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.

Fall Spirit

It's been the best warm fall weather these past couple weeks and we've been going straight into all the usual fall traditions that we know and love.

I don't think I've baked all summer. There must be something from primitive human times that makes me want to bake up a storm in the fall and winter. The week we came back from Montreal I had off and baked everything: clean chocolate muffins, banana bread, oatmeal raisin cookies, and clean pb balls.

On my baking day I went for 2 20 minute runs and baked in between. When I went for the morning run, it began to rain so I headed back and then I needed more because 20 minutes didn't cut it so after my baking went back in the afternoon.

And I finally went to the trail nearby off Sunningdale in behind the golf course. It was only a 3.5 run there and back - or at least until I reached a point I didn't know where to go anymore and turned back. And so nice - lots of the trail is through a foresty area and along a river.
So nice I went back the next day too!

Last weekend, we went apple picking with Steph, Jon and Rachel. We know from experience (multiple experiences) that Appleland is crazy expensive and crazy busy. So this year, we decided to try Great Lakes in St. Thomas. We went to an orchard a couple years ago in Byron but they no longer have pick your own as of this year.

We are so glad we went here because it was the best! An only 15 minuets extra of a drive than Appleland. Where appleland requires an admission fee, at this one you can pay for just the apples if you choose by the lb, or if you want to go in the place area, its $6. But we got in for free because it was a rainy day and they said if we picked 10lbs of apples, it was free. Such a score! $16 of apples and free admission to the play area!

Outside of our $16 bag of apples, we also may have eaten about $16 worth of apples. I swear Logan probably had 4 or 5.

I don't remember seeing any other dead trees at the orchard but these. And we got slightly past them and I forgot about them when I asked Steph to take our picture. So now we have a family picture in front of the only dead trees at Great lakes. At least we're unique.

Apples at Logan's level! A distraction from him wanting to pick the ones off the ground. We are partially confident that he didn't eat any of those ground ones...

These kids are so huge now! 9 and 2 so fast.

We measured Logan and if the theory that your 2 year old height will be your height as a grown up, he will be 6 feet even! But who knows... with the C family genes, even 6'5' isn't out of the question.

Let's talk more about how awesome Great lakes is... that they have a little cafeteria! They sell slices of pie and strudel, apple cider and you get to sit in this cute little area to enjoy!

Plus they had festive apple colouring pages and crayons... anything kid friendly is our best friend.

After eating delicious baked good from inside (the best apple cookies Jon shared with us...), we went to play... all of us. Diggers for all! Although it seems that this would be best suited toward Logan, you can see that he's the only one not digging in the dirt here.

The classic fall corn maze. Usually the corn maze consists of us roaming about in random directions and randomly coming across the exit..eventually. Somehow with this one we got in and out in a bee line within something like 5 minutes. It was weird. So weird that Steph, Rachel and Jon went back in so they could get lost.

There was a lot of parent playing too. The play area was wonderfully vacant so we could dig with the diggers, zipline lots, and all get in the corn pit. If it was appleland, we'd be tripping on children.

Parent ziplining, Logan playing:

And they had farm animals too. Logan likes his animals... mainly so he can mimic their noises!
So.. Mooooo.

This kid wants "on!" everything (including the mosaic exhibit in Gatineau!). But this time he could go "on!". Anything with a wheel where he feels he is driving is gold to Logan.

And Sunday, we made for baking with our delicious apples! Logan helped with the apple cake before he went for his nap.

The final product thanks to my little helper. Its a layered apple cake and its amazingly delicious. Discovered this amazingness when looking for recipes 2 years ago at Thanksgiving!

And of course, the staple annual apple crisp. Whipped that up during nap time!

Even Logan's crafts from daycare are seasonal. This is his apple tree with his hand as the braces.. Logan is obsessed with tracing his hand so this craft is all for him. He asks for his "hand!" every time we colour!

Ottawa Fam Trip: Sunday & Montreal!

On Sunday morning, after our arrival home at 1:30am after the wedding, Logan thought it was a nice morning to get up before 6am. 4 hours of sleep for me is totally adequate. Aleksy had all the whiskey so that wasn't happening, so me and Logan quietly played and watched cartoons until the rest of the house started to stir.

Sunday morning - when the parents are tired, he can have all the electronics to keep him happy - Peppa on both our phones and the tablet? You got it kid.

After all 4 of us and the small person were all ready for the day, we packed up everything from the airbnb into the cars before the 11am check out and headed to explore parliament!

We sucked up the expensive $14 parking at the byward market for the convenience and walked over to parliament. We took a happy family photo to commemorate the visit to Mr. Justin's landmark.

And we did the walk around the parliament with the prime minister statues around (striking a memory from the last time I was there about 8-10 years ago with the bird poop on their heads) and this beautiful view of the lake!

