The big deal event in February was a huge ice storm that rolled through our part of Texas. Even after the big snow and ice event in February 2021 that essentially shut down the whole state, I still tend to roll my eyes when the dire news stories predicting winter weather  come up. Call it twenty-some years of local experience. Given this, we had a good chuckle when the kids had a snow day on January 31st for a storm that had been predicted.

Icicles on Maya’s hummingbird lawn decoration

As I recall, they spent the day playing, often outside, because there was no “weather” to be had. Ha, ha, ha – silly Texas. That was Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, the joke was over. We woke up to no power and crashing noises coming from outside. A beautiful, glistening layer of ice had coated all the vegetation and the vehicles. The trees had already been stressed by the severe drought all through this past year; the branches snapped under the weight of the ice. The kids absolutely begged to play outside so they could examine the ice, but of course we wouldn’t let them, instead pointing out the crashing noises and showing them when fresh limbs had fallen.

Our neighbor’s fallen tree

At one point, in our neighbor’s yard, an entire tree fell over. Sean was estimating it was maybe 40-feet tall, and it just crashed under the weight of the ice, root ball pulled up from the ground. Thankfully it fell toward the street, and not toward the houses. It did however attempt to take out a couple of crape myrtles out of the row of them that provides erosion control and some division between the neighbor’s yard and ours. We’re predicting that they’ll survive.

We watched a number of cars turn down our street, and then turn right back around again.

We spent the day consuming food that either required no real preparation or that could be heated up on the camp stove out in the garage. We made sure we had collected up our flashlights and lanterns for the evening, and that sleeping bags were deployed throughout the house for extra warmth. It wasn’t nearly as cold as it had been a couple years ago – maybe 30 degrees F, give or take – but it still got cold in the house.

Cedar Waxwing

One of the highlights of the day was discovering that an absolute flock of cedar waxwings had descended on our icy holly tree, plucking away at its frozen red berries. They are such beautiful birds. Sean tried to sneak out and capture a photograph for Maya the bird-lover, but the birds didn’t make it easy. Regardless, Maya and I stood at the window and watched them for several minutes. She rushed to write notes about it in her Bird Nerd journal.

The view from our front porch on day 2. Believe it or not, it got worse.

On Thursday, we again woke to no power and more crashing sounds. I can’t remember exactly when all the waves of ice and sleet occurred, but the weight on the trees just kept growing and growing. It was both miserable and fascinating to watch as upright trees just kept bending lower and lower. I do not love crape myrtles – they’re pretty but over-planted in our part of the world – but we have a huge one in the back yard that has grown so large that it had become interesting. The silly thing is probably 25-30 feet tall, and its limbs bent all the way over to the ground, many of them breaking off, much to my disappointment.

Big Crape Myrtle bending under ice weight. This is on day one – no limbs had broken yet. On days 2 and 3, many limbs broke under the ice weight – some of them quite large.

The surface roads didn’t seem icy, so we cleared fallen branches from the driveway and Sean carefully wormed his way out between the bent over trees. The goal was to head to Home Depot to see if there were any chainsaws. Clearly we were going to need one. Of course, there were no chainsaws – as is usual, other folks were a bit faster on the uptake than us. But, on his way home, Sean bought hot chicken biscuits and hot coffee. It was amazing! Warm food that hadn’t been cooked in the garage – I’ll take it!

Had to clear brush and angle the car just right to get around the bent trees, but the surface roads were, thankfully, clear.

There wasn’t a whole lot to do, so we spent some time sorting through the contents of  old boxes – some of which possibly hadn’t been looked at since we moved into this house in 2005. The kids kept each other occupied – we wouldn’t let them have their devices till it got dark and we wouldn’t let them outside except on the front porch, so it was maybe a little boring for them.

Somewhere along the line, I was milling around by the back windows just at the right moment to see our neighbor’s very tall, very unhealthy cedar tree crash down and take out a couple sections of our fence. The fence needed replacing anyway, and now I don’t have to worry that their sick tree will fall on any new fence we have put in, but I don’t love having our hand forced. At this time, the fence remains un-replaced, but it’ll need to be dealt with soon.

Ice chunks falling as the temperature warmed a bit.

Later in the day, the temperature had warmed a bit and chunks of ice started falling from the trees, like slow-motion hail. It was weird.

That evening, we cautiously drove out to visit our friends and the warmth and light of their powered house. It felt incredibly odd and a bit dangerous to drive around the suburbs and highways of a largish city when sections of street lights and traffic lights are out and there are piles of limbs and / or bent over trees looming about.

Hanging out with our friends was such a wonderful diversion. They let us charge devices and the kids all played together for a little while. We ate dinner and had drinks and chit-chatted as if the city weren’t in a shambles. It was a welcome break in what had become, after only two days, a tedious pattern of cold and dark and destruction.

The difficulty with these things is not having any idea how long you’ll have to manage. When we originally went dark, the power company thought they might have things restored by sometime Friday. Yuck, but we can deal with that. Somewhere along the line, as more trees and limbs fell on power lines, and the clean-up effort grew and grew, the update from the power company became something akin to: this is bigger than we realized – we’re trying our best.

On Friday – my birthday – limbs were still coming down. If I remember correctly, there had been another wave of ice accumulation overnight. We had one poor tree in the front yard that basically lost all of its limbs – now it’s mostly just trunk and hope. We’ll see what comes of it. Later in the day, as things started to thaw, still more limbs began falling – maybe the ice had been keeping them in place.

Our uncommonly well-behaved children at my birthday dinner.

In sunnier days, I had made myself a dinner reservation for that evening. Generally speaking, I no longer choose places that I specifically want to try out. I instead select places that will result in a minimum amount of grumbling from the kids. It turns out, I’ll choose a no-drama meal over one prepared by a much-loved chef or a novel new restaurant. The meal was, in fact, pleasantly devoid of drama. The food was nice enough. There was a bit of live music. And they had light and heat, which we didn’t yet have at home.

Us uncommonly well-behaved adults at my birthday dinner.

It was a bit sad to again come home to a cold dark house, but on our way, we saw crews out working in our neighborhood in the pitch dark trying to get power restored. I can’t imagine how difficult their jobs were. We settled into our covers and the kids messed with their devices for a while. We had just sent them to bed, I think, when the power came back on! This was around 10:20p, and other than a flicker here and there, it stayed on!

I later learned that while we might envy those that never lost power and didn’t have to hang out in the dark and didn’t have to throw out spoiled food and run around town to keep devices charged, we were luckier than many. Some people were without power for as much as 10-12 days, with slow restorations happening throughout that period. There’s been a big kerfuffle with many of the city’s residents and elected officials decrying the poor management and poor communication during this particular crisis. Maybe that’s true, but I can also say, in 23-24 years of living here, we’ve never seen ice destruction like this – not even close. Whole trees are down – how does vegetation management around power lines account for whole trees falling over? No estimate for when electricity will be restored – I’m not sure how they could do that except case by case, there were so many lines down. I’m not sure there’s a villain here.

Our hard-working kids in front of the giant brush pile from Arborgeddon. And we by far didn’t have the worst of it.

They’re calling this event Arborgeddon for the sheer destruction that’s been rained down on these poor trees. I’ve heard it said now multiple times, “It’s tough to be an oak in Texas.” We borrowed a chainsaw and pruning saw from a friend and spent literally all day Sunday dealing with fallen and dangling and broken branches. The kids did an excellent job helping us, and it still took all day, and the entire front of our yard is piled up with stacked limbs. On February 6th, I opened a ticket with the city for brush collection. I read a recent news story that the city hoped to have all the brush picked up by the end of April.

Valentina! Maybe the kids’ favorite part of Corteo.

Quite a while ago, Sean had purchased tickets to see the Cirque du Soleil show Corteo when it came through Austin. Thankfully, luckily, the ice was mostly behind us at this point, and we were able to attend the show. The show was, as always, amazing. The music is performed live while you watch, and we had fun pointing that out to the kids. The performers and set pieces are incredible. The kids were particularly taken by Valentina, a small person who floated among the crowd dangling from giant balloons. She bounced through the crowd and people would raise their hands and push her skyward so she could make her way all the way up the auditorium and back down to the stage. Ian was disappointed that he didn’t personally get to help Valentina stay aloft.

More Corteo

Later that day, we threw out our spoiled food and restocked the fridge. We were astonished to find that daffodils, who’s buds had appeared to freeze solid during the storm, were thawed and opening! Amidst all the broken branches and dead plant life, bright yellow blooms glowed.

That Monday, after a very strange week, we all went back to work and school! And then our schedule proceeded to fill up (or more accurately, the kids’ schedules filled up). The week of the 7th, the kids both started once per week after school basketball. The week of the 13th, both kids started their soccer practices for the season – Ian once a week, Maya twice a week. Both kids have signed up for after school music programs – Maya a music memory club, Ian a performance group – these both meet once a week on different days. This is all in addition to the weekly instrument lessons they’ve been doing for years. The weekends will start filling with soccer games for two different kids. It was never our intention to over schedule our lives like this, but somehow it happened anyway.

Ian’s Valentine’s Day box

The weekend before Valentines day, the kids spent time writing out valentines for their classmates and decorating “mailboxes” for the cards. Ian’s featured a cute dog, and Maya’s was, incredibly, an octopus! She will never throw that box away – it will move into her first house with her.

Maya’s Valentine’s Day box.

Maya and Ian were also delighted to have received kid-sized, Pokemon-themed fleece blankets – perfect for snuggling up on the couch and playing with iPads.

Through a variety of HEB coupons here and there, we wound up having a couple varieties of dipping chocolate in the cabinet. I had already tried out the new cookie press I received for Christmas and made little heart-shaped butter cookies for us. Then we upped the ante by dipping those little guys in chocolate. We also tried out pretzels and potato chips, all to delightful effect. This worked so well, we went traditional and bought some strawberries and tried those out too.

The new mural at Davis

The kids’ elementary school recently installed a new mosaic mural. The artist they commissioned is Ryah Christensen, and she involved the kids in making the various tiles and things they used to create the piece. Maya made a small fish. I asked Ian what he made and he kind of shrugged and said he worked on some kelp.

Maya’s fish

Thankfully the mural still features an octopus, but unfortunately, Maya didn’t get to work on that part. There are several hundred kids at school – they can’t possibly all get the part they want – but it’s incredibly neat that they were able to participate in the mural’s creation. That mural is amazing!

We took the kids to the Drafthouse to watch Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania I think the weekend after it came out, and they LOVED it. It was not a great movie, but it was a lot of fun and the kids had full-on belly laughs going more than once.

Maya’s dragon is guarding our yard from wayward armadillos

Toward the end of the month, while Sean and Ian were at a group guitar lesson, Maya and I went and bought some pepper, cucumber, and tomatillo plants for our little container garden in the back yard. Spring has already sprung her in Central Texas – gotta give the plants a fighting chance to establish a good root system before the hell-like summer starts (late April / early May probably). While we were at it, we moved Maya’s cool stone dragon to the outdoors so he could keep an eye on things. With any luck, he’ll scare away the armadillos – unlikely, but it’s fun to imagine anyway.

January was a delightfully quiet month. As most probably do after the holidays, we really needed it. We found homes more or less for all the Christmas gifts. We worked on art projects. We worked on 2023 vacation planning, which is always fun. In short, we took a breath.

Maya painting her new stone dragon. We need to find a home for him in the yard.

Our high level vacation plan for this year was as follows: spring break in Los Angeles, Memorial Day week visiting the kids’ grandparents, Fourth of July week (maybe more than a week) visiting Boston and Maine, and Thanksgiving week in Mexico. Due to a lapse in memory for booking a much-desired excursion, the trip to Maine will need to be postponed till next year. No word yet on what a backfill will be, though we’ve discussed several options for a driving trip.

Ian is gentle enough for Lumos to tolerate from time to time.

The real shake up came around mid to late month. One of Sean’s coworkers had two cats, one of whom became sick with FIC. To reduce the stress on her sick cat, she began searching for a home for her other cat. We are, as always, suckers for a hard luck case. And so we became the caretakers of a fourth cat – Cheech.

Cheech! Big Chungus! Chungus Among Us! Chicharron! Bustopher Jones!

Cheech is a sturdy fellow; he’s clearly not missed many meals. Maya almost immediately took to calling him Big Chungus. I almost immediately took to calling him Chicharron. After being utterly terrified by his radical shift in lifestyle and venue for a couple of days, Cheech decided he wanted attention. He danced around for scratches and pats. He played with the toys his person had left with him.

Two extremely cute things we’ve discovered about Cheech … 1 – He likes to snuggle himself under the bedclothes. Often, we’ll find a lump in our bed, sometimes butted up against one of the other cats who are sitting atop the blankets, and there’s Cheech, snug as a bug. 2 – And this is a good one – dude plays fetch. He’ll wander the house with a toy in his mouth, mrowring for all he’s worth (can’t get out a proper “meow” with a mouth full of toy), and drop said toy by your feet. You chuck it across the house, and he tears off after it, and then, astonishingly, he brings it back and drops it at your feet to do all over again. Velvet used to bring you a string toy so you’d play with her, but never did she play fetch. This is new for us.

