Ottawa

After Toronto we made a quick one night stop in Ottawa to catch up with my uncle, cousins and second cousins. Despite multiple attempts we couldn’t get a nice photo of all the kids (mainly because mine can’t/won’t sit still).

The following morning we went to the Science and Tech museum to burn the kids out before the quick drive up to Montreal. We bought memberships to the Montreal Science Centre which gives us reciprocal entry to lots of museums. Even though we hadn’t picked up our cards yet I was able to show them the online receipt and we were waved in!

The museum had lots of interactive exhibitions covering transport, mining and even medicine. Moose wasn’t nearly excited enough to see a stethoscope that belonged to William Osler. He did however like smashing a hockey helmet with a hammer.

We had a quick drive to Montreal until we hit the construction. I didn’t trust Google maps and followed the sign posts and ran right into the worst congestion ever!

Toronto

We spent 2 nights in Toronto to catch up with friends and be tourists.

We managed the CN tower and Ripley’s aquarium in a day. We pre bought tickets to both places online the day before, both kids were free. We arrived at the CN tower at 11am and managed to walk straight onto the elevators without any waiting! The views from the CN Tower are absolutely amazing. I hadn’t realised how big Toronto is, from that height it feels much bigger than Sydney. There was a bar with a special CN Tower lager that I just had to drink! We went to the glass floor level and struggled to persuade Moose to walk on it. Another poor kid was dragged kicking and screaming so the parents could get the iconic shot.

After we went to the aquarium which may end up being a highlight of the trip. It’s got a great collection of animals but what stands it apart is the the layout and design of exhibits. Each seemed to have their own music. The underwater tunnel had a travelator so you could easily move through without bumping into people.

After the kids had a quick nap so we stopped at the Steam Whistle brewery for a beer and pretzel. Much deserved after all that walking!

That night we got a baby sitter from an online agency and went out with friends for dinner and drinks. Toronto has no shortage of unique small bars. Interestingly the ones we went to offered little snacks as well. We had spicy ribs, duck hearts and sweet potato pie.

Our Air BnB was well located, at a good price but damn small and not Ollie proof. Any time we wanted to clean or pack one of us would have to take him out for a walk. Not bringing a portacrib is proving to be short sighted!

We met Cara, my old nanny, for a play date on the way out to Ottawa. Turns out the drive was quite a bit further than I had realised. It took us close to 5 hours with 2 pit stops. For now that seems about the limit the kids can put up with. If all goes to plan that will be the longest drive though. We bought some towels to put under Ollie’s seat to change the angle. He’s in a bucket seat in the van and he’s rear facing so he flopped forward when he slept.

Niagara Falls

What a sight! It’s everyone’s first time here and it’s more stunning than people make it out to be.

We started on the American side given we were driving from Buffalo. We stopped at the state park, went up the observation deck and went on the Maid of Mist. We donned our cool blue ponchos (they’re red if you take the Hornblower from the Canadian side) and rode right past all 3 falls. The boat should be renamed the Maid of the Downpour. Thank goodness for the ponchos or we would have been soaked! Honestly though, it was a great experience and for $40 USD it was well worth it.

It was a beautiful day so we dried off quickly, had a snack and made our way across the boarder to Niagara Ontario. The boys slept so we drove around for an hour soaking up the sights. We checked into our hotel then explored around the area as much as Moose’s legs would let us. I think we’re going to buy a cheap foldable pram for him! We finished up by putting the boys in the pool before dinner with hopes of getting a solid nights sleep!

We stayed at the Four Points with a falls view room that didn’t disappoint! A big step up from the airport motel in Buffalo and probably the nicest accommodation we’ll have until Disney.

A note on Niagara Falls, it’s bloody expensive! Saying that, I wish we had a few more days there.

The next day we woke up early and headed for the Sky View ferris wheel for a lofty view of the falls. On our way Hanika took Moose to the toilet. While they were gone I heard the unmistakable sound of car vs pedestrian followed by screaming. I ran up the street to find a lot of people walking AWAY! I handed Ollie in his pram to some responsible looking people (what gives me any special ability to be a parent?) and ran to render assistance. It was a poor Australian couple who were hit crossing the road. A bit of blood and tears but no one seemed too injured. Within 10 minutes 2 fire trucks, 2 ambulances and a police cruiser showed up! Good to see the local tax revenue is paying for first rate emergency responders. We made it to the ferris wheel unscathed and enjoyed walking around Clifton Hill.

The hotel has a 12pm check out so we made our way to Toronto. We stopped in Oakville to see a very old friend and arrived in Toronto safely that afternoon.

Another challenging trip!

Hanika and I have no luck when we travel! This time we arrived at the airport painfully early to ensure we could drop off the rental car, check in, have breakfast and change a nappy before going through customs. We were extra early when I received a text message at the airport to say the plane to Chicago was delayed an hour.