After the parliament and a few pees in the Fairmont, we were going to head to lunch in the market when someone decided that his early wake up also warranted an early nap and he passed out in his stroller so we parted ways from Steph and Jon and headed to Montreal instead so we could take advantage of the sleeping in the car!

It was about 2 hours to Montreal and our Hotel Faubourg hotel. Construction around the core of Montreal was crazy so it took a little extra time to get to our hotel and even though Logan woke up halfway through the drive, he did really well and was happy playing with toys.

When we got to the hotel, they greeted Logan with a goodie bag of toys! That is our kind of hotel. Biggest parent bonus points for that! This is Logan's goodies - bath toys and a shaker.

Before heading to old Montreal, Logan had a quick hotel snack. This hotel was great with a full fridge and kitchenette too - so convenient for our travelling groceries.

We made it to old Montreal (so close to our hotel!) so family selfie with the Notre Dam cathedral of course.

Logan's favourite part of old Montreal was the horsies (Nehh!) that were everywhere! Every horse is an opportunity to stop, stare, and make a horsie noise.

Being in the stroller is just not how to enjoy old Montreal. Logan much prefers pushing behind the stroller so he can't see and if not pushing the stroller than grazing his hand along all the dirty pipes, railings along the side of the sidewalk.

But anything to keep him happy and enjoy Montreal!

After heading down to the Port of Montreal and walking by a cruise port (with a cruise ship docked!), we headed to this square where this picture was taken - I think this is where 80% of the tourists were!
We got a smoothie for Logan from here because we were feeling badly about the lack of fresh food for the goober. He drank it in 2.5 seconds as he does with smoothies.

And after our exploration and inability to find poutine (which we later learned was all around us), we headed back to the hotel after an IGA stop for some rotisserie chicken and microwavable mac and cheese for Logan, which we bought as a one time thing and then he didn't touch it. And of course, hand me down salad from Steph and Job who were going to throw it out.

We spent the rest of our night in Montreal eating the popcorn from Alyssa and Jon's wedding and watching Moana just like this. Then we all went to sleep just after 8pm. It was a perfect night to catch up on sleep since Logan goes to bed at 8 anyways!

And the next morning we packed up and got ready to go to the Biodome! It was the rainiest day so we were so glad that we got to see old Montreal the day before when it was nice out. We got poured on while heading to the subway station, but were so excited anyways for Logan to go on what we call the "choo choo". And he was pretty excited too.

Logans first ride on the subway. Loving all the same things as us: people watching and enjoying not being in the car!

Arrival to the stop with the Olympic stadium (which they hosted something like 20 years ago) and the biodome.

It was about $40 for the biodome -Logan was free. It was kind of narrow walkways so although there weren't tons and tons of people there like the Ripleys Aquarium in Toronto, it seemed really busy and difficult to see the animals/fish at times.

Interestingly, there was only 1 other family in the entire time we were there that we heard speak english.

I think Logan's favourite things were the fish - they were easier to see than finding the animals in their little areas.

Jellyfish are so cool!

We liked the penguins best! And Logan just wanted to go up and down the bleachers that had lots of free spaces so we could hear the lady talk about the penguins. Logan made it very clear that the presentation was not 2 year old friendly, so instead we looked at the penguins in awe for 2 minutes, redirected Logan from the bleachers a number of times then moved along.

The penguins were one of the last stops then we headed back on the subway (on the rainiest day!) back toward our hotel where our car was.

Logan stayed awake for the subway back, but once we started walking, he fell asleep in the stroller so we went to the indoor mall that was a couple blocks from our hotel - we needed wipes from the IGA store so after we grabbed those, we took advantage of nap time by hitting up a bit of Montreal poutine from the food court. With smoked meat because when in Montreal...

Guess who missed out on poutine?

The rain kind of put a damper on our plans to go to Mount Royal park and walk to the hill so we decided that we would just grab some smoked meat for lunch then head back on our long drive home. We had already experienced that touring in the rain with a toddler is not so fun. But smoked meat is.

So I found this smoked meat sandwich shop called Shwartz that seemed to have good tourist ratings and headed there. But that did not work out because there was a huge long line - in the rain outside! So we went straight back into the car and I found this gem of a restaurant: The Snowdon Deli. It was amazing and the Snowdon sandwich was awesome... but that warm smoked meat sandwich was the best! Logan had the turkey. Well a bite of it then we had the rest.

That was just the fuel we needed to start our drive home. We left around 2pm and got home at 11:30pm on the Thanksgiving Monday after a stop in Napanee: the busiest rest station ever that evening!

Logan was just as good on the way home and slept for the good later half of the drive and was easily made happy in the first part with some Peppa.