Toronto Christmas Weekend

The first weekend of December we booked to go to the Toronto Christmas market (a first for us!) and to take Logan to the aquarium in Toronto. We headed to Toronto on Saturday the 2nd during nap time so the car ride would be a bit easier. But then, Logan didn't want to sleep and we realized we forgot the playpen when already in Woodstock so we turned around to get it where Logan screamed the whole way home and all this added an hour to our trip. Smooth as ever. Did I mention he refused to sleep in the playpen that weekend?

But we got there around 3:30pm and he did sleep the whole way to Toronto after the playpen ordeal. We checked in at the holiday inn express hotel we were staying at then headed to the Eaton Centre. It was awesomely close and only took about 5 minutes to walk there!

And just outside the Hudson's Bay Company, they had these amazing window displays - a whole block of them!

The reindeer and Christmas tree in the Eaton Centre are way bigger than our Masonville! The crowds are too.

We didn't do much shoppingbecause Logan doesn't let us do that, but we wandered and made big purchases of some smoothies, which is our way of balancing the 2 year olds diet of timbits from the road trip.

We continued with supporting this balance with some quality Toronto street meat protein. Logan enjoys street meat the size of his head! I think he liked that he was given a whole massive hotdog more than the actual hotdog and he hardly put a dent in this thing.

We made another stop at the Nathan Phillips Square so we could see all the Christmas festivities - they had ice skating but also a whole area with rides, a Christmas tree and Christmas music playing.We grabbed some kettle popcorn for back at our hotel room and all were sleeping before 9pm like the party people we are.

The nice thing about 9pm bedtime is that the next morning, we are up bright and early and beat the crowds to the breakfast buffet (which we always pick out when choosing our hotel!). After our breakfast on Sunday, we headed to the distillery district for the Toronto Christmas Market. We bought our tickets in advance for the first time available because the 2 year old forces us to be morning people, and we made it there even before it opened at 10am! It was vacant at that time and even the shops weren't serving coffee yet.

The shops in the market were so festive and this is the one that we grabbed our latte/cappucino/cookies that Logan refused to eat at. So wonderfully Christmasy!

And on this sage, they had performances every hour or so, and this was the elves sing along. Logan was right into it! Anything with singing is a hit to Logan.

There were rides too! Logan got the big horsie and was really excited until the end when he was "all done horsie ride". Perhaps he's more of a thrill ride kinda guy.

So many amazing photo opportunities at the market! This ones my favourite.

After watching elves sing, watching some Christmas carolers, having a warm pretzel, purchasing the grand total of 1 Christmas ornament and 1 Christmas fruit cake for ourselves because the 2 year old doesn't shop, we finished off the market with this delicious chimney stack! Kind of like a churro but with icing inside. Deep fried goodness.

We headed back to the hotel room, only to find that Logan had fallen asleep in the stroller, so we decided to head back to the Eaton Centre and get some shopping in instead of go back to the hotel where we knew 100% that he wouldn't continue napping if we transferred him!

Logan woke up just in time for the big tree! And we were able to roam through the Bay and get a gift and browse some stores.

We had some fresh food in the hotel because we had hit the Metro to pick up vegetables, meat, cheese and yogurt lunch basics, but we wanted to make sure Logan was getting some fruit in him so more smoothies!

We left the mall after to head back to the hotel where we hung out for a bit, watched some tv and had down time before our big plan to take the street car (which is a train if you ask Logan) to Chinatown later that night!

We made it to China town! We (Aleksy) figured out the street car situation, and we realized we didn't need to pre pay for both ways since the transfer is good for a while, but it was worth the extra few bucks anyways.

First stop in Chinatown - the amazing pastry bakery where we got at least 10 amazing pastries for under $5!

Pretty exciting stuff. Logan required his own seat.

And one of our usual hotel carpet take-out picnics. Logan devoured the chicken fried rice! We definitely couldn't eat all of this supper for 4 that we bought (plus we bought soup on top of that) but we did pretty good.

We made it another 8:30pm night time.

And thank goodness... Goober decided 5:45am was a perfectly ok wake up time the next day. He was all thrown off sleeping in the big bed with me but refused both nights to go down in his crib. I totally caved when he said "im scared" - in Logan language and took comfrot in my presence.