Here, little bitty Nox isn’t allowing Cheech to exit the office

Cheech is still settling into the house. I can’t tell if he wants to be friends with the other cats or not. We’re 90% sure he’s not being aggressive, but, as Sean puts it, Cheech has no boundaries and doesn’t pick up on social cues. He wants to check out Lumos’s favorite hiding spots, but he hasn’t picked up on the fact that her hissing means she doesn’t want him there. It’s caused a bit of unrest in the household, but hopefully time will even that out. Cheech has learned that he should be wary of Nox. His fellow black cat is half his size, but she tolerates very little and has made this known often enough that Chicharron seems to have gotten the message.

Disney pin boards and a Hank in a box

And honestly, that’s our January. Resting up from our October, November, and December and welcoming a surprise new cat into our house. Heads up – I’m not sending holiday cards out this year. It just became too much on top of everything else and so I just didn’t do it. If you didn’t get a card, don’t take it as a personal slight. Maybe I’ll get a wild hair and send cards out at some other random time of the year. Maybe not!

We didn’t even spend a week in Disney World this year and December was STILL more busy than I can even begin to describe. I feel like we packed nearly every minute with one activity or another. And even after making the choice to send out Happy New Year cards instead of Merry Christmas cards, as of today, I still haven’t gotten around to it.

Maya had joined an after school choir group, and one of the things they did was some Christmas caroling. This started with a little performance for the Balcones Woods community. Maya and her choir-mates sang through holiday songs from around the world. She seemed to be enjoying the singing, but probably the cookies afterward were her favorite part. They had plans to sing elsewhere, but I think the weather limited them to caroling around their school.

Mrs Claus had to take a selfie

We spent Sean’s actual birthday in Marble Falls, checking out the town and the lights and getting in our visit with Santa Claus. The town was nice enough, but if you aren’t a big shopper, it seemed like there wasn’t much to do. We had lunch at Bear King Brewing and sampled their seasonal Milkyway beer – a chocolate marshmallow stout that the adults really enjoyed. We wandered over to Ms Lollipop’s to tell the kids “no” a lot when they wanted to buy all the random and super-fun looking toys, and to have really delicious ice cream with Santa and Mrs Claus.

Walkway of Lights at Marble Falls

We whiled away the time till dark, and then took a spin around the Walkway of Lights. Partway through, the kids got to see Santa and Mrs. Claus again and had a moment to discuss with them what they might like for Christmas. They also learned that Santa would enjoy chocolate chip cookies this year.

Pedernales Electric Coop lights in Johnson City

We enjoyed the light display well enough, but I did a little looking and it seemed that if we went only 20 minutes out of our way, we could see the Christmas lights and Pedernales Electric Coop in Johnson City “on our way home.” I don’t think anyone regrets this decision. They coat their trees in myriad white and blue lights and the effect is honestly magical. Even our sour-faced kids who just wanted to go home couldn’t help but ooo and aaaah at it. It was very crowded and a little hard to catch decent photos, but that didn’t dampen our collective spirit at all.

Happy birthday, Dad!

The next day we celebrated Sean’s birthday. We baked him his favorite chocolate malt cake, made pot roast (one of his favorites), and presented him with gifts and hugs.

Most of what Maya’s choir group was working on was a performance of a musical called Press Start. The kids had to audition for the parts they got and while Maya didn’t get the role she originally wanted, she did manage to get one of the speaking parts. The musical takes place in the world of video games, perfect for our little screen junky. She wound up being a robot dog called K9, and while she was initially upset about the assignment, she came around pretty quickly and did her best to fill the role. She especially liked the songs, though I think she did a wonderful job delivering her lines as well. She tells us she’d like to participate in more musicals.

K9, the robot dog – I sewed that tail onto the robot costume – life is weird sometimes

Through most of the semester, they’d been having weekly practices, but leading up to performance night, they had a two-hour practice on Saturday followed by nightly one-hour practices after school. It was intense. It paid off though – the kids did great! They performed the show twice at school, once for the younger kids, once for the older kids. And then that evening, they did it again for all the parents. Whew! Everyone worked so hard.

The following weekend, Ian and Maya both had recitals. After the closure of the Monarch Suzuki Academy, they are now at two different music schools, so we went to two separate recitals. Maya’s was at a downtown church. As is her habit, she was really excited till she got there and then the nerves hit her. Plus, because she’s one of the older kids, her performance is toward the end of the recital, so she had plenty of time for the apprehension to build before she finally got to play. Luckily, after a rough initial start, she pulled it together and played beautifully, as always.

Ian’s recital was the next day at a local coffee shop. For the first time ever, he’d be playing on a real stage and he’d have to have a microphone by his guitar so that everyone could hear what he was playing. When it was his turn, Ian also did a wonderful job. His guitar teacher accompanied with him and they stayed beautifully in sync through the performance. But Ian’s favorite part was that microphone. He was so excited.

Ian’s gingerbread treehouse

I had to jet off to Denver for a few days for work the following week. While I was gone, Sean hooked one of his full size guitars up to an amplifier and let Ian play. He was ecstatic – they sent me a video. Ian doesn’t just wanna play – he wants to play LOUD. Also while I was gone, Sean bravely took both the kids to get their COVID boosters – just in time for all the holiday travel!

Maya’s sugar cookie beach house

I know parents who bake lovely gingerbread and build beautiful handmade gingerbread houses out of that. We buy our kits from Target and let the kids do whatever they’re going to do. This year, Ian made a tree house and Maya made this kind of midcentury modern beach house. The kits aren’t expensive. The kids love them. And I don’t have to care if they sit around and dry out because I didn’t spend any time baking their constituent parts. Winning all the way around.

Maya’s pinecone ornaments

We decided to make pine cone ornaments this year for grandparent gifts. Did you know that, if there are no pinecones near you, you can purchase them from Amazon?? Anyhow, Maya and Ian had fun painting and assembling their various ornaments. Maya has also, after meeting Ryan the wire artist in Key West, has been dabbling in making wire art of her own. She made a few ornaments from wire to give as well.

Ian’s pinecone ornaments

Sean bought the kids cute Christmas doughnuts one weekend, because we needed more sugar like a hole in the head. They were adorable and the kids really liked them and if I didn’t know it before, I definitely know now that I’ve sadly aged out of being able to enjoy doughnuts for breakfast. My body just doesn’t want to deal with the sugar bomb first thing in the morning, I guess.

Ian is epic, no doubt

We celebrated Ian’s 8th birthday at a place called Urban Air. The kids can jump on trampolines, ride zip lines, play in ball pits, and on and on and on. This is exactly Ian’s kind of thing. I was worried attendance would be light since it was right before Christmas, but as the positive RSVPs started rolling in, I started to worry the room wouldn’t hold all the kids!

Snake cake

Ian wanted a snake cake and a reptile themed birthday party. I think this may have weirded out a few participants, but generally the kids seemed to have a lot of fun. Those kids played hard and hopefully slept well for their parents that evening.

We discussed with Trinket, our Elf on the Shelf, who must have passed along word to Santa, that we’d be leaving town to see our families over the holidays and would like to celebrate our Texas Christmas a little early. The kids woke up on the 22nd to a pile of gifts under the tree. Among all the goodies this year, we’re trying out a couple of “experiences, not stuff” options to see how they play out.

It might get loud

Mr Play-it-loud received his very own (not quite full size) electric guitar. Sean has moved an amplifier into his room and now he regularly jacks in and plays Thunderstruck at top volume. He tells us he has to turn it up loud so he can hear the distortion – a pedal or two may be in this kid’s future.

Commence outpouring of printed photos … now!

Maya received a photo printer, which she’s made liberal use of since receiving it. She’s forever asking us to print various photos for her, and we mean to, but never quite seem to get around to it. Now she doesn’t have to wait for us! The next step will be her learning to be a leeeeetle more selective about what she prints.

The kids had a day to play with their new stuff before we had to head out of town. We woke up on the 23rd to a fierce cold. It was a whopping 13 degrees outside, and that just doesn’t happen that often in central Texas.

We had a weird travel holiday. Months ago – last summer, I think – we had booked our flights from Austin to Memphis (to do the three-legged trip we’ve done in the past would have been prohibitively expensive). The trip there had maybe a 1.5 hour layover in Houston. Not long after we booked it, they had to change the second leg of the flight such that we now had a three hour layover and would arrive much later than anticipated in Memphis. We tried to finagle earlier flights, but we never managed it.

Then, a day or two before we were scheduled to fly out, they canceled the first leg of our trip. Sigh. Luckily, there was a later flight from Austin to Houston that would still get us there in time for our connection. This all went smoothly on travel day, believe it or not. Flights weren’t delayed. We made our connection. Got our luggage. All was hunky dory till we walked up to the rental car counter and found that it was dead-assed closed. Evidently they closed at 10p, and it was more like 10:30 or so when we arrived. We waited in line for three other car rental places and all told us they were low on inventory and couldn’t do same day rentals.

Because of our late arrival, we had already booked a hotel in the Memphis area to sleep in that night – thank goodness. We took an Uber to that hotel and first thing in the morning, Sean called our closed rental car place to try to make alternate arrangements. The nice lady set him up with a new reservation which, regrettably, was going to be more expensive. After eating a quick hotel breakfast, we Ubered back to the airport again to fetch our rental car. Sean discovered that this morning’s reservation wasn’t in their system, and at any rate they weren’t honoring same day reservations anyway. Luckily, they still had his original reservation in the system from the night before, so we were able to secure our rental car and at our original rate.

That poor car had been ridden hard. We learned later that it was a black car. This wasn’t at all apparent at the time, coated with dirt and snowmelt sludge as it was. But, our luggage fit in the trunk and there was a full tank of gas, so finally, we were on our way.

Helen and Harry made an Octo-pie

We rolled into Alabama around lunchtime and the kids happily disembarked from our filthy car. They had rolled with the weird travel punches pretty well, but they were clearly relieved to finally be at Lolli and Pop’s house.

Ian and Gumball

We mostly hung out at the house. The kids played with Lolli and Pop’s newly acquired stray, Gumball. And when Gumball got sick of being pestered, the kids played with each other. Sean and I did some last minute shopping and later that evening some last minute wrapping.

Grandparent grandkid pileup

Christmas Day was filled with gift unwrapping and lots of eating and lots of relaxing. Ian had gotten a hoverboard as a gift and so we had to learn how to ride it (he picked up very quickly and now regularly rolls around the house). Maya snuggled with her Minecraft cat neck pillow (it purrs and meows). They both snuck WAY too much Christmas candy, leading to Maya to make some very questionable decisions, “I had too much sugar; I wasn’t thinking clearly!”

Maya and her purring cat pillow

The day after Christmas, we all loaded up and went to watch Avatar: The Way of Water in 3D at the IMAX theater. Despite making about 2 billion visits to the bathroom with the kids, we managed to follow the story well enough. I was left with a similar impression as I had after watching the first film: it’s very pretty to look at but the story is kinda meh. The kids seemed to love it though.

On the 27th, we made the trek up to Friedheim to see Grammy and Grandpa. The weather was warming up and the roads were nice and clear, so the trip was fairly painless. We arrived in early evening and the kids made a mad dash to the downstairs to play. It’s hard to be cooped up in a car all day, even with screen time to entertain you.

We woke up the next morning and set about wrapping all the things – thankfully, everything arrived on time! I won’t tell you how late in the game we made some of those purchases though.

Snow in Missouri!

We also woke up to see that there was still a good bit of snow lingering on the ground. I warned the kids that it had warmed up and the snow would be gone soon, but even at that, they only lasted a few minutes outside before coming back in where it was warm.

After present wrapping and snow playing, we went to visit Uncle Bimps and Aunt Kay. We haven’t seen them in quite a long while, certainly not since they moved away from what I still think of as Grandma’s house, though she’s been dead for 30 years. Their new place is nice, and we had a pleasant, if short, visit before heading back for the big Schmidt Christmas.

It’s hard work getting them to pose for photos when there are presents lingering nearby

Carol always sets out a huge array of finger foods, and now she supplements with soup and sandwiches from Subway. We all basically linger in the kitchen and eat all afternoon with brief stops for photographs, gift unwrapping, and game playing. There were mountains of gifts under that tree. The grownups do a gift exchange, but none of us can resist buying for all the nieces and nephews. I won’t say it was total chaos, but it was all I could do to keep track of which gifts belonged to Maya and which to Ian.

Imos!

The next day, we drove up to Cape to eat at Imos (which Sean and I love) and see about trying the kids out on bowling. The pizza and toasted ravioli were lovely, as always, but the dang bowling alley was hopping! We’d be an hour or two waiting around to maybe get a lane. We abandoned this plan and headed back to the house for more playing and lounging.

It was during this time in Missouri that Sean and I started paying enough attention to the news to realize that Southwest Airlines was having an epic holiday travel meltdown. Thousands of flights were canceled, luggage and passengers stranded all over the place. It was horrible. We had a flight scheduled for the 31st with Southwest, and were honestly sweating it a little by this point. After our travel shenanigans coming into Memphis and decided to reserve a one-way car rental from Memphis to Austin, just in case our flight did wind up getting canceled. It would suck, but at least we’d be able to get home. And after our earlier adventures, we knew darn well that same-day car rentals would likely be unavailable.

Getting festive at The Bayou

We got some more relaxing in. Got all our various gifts shipped to Austin. Managed to have a fantastic dinner at a place called The Bayou. And got alllllllll of our stuff packed up and ready to go. We’d have to wake up early on the 31st to make the drive back to Memphis in time to catch our flight to Austin.

