A Hop Across the Pond - Niagara Falls

Lovely to talk to Mum and Lisa today (and Jared - briefly). We all agreed to update the Bandwagon more frequently - and this goes for everyone. :-) Even if it's just a sentence to talk about the week. Okay?!

A Hop Across the Pond

We've done a heap of stuff since July - the most exciting thing was our recent holiday to North America. We spent two weeks and visited four cities: Niagara Falls, New York, Montreal and Toronto.

Niagara Falls

We stayed on the Canadian side, along with all of the other tourists! The Falls are amazing - every single minute there's enough water going over the Falls to fill one million bathtubs.

In order to make the most of our two days, we bought an Adventure Pass. The night we arrived we collected our passes (they didn't have enough 'adult' ones, so ours had "ADULT" scrawled in black marker pen over the "child" label on the front), donned a blue plastic poncho and headed to Niagara's Fury. We learnt a little about Niagara's history and got very wet (one of those "4D" movies). We spent some of the evening watching a fab sound and light show that was in the park opposite the Falls. The lights were projected onto water jets and looked amazing.

The next day we walked along the Whirlpool Rapids, went on the Hornblower - the boat that goes to the bottom of the Horseshoe Falls (we got a red plastic poncho), and did the Journey Behind the Falls - that is, we wandered through some tunnels and looked the water rushing past a couple of openings (and we got yellow plastic ponchoes). We also had a good look around Niagara Falls, including all of the (slightly tacky) 'man-made attractions', like Ripley's Belive it or Not, or dinosaur mini-golf. We didn't go into any of the attractions - it was fun enough to walk along the street and people-watch.

Our second night we spent in the Hilton hotel with views of the Falls (the first of our three 'fancy' things booked on our trip). It was great - we even got to watch the fireworks from our room! And they were below us!!

All in all, Niagara Falls was very touristy but a fascinating natural beauty. Just remember to have patience and that everyone else is there to see the same things as you. ;-)

I'll post this now and update on the other cities very soon.
The (very very abridged) photo album for the trip is here.

Just a Sec..

Hey everyone,
I've probably told you about my one second per day video project. Well, here's the first full year!
Enjoy!

*hugz*
-d-

Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3

Ignore me: I'm trying out the "send to Facebook" button that I've just added to the bottom of each post -- if it works, it means you can publish here, then click "[f] Send" at the bottom of the post and type "Family" to send a link to that group on Facebook -- let's try it, eh?

Update from Adelaide in the form of an epic novel

Hey all,

I thought it's about time we did an update from us. Let me start with childcare..

Friday a week ago was to be Oscar's first day of childcare, and Cheryl's first day of work. We were totally psyched for it, I was going to take lunch off and we would both drop Os in and ease him into it. Unfortunately, best laid plans and all that, Os got a fever Thursday night which continued throughout the day. We decided it was better for Chez to have her first day, so (with big thanks to my boss) I took a half day, dropped Cheryl at work and took Os home. Unfortunately his temp continued to rise, and once it got to 39.6 I took him to emergency. 3 hours, much poking and prodding and a very unhappy Os later we were able to take him home, Cheryl having left work early to catch the bus. The doctor's final report was along the lines of "probably a virus, we can never be sure with kids, no other problems so he'll be okay in a day or two".

It wasn't an ideal first day.

Over the weekend his temp sorted itself back out and he was looking fine for his Wednesday childcare when on Tuesday arvo he picked up a fever again. Thankfully while generally these things are 48 hours or so he was fine on Wednesday and was able to have his first day.

Once we got him there, he was fine. I suspect if you surround him with toys and girls who smile at him he'd be happy anywhere (and who wouldn't?). Apparently it took a little while to get him to sleep, but once they found out the tricks (rubbing his blue bear against his face, patting his leg) they got there and he was asleep when I arrived to pick him up.

Oh, that's the other thing. On his childcare days I leave the house before 6am, walk 4.5kms to the train station then train into the city and bus to work, to be there by 8am. Then I leave at 4pm, bus to the childcare and pick him up.. although the plan is for me to stay there with him for a while, to help him get comfortable until around 5:30 when Cheryl finishes. There's probably a bus I could catch later in the morning, but I need a couple of big walks in the week. Plus when Os is older I can say "back in my day I had to HIKE for 45 minutes through the SNOW etc etc".

On Friday he stayed home with Nanna and Granddad who by all accounts doted on him and carried him everywhere like a little prince :) So he's only had the one day.

Sunday (today!) we had his birthday party. We had something like 25 adults and 10 kids, but somehow we didn't run out of food or seats.. Certainly not something we could have done at any of the units we lived in ;) It was a really great day.. Os had a sleep from around 10:30 until 12:30, so he was in a really good mood for his party. He even got to eat some cake, although I'm sure he didn't realise it was a treat. Babies played with Os' toys, kids played the Wii and ran around outside, and adults ate, drank and generally made merry. Just as a first birthday should be. I'll post photos up to flickr later, and I'm sure Cheryl will post some to facebook too.

I might get Cheryl to jump on now and tell you how her first few days of work are going..

Cheryl here :) Work is going well. My first shift back my supervisor got me to do most of the sales to help me get back into the swing of things. Nothing like being thrown into the deep end to refresh your memory! Apart from wondering how Os was doing, it all went well. I'm enjoying being back at work, and Os & I are slowly working out our new routine. And I'm enjoying not having to worry about all the supervisor stuff I used to do! It's also great just being around my work friends and students :)

Okay, that's it from us.

Better than a photo with Santa