Toronto/Ottawa Trip

When Dan returned home from his recent trip to India and China, he took a well deserved week long vacation. As the week came to a close we packed everyone up and headed to CANADA. Dan and I are fortunate enough to have a great set of friends in Toronto that have kids the same ages as ours, so we got to drop the kids off with Andy and Jo Stiff (our favorite Australians) and then head onward to Ottawa for a couple of days to ourselves. Andy and Jo have our Eternal Thanks for surviving a weekend with the 7 kids.

(Dan and the kids resting at the Burlington Canal on the trip up to Toronto)

The kids had a great weekend hanging out with Jaz, Abbie and Cam. They have a park right acrossed the street from the house and a brand new X-Box 360 for the kids to play with. On Saturday they took all the kids for a hike along 16 Mile Creek, which according to my kids, was "way longer than 16 miles!"

Dan and I had traveled to Ottawa years ago before leaving for Australia and I hadn't been back since so it was great to get reaquainted with the city and the culture. Dan had the advantage of having been sent to Ottawa by GE not too long ago so he had a certain number of things in mind to do while we were there. He had picked out some wonderful restaurants (we had Indian, Thai, Irish and Canadian foods while there). We had two beautiful sunny days and managed to hit the open air market, the Parliment building (Ottawa is the Capital Seat of Canada), the Art Museum, the Locks and even a nearby Casino! It was a HUGE amount of walking for one weekend (we must have criss-crossed the city a half dozen times) but the weather was so nice we hardly noticed at all.

(A spider scultpture outside the Ottawa Art Museum)

When we picked the kids up on Sunday, everyone had such a good time that no one wanted to leave and come home to face a "regular" Monday. Poor Abbie got sick just as we were leaving and we felt bad shouting our good-byes up to her bedroom. Luckily, she got better quickly and is now doing grand. - J