Everything went smoothly. Our drive was uneventful. Our flight wasn’t canceled and managed to be delayed only a little. We rolled into Austin and collected our luggage and got back to our car with a minimum of fuss and after a crazy week at the end of a crazy month, finally made it home. We all agreed that we didn’t feel one little bit like making ourselves stay awake till midnight, and so it was that by probably 10:30, the entire house was dead asleep.

Before Halloween, I had had the bright idea that we needed spooky cookies with sugar eyeballs. Sugar eyeballs were purchased and then sat unused as October was frittered away with activity after fun activity. And that’s the story of how we had Guy Fawkes Day spooky eyeball cookies instead! (Remember, remember, the 5th of November.)

Candy eyeballs are awesome

The kids finished out their soccer seasons and at least Ian got to celebrate with an end-of-season meet up at Hat Creek Burgers. Maya’s last game was pretty amazing. The team played really well together, and Maya herself was more focused and involved than her norm. It was a lot of fun to watch.

Maya is holding the team’s mascot, the Octo-corgi

We tried to make a fancy punch that needed oleo-saccharum as an ingredient. Making the oleo-saccharum worked as advertised, and the punch was tasty, though I’m not sure it was entirely worth the fuss. We have this hot gin punch that I honestly prefer (thank you, Holly), and it’s delicious hot or cold, so I’m inclined to make it instead.

First soccer season!

I did try to use my mini bundt pan to make large citrus ice cubes for floating in the punch bowl. The were pretty to look at and didn’t inordinately dilute the punch, so I think we’ll call it a win.

The kids are endlessly entertained by the notion that the squirrels are better gardeners than I am. Those creatures stay very busy planting corn and sunflowers from the bird feeders all over the yard. This year they even used my flower pots, and to show for it, I had a bold and lovely yellow sunflower towering over one of them. Well done, squirrels!

Petting the bunny at Dolphinfest

The kids had their annual Dolphinfest carnival around the middle of the month. This year we delighted in the fact that we could send the kids off to play on their own and just report back periodically. It was awesome. Sean and I could just kind of linger around and chitchat while the kids used their tickets however they chose. Maya’s preference was to play a softball toss game where she knocked over targets and got to choose a stuffed animal from the prize wall. Ian seemed to prefer the various bouncy houses that he could run and jump and slide in. There was even a small petting zoo at the carnival this year! Ian was sad there were no reptiles there.

Happy 10th birthday!

This year marks the post-COVID return of birthday parties. Maya’s birthday party was the day after Dolphinfest. She and her classmates gathered up at Pinballz arcade and played games, ate pizza, and drank soda to their hearts’ content. I was caught entirely off guard at how much fourth graders eat … and fast! We should almost certainly have ordered more pizza than we did. Either way, Maya loved her party and seems thrilled that so many of her classmates came to celebrate with her.

This girl is happy w her giant plate of shrimp

We had Maya’s birthday dinner on the 18th. She wanted to have fried shrimp at Pappadeaux, and so that’s what we did.

The very next day, we flew to Salt Lake City for our Moab vacation.This is one of the many things that we had to cancel in 2020, and I’m sad we put it off for so long. What a great trip!  As has become our habit, I’ve written a whole separate post on this vacation so I could yammer on for as long as I wanted and not belabor this post with those details.

Move over Clark Griswold – no windows were broken when we cut the rope to release the branches

We flew back into town on the 25th and right away on the 26th, we went out to find this year’s Christmas tree. They tell you not to fall in love with a house when you’re house hunting. They should tell you the same thing about Christmas trees. We went home with the biggest tree we’ve ever purchased – I think it was in the 10-11′ tall category. You should have seen the two of us trying to wrangle it into the house! It is lovely and glorious, and probably we won’t do that ever again. I shudder to think what it’s gonna be like getting the tree out of the house when its all dried out after the holidays.

We gotta stop meeting like this

And then Ian, who had just managed to survive a week’s worth of hikes in the Utah high desert unscathed, managed to cut his head open at school at the end of the month. Apparently there was a collision with another kid during recess that culminated in Ian’s head smacking into a piece of playground equipment. We went to an urgent care place instead of the children’s ER we had taken him to last time, and this was probably a mistake. They glued a wound that maybe ought to have been sutured, and they weren’t really able to manage his pain and anxiety very well. Lesson learned. The Dermabond stuff came off after only a couple days and what had been described to us as a 1 cm laceration was really more like a 1-inch laceration, and could have been longer. The cut was right along his hairline, and now you really even don’t see that it’s there unless you’re looking for it.

So there you go – that was November. I’m finally writing this as we’re right up against Christmas, so I’m *sure* I have all my details straight.

Remember how we were going to go with our “bubble family” to Moab to hike and hang out at the end of a shitty 2020. And with hospitals being full and beyond with suffering COVID patients at the time, we felt it would be irresponsible to travel and hike, even in an isolated way, and so like nearly everything else that year, the trip got canceled. Well, this year we finally got to go.

Loving each other for warmth – Balanced Rock in Arches NP.

The kids get a full week off for Thanksgiving, so we flew to Salt Lake City and drove nearly four hours from there to Moab, UT. It was afternoon when we landed, but the sun sets pretty early there this time of year, so we experienced most of the scenic drive between the two cities in the dark. After a stop in Provo for dinner at J’Dawgs and a bracing cold pit stop en route, we finally rolled into Moab just shy of 10 o’clock, Mountain Standard Time.

A word about our hotel. We stayed at a Homewood Suites right in town. It was nothing fancy but it suited our needs almost perfectly. They started serving a hot breakfast at 6:00. They had an indoor pool. Our fairly large room featured a small kitchen, and the kids got to sleep in bunk beds. Also, there was a really nice doughnut shop across the street, and the main part of town was an easy walk away.

Arches National Park was maybe a 10-12 minute drive away from us, so that’s where we started our adventure the next day. Maya is in fourth grade this year, so we took advantage of the Every Kid Outdoors program. I had filled out the form and procured a paper pass while we were still in Austin. At the entrance to Arches, we traded it for a nice plastic pass that Maya can wear on a lanyard.

We started slow with a quick walk to Balanced Rock. It was a brisk 18 degrees F out at the time, and the kids weren’t super impressed with that part. As soon as we were near the rock, Ian went perpendicular to the trail and started scampering around in the sandstone. Being a not-quite-eight-year-old, Ian has no sense of his own mortality, so we discussed the balance between independence and caution. Probably it leaked out of his brain almost faster than it was going in.

Double Arch

We drove out to a series of trails leading to Double Arch, the North and South Windows, and Turret Arch. Here Ian’s impulse to bulldoze ahead of his grown-ups was a little more dangerous. He has an independent streak about a mile wide and he’s really nimble, but those things can get him into positions he can’t easily get out of. Also, he learned that if you climb up something, you also have to climb back down, and believe it or not, down is often scarier. Add to that that his listening parts aren’t always 100% functional, and you have a recipe for a stressful hike.

We spent long enough here that we needed a snack before carrying on, but then we made our way to the easy Sand Dune Arch hike. Even with all the people, this one was almost peaceful. You wander in the shadow of big sandstone fins, and the arch seems almost tucked away and hidden.

Sand Dune Arch

Our snacks were sustaining us, so we chose to head out to see Landscape Arch, the longest arch in North America. The park service’s website tells me that it has a light opening of 306 feet and that the arch is only 6 feet in diameter at its narrowest. In the 90s, a 60-foot-long chunk dropped from the underside of the arch. I read repeatedly in guidebooks for hikes, if you hear loud cracking sounds, get away from the rocks. Noted.

Landscape Arch

By the end of this hike, we were ravenous. There are no services within the park itself, so we drove back into Moab for late lunch / early dinner. We ate at Antica Forma, where we found friendly service and a delicious array of Italian food. Sean and the kids even sprung for dessert.

We ended our day with a walk through Park Avenue. Here, after a decent down stairs, we walked through a valley with sandstone formations towering over us on either side. The sun was setting and the colors, when not in shadow, were warm reddish-brown in the golden light. I think it was along this hike that Maya started deploying what became the signature commentary on this trip. I looked at here at one point and told her she was flirting with disaster. I explained what I meant and then she chuckled and said that no, she was twerking with disaster. She and Ian must have said it to each other a hundred times over the next few days, and they were rarely incorrect.

Sunrise – Turret Arch taken through the North Window

The next day we woke up and headed immediately out the door to catch sunrise. The kids and I puttered around at Double Arch again, while Sean enjoyed a kid-free scramble through the boulders to get sunrise shots of Turret Arch through the North Window opening. When Sean’s in his element, he doesn’t really feel time passing, and so by the time he was done, the kids were cold and grumbling about boredom and hunger. We headed back into town for a late breakfast. Then we loaded up our snacks and water and cameras and headed to the Arches visitor center to check in for our big deal hike of the trip – Fiery Furnace.

There are only two ways to see Fiery Furnace – either via a ranger-led hike or by applying for a permit for a self-guided hike. This is a maze-like hike without any real “trail” through a land of sandstone fins, canyons, and boulders. There’s nothing to guide you but a series of difficult-to-spot arrows, and every piece of literature you encounter will warn you how easy it is to get lost. No maps are provided. Given all this, our original plan had been to take the ranger-guided hike. Alas, that was no longer an option in November.

These are the arrows meant to guide you along one possible route through the Fiery Furnace

I am a trail-hiker, through and through. I’m fine with a difficult trail, a long trail, a stupidly large elevation change, whatever. But I want a trail or series of rock cairns to follow. Even with all this, given the natural beauty we were sure to enjoy and the interesting challenge the hike presented, we eventually decided to give it a go, and I secured our reservation for a permit.

At the Arches visitor’s center, we learned how fragile the environment was. That we must avoid trampling any cryptobiotic crust by staying on rocks or sandy washes. The kids learned, to their delight, about poop bags (no pit toilets in Fiery Furnace, except at the trailhead). The ranger encouraged us, wherever we saw a sign that read, “Dead end,” to follow the path back beyond it because more often than not, it lead to interesting things.

The scenery did not suck

As an added measure of insurance that we’d make it to the end of the trail, we had also purchased an independently produced guide. We both had it loaded on our phones and could kind of match up rock formations and settings from time to time to feel confident we were on a path that would eventually get us through the hike. We have friends who went through without a ranger or a guide, and they did just fine. For us though, I’m glad to have had the comfort of a reference, albeit unofficial, for the hike.

Fiery Furnace hike

We did still explore many of those “dead end” paths – the kids took particular delight in going past the signs. One of the park rules is that no one under 5 is allowed on this hike. I’m completely impressed with any 5 year old that manages this. With our 10 and not quite 8 year old, it was challenging. There were squeezes, scrambles, and crawl-throughs. We sometimes had to jump across gaps between rocks, and you could really tell Maya was hesitant about these. There was at least one point where we kind of walked wedged between two cliff walls – hands on one side, feet on the other. Had it been me and Sean, I think it would have just been physically hard. Making sure the kids got through, from time to time, was a wee bit nerve-wracking. All that said, I’m so glad we went. I’ve never been on a hike quite like it and the scenery was incredible. Plus we’re all really proud of the things we managed to do.

We made it through the Fiery Furnace!

After that crazy hike, four tired and hungry Woodses headed directly to Moab Brewery in our sweaty clothes and red-dusty boots for early dinner. There were giant pretzels, beer cheese, fish and chips, house made root beer, actual beer and a whole lot of talking about our day. My only advice: don’t order the kid-size cheese pizza. Everything we ate was delicious and well-made … except that pizza. Thankfully Ian liked the fried fish in Sean’s and my dishes, so between fried fish and baked pretzel, little dude loaded up.

That pretzel didn’t know what hit it.

We had promised the kids pool time, and so after dinner, that’s were we went. I don’t know where they came up with energy for swimming – I could barely manage to sit upright in a chair to watch them, but they played in the hotel pool for about an hour that evening. I believe they both slept soundly that night though.

The next day, we were finally going to spend a little time at Canyonlands National Park. The closest entrance to Moab is to the Island in the Sky district, so that’s where we went. There are several different districts in the park, none of which are really connected by any roads, and while we wanted to come back another day and visit the Needles district, we simply ran out of time and energy on this vacation.

Carefully peeking through Mesa Arch at Canyonlands NP

“Island in the Sky” is a poetic description of the mesa you’re on, sitting sometimes a thousand feet or more above the surrounding area. Every corner you turn provides some new and breathtaking vista. After stopping by the visitors center and getting the kids passport books stamped (this is a new thing for this trip – we had never fooled with it in the past, but for whatever reason, this time it took the kids’ interest), we headed to the very popular Mesa Arch trail. The kids liked this trail because there were patches of snow right along the path, so they could mess with it a little bit.

We had been in Arches for a couple of days and were well versed in the “no climbing on arches” rule, so it was astonishing to see people lined up along the top of Mesa Arch having their photo taken. Sure enough as we got closer, there was the big sign forbidding people from climbing on the arch. We puttered around here for a while, scrambling around on the rocks, poking at the snow. Ian had been dealing with a loose tooth and every so often would spend a moment fidgeting with it and complaining.

Quick tooth extraction between hikes.

As we made our way back to the car, he went to work wiggling it back and forth, back and forth. As we were sitting in the car after the hike, he finally managed to extract it. There was a bit of blood, but having that pesky tooth out of his mouth was clearly a relief. And we even managed to keep track of it through the rest of our trip so that we could tuck it safely under his Austin pillow for the tooth fairy to find.

Maya’s definitely not a ham. And Sean definitely doesn’t encourage her.

