NY/Canada Trip: Part 3: Palmyra

The night we arrived in Palmyra was a little wet, so we headed out for dinner instead and watched Toy Story 3 until the rain subsided. Setting up tents in the rain is not my favorite time to set up tents so we were glad it was pretty well over by the time the movie was out. B and the adults LOVED the movie; it was so fun! It was a little much for the two little ones and little J needed quite a bit of coaxing to stay in the theater.

Here we are at the Smith Farm outside of Palmyra. Big J's sister and her husband were able to join us for this leg of the trip. Yay! It was a nice day in Palmyra, though a little busier than usual, I suspect from all the pageant goers. The Smith farm is on a lovely spot of land and it was interesting to go get a little more personal with the location and learn some information about the farm.

This is inside the Smith home, which seemed a decent size. Good thing since there were 11 people residing in it much of the time. Lucy loved herbs so we got a pic with what her drying herbs may have looked like.

In the sacred grove. The woods are very still, other than my rambunctious children. I did get them to be still and listen to the quiet still for a few moments. According to everyone who likes berries, which means all but me, the grove has some very scrumptious blackberry and raspberry bushes.

Atop Hill Cumorah. From here we could look out a ways and most prominent is the set up of the pageant stage down the steep hill.

The printing press where the first 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon were run and sold. It's quite a process to get that many pages run back in the day!!

This bookstore/print shop is right on Main Street in Palmyra.

We also went and checked out the Eerie Canal. This is a pic our brother-in-law took of us standing on the bridge above the lock.
So super cool that we got to see the lock work!! Two boats were headed downstream and we watched the water drain out of the lock and the doors open to allow the boats passage downriver. This lock is over 100 years old!

Saying goodbye's to Aunt and Uncle and Grandma and Grandpa. And the fairgrounds. Even if we went again we don't know if we'd camp here. Between no privacy and noisy neighbors it was not our favorite camp spot. In fact, I'm pretty sure it would rank dead last. Oh well, it was cheap.
The Palmyra Temple. After we said goodbye's to family we drove up to the temple and hung out on the grass and read books for a while of peace and quiet downtime. We walked around the temple and enjoyed the beautiful gardens. Temple grounds are always so well kept and beautiful.

After a bit of downtime we drove for a ways before reaching the Peter Whitmer farm, which is where the LDS church was officially organized. We had our picnic lunch outside and then went into the visitor's center--which doubles as a meeting house, and the Whitmer log cabin home. There was entirely too much talking in the tour for our kids to listen longer than a couple minutes.

NY/Canada Trip: Part 2: Toronto

View of part of Toronto's skyline. I'm still quite partial to the NYC skyline but this isn't bad either. Most of the tall buildings are apartments, the big dome of course is the baseball stadium and the tall, skinny one is the CN Tower. We caught this shot on the boat ride you see us on in the Toronto sky.

Fun Views L-R: Looking up from the bottom of the staircase in the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario). This museum had several really good works, lots of decent works and tons and tons of miniature carvings, bottles, etc. It reminded me actually of the PU Art Museum. Next, the first skyscraper in Toronto--that small red brick building in the foreground. Everyone was nervous to go on the top floor (4 floors) because they thought it was going to blow over, this was back before 1900. I think it's fun to hear that now when it's pictured sandwiched between two modern day skyscrapers many times its height. Moving on, Looking down approx. 1000 feet from the first look-out level of the CN Tower. The tower has a glass floor in one area that is a little unnerving to step out onto so far above ground. Toronto boats the CN tower being the tallest tower in the world--if you are using the official dictionary meaning of the word tower. The family in the bottom pic boasts being the cutest bunch of tourists in Toronto. Little J could have spent all day in the tower watching the planes land and take off from the island airport and the baseball stadium (literally next door to the tower) open and close it's roof. Toronto also boasts having the first working roof over their baseball stadium and reportedly at the first baseball game with the roof the crowd began to chant "Open the roof! Open the roof!" and unfortunately a thunderstorm had moved in and everyone naturally began to chant "Close the roof! Close the roof!" but it was too late and everyone got soaked. If I remember right it takes 20 min. for the roof to close. The tower offered nice views of the city. Toronto has many laws to protect the historic buildings and we didn't get a pic, but recently one of the many old buildings completely collapsed on one side--luckily no one got hurt. We went right by it on our double-decker bus tour and got to see the ruins if you will.