Monday we had big plans to hit Ripleys Aquarium. It was the best possible time to go after having breakfast and getting there around 9am. Last time we were there, it was massive crowds and super busy and this time, it was pretty much empty. Logan wandered around and could look right away as long as he wanted at everything. He was very impressed by all the little things, although I think his favourite thing was the conveyor belt that takes you through part of the aquarium. He went up and down it a few times and din't look when we tried to show him the sharks and stingrays swimming over his head!

He did see some of them!

We tried to explain that this is the same friend as in his favourite movie Moana.

Logan amid the awesome jellyfish! Pictures like this would never happen at any other busy time!

We finished up at the aquarium around noon and knew that since Logan was up at 5:45am, he'd be in for an earlier nap on the car ride home.

One last stop to check out the CN tower, conveniently right beside the aquarium. Logan thought it was pretty "big and tall!".

Christmas Christmas Time is Here

And for our festivities of November:

On the 17th weekend, we headed to St Thomas to Canadale nurseries where they had a bunch of activities for kids. We had wanted to sign up Logan for breakfast with Santa but left it too last minute and the spots filled up so this was our alternative.

Behind Logan's sled are Santa's live reindeer!

All of the excitement of SANTA!!

And a bit of gingerbread cookie decorating.

And a little bit of gingerbread cookie eating (we were very helpful with this task).

And after roaming Canadale, getting a couple Christmas decorations, we were ready for our Christmas family pictures, which were also in St Thomas!

Since we had a little time after our Christmas photos, we decided to take Logan to our favourite crazy cat lady spot in St Thomas. We randomly came across this place a few years ago when walking by and seeing cats in the window and we've visited a few times since. Its cat paradise with like 200 cats in the place (for adoption... or just to visit as we did!). Logan shares my enthusiasm as you can see.

And after kitties, we went to the Open Kitchen restaurant in St Thomas and had the best breakfast that Ive had in a while! Everything was delicious there and plus they had smoothies (which Logan took over).

We had plans too to go to the Santa Claus parade that night which we missed for the first time in several years because of the rain!




Family pictures:

Emma and Mike came for a visit the day after and we made our traditional Christmas cookies together! There's never too many cookies at Christmas.

Logan isn't stingy with his sprinkles as you can see.

We made up for missing the London Santa Claus Parade by making the Hyde Park Parade on the 25th. It wasn't quite as elaborate as the London one, but the shriners were there and Logan liked their little cars (unless they came directly at him which is apparently terrifying).

We went with Chels and her 3 kiddos too (and stole their convenient driveway).

My Santa picture was tricky to take because the parade was super busy, but he made it! Santa!

Logan can identify who Santa is this year but he hasn't got too close to Santa yet. I dont know if he will want to be up close and personal this year. A photo with Santa in time will tell.

November Stuff

Some things that started off November and kicked off Christmas season:

Early in November we got all this snow! I mean we were so unprepared we still had Logans toys out from warm weather play (ok... we may still have those outside now - we'll clean them eventually).

It melted quickly so we didn't get a good play in it, but we have learned that Logan REALLY doesn't like snow pants. This winter should be fun (if you need us we may just be inside).

We signed Logan up for a Little Monkeys playgroup through Spectrum at Kinsmen (weird that I used to work there what seems to be a million years ago) which he went to on November 11th. Logans making a monkey mask here.

It was a good morning of monkey making, books, and some songs (even if the song lady was super intense and may have scared Logan a bit).

And the day after was Christmas tree day! Logan helped grab all the individual branches to put the tree up. Much better helper this year.

And then all our Christmas decorations have been placed in the bottom centre of our tree! If you ask Logan, it's totally fair to put 3-4 ornaments per branch.

A Late Halloween Post

I still need to document Halloween. Where did the past 3 weeks go? We are already in Christmas mode so this is weird.

The weekend before Halloween was Aleksy's bday celebration at his parents. Logan helped make the Halloween eyes on the birthday cake. Some M & Ms and Oreos.

Aleksys dinner of choice for his birthday was meatloaf. It was delicious. Much better than mine that's for sure. Plus there was patichky (I have no idea how to spell that polish word but its basically seasoned pork on a stick and its the best!). Logan was in anti-eating mood so basically had ice cream for supper. So typical that boy.