Next we went to the Grand View hike, and the views all along it were indeed grand. The hike is generally flat, but you’re hiking along the top of an incredibly tall and breathtaking cliff. The kids drove us bonkers running up to the edge to look down, heedless of the potential for self destruction. Sean is not a huge fan of heights, so this was particularly stressful for him. He did carefully walk out to a few non-Sean-sanctioned edges and outcroppings to confront his apprehensions head on.

Conquering his fear!

I have no particular issue with heights, but I felt I had to be mindful of not giving the kids too much license for mayhem along the sheer drop-off to the lovely canyon-scarred land below. We were routinely graced with the caw-caw of ravens as we hiked. At the very end when we were nearly back to the car, one raven even went so far as to place himself in the bright sunshine and pose artfully so Sean could photograph him from several fetching angles.

Raven’s fancy

We thought we might hike up Whale Rock after that, however, all of us were still feeling the Fiery Furnace hike in our legs. Even the kids claimed they were too tired, so we drove up to it and observed that yes, indeed it does look whale-like, and then we headed on out of the park.

Rather than add on that last hike, we decided to drive out and see Dead Horse Point State Park instead. This is what I think of as that quintessential Colorado River winding through the sandstone overlook, and I had read that it was nicer at sunset than sunrise, so we saved it for later in the day. I may be wrong, but I think the scenery would have fared better  in morning or even midday light. It was beautiful, to be sure. But more of it was in shadow than I was hoping for. Also, as mentioned, we were all pretty beat, so we didn’t wander far along the trails and whatnot surrounding the area. I’d love to visit again and actually spend some time wandering the trails in the area.

Dead Horse Point

After this, we drove back into town and had Moab Diner for dinner. It was … fine. The kids say they really liked their food. For my part, I felt like we got the clipped, we’re-a-diner-we-gotta-move-quick level of service when there were only a very few occupied tables.

That evening, I availed myself of the hotel’s coin-op washers and dryers to get a midweek load of clothes through. This was our trade off – we packed a bit less so we could wash partway through. And really, we each only brought one good set of hiking layers, so freshening them up partway through was really nice.

Not before we have our coffee, Mom

After a good night’s sleep, we got up early to plow through breakfast and make our way out to Capitol Reef National Park. This was maybe a 2.5 hour drive from Moab, if I’m remembering correctly. We waxed and waned on doing this vs driving down to the Needles district of Canyonlands, but ultimately this won out because … there’s an arch here that you can walk across and we figured the kids would get a kick out of that.

The drive out to the park was predictably beautiful. We wondered endlessly how they decide while parcel of amazing rock formations and beautiful scenery they elect to designate as federal land and which they don’t. We headed straight to the visitor’s center for a passport stamp and a pit stop before heading to the trailhead.

Grand Wash trail

There were two hikes we were considering in Capitol Reef. Cassidy Arch was number one, and if we had time and energy, we’d like to try Hickman Bridge as well. The Cassidy Arch hike starts with a small jaunt down the Grand Wash Trail. This trail is flat and fairly easy and to be honest, the walk through the wash with the canyon walls rising up is absolutely gorgeous … and possibly that was our trouble. Maybe we were so busy looking around, we failed to notice the giant sign for the Cassidy Arch turn off. We essentially walked the whole Grand Wash Trail.

I mean, how could we have missed this sign??

We hoofed it back to the car for a light lunch (read here “glorified snack”) of cheese, crackers, salami, olives, and chocolate before heading right back the way we came, and this time taking the left turn to start our intended hike.

Along the Cassidy Arch trail

The path to Cassidy Arch is a mountain hike. You’re basically heading uphill the whole way, and oh my goodness, was Maya not impressed. We decided that she’s powered by sass and salami and let me tell you, by then she was all outta salami. With the rock cairns guiding us along the route, finding the arch wasn’t too hard. We rested and took turns having our photo taken on it. First I went to make sure everything was ok. I reported back that while you were on the arch, you didn’t really even realize it, so wide and sturdy was its top (which is, I’m sure, why you’re allowed on it).

The kids tried to show me how to dab, but I was hilariously not getting it.

Then I took the kids out there to have their photo taken. They tried to teach me how to dab (they mean the dancing kind of dabbing, just in case there’s any ambiguity for anyone here). There’s photographic evidence that I wasn’t picking up what they were laying down, but honestly that’s almost funnier to me. Non-cool mom being non-cool.

Sean on Cassidy Arch

And finally Sean braved the heights of the arch to have his photo taken as well. After a decent rest, we headed back down. Luckily, down was so much easier and faster that Maya was (mostly) able to keep her sass in check. Once we got back to the car, we decided to drive around the park a bit instead of attempting to squeeze in another hike. As mentioned before, the sun sets early in this part of Utah in November.

Pizzaaaaaaaaaaa

After the long drive back into Moab, we had dinner at Canyon Pizza Co. This was good, solid pizza – one of my favorite meals of the trip. The kids and Sean bought a pint of ice cream to share back at the hotel, and I don’t remember doing much else before we sacked out for the night. Except … it occurred to Sean and I that we should make a plan for Thanksgiving dinner. We had a few no-reservations-allowed ideas, but none of them seemed like things the kids would be into. Eventually we found a thanksgiving buffet at The Cowboy Grill at the Red Cliffs Lodge and managed to secure reservations for a 3 pm meal.

These 12 should have only been 4. They were so good though.

On Thanksgiving morning, we walked across the street and bought a dozen doughnuts from Doughbird. For the record a family of four, at absolute most, needs only one Doughbird doughnut apiece, but we didn’t know that till we ate one. They are really, really spectacular doughnuts and oh my are they filling.

Next, we went out to hike the Delicate Arch trail. It was bright and early when we headed into the park, and at that time, there was only a single car in front of us at the entrance gate – by the time we left at around 11:00, the line was about 42 cars deep, by the kids’ count. Delicate Arch is also sometimes called license plate arch since it’s featured prominently on Utah’s license tags. What isn’t clear from the metal plates is how huge that arch actually is. The NPS website tells me that Delicate Arch has a light opening that is 46 feet high and 32 feet wide, which makes it the largest free-standing arch in the park.

More climbing – those poor, mistreated children.

The trail isn’t easy. We had to do a fair amount of climbing, and when the cold breeze hit us, it took our breath away. There were a few ice patches here and there, but if you aren’t an elementary school kid, they’re easy to avoid. If you *are* an elementary school kid, you will be magnetically drawn to the icy spots, and your brain will encourage you to chisel it with rocks and pretend to ice skate in your hiking boots.

Once we finally got to the arch, it was semi-crowded, but we really didn’t have to wait too long to get our photos under the arch. A nice local family volunteered to photograph us and I feel they did an excellent job. After sitting and having a much-deserved snack, we headed back down. The kids were on fire by this point. Maya and Ian struck off like little darts, weaving well ahead of their grown-ups. Once we couldn’t see them anymore, Sean caught up with them and we regrouped. The walk back though was quite fast.

Woodses at Delicate Arch

We all went back to the hotel to get cleaned up for our Thanksgiving feast. The drive out to that made me wish we had spent a little more time driving around – it was along highway 128, which I believe is considered a scenic byway. The part we drove wound its way along the river and it was absolutely gorgeous. The restaurant was nice enough. Service was perfect, and there was such a good variety of proteins and sides around that the kids could find plenty of things they wanted to eat, even outside the dessert table. Did it compare in quality to a home cooked meal? Probably not. But it was pretty decent for a buffet meal, everyone could find things they wanted to eat, and I didn’t have to clean up afterward.

We let our food digest for a while and started packing up some of our things for the return trip. We took the kids down to have one last long swim in the pool. And once it got dark, we all bundled up and headed back into Arches to the Balanced Rock area to hang out and look at the night sky. This is considered a “dark sky” area, with minimal light pollution.

Night sky at Balanced Rock.

When we looked up, after letting our eyes adjust, the sky was visibly full of stars. We could see the haze of the Milky Way. If we knew more about astronomy, I’ve no doubt we could have picked out planets and constellations. This is not something we get to see in Austin, and for a few precious minutes the kids were entranced. Eventually the cold got to them though and they were begging to go back to the warmth of the car. Sean stayed out a few minutes longer attempting to capture some photos, but we think the wind may have hindered his ability to focus well.

The next day was really nothing but travel. We had a long drive back to Salt Lake City, which, as predicted, was beautiful in the daylight. On the drive in, it would have wow-ed up, getting steadily more interesting as we made our way southward. But after our deep five-day soak in the rugged landscape around Moab, it was hard to get too wound up. Don’t get me wrong, it was still lovely to look at.

Utah state highway sign

I had been trying to work out what Utah’s state highway signs actually were off and on for most of the trip. Igloos didn’t make sense. They didn’t quite look like yurts. I figured it couldn’t possibly be a malformed boob. Finally I looked it up: it’s a beehive, meant to be an image of industriousness, productivity, and self-sufficiency. Now you don’t have to wonder.

I really loved this vacation. And while our kids may have complained about all the hiking, I think they loved it too. They learned what they were capable of. I’m going to pretend that certain members of the family learned the value of a little caution. And of course, hopefully they will remember some of the amazing things they saw. We of course didn’t get to do everything we wanted to do; I think we could easily go again for the same amount of time, repeat nothing, and stay well occupied. But the things we did were incredible, and allowed us to pleasantly disengage from our day to day lives for a while.

October was a marked improvement over September. Sure we were running around all crazy between soccer and music and after school choir lessons. But everyone was healthy! And there were fun things to look forward to! And eventually the weather cooled off a bit!

Ian – 2nd grade – age 7

Early in the month, the kids had school photos. I was liking the whole outdoor photos thing that COVID had inspired the past couple of year. Sadly, they were moved indoors this year (I’m sure it’s a much more controlled environment), but the kids’ photos still turned out really well.

Maya – 4th grade – Age 9

Alamo Drafthouse, our go-to movie theater, often has fun events for the holidays. This year, for Halloween, they were offering a Beetlejuice movie party. They show the movie and  provide fun props, and their normally stringent “no talking” rules are relaxed to encourage audience participation. I LOVE that movie, and I truly felt like the kids were old enough to enjoy it.

On our way in, we were outfitted with some rubbery eyeballs, a shrimp keychain, a cool sand worm sticker, and a Miss Argentina sash. We ordered delicious food. We had fun clapping and shouting along with our audience members as favorite movie characters made their first appearance in the film. The kids found Beetlejuice’s antics funny, and I thought they were going to die laughing at the wild Day-O performance.

We had the kids seated at one table and us at an adjacent table since that’s how the food sharing worked out. Partway through the movie, we changed around so that each kid would be sitting by a grown up, since Ian was left off by himself with only Maya for comfort. In this configuration, we made it nearly to the end of the movie, but the scene where our two main characters suddenly age rapidly and start to look sort of skeletal and creepy turned out to be a little much for Ian. I tried explaining to him how the movie ended, to let him know the bad thing would be undone, but ultimately he decided he’d had enough. He and I headed out of the theater and took a walk around the parking lot instead. Parenting fail? Maybe, but I choose to think of it as adaptive parenting.

Maya and Ian on their way into the symphony

As part of Maya’s curriculum at her new music school, she’s required to see some live musical performances throughout the year. To that end, we decided to go see the Austin Symphony’s children’s Halloween concert. We all got dressed up – the kids in their costumes, and Sean and I in holiday appropriate clothes – and headed downtown to the Long Center. Before the show, the kids were able to make a few STEM-esque crafts. In between all that, we talked them into tolerating a few photos with the city skyline in the background – in case it isn’t obvious, it was a bit windy that day. Then Sean loaded them up with treats from the concession stand, and we spent a brisk hour watching the Austin Symphony. They performed a variety of pieces, but Maya’s favorites by far were the ones from the Harry Potter movies.

New glasses!

Ian finally got new glasses – our family COVID infection the previous month had put us behind on scheduled human maintenance. He again went with a purple pair, though maybe a bit more subdued and sophisticated this time. So far he hasn’t managed to smash them or lose them <knock on wood>, so I’m content.

We all got our flu shots. For 75% of us, this is a minor inconvenience, a small fear that could easily be rationalized away. For the remaining 25%, this is sheer trauma. (I’ll let you guess who. Rhymes with papaya. And jambalaya.) Maybe it’s not fair that only 25% of us experienced the trauma of that tiny little barely-there injection. I felt some bleed-over angst, and Sean, who had the unenviable task of staying with her till she got her shot certainly felt some. Worst though was probably our intrepid pharmacist. I’m gonna guess that we aren’t welcome back, at least not if we have daughter dearest in tow. She has a strategy for next year though – she will go first so she doesn’t have to see the other three of us get needles stuck in our arms.

The Cat and the Cobra, in pumpkin form

We were able to continue our tradition of having the kids work with our long-time friend and babysitter Anna to draw the designs on their jack-o-lanterns this year. Maya went with a simple but adorable cat. Ian chose a relatively intricate (for us) cobra. Thank goodness Anna drew that one, or it would never have happened. Even as Ian and I were cutting it out, I wasn’t really getting the full picture – not until we went outside and lit it up. I think they both turned out great, and I was pleased that the kids did a fair amount of the carving this year.