Normally that wouldn’t have been a big deal except it meant missing our original connection to Buffalo. No one was at the United desk but I was told over the phone we had been rebooked on a later flight that evening. Again, that should have been fine. Except I’m a tight ass and I booked our rental car from an off airport Hertz which closes at 18:00! I can’t remember how much I saved but it better have been more than $20.

We landed in Chicago and saw that our original flight to Buffalo was delayed. I quickly asked at a gate if we could change back to that flight but was told I’d have to take it up with the people at the departing gate. I hadn’t been to O’Hare before so I figured we could make a mad dash and catch them… wrong! It’s a massive airport, the scale of Charles de Gualle. So I dragged my poor family through a busy airport, across 2 terminals only to find that by the time we got the gate the plane had left! We collected ourselves and mopped our brows. We headed back to another terminal to wait for our flight. 45 minutes before check in I looked at the screen to confirm the gate only to find they had moved the plane to another terminal! We walked across and found another 45 minute delay!

Eventually we landed in Buffalo and made our way to the hotel. The airport charges $5 for luggage carts so I walked outside to the taxi rank and found a discarded one! Despite Ollie being Mr No Sleep we made it out with the van to Niagara Falls in good time.

Leaving Winnipeg

After a month it’s time to leave Winnipeg and start the road trip part of the trip. It’s been great catching up with friends and family and being “home”.

Since the last post we’ve been keeping busy. We went out to the Living Prairie Museum (a bunch of native grasses), the Forks multiple times, Go Kart racing and even made time for an escape room!

We played some street hockey to introduce Moose to even more Canadian culture. I grew up on a street full of families with children of overlapping ages. As we’ve all left the empty nesting parent’s haven’t moved so there’s been a glut of children around. Things are changing! It was a great multigenerational game with children, parents and grandparents all playing.

The escape room was heaps of fun! We went with Eric and Jenn (Eric and I met each other in grade 6). It was loosely based on the movie “Alien” and involved solving puzzles aboard an alien infested spaceship. There were lots of puzzles requiring different levels of communication. One involved talking Eric through a puzzle via an intercom while he was in a black room and we could see him with a nigh vision camera. The staff acted as aliens and worked hard to scare us. I believe Jenn was successfully terrified.

Tomorrow we’re flying to Buffalo NY to pick up our car and start our first road trip. We’re heading back to Canada through Niagara, Toronto, Montreal then down the east coast of the USA to Florida for 2 months. The blog posts should be more frequent from now on as we write about all the things we’re doing.

St Malo Provincial Park

Tucked 45 minutes south of Winnipeg is the town of St Malo and its provincial park. We were invited down for the day by my cousin. The weather cooperated by clearing up just as we arrived. We were treated to bright blue skies and a little in the way of wind.

It was a great day spent immersing Moose in all things Canadian. For lunch we had fire roasted smokies. Then we took him canoeing in a wooden canoe that was hand built by my uncle (no blood relation obviously). We finished off the day with Smores over the fire. We couldn’t convince him to go for a swim though, he’s still a bit precious about the temperature!

Lake Manitoba

We’ve just returned from a week with my dad at Lake Manitoba. It’s about 2 hours north west of Winnipeg (see google maps on the sidebar) next to the Narrows Resort. The cabin was beautiful, situated right on the water with ample grassed area for Moose to race his Uncle Beeg (Alex) every day.

Unfortunately we were not treated to any of the famed summer weather Winnipeg has had recently. Highs in the low 20’s to mid teens with wind warnings hampered efforts to get into the canoe. We did manage to go for a quick swim which was followed by jumping into the hot tub. This is the third year running I’ve brought Hanika to Canada to experience “unseasonably cold weather”. Last year there was snow in September. The year before there was snow for Halloween. I’m beginning to think my memories of warm summers are just figments of my imagination.

Luckily we had the resort next door to kill sometime in. It comprised a small convenience store with all the essentials, a Chester’s Fried Chicken bain-marie, a lounge with the mandatory VLTs and pool table and a restaurant. We had a couple of meals in the lounge which permitted children until 9pm. I see a bright future as a pool shark for Moose.

We went to Ashern for a grocery run one day. It’s a town of just over 500 people but services a busy highway and surrounding communities. We were able to find food and even a puzzle. Dad and I proudly finished the 500 piece puzzle in two days. At our low points we routinely blamed the manufacturer for pieces that must have been missing.

Despite not introducing Moose to canoeing he did manage to have his first bonfire. The Haiarts are famed woodsmen. Armed with a forrest worth of paper and cardboard, some wet branches and overpriced logs we managed a half decent fire. I masterfully whittled a branch into a marshmallow stick using a blunt steak knife. Moose was thoroughly unimpressed with my roasting skills and complained they were too burnt. He did delight in simply eating raw marshmallows off the stick though, so not a total failure of an experience.

