Surfergeeks

The weather was amazing today! The Toronto Zoo made for a much more laid back day than yesterday’s journey to Ontario Place. I don’t know why that is exactly – maybe familiarity? I hadn’t been to Ontario Place since *I* was a kid (probably around ’81/’82 maybe?) so everything was more-or-less new to me and there was that urgency of wanting to do everything. The zoo doesn’t hold that allure as it’s only been a couple years since we’ve been there. There have been a few changes however in those two years. The African pavilion was closed for renovations and the central dining spot has a new name and is also operated by Coyote Jack’s. They seem to operate in a niche zone where the food services of a company/location are contracted out – there’s one at Fanshawe and they run the food at Western Fair’s ice pads as well as other places. If I remember correctly, that central dining spot used to be a Pizza Pizza and a Harvey’s? I think that’s what it was. I still remember back in the late 80′s/early 90′s when McDonald’s ran all the food at the zoo (and the SkyDome Roger’s Centre).

So as I said, today was kinda laid back. Unfortunately Ryan still didn’t take much interest in the various animals. He’d look and point at some of them but that was about it. And Alex kindly suffered through the animals to get to the splash pad. As such, we kinda skipped some of the areas. One thing that I found interesting was as we were getting there I asked him what animal he was wanting to see and he came back with a jaguar! I’m guessing he pulled that off of Diego or Dora but really have no clue. We did *very* briefly see a jaguar on our Zoomobile trip around the park but sadly Alex didn’t. Then when we got off at the Americas stop we ran into a bit of a problem finding the path to the jaguars. Still, Alex seemed quite happy with the day and wasn’t the least bit upset about the lack of jaguar-spotting. The highlight for him was Splash Island.

Upon arrival we hiked around Eurasia – don’t ask me why i picked that, it was left or right so I chose right. Then we went through the Austrailian pavilion. Since we didn’t get there until just after 11 and didn’t get in until closer to 11:30 (line-ups!) we had lunch right after those two things. Then we headed off to Splash Island. For those that have never been, it’s a big splash pad area. It has a couple slides but they aren’t actually water slides. They’re covered tunnel slides with water spraying toward you at the bottom. Alex loved them. Up and down. Up and down. The kid barely paid attention to any other aspect of the area. We were sitting about a quarter to third of the way around the perimeter from these slides. We could still see him go up and come down. One time he stood at the bottom and I could see he was calling for us and couldn’t see us so I walked over. He had a runny nose and needed a kleenex. Just before leaving the splash pad I saw him walking down the one side with a staff member. Oh oh. She stood with him for a second at the bottom and I could see him looking around so I jog over. By then she had walked away but when I got there I saw three band-aids on one foot and one band-aid on the other. I asked him what happened and he said that somebody ran into him. She was gone so I don’t know exactly what happened but somehow he ended up with a couple scrapes and cuts. That pretty much ended his splash pad fun there as he didn’t want to get the band-aids wet. Ryan, well, it was pretty much a repeat of yesterday. He didn’t want to get splashed or sprayed on. He reluctantly got wet a couple times as we walked under stuff holding him but he wasn’t having anything to do with it himself. Which is weird as he loved the splash pad in St. Thomas. Meh. Oh, and to top it all off, Alex managed to pick up a cold sometime before yesterday. Most of yesterday was spent coughing and sniffling. We got him some tylenol today and it helped some.

So there is some video from today and some pics but nothing’s been transferred off the cameras yet so no preview picture with this post. Tomorrow looks like we’re heading to the ROM and to the CN Tower. At least that’s the plan as it stands right now.

Unfortunately, not here. I can’t upload on this gallery. But I did post a bunch on facebook. Click the links and you are good to go.

Swimming Lessons
Toronto Zoo
Toronto Zoo 2
Toronto Zoo 3

Okay, wow. This past week has been BUSY. It kicked off last Thursday with Nikki, Alex, Ryan, and Nikki’s Mom heading to Storybook Gardens to celebrate its 50th birthday. Everything was 50 cents – admission, rides, some food, etc. Of course, since everything was so dirt cheap everyone was there. I would imagine Nikki may report more but there were long lines to get in and for the food. From what I could gather Alex’s favourite two parts were the whale, which, sadly, is no longer a slide, and the splash pad. I was more than a little sad that I didn’t get to go because I had to work.