Dad had fun at trunk or treat too

The Friday before Halloween, the kids got dressed up and went to the Trunk or Treat in the  two big parking lots af their school. Maya really wanted us to decorate our car – and I think if we hadn’t COVIDed, we would have, so maybe next year. Some of the families really did a great job. There was a Candyland car, a Harry Potter one, another for Willy Wonka, a really cute Encanto themed one. My favorite was probably the P. Scary’s Burger Stand. It’s a plan on local burger chain P. Terry’s, and it was a work of pun-filled art.

Getting ready to trick or treat

And finally, the big day. Actual Halloween. We plied the kids with a perfunctory dinner, so we could pretend they’d had something with a bit of protein before the candy-fest ensued. We have a more or less standard route at this point. We made it probably two thirds of the way through the path before the kids informed us their buckets were overflowing. Our neighborhood doesn’t usually get a ton of trick-or-treaters, and so most people wind up giving candy out by the handful, especially as the evening wears on. We actually stopped by the house and let the kids dump their buckets so we could finish up our route. I cannot believe how much candy we have.

Yay for bouncing back after a rough COVID month, after a rough summer. The kids got to have fun and be carefree. They got to stay up too late and eat a little too much candy and watch a movie that was maybe not 100% age appropriate. We listened to the symphony and played in the yard and carved pumpkins. It’s been a pretty good month. (Also, the photographed chicken can be repeated by following this recipe: Buttermilk-Marinated Roast Chicken.)

September started out nice enough. The late August rain that we so desperately needed turned things from brown to green with a quickness. It’s like all the flowers in the back yard had been waiting that whole hot, dry summer for the chance to do their thing. The birds came back, the lizards never left, the squirrels breathed a sigh of relief.

Maya and her grasshopper.

We have a big hiking trip coming up in November, and at least Sean and I needed to condition ourselves a bit for it. Plus both kids would be playing soccer, and at least Maya is not fond of running. With that in mind, on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, I got up early and took the kids to the track at their school to run a few laps with me and to them kick the soccer ball back and forth a bit. This all went pretty well, except of course Maya was disinterested in running. They did have a lovely time catching grasshoppers, so that helped.

Then Sunday, we took them all bike riding, and Ian was able to ride on his own! This was a big achievement for him. He’s more cautious than his sister. I have a notion that he actually considers what might happen if he falls or crashes, and that can make a person hesitant. The willingness to ride without Dad right next to him to help steady him took some bravery. But he did it! His pride was evident. Suddenly he was making plans to go on bike rides all over Austin.

So it goes

The Tuesday morning before school, Maya was a little sniffly and had a bit of a cough. As has become our habit in the age of COVID, we gave her a quick at-home test, just to rule it out before we sent her into the school population. To our surprise, the test was positive! We kept both kids home, just to be safe. Ian wasn’t really showing any symptoms, but we figured it was a foregone conclusion that if one of us had it, we all had it. Later that afternoon, Ian had sniffles as well. We tested him, and sure enough, he was positive.

Given quarantine guidelines, this meant a guaranteed week off school for both kids. They seemed mildly put out that I collected a pile of homework for each of them to do while they were home, if they felt well enough.

My co-worker warned me on Tuesday that by that evening I’d feel a tickle in my throat. Sure enough, he was correct. I tested negative still on Wednesday, but on Thursday, I had the faintest positive line on my test. Sean didn’t test positive till Sunday.

Like I said, we assumed we’d all wind up sick, so once the kids were positive but the grown-ups weren’t yet, we collected cold medicines and stocked up on easy groceries. I prepped and cooked a few things while I still felt relatively well to keep us supplied with leftovers. We still do curbside pickup for our groceries, so we were able to keep our likely germ-ridden selves a good distance away from people. Even when I fetched the kids’ homework from school, I had a mask on, and accepted the homework packets outside and at arm’s reach.

Post-soccer game ice cream

Ian was visibly ill for only a day or two and then he was right back to his regular, energetic self (though he did fall asleep suspiciously early for a little while, so could be his body was still recovering a bit). Maya’s congestion and cough lingered a short while, but she seemed to be over it in a few days. Sean and I were out for the count for a good 3 or 4 days, fever, extreme fatigue, achy joints. Sean had the horrible headache to boot.

The recovery was so slow for me and Sean. For a while, our energy levels were frustratingly low. I bet it was a good two weeks of slow improvement before we were back to normal. The cough lasted longer. Even now, more than a month later, we’re both still dealing with some lingering crud.

Once the kids were well, we did manage to get them to all their music lessons, soccer practices, and soccer games. Ian and Maya got to go to a couple of friends’ birthday parties, which hasn’t really happened in a couple of years.

Maya joined an after-school music program, offered by one of the school music teachers. She tried out for a particular part, and while she didn’t get that one, she did get another that she eventually decided she was ok with. She is more excited about this musical than I’ve seen her about much of anything lately, so I’m glad she has the chance to participate.

Silly lilies think it’s fall

Our yard has been kind of fun. Right away in early September the oxblood lilies came up – also known as schoolhouse lilies, they’re sort of a first sign of fall. I mean, it was hot as heck all September, so I’m not buying it, but they’re pretty anyway.

We have had a couple of really pretty Texas spotted whiptail lizards dart through the back yard. We usually don’t see this particular variety, so it was exciting, particularly for Ian who is very fond of reptiles.

We got to watch the little lesser goldfinches eating every seed they could get their beaks around. They’re tiny birds, and they sort of perch on the main flower stem sideways, often blowing in the breeze as they peck all the seeds out of the salvias and whatnot. I was delighted to see that they apparently like basil seeds as well.

Blue jay!

We almost never have blue jays in our yard, and they definitely do not linger. I know it’s probably common for my Missouri family and friends to see them around, but for us it’s a treat. At the very tail end of not-the-best-month-ever, we had a few days where a couple fo them would zing down for a quick drink of water from one of the back yard birdbaths. Sean finally managed to grab his camera in time to catch a few slightly blurry photos of those beautiful birds.

And that’s it. Ian learned to ride his bike. We were all sick. The kids started their fall soccer season. We saw critters. There’s really not much else to say.

Our early August was mostly about preparation. We’d be going on our trip to Niagara Falls and Toronto during the first full week of the month, and then the kids would be starting school almost immediately thereafter. Prep for vacation. Prep for school. Prep for soccer. Prep for music.

It’s as good a reference point as any, I suppose (as seen at Jerry’s Artarama)

The kids had been doing a lot of work getting their rooms overhauled. We had challenged them to go through piles of old stuff and make hard choices about which things they had to keep and which things could go, and then to organize the things they were keeping. This is particularly hard for Maya, who doesn’t like to let anything go, ever.

They did a good job and so early in the month, we agreed to take them to Jerry’s Artarama, a local art store. Though the store has apparently been around since 1968, none of us had been before. It is immense and overwhelming and clearly populated with folks who have a sense of humor. It took quite a while for the kids to go through the store and make their selections.

One woman overheard Sean and I talking Ian out of buying certain materials for making his very own bow and arrow (because we were certain that his idea wasn’t going to function the way he wanted it to). She came over to talk to me to let me know that I shouldn’t talk my daughter out of wood-working projects – that she herself was a wood-worker and laments that her parents weren’t more supportive. I calmly explained that the long-haired creature in question was, in fact, a boy. I explained we were trying to find a way to make his idea work; not poo-poo it entirely. And then I explained that I was a working electrical engineer and not bound to standard gender roles. I know she meant well and part of me appreciates her standing up for my kid’s interests, but I also know that I felt some satisfaction at having set her straight.

We made sure everyone had fitting clothes, fitting shoes, functioning backpacks, lunch boxes, etc. We made last minute arrangements for our trip. We pack, pack, packed. And then, we went on our vacation to Niagara Falls and Toronto. We arrived in very late from traveling on Saturday night. Had one good day to recover, and then it was back to the grind.

Maya the 4th grader and Ian the 2nd grader

School started right away on August 15th. We weren’t allowed to take the kids to their classrooms. No one really talks about COVID anymore at school, so I’m guessing this is a reaction to the horrific school shooting at Uvalde.

The kids both tell me they really like their teachers, and they seem to have settled into their routines pretty quickly. Ian has Maya’s second grade teacher and is doing really well so far. Maya was pleased that she’s in the same classroom as her best friend Maclin.

Mac and Cheese on the top, Kraft Dinner on the bottom

One night after school started, we decided to test out Canadian Kraft Dinner against United States Mac and Cheese. I’m honestly kind of ambivalent about both of them, so Sean and the kids will need to try to remember what they preferred. Quantities of butter and milk called for varied between the products. The two macaroni dishes ended up looking somewhat different and tasting marginally different. Either way, I’m content to leave it to the rest of the household.

The kids’ music school, Monarch Suzuki, effectively ceased to exist at the end of July, and so they’ve both been transitioning to new music education setups. The spectacular thing is that they’ve both been able to stay with their same teachers from Monarch. With this have come new music lesson schedules. The kids also both wanted to sign up for fall soccer, so we have added soccer practice schedules and will soon be attending weekend games. Maya’s old enough that she’s been transitioned to a traveling league this year.  And Maya has joined an after school music group that will be putting on a musical at the end of the semester. So far, we’ve more or less managed to make all of this work, but it’s been a bit of a juggling act.

Ian McCulloch – lead singer for Echo and the Bunnymen, ill but soldiering on

A week after the kids went back to school, we got to go to a concert. Echo and the Bunnymen, Sean’s favorite band, were supposed to have been at the Cruel World festival we attended last spring, but they failed to show up due to some BS about visas. This time, they had to cancel a couple of tour dates ahead of Austin for “unforeseen circumstances” so we were sweating it right up to the concert date.

Will Sergeant, lead guitarist for Echo and the Bunnymen

Alas, they showed up! And while there were a few stops here and there and what seemed to be a slightly shortened set, the show was great! Their wonderful guitarist in shows past seemed to make a sport of watching his feet, hanging back in the shadows and never looking at the crowd. Not this time. He was engaged and looking at the crowd. He seemed to be completely in his element. He seemed to be having fun. Despite the lead singer’s illness, they sounded great. And at the end, Sean managed to get a set list and a guitar pick! We couldn’t have asked for better.

In the big snow and ice event in winter of 2021, several of our trees took some pretty severe damage. We let it ride for a full year to see what would recover and what was truly dead. After nearly being murdered by a falling limb, we decided to take care of business. It took a day and a half, spread over probably a month or so, but it is now all done. I saved a chunk of one of the larger tree trunks to use as a stand for a new birdbath, recently purchase to replace one that was lost during last winter’s one real freeze.

Nox on amp with bass guitar

The kids had liked the Korean rice dogs we had in Toronto so well, that Sean went looking for a local place that served them – and found one! Oh K-Dog can be found in the H-Mart shopping center. The kids were delighted to have more of the rice dogs. They could sprinkle on their own toppings and try out a variety of self-serve dipping sauces. H-Mart was insanely busy on a Saturday, and I was ready to leave when it was time, but we enjoyed our lunch and got some fun goodies from the grocery store.

With our newly minted Insane Schedule, we haven’t planned a single “fun” thing for September. We will have to see if there’s any weekend room left after two kids’ soccer and music schedules are met. That aside, after a couple of exceedingly weird pandemic years, it definitely feels like a return to normalcy. We vacationed more or less like normal over the summer. The kids went to school like normal (with the addition of heightened security). They’re being invited to birthday parties (which we are now likely to allow them to attend) and hanging out with classmates like normal.

The drive from Niagara Falls to Toronto on a Sunday afternoon in August during the height of tourist season wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The traffic wasn’t terrible and the lush green scenery was pleasant. But after a morning and afternoon trekking all over the Ontario side of Niagara Falls, the grown-ups in the car were nearly overwhelmed by a wave of exhaustion. It was all we could do to stay awake during our journey! As an added level of complexity, albeit minor, our rental car, which we had picked up in Buffalo, only showed us velocity in miles per hour, so I was rapid fire calculating kph to mph so Sean could try to follow the rules (or knowingly not follow them) as the speed limit varied.

As seen in Graffiti Alley

When I was originally thinking through this trip, I had thought we might stop in at either Niagara-on-the-Lake or at St Catharine’s to visit one of the local wineries and sample the regions famous wines. As everything kept taking much longer than anticipated, we abandoned that idea for this leg of the trip, thinking maybe we’d shoehorn it in on our drive back to Buffalo the following Saturday.

By the time we rolled into our hotel and relaxed for a little while, it was getting pretty late. No one was particularly hungry, so we walked to Dairy Queen and let the kids have Blizzards for an evening treat, and Sean and I shared an order of mushroom-truffle noodles from a place called Petit Potato. Ian in particular seemed astonished that he wouldn’t be required to eat “real” dinner. (I did check with him to see if he was actually hungry, and he confirmed he wasn’t.)

We discovered on our way out to fetch dinner / dessert, that our hotel had a revolving door. Over the week, we discovered that many of the other buildings had them as well. The kids LOVED them. I have a notion this will be a defining feature of Toronto for them – the city with all the revolving doors.

Before we left Texas, our week in Toronto looked like it was going to be nothing but rainy days – we even brought our raincoats along. That first evening in our hotel when we checked the forecast, it showed us rain only on Monday. With that in mind, we chose to spend the next day inside at the Royal Ontario Museum.

Day 1 – ROM, Poop Cafe, Nathan Philips Square

We started our morning with breakfast at a nearby Tim Hortons. As I understand it, Tim Horton’s is to Canada as Starbucks is to the United States. I can tell you that no matter where we were on our trip, it seemed that there was always one nearby. Sean and the kids split a box of doughnuts while I had some kind of maple bacon breakfast sandwich.