Despite the weather it was a relaxing week with some beautiful Manitoba scenery.

Pickleball

For the uninitiated who are wondering what the hell pickleball is, wonder no more!

Image result for pickle ball

Pickleball is racket sport played on a badminton size court with a tennis net, square paddle and whiffle ball played 2 against 2. It is the geriatric sport of choice I’m told. Turns out I suck… big time! For those that have had the fortune of playing squash with me this was also a full contact sport. No amount of diving, rolling and tumbling could save me against clearly superior players who risked a NOF/Collie’s doing anything similar.

I won’t lie though, it was great fun. Despite not winning a single game (no matter who was unfortunate enough to be my partner) I had a blast. I’ll be feeling it tomorrow I reckon!

If any of you get the chance to play I would highly recommend it.

Made it to Winnipeg

What an eventful start to the trip! Our booking was for 3 seats + Ollie on our lap from Adelaide to Winnipeg via Melbourne and LA on Qantas/Westjet.

We checked in to Adelaide and had our first hicup. Ollie’s Canadian and Australian passports weren’t linked (because that’s a thing) so they had to call customs and sort that out before we got our tickets issued. They said they could check our bags through to Winnipeg but couldn’t give us the boarding passes for the last Westjet flight. No problem right, we’ll sort it in LA.

Our Melbourne connection was tight, 1 hour. We made it through customs and security and walked right onto the plane. Thank god there were no exploding nappies to slow us down!

The transpacific flight was manageable. We had a bulkhead row of 3 seats with a bassinet. The plus side was lots of leg room with space for the kids to play on the floor. The downside was that the arm rests don’t move so we couldn’t lift them and let Moose stretch out to sleep. The bassinet was an utter failure as a bed for Ollie. He’s become a fussy sleeper so we only tried to put him in once. He touched the ends given his length and didn’t have a bar of it. That said, it was a perfect place to store extra pillows, blankets and food. Unfortunately Ollie had a massive chuck on the plane. Thankfully I was up walking at the time so it landed over me and the floor in front of some poor childless people! The staff on Qantas were excellent and snagged me a set of business class PJs to change into. He had one further spew but settled after that. The A380 has the biggest change table we have come across on a plane. That came in handy for no less than 6 nappy changes…

We finally made to LA and with a 2 1/2 hour layover thought it would be a comfortable transit. Wrong! We collected our bags, changed into some fresh clothes and restocked on nappies and made our way to T3 to cross security. Well, Westjet has their check in desk at T3 but their gates are at T2. Thank goodness we were at T3 because it’s there that the real troubles started. We went to the desk to double to check the gate and that’s when we found out that Ollie wasn’t on the tickets! The short story is we booked our flights on points before he was born, then added him on later (as instructed by Qantas). Turns out they only added him to the Qantas flights but not the Westjet section! It took nearly 40 minutes to get that sorted by which time we had missed the check in time significantly. A big shout out to the Westjet staff who held the flight as we frantically ran through the airport to get onto the plane as the last passengers. Unfortunately in the mess of emptying liquids, taking off shoes and removing laptops at security Moose ripped a nail and was bleeding and crying. Needless to say, this was not the time for TLC. Poor kid was whisked up and carried to the gate screaming. But we made it!

Once on the plane it was smooth sailing to Winnipeg with a few hours in Calgary.

We landed in Winnipeg to do the Haiart ritual of hugs on the “Hug Rug” at the bottom of the arrival escalator. We waited 30 minutes for our luggage before someone from Westjet approached us to say he received an email to say 2 of our 3 bags were still in LA! The one bag that did make it was full of our winter clothes! Arrangements were made to have the bags delivered the next day and temporary provisions were sourced from the local Walmart on Qantas’ dime.

We rented a small car to get around town for the month and were surprised with an upgrade to a Ford Escape!

All things considered, a successful trip so far. We’ve got a month in Winnipeg before we fly out to Niagara Falls to start the first road trip.

Lumix FZ300 Camera

Neither of us are into photography. In fact, we haven’t owned a camera since we got married. As usual we turned to friends to offer their suggestions what camera we should buy.

The requirements were simple: good optical zoom, midrange price and point and shoot form. We settled on the Panasonic Limux FZ300. It fit the brief with a 60x zoom, $600 price and no fancy lenses.

I’ve had a chance to play with it before we started the trip. It seems feature packed, in that I have no idea what most of the buttons do!

I’ve been using a video series on YouTube by
Graham Houghton to learn how to setup and get the most out of the camera. Hopefully you’ll see some progress in the pictures throughout the trip!