Summertime!

22 February 2010

As I sit at my dining room table and (ahem) enjoy....the blizzard-like conditions descending on my city, I've decided that it's time to revisit the summer! I never did get the last of my Summer of Fun photo albums posted (I'm sure you've been impatiently hanging on that cliff wondering when the rest would come ;-)
Part of the problem was that our camera's both bit the dust and I had to start taking pics with my phone. Near the end of the summer I discovered that LG was no longer supporting the program I had been using to transfer my photos from phone to computer. I had to get a micro-sd card and then manually transfer all the photos from the phone memory to the sd card....one...by....one. Do you know how many photos I took last summer!?!!?
It became one of those projects I was never getting around to...until last night. So, finally, here they are!

This was a previously unplanned trip that our good friends Jenn and Troy invited us to on the spur of the moment. They have passes to all the parks around here and had a bonus of a day long canoe rental. So we headed out to Valens and enjoyed an afternoon paddling around the water.....

One of our originally planned trips was to the Hamilton Children's Museum and then to the Gage Park splash pad right next to it. Unfortunately we took our sweet time that day and didn't get out to the Museum until about 2:30 or 2:45. When we went to the front desk, we were sadly informed that they were only open until 3pm. So the kids only got about 15 minutes around the museum, but the bonus was that we didn't have to pay. We figured we'd come back another day, but we never did. They still liked it though and we snapped lots of pictures.
Then over to the splash pad which is alway a hit with my kids. I love a splash pad because it's so fun for them, and I don't have to get my suit on! (I never thought I'd be one of those mummies).

I'm pretty sure it was after Gage Park that we hopped on the QE and headed over to the beach. The kids had been whining about supper and a real water feature, so we got some supper at Hutch's and sat on a blanket on the beach to eat it. I love to go down to the beach and even with sand kicked on my food, spilled drinks because there was no hard place to set them down on, and James rapidly losing his cool because of all this....I still have a lovely peaceful feeling when I think of that trip.




And....I think this is the last one....on Labour Day weekend, we took our last Summer of fun trip. We went to Spencer Gorge. It was a half nice and half sucky trip. First of all, there was plenty-o-whining going on with the amount of hiking that it required. If the place hadn't been packed out, I very likely would have left Verity standing in the middle of one of the paths, shrieking her head off because "her legs hurt". We borrowed a hiking back-pack and James carried Afton in it...which she was not completely thrilled with. So that was a stressor. I had never been here before; I only picked it because of the pictures and description on the website, so I didn't realize that there was a tremendously steep, somewhat rickety, crumbling away in places stairway to get from the top where the falls start, down to the bottom where you'd get the amazing view. Jairus had a bit of a hard time with that climb and I have to admit, I was pretty nervous trying to coax them all down it.
And then came the event that Verity talks about even to this very day (this morning when she put the same Dora boots on she was wearing that day). We had gotten down to the bottom and were climbing around on the rocks trying to get closer to the waterfall. Like I said, the place was crawling with vacationers like ourselves. I left James and the kids on one large rock and hopped over a few until I was nearly in the middle of the creek that the falls drain into. It was a great view to get a picture of. Well, Verity, ever the brave and daring one, followed me before we could stop her. And to tell you the truth, I wasn't too worried because she's such a climber and very sure footed. Until she tried to hop one rock farther than me...and it was a slippery one. She fell hard and slipped right into the water. A number of people saw, and many more heard her yell. I had many eyes on me as I quickly grabbed her arm and hoisted her up with me....but not before I'm sure many of them had decided I was indeed an irresponsible mummy to have brought my wee little girl way out onto these rocks. Verity was pretty upset, a little bumped and bruised, but her pride was surprisingly the most damaged. She was mighty embarrassed at what had happened.
Anyways, in some ways it was still a nice trip. The park and falls are quite beautiful and I made some mental plans to come back on a day when there might not be so many throngs of people about. I think we stopped for ice cream on the way home and that covered a multitude of complaints. :-)


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