Surfergeeks

Long time no talk peeps! I never realized being unemployed could be SO busy! I’ve ALWAYS respected stay-at-home parents and knew they did a LOT of work. Now I know first hand and yep, it’s just as hard as I thought it was!  So this is sort of a catch-up post of various things. Read on.

Pictures: One of the main reasons y’all stop by. They’re missing. I have to rebuild those pages still. Gimme some time. There will be new pictures soon too!

On Birthdays: Alex turned 4 yesterday. 4-fucking-years-old! I can’t believe it. It does NOT seem like I’ve been moulding him in my image (poor little bastard) for 4 years now. On the plus side – I’ve managed to keep him alive for 4 years! W00t!

Elections: I swear to fucking god that if that liberal fuck forces ANOTHER election this quickly I will NEVER vote for them EVER again. If you could form a political party from all the heinous and murderous leaders from history with Hitler at the helm I would vote for that party over the liberal party. Yes, I would choose a genocidal psychopath over the liberal party. I won’t even dignify their importance by capitalizing the word liberal. Fuck them. As for the provincial branch of that party – sucks to be them. They’re getting painted with the same brush.

Gross misuse of resources: Sending eight (8!!!) OPP officers with one (1!!!) bylaw officer to inspect some guys farm because he has a lot of cars in various states of disrepair (although ALL driveable) on it. Oh yeah, and he uses these cars to make a living. He makes youtube videos that pay him over $11K a month.

Okay, enough ranting about miscellaneous shit. On to the good stuff: VACATION!!!

Nikki’s parents were awesome enough to send the four of us to Niagara Falls for a few days earlier this week. From Sunday to Tuesday we were guests of the Embassy Suites Fallsview for a relaxing (???) time at our Wonder of the World. Sunday we arrived and did the obligatory cruise down by the falls. We saw that parking was $20 there and figured that we’d maybe find a cheaper place to park. We ended up parking up at the Fallsview Casino for only $10. We walked back down the STEEP hill and went on Maid of the Mist. It was a little cool but quite nice. Alex checked out the falls a bit but, for the most part, hung back toward the middle of the ship. It may have been a little overwhelming for him or something. Hell, it’s still a little overwhelming for me and I’ve been on the boat before. After the boat ride we grabbed a ridiculously overpriced bite to eat. Our timing was absolutely perfect as it POURED rain while we were inside eating and cleared up right away. We walked back along the gorge and headed back UP that steep hill to go check into the hotel. That sucked. The climb that is. Checking into the hotel was smooth. We were on the 11th floor with an AWESOME view overlooking both the Horseshoe Falls and the American Falls. The rest of the day was spent chilling at the hotel – down in the pool then back to the room. We ate supper at the TGIFriday’s in the hotel. Okay…maybe lunch wasn’t so expensive… After supper it was just an uneventful evening in the hotel room. There were fireworks over the falls at ten o’clock so we watched those. Had to call it a night shortly after that as morning came early and we had plans.

Up and at it early Monday morning. Down to the 9th floor atrium for the buffet breakfast. The hotel has a Keg Restaurant inside as well and this is where they have the breakfast each morning (spilling over into the lounge if necessary AND the TGIFriday’s on the ground floor if it’s REALLY busy). The Keg has a STUNNING panorama of the gorge. The breakfast itself was excellent! It wasn’t a HUGE selection although it covered ALL the breakfast basics and had an awesome cook-to-order omelette bar. Ryan ate like a little pig and Alex, who usually is slow to eat, did a great job as well. After breakfast we struck off to Marineland. Nikki can’t remember ever going and, while I know that I went, I don’t actually remember going. The first thing we did was head to the “kiddie-land” rides. Alex was reluctant to go on any rides but finally made the decision to tackle the Ladybug Coaster. From that point on he was hooked. All he wanted to do was go on rides. We had to leave the area to go to the dolphin/sealion/walrus show and Alex wasn’t really interested at all in that – he just wanted to go back on the rides. He did like feeding the deers though. If you ever go to Marineland, take your own food. It’s WAY overpriced. For a kid’s hot dog combo, regular hot dog combo, and burger combo, along with a juice and two pops it was almost $30! I tried offering them Ryan in exchange but they apparently preferred money. After spending a day at Marineland we headed home for a swim in the pool. The plan was to hit-up Dave & Buster’s, go for supper, then Nikki & Alex were going to check out the magic show that our package included tickets for. That was the plan. During the swim we realized that we didn’t have time to do D&B’s so we decided to shelve that until Tuesday – after we checked out. After we swam, we got dressed and went across the street to Applebee’s for supper. Alex wasn’t the best little boy during supper and it was really up in the air whether he’d be good to sit through a magic show. When we got back to the hotel he ultimately decided for us when he ended up getting sick. Sorry magic dude, maybe next time.

Tuesday was checkout day. Up early, down for breakfast and back to the room to pack and relax until closer to checkout time. We head to Clifton Hill and spend a couple hours in Dave & Buster’s. For those that don’t know, D&B’s is an arcade/eatery. Our package came with a $60 card for the place. All the machines spit out tickets based on how you do and you can cash in the tix for prizes. Alex liked skee-ball. I ROCKED the Deal or No Deal game. After running out of credits there we went down Clifton Hill to Falls Ave and then back up, stopping at Boston Pizza for lunch. It’s kinda funny – Clifton Hill is arguably the MOST tourist driven area of Niagara Falls; possibly even moreso than The Falls themselves. Yet it was here on Clifton Hill where the food seemed to be the most reasonably priced. After lunch, we headed back to the van, got everyone settled in, and headed for home.

People talk about needing a full week to fully enjoy Disney World. I’ve no argument with that at all. However, I also believe that if a family wanted to take part in most of the things that Niagara Falls has to offer, a full week is required there as well. Perhaps even longer if you wanted to do all the tourist traps on Clifton Hill like the 4,293 different haunted houses. There’s LOTS more we would have liked to have done but just simply didn’t have the time, or, frankly, the money.

What we did have was an AMAZING three day vacation that we didn’t think would happen this year. There are hundreds of pictures and some video. I’ll get the pics posted as soon as possible. I’ve got them on the computer but I just need to get them up onto Picasa and the link posted here. Gimme a couple days.