Maya loves mass transit

After breakfast, we made our way to the subway station to head further into Toronto. We had chosen our hotel in part because it was right on the main north-south subway line. When we got there, we discovered we wouldn’t even have to leave the building to board the train.  The TTC (Toronto Transit Commission) manages the subway, streetcar, and bus system in Toronto. For the days we’d be taking the subway system, we went ahead and bought the full day pass, which got us access to subway, streetcars, and buses all day long.

The kids, since they were between the ages of 0 and 12, were able to ride for free. It was never entirely clear to us how to correctly get them through the gate. If there was an agent around, they’d walk them through a special gate, while we tapped through with our day passes. If there was no gate agent around, each grown up would take a kid, tap our passes, and walk two people through when our gate opened.

Old ROM, new ROM

The Royal Ontario Museum, or the ROM as it’s known to the locals, is impossible to miss. The Michael Lee Chin Crystal, named for the man whose donation made the project possible, is an angular metal-and-glass addition to the museum. The museum’s original structure is still there, standing in stark contrast to the more modern addition jutting out from it. I get the impression the locals either love it or hate it – rarely are their reactions ambivalent about the building’s aesthetic.

Maya and dragon

The museum itself is a behemoth encompassing art, artifacts and ancient culture, science, nature, and probably more that I’m not adequately categorizing. If we lived in Toronto, we’d buy a membership and visit often, letting our interests of the moment dictate which exhibits we saw. It is too much to consume in a single day. We saw artifacts from ancient civilizations from all over the world, tons of preserved animal specimens (including hummingbirds, to Maya’s chagrin), minerals, meteorites, replicas of dinosaur skeletons, and on and on and on.

The Ian-corn

We also sprung for the special exhibit, Fantastic Beasts: The Wonder of Nature. This exhibit lets you inhabit the world of Harry Potter and Newt Scamander for a little while, with particular focus on the magic creatures that exist therein. What I liked about it is that it drew the kids in by talking about dragons and unicorns but linked those magical creatures to the real world animals they may have derived from. Magical elements were featured throughout – drawers and cabinets that moved of their own accord, bowtruckles that would defend their trees, and nifflers that needed to be offered treasure. But there were also placards warning of the endangerment of certain species and information about real animals and what traits they share with the creatures of the wizarding world.

Artful, yes, but these chairs were too slippery to sit in comfortably

My only gripe about the Fantastic Beast exhibit, and I guess I should expect these capitalistic shenanigans by now, is that to exit you must go through a gift shop. Our kids have definitely gotten better about dealing with souvenir purchasing. A lot of that is probably a byproduct of them getting older, and some of it may stem from our requirement that they largely spend their own money on them. But, and I’m sorry to be this person, I still think they’re a giant hassle. I get so distracted with what the kids want and the negotiating and the gently talking them out of silly crap that I usually leave without ever having considered whether I might like something.

We had lunch during our visit as well. And it was … fine. I don’t remember if you’re able to leave and then come back later, but if the weather is good, that may be preferable to eating there.

After a very long and lovely visit to the museum, we took the subway over to the Koreatown area. During trip planning, I had watched a few videos of locals showing things they’d recommend in Toronto. In one, I learned about the Poop Cafe. Believe me, I know, it sounds gross. But the desserts looked pretty epic, and I knew that Maya and Ian would get a kick out of it. Think of it as the kid-centric reward for putting up with several hours at a museum.

Poop Cafe – it’s an experience

We walked to what we thought was the address of the Poop Cafe, and it was all boarded up and clearly closed. So sad! But then we noticed a sign pointing us to a new address, and a passing local said, “Oh, you want the Poop Cafe? It’s moved just a couple blocks away.” Sure enough, a short walk later, we were greeted by a statue of a happy pile of poop.

Oreo Freak Shake

Inside, the decor is on point. There are commodes for seats at many of the tables, cute stuffed poop emojis tossed around in some of the chairs, and a giant kawaii poop hanging out in the back of the store. The desserts are massive, magnificently garnished, exactly the kind of thing a kid would adore. Sean and the kids ordered towering Freak Shakes, chocolate chip for Maya and Dad, Oreo for Ian. I am not a huge chocolate person, so I ordered a lychee bingsu (shaved ice), which – to the kids’ delight- came served in a miniature porcelain toilet bowl. Everything was tasty enough, but the out of this world part wasn’t so much about creative flavors and exceptional execution. It was more about bathroom theming and over-the-topness.

Lychee Bingsu

There was a funny moment when Maya needed the rest room and we hadn’t yet located it. She was completely tickled by the irony that something called the Poop Cafe with its toilet bowl seats wouldn’t have a bathroom. Eventually we did find it, down the stairs and near a pile of commodes which we were guessing were destined to become additional seating in the future. All in all it was a fun experience, especially for the kids.

We were all still suffering a bit of a Niagara Falls hangover (we did a LOT of walking), so we decided to head back to the hotel to rest for a little while. Sean wandered over to the LCBO store across the street from our hotel. LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) stores are essentially government run liquor stores. We were able to purchase wine at a retail store, but I believe liquor can only be purchased from an LCBO shop.

Sean’s haul from the LCBO store

Sean went to the one nearest us out of curiosity. I suggested he try to come back with some wine since we didn’t get to try any while we were in Niagara. He came back instead with a “build your own” eight-pack filled with interesting beers for us to try out as we chose over the next several days.

City Hall at Nathan Phillips Square

Near sunset, we again all boarded the subway and headed toward Nathan Phillips Square to see City Hall and check out the famous TORONTO sign. The kids had so much fun wandering around the square taking photos and videos to their hearts’ content. After snapping photos as we entered the square, across from the sign, at the sign, and across from the sign again but from a higher vantage point, we decided we “needed” a late night snack (we really didn’t).

Kids hanging out in one of the TORONTO Os

We walked over to a small lineup of street carts. As we headed that way, we passed some folks, presumably without homes to go to, sleeping in quiet corners. While they slept, we also startled some very large and vigorous rats. The kids were delighted by the rats and were pointing and exclaiming. We used this moment to try to show them the sleeping people and how it would be kinder to keep our voices down and let them sleep. They seemed to take all of this in stride – I expected more questions, but none came.

After the Maya and Ian enjoyed some fries and Mom and Dad enjoyed some poutine, we took the subway back up to our hotel and crashed for the night.

Day 2 – Casa Loma, St Lawrence Market, Distillery District

We had planned for Tuesday to be our big touristy CN Tower and Toronto Islands day, but then we woke up to heavy cloud cover that would reportedly last all day long. Instead we decided to visit Casa Loma. After a slowish start, another Tim Hortons breakfast, a subway ride, and a walk, we arrived.

Casa Loma

Casa Loma is a castle-esque mansion built in the early 1900s for Sir Henry Pellatt. Apparently it took 300 people not quite 11 years to build. The castle is a nearly 200,000 square feet – the largest in North America.

After taking some outside photos, we bought admission tickets, picked up our audio guides (included with admission), and wandered around for most of the self-guided tour. We’d go to an area of the museum, punch the posted number into our guides, and then hold the thing up to our ears and listen to what the narrator had to say. I honestly found it interesting. Maya lasted for part of the first commentary before she was abandoning her guide. Ian made it through about half the tour before he as well was handing me his guide. And so it was that I went through most of the grounds with three audio guides hanging from my neck.

Inside Casa Loma

The house was interesting as a period piece. One of the facts I remember hearing is that at a time when the whole city of Toronto had maybe 200 telephones, there were something like 50 scattered throughout the house. As Sir Henry is considered to have brought electric power to the city, it is unsurprising that his home sports many features that would have been considered luxuries at the time, not least of which is electric lighting through the house.

Speaking of interesting luxuries, in keeping with our theme, the kids were weirdly interested in how the bathrooms worked. I too was taken with one of the features. It seems that Pellatt was ahead of his time in having a shower that had a multi-head set-up that was designed to spray him from all sides. His study had secret passages that we got to examine. We got to climb narrow spiral staircases into the castle’s two towers, from which the views of downtown Toronto were lovely.

Prince presiding

There were a few non-period visuals in the castle as well. My favorite is the portrait of Prince in, I think, the Great Oak Room. I thought it must surely be someone’s idea of a joke, and maybe it is, but the work was specifically commissioned for placement at Casa Loma, not by Sir Pellatt, obviously. These days the City of Toronto owns and operates Casa Loma as a tourist attraction and entertainment complex.

The lower level boasts a Hollywood Film Gallery, with movie posters and placards explaining how the given movie was related to Casa Loma. More films than I’d have anticipated have had scenes filmed here. Throughout portions of the castle grounds, we also saw evidence of the various escape room adventures hosted at Casa Loma. The odd dragon here and there, various props and clues and set design were tucked into towers and hallways and nooks.

“That unicorn looks mad”

At the tail end of our visit, we walked the underground tunnel to the stables. This featured Toronto’s Dark Side exhibit, showing images of fires and illnesses and whatnot that had befallen fair Toronto over the years. Sean and I didn’t get to read too much because by this point the kids were pretty all done, and we were just trying to at least get a glimpse of the grounds. Weirdly, to get back to the main castle, we were sort of shunted through this waxworks exhibit (except I think it was silicon, not wax) showing scenes from the movies that had been featured in the Hollywood Film Gallery.

At long last we were finally through the castle and ready to breath the open air. The nice thing about it having rained the day before is that the heat wave (think 90-ish degrees at the high end) had ended and lovely cooler weather (mid 70s-low 80s), the kind we had been hoping for, had descended. We sat outside for a while and hatched a plan to head over to St Lawrence Market to eat a late lunch and check out the market.

Inside St Lawrence Market

We had a lovely lunch courtesy of Buster’s Sea Cove. Each of us got seafood dishes we were pleased with, and Ian was able to get chicken fingers. The one sour note is that Maya had decided the lobsters in the tanks throughout the market were cute, and so she spent the better part of the lunch lecturing me about the cruelty of my very delicious lobster roll.

Macarons

After lunch, we had a stroll through the different levels of the market on the hunt for dessert and whatever else we might happen across. The meat and seafood counters had us wishing we had an AirBNB, so that we could cook some meals. The produce was varied and gorgeous. St Lawrence Market is boxed in by Market St, Front St, Jarvis St, and the Esplanade and helpful street signs have been placed throughout the building, presumably to keep you oriented.

Fountain at Berczy Park

After the market, we headed back toward our subway station with a few stops in between. I wanted to see the Gooderham Building, which is Toronto’s local flatiron, and we all wanted to check out the neat fountain at Berczy Park. This fountain features a bunch of dogs staring up at a golden bone. Water arcs out of their mouths, feeding the fountain. Tucked amongst them is a solitary cat who is of course looking an entirely different direction. I’ve read that he’s looking at some birds on a lamp post a few meters away, but I failed to notice that while we were there. The kids LOVED this fountain and we spent quite a while photographing various aspects of it.

Finally, we headed back to the hotel. We let the kids partake of the hotel pool, while we hung out and split one of our fancy beers and watched them play. After a little relaxing, we headed back out to see what the Distillery District was all about. This trip would require both subway and streetcar and unfortunately the street car we thought we were supposed to take didn’t appear to be running. Eventually we took a different street car that got us a bit closer and then otherwise hoofed it. All of this figuring out took some time, and so by the time we made it, most of us were pretty ravenous, even with our late lunch.

Parents at the Distillery District

The art throughout the Distillery District was a lot of fun to see. We spent a fair amount of time taking in the sights and letting the kids run a little wild with their cameras. By the time we found a place with suitable menu items for everyone, it was going to be at least a 30 minute wait just to sit down, and even longer to get food in bellies. And so it was that we had dessert for dinner arguable for the third day in a row. We went to a place called Cacao 70. I had hot chocolate, Sean had a shake, Maya had crepes, and Ian had a waffle. You should have seen Ian’s waffle. It was so buried in dessert items, I’m not sure he even dug down far enough to get to actual waffle.

This is Ian’s “waffle”

Indulgently fueled yet again, we took a quick jaunt back to City Hall so Sean could get a street cart hot dog he’d been craving and then we headed back to our hotel for the night.

Day 3 – Kensington Market + food tour, Graffiti Alley, Monkey’s Paw (book store)

By Wednesday, we felt we had earned a bit of a sleep-in. The only thing we booked ahead of time on this trip was a Kensington Market Food tour and that didn’t start till 11. We decided to take it easy and make that our first thing of the day. We ate very lightly for breakfast, suspecting that we’d have a very large lunch to work our way through.

Yonge-Dundas Square

We took a combination subway + streetcar trip to get ourselves over to Kensington Market. The cool thing was that the walk between the subway and streetcar took us past Yonge-Dundas Square, which is something we’d been planning to make a separate trip to at some point, but hadn’t yet worked it in. It’s sort of like Times Square in NYC or Piccadilly Circus in London with its big illuminated billboard screens. It might have been fun to wander around for a while and see more of the architecture of the area, but we did get a good gander of the area even just passing through.

Some people call it the smallest park in Canada

Entering Kensington Market was almost like walking into a different city altogether – the contrast with Yonge-Dundas Square couldn’t have been more stark. Everything was a tangle of color and aroma (mostly good), a hodgepodge of architecture, a staggering wealth of small businesses. We had a little time to kill before our tour was to kick off, so we wandered the streets a bit, soaking up our surroundings. The kids found a little playground  and alternated between playing on the structures there and pestering the local pigeons and sparrows.

