Surfergeeks

As most of you who visit this page now, we went to African Lion Safari on Thursday with Laura, Carmon and Kamara. It was a great day. Ryan was actually old enough to appreciate it this time and Alex may remember it this time. Oddly enough he doesn’t remember the last trip which is very unlike him. When asked, Ryan’s favourite part was the choo choo ride. Alex’s was the “big kid’s splash pad” that he spent a good chunk of time in.

Unfortunately all was not great that day. Near the end of the day (literally on our way out of the park) Alex went through this little kids obstacle course type thing. The last part was to climb down a chain ladder with wood rungs. It’s about a 6′ climb down. The base has some thin padding. Sadly, Alex though that the padding was softer and thicker than it really was. He sat on the edge of the ledge and dropped down instead of using the ladder. If anyone is keeping track of such things, a 6′ drop is bad for a 5-year old’s feet. At first he couldn’t put much pressure on it but he was able to move it about so we knew it wasn’t broken. He slept on the way home but could walk into the house with a bit of a limp. The next day he started off the day saying it was sore but said it felt better shortly after getting up. There’s a bruise but other than that he’s okay.

Also, the pics are posted. Just hover over the “pics” button at the bottom (don’t click it!) and then when the menu pops up choose whatever album you want to look at.

I can’t add anything more to what Nikki wrote as she did a great job recapping the day. What I can do though is give you a couple videos! I didn’t upload the video of the 2nd launch as I couldn’t track it beyond initial launch.

NOTE: If you want to see the videos bigger you can click on the YouTube logo and watch it on YouTube directly and then you can even make it full screen from there! You’ll probably want to turn up the volume a bit as well since the volume is a little low.

Rocket Launch #1

Rocket Launch #2

I was originally going to write this last night but really was rather exhausted. The lot of us were in bed by 9:00! Crazy. Of course the kids had us up at 5:50am this morning. And there was NO way Ryan was going back to sleep.

We saw a *little* bit of excitement yesterday on the trip up. Around Guelph the traffic slowed to a CRAWL in all three lanes. We figured either accident or construction. A little while later we noticed that there was NO traffic in the other direction. We now concluded that it must be an accident. Eventually I see some flashing lights up ahead in the other lane. As we finally get to the scene, just west of the 401 McDonald’s, there’s an 18-wheeler with a bit of fender damage and a ton of cop cars. Nothing else. Our lanes were slowed because everyone was rubber-necking. Once past we got right back up to highway speed. They had closed the westbound highway at the next exit meaning that the McDonald’s wasn’t getting ANY business (unless the dozen cop cars were hungry). When we got here I checked google and found out that a car was involved and the dude had to be airlifted to Hamilton with life threatening injuries. I’m assuming it was the dude in the car and not the dude in the truck with a bit of fender damage. Remember kids, 18-wheeler vs. car is NOT a good game to play if you’re in the car.

Yesterday we hadn’t planned on doing much but got to the hotel right around 1:00. Since we had some time to kill we ended up going to the Fantasy Fair which is an indoor amusmement park for kids inside the Woodbine Shopping Centre. It’s actually pretty cool. There’s a play village (think McDonald’s play place to the ultimate degree – it’s HUGE), carousel, ferris wheel, train ride, bumper cars, bumper boats, and more! Since some of the rides require someone over 54″ for those under 54″ Nikki had to buy a pass as well. Okay, she didn’t HAVE to buy a pass, but if she didn’t Alex wouldn’t have been able to go on the bumper cars or the train. By far, the biggest hit was the play village. We’ve got some video and pics that I’ll get uploaded. It may not happen before we get home but soon after. The video definitely won’t be uploaded as I have to edit it together so that’ll take a bit of time. The hotel is nice. It’s no resort by any stretch but it’s also not very busy. We had the pool to ourself for almost an hour last night before a man and his son came in as we were getting ready to leave. Breakfast isn’t bad – it covers your basics: juice, coffee, toast/bagel, yogurt, cereal, waffles, “scrambled eggs”, some fruit. It filled us up anyway.

Now we’re just killing some time before packing up and heading out to Ontario Place. The plan as it stands now is to spend the day at Ontario Place, have supper there, kill some more time there until it’s time for the fireworks. However, they don’t happen until 10:30 and we’re not really sure that the little dudes will last that long. So if there’s no pics or video from Festival of Fire fireworks please consider this my preemptive apology.

So Happy Canada Day to everyone that reads this. All two of you. In the mean time, here’s one pic to keep you satisfied.