Next up on the busy-ness was the weekend. Sunday would see a trip a to the zoo but first we had to get through Saturday. We packed up the kids, grabbed Jen’s brother, dropped Ryan off at Nikki’s folks for the weekend then headed up to Waterloo. Actually, Saturday wasn’t terribly busy by itself – just part of a busy weekend. At Jen & Mike’s, we mostly sat around while the kids played. Chantalle caught the bus up from London after she finished work for the day and joined us for supper. After the kids went to bed we broke out Settlers of Catan and the Seafarer’s expansion and played that. It’s a sad game when the most drunk guy there pulls out a miracle six-point turn for the win – exactly one turn ahead of when Nikki would have won had it made it to her. We were all tired though and were in bed by 11.

Sunday. The Zoo. After getting a fairly decent night’s sleep we were up pretty early on Sunday. Got everyone ready and packed up into the vans. Dropped Jen’s brother off at the bus station – he had to work and unfortunately couldn’t go to the zoo with with us. And off we go. The drive to the zoo was rainy. Really rainy. The Weather Network was claiming 1mm of rain for the day. They lied. Fortunately, once we got to the zoo the rain wasn’t heavy and was actually just a really light sprinkle. The nine of us (Jen, Mike, Bri, Serena, Katie, Chantalle, Nikki, Alex, and I) met up with a close friend of Jen’s who is also named Jenn (with two ‘n’s), her fiance Chris and their kids Nicholas, Kaitlyn, and Scotty (hope I got all the spellings right! Sorry if I didn’t) making us a gang 14 strong. The zoo was what you would expect of the zoo. Lots of different animals. We’ve gone to the zoo every year starting in 2005 and not much has changed. I was really looking forward to it this year as I was hoping Alex would be super-fascinated with the different animals. While he showed more interest in the animals than in previous years, it was still a little disappointing to me but we still had a great time. He seemed to really love the big animals like elephants and such. By far the coolest part was the Poke The Stingray exhibit. Okay, you don’t actually “poke” them, although i suppose you could. You hold your hand in the water flat and they swim over or under your hand. They’re really soft and squishy. Most definitely worth the $3 each to get in! By the end of the day a lot of kids, Alex included, we’re definitely tired and definitely a little whiny. It was a busy day for them. While not 100% positive, I’m sure Alex was sound asleep before we even got to the highway. We stopped in Milton for some Wendy’s then made it home around 10 after dropping off Chantalle and picking up Ryan.

This week Alex started swimming lessons. He goes every morning for two weeks from 10:45-11:15. Like most things, he hates to go at first then doesn’t want to stop. Yesterday of course was day two of swimming. Obviously it was also Canada Day. So the morning starts off with us dropping Ryan off at Nikki’s folks. Then we head over to the pool. Outside the pool they had a sign saying “splash pads open”. Silly me – I took that to mean that they actually had a splash pad there so I told Alex we’d go there after swimming. Oops. The sign actually refers to the splash pads across the city. So after swimming we stop back off at Nikki’s parents and ask them to keep an eye on Ryan a bit longer so we can take Alex to a splash pad. We head downtown to the Forks of the Thames and let him play there for a while. Again – like everything else – he ran away from the water at first whenever it would come on but soon enough he was playing and splashing in it. He was actually really good when it was time to go – no tantrum, no whining. So then we head back down to the south end to scoop up Ryan and then head home where Ryan and Nikki have a little nap in the afternoon while Alex & I chill out in the backyard. Around 3:00 I fire up the BBQ and throw on the half dozen rib eye steaks I picked up on Monday. By 4:00 my mom has joined us and all of us head back over to Nikki’s folks for a nice BBQ dinner. After dinner, around 7:30 we (Nikki, Alex, my mom, and I – Phyllis & Gord stayed home with Ryan) head over to the park to settle in and watch the fireworks. Again, Alex was super good and did as he was told while waiting the 2 hours or so for the show to start. Once the fireworks started Alex sat mesmorized by the display of lights and sound. He had a small bag of chips to snack on and my mom said that he didn’t even look at the bag; his hand just moved down to the bag, grabbed a chip, and back to his mouth. Of course by the time the show ended it was about 10:30 and Alex was one tired little munchkin. Once again we scooped up Ryan and headed home. Alex was asleep by the time we got to the mall (about two blocks). It was a really long day but most definitely one of the best Canada Days in my life! This is going to be a great summer!

From the start of the weekend through last night I’ve taken over 1200 pictures. I’ve got to sort through them all and resize them and get them uploaded. It’ll take me a few days but they should be up by the end of the weekend.