The pumpkin carving occurred the day before Halloween. As Logan noticed "pumpkin crying" - well pumpkin scared but... Pinterest stolen face:  

Halloween and birthday supper called for some of Aleksys favourites: a big haul from Alicias the Polish store complete with perogies, bigos, sausage, pochki and the little milk fudges. Nice and quick too so we could head out quickly after for some trick or treating!

Our giraffe was cooperative once we got to Lambeth to get his costume on - well it took a lot of distracting while getting it on. The cutest giraffe in the world.

Logan trick or treating with Nana. I think he would have gone all night if we didn't turn around. He really liked this idea of gathering candy house to house. He kind of stopped saying "trick or treat" toward the end and dropped his bucket at peoples doorsteps. But he was good with the "thank you"!

Houses with lights and decorations were exciting. Except the one house with the haunted garage that Logan did not want to go into. Scary stuff.

And he cleaned up! So much candy including a whole bag of smarties that his Nana and Dziadek poured into his bag. We've helped him eat all this candy (except the smarties... those are Logans) like good parents do.

Logan's Halloween daycare crafts! His favourite thing is to draw his hand.

October and Our Halloween Party!

These past couple weekends have been so much calmer than the previous ones. We've actually been able to plan things to do as we feel like it. It's like the crazy busy weekends of the summer are slowly dying down and I dont know where this extra time came from.

Last weekend, Aleksys Dad invited us to an open house through his company at a pumpkin patch near us. We got the biggest pumpkin at the patch and then Logan picked up some extra mini pumpkins, harvest corn and loved pulling the wagon around.

They even had free coffee and hot chacolate ad timbits from Tim Hortons for everyone.

And we got our whole wagon for free from the company! That was an amazing perk... we were going to pick our our pumpkins from that exact pumpkin patch anyways and we saved ton and got extras too!

The massive pumpkin display family picture.

We never have time to shop, but last weekend we hit the mall for a bit of shopping for this growing little man after trying out the new breakfast restaurant near us the signing chef (which was kid friendly with colouring sheets and crayons - the best kind of restaurant for us!). All the favourite stops: h&m, zara and costco too. Found a place for all the money saved on pumpkins!

And on Sunday, we went out to the trail near us off Sunningdale for a family walk. It was such a beautiful day too! There were so many family photos being taken too, which reminded me that we haven't taken any of those in about a year. Maybe for Christmas!

Throwing leaves is pretty cool.

Logan hopping on Aleksy's shoulders, he calls "hop hop". The trail was a bit long for him so he did want up for about half and chomped on his apple while up there. And after eating the entire apple, he asked for another one! We clearly were not prepared with an extra emergency apple.

This weekend was our annual Halloween party. Logan and I started some prep on Thursday with making lollipop spiders and ghosts. Then Friday, I made some frankenstein juice boxes and jack o lantern mandarins. All of those are for Logan's daycare friends too! And for food I prepped so many festive things: pumpkin shaped tortilla sandwiches, a fruit jack o lantern, a barfing pumpkin with dip, meatballs, and a jack o lantern cake. So many pumpkins this year!

Our family zoo. But our giraffe was non-compliant. Just a monkey, a tiger and a giraffe costume draped over the baby gate.

All the party people in their many costumes: batman & superman twins, army people, Christmas people - elves, reindeer, santa and of course santas bee keeper (for the 4 year old who really wanted to be a bee keeper), spiderman family, sleeping beauty and blue jays fan with their official jay.

Poor Kate made the decision to come downstairs for only a minute then after fighting for her life from these kids, she remained upstairs. Poor old kitty!

And of course after absolutely refusing to go anywhere near the giraffe costume yesterday for the party- crying every time, he put it on today. We will cross or fingers for Halloween.

I came across this random event on Facebook last night after the party for a garden centre near us that had a scarecrow display and an event for kids today so we went to check it out. They had a section with some gory halloween scenes (which thankfully Logan doesn't understand yet) and this awesome pumpkin head!

Free apple cider inside too.

And there were tons of scarecrows inside of all kinds (people, bees, horses... everything!), and free wagon rides. Along this wagon ride, we were asked to count the scarecrows along the way. I counted 37 and there were actually 45!

The food trucks were there too so we got some donuts from the Donut Diva before heading home for nap time.