The beginning of our food tour

At tour time, we met our guide at Nu Bugel, the end result of a fascinating multi-cultural journey. Bagels are a Jewish-Polish food. These bagels are honey boiled like the Montreal-style bagels, but served in a larger size like the New York-style bagels. To make matters even more interesting, the shop owners are Venezuelan. Multi-cultural bagels, indeed!

Our guide’s name William (unless you didn’t like the tour, then his name was Charles). He had a deep, resonant voice that carried well, even to the back of the pack. He came around to each of us, offering a small sample of both a coconut flavored bagel and a bagel  sandwich stacked with arugula, mustard, horseradish jelly, and smoked trout. He was also kind enough to provide plastic sacks for folks who needed to carry along the things that one kid or the other may not have enjoyed.

They didn’t like everything, but they seemed to enjoy the experience

We had never done a food tour before and didn’t really know what to expect. It just seemed like a fun way to get shepherded around an unfamiliar area and get to try more than the one restaurant we may have decided upon on our own. The kids, especially Ian, seemed to get a big kick out of it.

Our second stop was a Jamaican place called Golden Patty. We were each offered either a spicy or mild Jamaican beef patty, which was first ensconced in a curry crust, and then was sandwiched into some coco bread. This was one of Ian’s favorite things. For Maya, sadly, it did not pass the sniff test. For my part I thought it was divine.

We stopped then at a place called Jumbo Empanadas. Luckily, they had made two different sample size empanadas for us to try, one with some kind of mild white cheese and the other with a sort of meaty picadillo. The kids’ favorite part were the samples of Inca Kola that were supplied to wash it down with. William explained that it looks like Mountain Dew, smells like bubble gum, and taste like banana. He was not wrong.

Canada used to have an interesting rule that only dark drinks could be caffeinated. This meant that yellow sodas like Mountain Dew, which I associate with late nights in the computer lab, had to be decaffeinated. This topic came up because the Inca Kola is both yellow and caffeinated.

Maya and her rice dog

The next place we visited on our tour was Chungchun Rice Dog, which served Korean style hot dogs. The ones we tried were served in a rice coating – corndog-style. Then they were topped with an artful squiggle of ketchup and an optional powdered flavoring of some kind. Sean and I went traditional with ketchup and sugar. Maya tried a powdered garlic thing (which I think she was kinda meh about), and Ian had powdered cheese, which he loved.

Decor at the Fika Cafe

After the rice dogs, we went to a place called Fresco’s Fish and Chips where we had some double-fried cod and some spectacular kale salad. Sean and I wound up getting the kids’ kale salad, which after the debauchery of the past few days was most welcome. We ended our tour at a place called Fika Cafe. It’s a Swedish joint where we enjoyed crispy gingerbread tail-less horses and some iced Rooibos tea.

We walked away from the food tour having had an interesting and enjoyable experience. Our bellies were very full, and I had a bag full of things that the kids hadn’t eaten to snack on later if the need arose.

Maya figures this is how our black cat Nox sees herself

From there we walked over to the famous Graffiti Alley. Get this – Toronto has a Graffiti Management Plan. Here’s what the city’s website has to say: The City of Toronto’s Graffiti Management Plan is a proactive and cooperative approach to managing graffiti vandalism in the public realm while continuously supporting graffiti and street art that adds artistic vibrancy to Toronto’s streets.

We saw brilliant examples of incredibly talented artists having decorated walls and alleyways all over town, but nowhere was it quite so dense as it was in Graffiti Alley. The kids again went nuts with their cameras snapping photos of art both bright and dark, funny and sad, light-hearted and full of political commentary. Our food tour guide had told us there are a couple of Banksy’s around Toronto as well, but we didn’t bother with trying to find them. Our days were full as it was, and there was no shortage of street art to see.

Sometimes traveling with kids is hard

We tried to visit a local record shop, and it seemed pretty amazing, but there weren’t a lot of interesting deals hiding in their bins, as far as we could tell, and our children have not yet developed the patience to spend an hour flipping through bins of records, so we didn’t get to linger long.

The Biblio-mat at Monkey’s Paw

I had read about a neat rare book store called Monkey’s Paw. Sean and I are pretty much always game to visit a book store, but the thing I thought the kids would get a kick out of is that this place had a book vending machine – the Biblio-Mat. It was kind of fun and novel, but the kids were spent by this point. Sean took them outside to let me browse around in the store a little bit before we left.

Other than making a quick jaunt across the street to the Loblaws grocery store to pick up some goodies for snacks and breakfast and to a couple places to secure dinner (the kids’ first non-dessert dinner since we arrived in Toronto), we largely relaxed for the rest of the evening.

Day 4 – Canada’s Wonderland

Thursday was probably the day Maya and Ian were most excited for – Canada’s Wonderland! After a quick breakfast from our grocery store haul the day before, we took our car out the hotel parking lot and drove slightly northwest of the city to Vaughn, Ontario,   to the sprawling amusement park that is Canada’s Wonderland. Sean and I have loved roller coasters forever, and the kids developed a newfound devotion after last winter’s visit to Walt Disney World.

Tacky souvenir photo at Canada’s Wonderland

Ian was about 2.5 inches too short to ride some of the more thrilling attractions, but we had no problem whatsoever filling our day with rides that all four of us could ride. Sean introduced the kids to the concept of “coaster credits.” For each new roller coaster they ride, their tally goes up by one. Ian in particular seems to love keeping track of things, so I think the idea appealed to them.

Canada’s Wonderland itself was unexpectedly pretty for a park full of thrill rides. It is anchored by a manmade mountain, complete with a waterfall crashing over it, and greenery and flowers abound throughout the grounds. Bearing in mind that we weren’t able to partake of the most thrilling rides, the ride queues we were in did a good job of keeping you out of the sun, and seemed to pass reasonably quickly.

Maple leaf

Maya and Ian will tell you it was the best part of their trip, and they wonder why all of our vacations don’t feature amusement parks. For me, it was a fun way to add some variety to our days. Asking the kids to appreciate museums and culture and architecture and history for five days straight may not have been too much to ask, but it was more than I was going to ask.

Waiting to board The Fly

That evening, once we got back to the hotel and got the kids into bed, we were talking through what we wanted to try to achieve during our last full day in Toronto. I looked around at the CN Tower’s website thinking we’d see about buying tickets ahead of time to save time in ticket lines. Alas, all the early timed ticket entries were gone. And there were no tickets left for the special SkyPod level, which is a few hundred feet higher up than the main observation level. We decided that we’d get there as early as we could reasonably manage and see if more options were available on site.

Day 5 – CN Tower, Toronto Islands, Beaver Tails

We let the kids sleep in just a bit after their very busy amusement park day, ate another quick grocery store breakfast, and took the subway all the way down to Union Station to see what kind of chaos we could find at the CN Tower. We were delighted to find that there weren’t heavy crowds, that within minutes we had purchased essentially immediate entry to the tower, and that Skypod tickets would be available for purchase if we wanted them from the observation deck.

CN Tower

The Canadian National (or CN) Tower was the tallest freestanding structure in the world in 1975, when it opened. Of course this is no longer true today, but it is still tall enough to dominate Toronto’s skyline. The tower itself is 553 meters (1815 feet) tall. The main observation level is at 1136 feet above ground, and the views from this floor are superb. There is also glass flooring to look down through. The SkyPod is at 1465 feet, and while the views to me weren’t much different, it allowed us the potential to feel the tower swaying (if we did, it was just barely on our clear, near-windless day), and it let us get a good look at the folks who did the EdgeWalk.

These brave souls are doing the EdgeWalk

The kids are too young to do the EdgeWalk, Sean is uncomfortable with heights, and I wasn’t going to do it if no one else was, so we contented ourselves with watching from the SkyPod. They suit you up and strap you in so you can walk along the outside edge of the tower’s main deck. And it looks like you can turn around to face outward and LEAN OUT over the city. I can’t imagine how it must feel.

Once we’d finished at the CN Tower, we headed over to the Steam Whistle Brewery Biergarten for lunch. We lucked out and only had to wait a few minutes for a nice table inside, so we didn’t really get to linger on the grounds much before we ate. The food was decent – chicken fingers, sausages, a baked pretzel. The only Steam Whistle beer they had on tap was the pilsner, so that’s what I had.

Sean **loves** heights

One of the draws of Steam Whistle is that it’s located inside an old railroad roundhouse. There are old train engines sitting around on the grounds that kids can climb around on, so after lunch, we spent a few pleasant minutes letting them bounce amongst the engines. Then it was time to hoof it over to the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal to catch a ferry over to Toronto Islands.

We took a meandering route over to the terminal so we could walk along the waterfront a bit. The kids chuckled over the mallards who were floating around in the water, many with their heads tucked under a wing, enjoying an afternoon nap.

Toronto skyline

The terminal had ticket counters, but we were greeted by a sign with a QR code that we were to scan and purchase tickets on our phone. All tickets are assumed to be round trip, so we didn’t even need to show tickets on the way back. We took the Ward’s Island Ferry on the way over so we could get some nice views back at the Toronto skyline, the CN Tower prominent amongst the gleaming skyscrapers.

The walk along the southern waterfront was so serene, you forgot you were in a huge city

My original plan had been to wander along the waterfront till we got to the Gibraltar Point Lighthouse, let the kids play a bit on the beach there, and then take the nearest ferry back. As it turns out, the walking distance was pretty far between these things. Sean’s knee had been suffering for all our walking around all over Niagara Falls and throughout the city, and it just wasn’t up to it today. Had we realized a little sooner how long the walks would take us, we might have rented a quad-cycle when we exited the ferry – it would have allowed us to pedal around and see a bit more of the islands than we managed to see.

More skyline

We decided instead that we’d walk to Centre Island Beach, some along the waterfront, some along the main thoroughfare through islands, and let the kids play there instead. I had suggested before we left for our trip that we might find time to let them swim in Lake Ontario, but we warned them its colder than the Gulf Coast swimming they’ve grown accustomed to. Apparently this idea of swimming in one of the Great Lakes took root firmly in their minds. When we got to the beach, we had them take shoes and socks off first to stick their toes in the water. Yup, they decided they were in. I took them to get swim-suited up, but they never really went too far into the water. I’m guessing it was pretty cold. Sean and I, for our part, plopped down in the sand and watched them play for a bit.

Fresh from a Great Lakes swim

After they played for a while, we all took a mosey down the Centre Island Pier to let the kids dry out a bit and to let the grown-ups cool off in the fresh breeze off the lake. Once everyone was again properly clothed, we took the long walk to catch the Centre Island Ferry back to the city. Centre Island is vastly more popular than Ward’s Island. That coupled with the fact that it was now late afternoon and most people were heading back into the city by this point culminated in a very lengthy line at the ferry terminal.

Ferry Boat ride

Astonishingly, after maybe 30 minutes of waiting for it to arrive, we managed to get on the very next ferry boat! Evidently, these things can hold a lot of people. The ride was again pretty. I’m sure a harbor cruise would have been lovely, but for less than $10 a person, we had a couple of nice boat rides across the water.

After disembarking the vessel, we headed straight over to the BeaverTails restaurant to have … Beaver Tails! These are doughnut like pastries that are flat and paddle-shaped like a beaver’s tail. The pastries are loaded up with any of a variety of toppings for your dessert pleasure. For example, Sean had brownies on his. Maya had some kind of Reeses Pieces peanut butter chocolate insanity that we probably shouldn’t have let her finish. Ian had a sort of cookies and cream one. And while I was eyeing the Pou-tail (a beavertail with poutine on it), I settled on the original cinnamon-sugar topped one. These were all tasty enough, and after dealing with Maya’s very messy hands, face, clothes, etc, we headed back for our last subway ride back up to our hotel.

Beaver tail

We saw lots of maple syrup in every souvenir shop near every tourist attraction. In the end, we did buy some syrup to bring back home, but it was in a liter-sized jug from the Loblaws across the street. We went to our now regular Petit Potato for dinner and had some kinda crazy omelet rice creation dubbed “omirice” that in this case came topped with a brightly seasoned pepper steak. We did most of our sorting and packing that evening while the kids relaxed and either played with their iPads or watched TV.

Our flight home on Saturday wasn’t till the evening, so we didn’t rush leaving our hotel. The plan had been to take the 90 or so minute drive back to St Catharines and eat lunch at one of the wineries since we hadn’t gotten to do so on the way up to Toronto earlier in the week. We were on the road before 10:00 and traffic was clunky, but we figured it would thin out once we got away from the main knot of Toronto. Nope. It was pretty horrible for the entire drive. Couple that with a few pitstops for our children and we first abandoned the plan to stop at a winery for lunch, and then we abandoned the backup plan to find an interesting joint in Buffalo to have lunch. (Sean’s comment about Buffalo, “I’m sure there are nice parts of Buffalo, but we didn’t see any of them on this trip.”)

Our Canadian food souvenirs

At least the border crossing back into the United States was faster. This time we crossed in via the Peace Bridge. I don’t know if it’s standard procedure, but our border crossing guard left you with the impression that he wasn’t a fan of Toronto. He grilled us about how long we’d been there, was it our first time, etc. Then he looked at Sean and said, “Why Toronto?” in a tone that suggested he didn’t not see the allure. Sean was caught so off guard that he shrugged and said, “Why not?” Eventually the guy waved us through.