CASA LOMA!! This was my favorite stop in Toronto! This is the home, yes home, of an extremely wealthy man, Sir Henry Pellatt, who loved castles and was fortunate enough to have a monopoly on Ontario electricity for a time so had vast amounts of wealth to build it in the early 1900s. He toured for a year (a year!) around Europe with his architect so they could figure out exactly how they wanted their castle to lay out and with which design elements. The Pellatt's were some of the few to be rich enough for things such as indoor bathrooms--note the plural even--an underground tunnel to their immense stable, turrets, lovely gardens, secret passageways, room for 1,800 bottles of wine, large servants quarters, light bulbs and telephones galore and a lovely conservatory complete with personal horticulturists. It's ridiculous how much money this man spent on his dream home, which is I guess why the government eventually took his monopoly away forcing him to not be able to complete his underground, indoor pool and even to lose his castle. Once it was a historic site for touring he was the first visitor. The tour was nice because it was not guided so you could go at your own pace but we had these electronic devices to tell us all the secrets of the castle. We even took the long, spiraling staircase to the top of one of the turrets. The Kennedy's happened to be filming there at the time and many movies have been partially staged there. Pretty cool castle!

Our day in Toronto was HOT, HOT, HOT so we cooled off in the pool. Our hotel had this awesome 2-story water slide and we got all the kids to go down. The girls in particular could not get enough of it. Little A even went all by herself with her daddy at the bottom to catch her. That's our little water baby!! We saw many, many elegant swans on our boat ride. Love those birds!

NY/Canada Trip Part 1: Niagra Falls!!

The fun begins! We took a shuttle ride from the parking lot to the tourist area.

A trip to Northern New York and Niagra Falls was on our MUST-DO list for living on the East Coast. This summer we made it happen. We met J's parents in Niagra after a day of driving and camping close by. The link above will tell you a little about the history of people exploring the possibility of going over the falls. "Do not try this at home" is obvious advice to any but the most crazy thrill seekers. As for us, we went for the typical sightseeing options. We decided to head over to the Canadian side of the tourist area since we had passports and had heard it was the better side to view. We walked around for a bit, cooling off in the spray of the falls and admiring the vast amount of water going for a plunge.

American Falls from Canadian side

Horseshoe Falls

Both from the humongous ferris wheel

The Fam

We toured the Journey Behind the Falls, which ended up being a long wait and overpriced (do not recommend it) and went on the Maid of the Mist (definitely recommend!). Seeing the falls from so close was quite a thrill! We also went on a large, enclosed Ferris Wheel which offers a fantastic view of the falls and the street of things to do once you've seen the falls.

All blue and ready to get wet on this scorching hot day!! Bring on the water! J caught a nice pic of Maid of the Mist complete with rainbow in the late afternoon light after we'd gotten drenched while on it. We started on the lower deck in the back and progressed to the front and then to the top to get a good soaking. The water I expected, the wind I did not. It was incredible how close they could get the boat to the falls. We read a little of the history of the falls too and did not realize that the horseshoe shape is from erosion and only after adding stabilizers were they able to slow the rapid rate of retreat of the falls. Now it only moves back about 1 foot every 10 years. Muy interasante!

Looking toward Rainbow Bridge and American Falls on the Canadian side.

Little A's Birthday!!

For little A's birthday this year we kinda wanted a chill birthday without too much hollabalo but wanted to celebrate with many of her cute little friends so we took it to a nearby park. Little A loves fruit so we let the chillin's make little fruit kabobs. She also loves games so we played a few of her favorites: Red Light-Green Light, Duck Duck Goose and Hide and Seek. She had so much fun and was happy many of her friends were able to make it. We stuck with ice cream, mostly because I didn't feel like making a cake in the middle of summer and because I have memories of 2 years ago when the icing was melting off the cake it was so hot outside here. Nothing like ice cream to cool you down!

The next day was her real birthday and she was ever so delighted to have milkshakes for her birthday dessert.

This is our little A to a Tee (heehee). Her favorite color is yellow and she is such a happy girl that this made a perfect birthday gift. She certainly makes our every day happy! Our little A really knows how to communicate well. She is constantly cracking me up with what she says and how she says it. She loves to go just about anywhere and loves, loves, loves her older brother and sister. She's not going to know what to do with herself next year when big bro is in preschool. She loves to help in the kitchen, cleaning, sorting, laundry, you name it and she loves it. Except me trying to strap her in her car seat before her. And me helping her out of the car. Or with washing her hands. Or getting her shoes on. Yep, she's 3!! And we love her!!!!