I often had to drag them out to see the various sights.......and in the end we struck a healthy balance of the two!


We went to the Ontario Art Gallery, where we saw an amazing exhibit by David Blackwood. The kids were given trading cards of various pieces of artwork, which meant that we sought out new areas of the art gallery and they all discovered new pieces of art work that they loved!



Over the past year, Kea has been lamenting about how boring art galleries are and has been refusing to go. But during this trip, she was re-inspired and discovered that she actually LOVES them, and proceeded to draw here there and everywhere again - yeah!!!!

Some snapshots of Toronto.......

And finally, we get to the posts about our trip to Toronto last week. Jamie had a work conference that he was presenting a paper at (Innovation in Building Envelope.....I'm sure it was super exciting, for those in the Building Science industry) so we decided to take advantage of the free hotel and free transportation down in order to have a mini holiday. For the most part it was a rainy, windy, chilly time - perfect for hanging out at art galleries and museums! And we still managed to wander quite a few of the streets as well, exploring the waterfront and always looking out for good places to eat! I've really been enjoying my short glimpses into Toronto, there's always lots of cool things to see and visit, but after a few days, I'm more than ready to escape back to the quiet of our property!!!!! Anyways, I'll leave you with a few shots of our adventures, and come back with more detailed posts on things we saw and did soon........

Playgroup with Ryland and friends

And in the vein of sharing bits from our day-to-day lives, here's a few photos I took from our Thursday morning playgroup. The girls both attend their all-day outdoor program in Carp on Thursdays, so Ryland and I enjoy hanging out with the younger set during this time. We play with playdough, do arts and crafts, see how many kids we can fit into a tunnel and sing silly songs with copious amounts of jumping and bum wiggling. I used to do stuff like this ALL THE TIME with Kea, and it's really nice to have the focused time with my third child. Usually it's so easy for him to run along after his older siblings, happily playing their games, and I have to remind myself every once in a while that he could benefit from some book reading, silly song singing and cuddling from mom during the day! So Thursdays are our day together.......