Our flight out of Buffalo was fine. But then, our one hour layover in Chicago grew into a three hour layover. Our late but tolerable 10p arrival in Austin wound up being a 1a arrival. At least this time all our baggage arrived with us. We were all so relieved to be home. It had been a great trip but wow were we tired.

Bye Toronto

We loved our Toronto trip. I would have liked to see either the Art Gallery of Ontario or the Aga Khan Museum, but taking the kids to Canada’s Wonderland and seeing Toronto Islands and letting them swim in Lake Ontario were probably worthy tradeoffs. The city is clean and the people were friendly – there was never a moment we felt unsafe, and we did plenty of wandering around after dark. The subway system was efficient and not redolent of urine or spilled booze, a marked difference from what I’ve come to expect from certain types of mass transit.

The city, for us, was less about seeing particular attractions and more about going to different neighborhoods and wandering around. It’s the kind of place you might like to just live for a few weeks so you could try a different ethnic restaurant every night, make time to go see a play or a ball game, visit the ROM about six more times. The kids are excited that they got to visit a whole different country (wait till we get them to a whole different continent!), and they’re particularly enamored with their Canadian money, which they both agree is much prettier than American money. And we are excited we got to take them there.

  

For our final summer hurrah before the rigors of formal education set in, we took our overheated selves up north to the wilds of New York and Ontario. Our first destination would be Niagara Falls, NY, but first, we had to get there.

Connecting through Chicago-O’hare

On a quiet Friday evening, we flew into Buffalo, NY, retrieved our too-large baggage and headed to our rental car pickup. As has become our norm, we waited for something like 45 minutes to get a rental car. By the time we had finally made it to our hotel and settled in for the evening, it was around 1 in the morning, Eastern time.

Never mind the late arrival, we had vacationing to do! I had read over and over that the secret to Niagara Falls success on a weekend during the busy tourist season was to show up early. Given that, we drug our dead asses outta bed around 7, ate breakfast, and headed right over to Niagara Falls.

Maid of the Mist – this boat was just leaving as we got in line.

There are two boat rides you can take to get a little closer to the roar and spray of Niagara Falls. There’s the Hornblower, from the Canadian side, and the Maid of the Mist, from the American side. Both of them take you past American Falls, Bridal Veil Falls, and Horseshoe Falls. We had read that Hornblower used newer craft and that the Maid of the Mist, which has been in operation since 1846, was more historic. Ultimately, I think it came down to us wanting to have that experience on day 1.

Observation Tower from below

We stood in line to buy our Maid of the Mist tickets, and we couldn’t have spent more than 5 minutes in that line. We then spent another 10 to 15 minutes in line for the elevator, during which time, we could chill out and listen to the waterfalls and photo the boats and the Rainbow Bridge. Once we were down the elevator, we were outfitted with our fancy blue ponchos and basically only had to wait for the next boat to arrive. It saddens my little EE soul a bit, but we just missed boarding the Nikola Tesla and would have to settle for the James V Glynn instead. (I just looked it up. Apparently James V Glynn started at Maid of the Mist in 1950 as a ticket seller and bought the whole dang thing in 1971.)

I had had the presence of mind to pack along the kids’ glasses cases, so before we even really got started, I had their glasses and any unprotected electronics in my shoulder bag and under my poncho. The kids have waterproof cameras and Sean had his iPhone in a case as well as a GoPro for capturing the mayhem.

A little bit of American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls

It started out leisurely enough as we smoothly and quietly (electric motors, FTW) passed by the American Falls as they crashed down on rocks and boulders. Bridal Veil falls is barely separated from the American Falls. From out in the river, it seemed so small relative to the other two – more on that later.

A light mist from Horseshoe Falls

Then it was time to dive into the giant Horseshoe Falls. It’s poetic to call what was happening “mist.” It brings to mind gentleness and tranquility. But I’m gonna be honest here – as a contact lens wearer, I could have stood to don a pair of goggles. That “mist” was more like a steady rain carried on waterfall-generated air currents. I could literally feel my contacts trying to swim away. Sean was attempting to document through all the swirling water, Ian was kind of hunkering down (though he seemed to be enjoying himself), and Maya was trying to get as wet a she possibly could. I wanted to lean into it a bit and really feel the waterfall – and I did that – but I did it all with my eyes shut, so I wouldn’t lose my means of seeing.

After our journey

Once out of the main fray, I was able to squeegee enough water from my face to open my eyes again. We were all drenched. Luckily my bag had remained dry under the poncho, and it was warm enough out that none of us minded the soaking. It’s a good thing too, because we weren’t done yet! We walked up a little trail to what I think is called the Crows Nest.

Drenched blue ants, lining up to get more drenched

When we were trip planning, we had seen a photo of the American Falls that showed a string of blue poncho-ed people lined up on stairs just in front of it. I loved the perspective – you could see just how huge it was. Those people were heading up the stairs to the Crows Nest viewing platform. By this time, Maya had gone full fuck-it mode and ditched her poncho entirely – by the end, she was soaked through several times over. As we got nearer and nearer the waterfall, we were misted and sprayed again and again.

Rainbow in the foreground, Niagara Falls, Ontario in the background

As the light was diffracted through the ever-present mist, we got to see partial rainbows, full rainbows, even double-rainbows. Before we arrived, Sean kept telling me he would NOT be crossing the Rainbow Bridge into Canada – he intended to survive! However, having seen the prismatic effect of all that mist, it became clear where the bridge had gotten its name.

This girl – pure joy! (Not sure what Ian’s thinking about here)

After our soaking, we hung out at the top of the Observation Tower for a while, letting the cool breeze dry us a bit and taking photos. We were amused to find that we had arrived in New York in time to be sent a heat advisory. Yup – it was around 90. We came to cool off guys, what the heck? Also, we failed hard and didn’t pack sunscreen. Future travelers, you will be spending all day outside in the beating down sun. Let us be your cautionary tale! Wear sunscreen! Reapply!

After an unremarkable lunch that sadly cost more than our Maid of the Mist journey, we walked over to Goat Island, which is also part of Niagara Falls State Park. We wanted to take part in the Cave of the Winds adventure. You can only purchase tickets for this at the booth on Goat Island, and your tickets are for a timed entry. We got there around 1p and the earliest we could get in was 3:20! Were I to do it over again, I’d maybe pick up those tickets and then find food.

Horseshoe Falls from Terrapin Point on Goat Island. Note the boat barely visible through the mist.

We wandered over to Terrapin Point to get right up close to the top of the Horseshoe Falls.  The sheer volume of water moving over especially that part of Niagara Falls is incredible. After relaxing a bit and drinking in the sights and sounds, we decided we had plenty of time to kill, so we got some ice cream for the kiddos and lemonade for the grown ups and hung out for a while. A nice lady hanging out in the park overheard that I was having blister troubles and she gave me a bandage! Hooray for nice people.

We wandered over to see the American Falls from the Goat Island side as it crashed and splashed in all its glory. Bridal Veil Falls from the top is deceptive. It would be the most likely to kill you, I think. You’re wandering down a little stream and you barely notice it; then the stream just abruptly ends.

Bridal Veil Falls, from the top

By this point, we had gotten close enough to our 3:20 time slot to enter the attraction. It started with a small museum (which was delightfully air conditioned) and a small six-minute video providing a bit of history. And then we were ushered through a set of doors to wait for the elevator down (175 feet down, in fact) to the start of Cave of the Winds. Here we are in New York out in the full mid-afternoon blazing sun, waiting for 45 minutes for that elevator.

American Falls, from Goat Island

Once we finally made it down the elevator, they handed out yellow ponchos, but Maya didn’t even bother this time. As you’re reading reviews and things, you may see that they give out shoes to wear as well. That is no longer accurate. I believe to reduce waste, they’ve stopped providing footwear.

Cave of the Winds – as I understand it, they take down that decking and scaffolding each fall and rebuild it each spring

After baking in the sun for a while, we were quite content to let the waterfall douse us again. We walked along Niagara River for just a bit before climbing stairs up along Bridal Veil Falls. No longer did this waterfall appear slight. Now it was crashing down right next to us. Ian bent down at one point to just straight up stick his arm into actual Niagara Falls (he was so proud). We were again misted and sprayed as we worked our way up to the main attraction.

Hurricane, indeed – I think I heard up to 68 mile an hour winds can be experienced here. That’s Maya, without her poncho, by the way.

We finally made it to the Hurricane Deck. Between the water you’re lashed with and the falls-produced hurricane-force winds you are buffeted by, it’s definitely an intense experience. Maya could be heard giggling and squealing above the roar of the falls. Sean photographed himself leaning back into the water as it crashed down around him. Maya tells me it feels like rocks hitting your back but that she loved it anyway. Ian tried to stick it out and seemed to enjoy himself, but before long, he was asking if we could walk back down and stick our hands in the waterfall again. I again was wishing I had packed swim goggles so I could keep the water out of my contacts.

Sean enjoyed the Hurricane Deck as well.

Sean and Maya soaked up a little more hurricane. Ian and I walked down and played in the waterfall a bit more. And then we all met up and headed back to the top, make the long walk back to our car, and finally drive to Canada.

Our hotel was only about 2.5 miles away from where we were parked at Niagara Falls, but crossing the Rainbow Bridge into Ontario took up around an hour and 15 minutes. It was well past 7 before we arrived at our hotel, and it was even later before we had settled in a bit and chosen a place for dinner.

Glowing falls, as seen from our hotel

By the time we were done with dinner, it was dark. They light up the falls at night, and we wanted to walk along the river and see how all the glowy mist looked. We wandered along Niagara Parkway (I think), trying to see if there was a walkway down to the path that skirted the Niagara River. Alas, we found none, and by the time we worked out that there was no easy way down, it looked like the funicular (the inclined rail and cable system that runs up and down the side of the gorge) wouldn’t be open long enough for us to ride down, take our walk, and then make it back again, so we decided that we were too pooped to party, and we headed back to our hotel and called it a night. I will say, the view of the falls from our hotel room was beautiful, and we got to watch the lights a bit from there.

I always fuss about wasting money on a hotel we barely stay in, but it did not suck waking up to that view

We were again up and at ’em at 7. Today’s goal was to see the falls from the Canadian side. Everyone had told us the best views were from this side of Niagara Falls, and it kind of makes sense. You’re looking back at the lush greenery of the state park in New York. In Ontario, you’re seeing lots of hotels and a casino and other development. Also, in New York, you’re kind of *on* the falls, whereas in Ontario, you’re looking back across the Niagara River at the falls.

We started out with a lovely breakfast at our hotel’s restaurant. I got to try one of the Canadian specialties I had read about: peameal bacon. It’s essentially cured pork back / pork loin that’s been rolled in cornmeal (though originally, it was rolled in ground dried yellow peas, which were thought to extend shelf life). Mine were part of a lovely eggs Benedict. Sean and the kids’ food looked really fantastic too, and it was a relaxing way to start what was sure to be a busy day.

After breakfast, we took the funicular down to the pathway along the Niagara River. We entered the Table Rock Visitors Center – a touristy behemoth from which we were able to purchase our tickets for Journey Behind the Falls. This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. You again queue up to take an elevator down to a series of tunnels that take you behind Horseshoe Falls and lead you to portholes looking from behind. It’s sort of unremarkable from a picturesque standpoint, but it’s pretty cool to be looking out from behind that vast volume of water crashing over the edge of the falls.

Woods family photo with the *back side of water* in the background

After a couple of porthole views, we eventually came out at the base of Horseshoe Falls, where we again got a proper soaking. Today, Maya had decided she didn’t feel like getting wet, and so her reaction to this experience was more subdued. Ian may have been getting tired of the waterfall action by this point; he kept asking if it was time to go up yet. Sean and I soaked it all in – the atmosphere, the natural splendor, the water.

Journey Behind the Falls

We did eventually meander our way up. We picked up a few drinks and snacks and wandered along the Niagara River for a little while. Our destination was Skylon Tower. I had noticed that if we dined there, we wouldn’t have to pay a separate admission to the viewing deck. And so it was that while the kids ate maple lollipops, I booked a 2:30 lunch reservation at something I normally would categorize as tourist schlock.

Mom and Maya in the Skylon Tower

The walk to Skylon Tower from Table Rock Visitors Center was manageable and very pleasant, at least while we were on the riverfront. The heat kicked in as we made our way up to the actual tower. When it was time for our reservation, we rode an elevator up to the restaurant level and were promptly seated. The restaurant makes one full revolution each hour, so over the course of our roughly hour-long lunch, we were alternately treated to views of the fall and views of the city. Food was … fine. Ingredients seemed fresh and of decent quality and the dishes were serviceably prepared. But, in the end, it was nothing to write home about. I loved being able to sit and watch the beautiful scenery slowly glide by, but ultimately the revolving restaurant at the top of a tower pretty much exactly met my expectations of mediocrity.

Panoramaaaaaah

After lunch we checked out the observation deck to take in those amazing Niagara Falls vistas for just a while longer. Then with a deep sigh, we made the long, hot trek to our car and loaded up for the hour and a half long drive to Toronto.

Ian and Dad ate there too

In conclusion, we loved our trip. There are tons of activities that we didn’t partake of and could still easily fill a couple days with Niagara Falls goodness. Is the area over-touristed? Probably, especially during the summer. Are services around the area overpriced? Of course. Is it worth visiting? Yup. Did we take too many photos of the same three waterfalls? Yeah, probably.