Civic Long weekend

We'd been looking forward to this long weekend for a while before... because we had a sleepover planned for the kiddos! They havent had a sleepover since April so we were pretty excited about a date day.

Logan was also looking forward to this weekend but for him it was because we were taking him to the movies to see the racing paw patrol movie. I ordered the tickets maybe 2 weeks before and he asked almost everyday if we were going to "racing paw patrol" that day!

On Saturday morning, we dropped Leah off at Aleksy's parents and brought him to the movies for 10am. Nothing like breakfast popcorn and a whole bag of M&Ms before sending him back with Nana and Dziadek for the weekend!

Logan loved it and we will collect our presents of gratitude from Logan later for sitting through an hour and a half of paw patrol.

After dropping the big one back with the small one for their sleepover, we headed to Komoka trails for a trail run!

I loved this run but... it was so hard! Elevation changes (tons of up and down hills)and avoiding roots and the hot hot sun were kind of exhausting and I couldnt keep up with even my stroller running time!

After about a 6.5 km run, we speedily got ready and headed to the Grand Bend area for a coupleof winery tours that we had scoped out.

This sheep selfie was taken at the first stop... Alton farms winery. We did tastings first and then ordered a glass to walk through the vineyard with and with the vineyard.. goats!

We found out about this place through the Framers market in Ilderton... our usual hit up spot after soccer.

We had the whole vineyard to walk through to ourselves... super beautiful and nice until the squawking bird and gunshots go off (to scare the birds... and me away).

After going to the Alton farms winery which was cute and the tasting were basically in a basement of a home, when we got here this grand winery was a shock!

Next we stopped at the Dark Horse winery in Grand Bend. It was so beautiful!

We had some wine tastings and glasses of wine/cider as we waited for our spot on the patio for supper.

We ordered a charcuterie and pizza. The charcuterie wasn't much more than some cold cuts, pieces of cheese and crusted bread (ad jam and honey) but the pizza was really good!

We loved the whole atmosphere of this place... the inside tastings, patio with the vineyards behind us and would totally go back but we really didn't love the wine. It was totally fine but we preferred the Altons wine!

And before picking the kids up the next morning, we even squeezed in an 8am gym session (one of the few times this summer I could actually make my step class!) and then Aleksys parents made us brunch as thank you for giving them our kids (I dont know how this works but I'm totally game).

The holiday Monday we met our friends down at the Canatara beach in Sarnia. It was a cranky ride up for this guy and we really were tempted to turn around but lucky for him we were closer to the beach than home.

But once we got there, he quickly became beach happy and loved gathering all the rocks to play with. This is a super rock heavy beach. But otherwise, it really is a nice beach and really big. Logan's puddle jumper would have been helpful though because it wasn't quite as shallow as ipperwash or port franks!

A bunch of swimmers! It was the kind of water temperature where it seemed too cold at first but once you got in it was totally fine. The waters bluer here than the other beaches too!

We had a bit of weird weather at the beach... sunny but then some thunder, lightning and maybe 5 min of rain!

After a pretty solid 4 hours or so at the beach, we headed down to the bridge to the chip wagon for supper. The kids were much more enthusiastic about the bridge than the food.

Finishing the day off with ice cream is always a good idea (pretty much Logans supper other than a chicken nugget).

I was so full and greased up from the burger and fries I could only so half my soft serve (and I'm totally a hard ice cream person!).

We had to bolt out of there pretty quick with the kiddos getting super overtired and both kiddos slept on the way home (one of the scary 5:30pm naps where we cross our fingers theyll go to bed ok!)

Summer weekends with friends

Our summer weekends fill up so quickly with fun summery plans and in July, we had a couple of weekend getaways!

On the July 13th weekend, we went up to our friends Zac and Sam (and their kiddos!) place near Kincardine for the weekend. When we got there on the Saturday, it was a friends reunion because the Osbornes were also there to visit because it was right en route from the cottage they were staying at on their way home. So we all had a beach day together!

When we got back from the beach, the kiddos had some good patio play complete with a swimming pool and multiple options of water tables.

We had a 4pm lunch/supper of some cheese meat crackers and veggies and then a water balloon fight to top it off!

Since these were on sale for a few bucks off from Costco, we had to get them! Logan loves throwing some water balloons at us and us him.

These pictures have been a tradition for a long time now! The first one I have Logan is about 9 months old with just Scarlett who would have been 2 and a half at the time!

No we have a Leah and Bill too.

July 20th weekend, we rented a cottage at Ipperwash beach for the weekend! It was going to be with the Osbornes and Websters but then the littlest Osborne ended up with an infection (something we can definitely relate to with Leelee) so it ended up being us and the Websters...

We went during the heat wave where they said to stay inside... and instead we had beach days and a no AC cottage! Well 1 AC that was in the upstairs room... The first day we got there on the Friday was super hot. We went straight to the beach and spent the evening there. It was perfect when staying in the water!

Our cottage had a chip wagon right on the property so we did a quick burger and fries for supper that night and the kiddos had a bit of a later night.

The power had gone out that night/morning at around 5am and was not on in the morning when we woke up! So I couldn't make coffee which was an emergency so I drove down to Forest to the Tim's to get coffees. These little guys (the triplets according to someone on the beach!!) had a morning digging adventure and then we headed to the beach for the morning!

On the way down to the beach, there were a bunch of kayaks and paddle boards for rent and we rented a stand up paddle board for 1/2 a day. The kids loved this! To the kids its just a boat...

And I tried stand up paddle boarding for the first time too! It is super relaxing.. a bit of a balance act but not difficult at all!

And Logan finally got some use out of his alligator floatie that he got from the Easter bunny. Apparently its not a 2 man alligator (actually Logan could hardly stay up on it himself..).

On this day, we did 2 trips to the beach... 1 in the am then back to the cottage for lunch and then back to the beach for the afternoon.

We skipped the chip wagon for night 2 and just ordered pizza instead!

This was the night of the storm and we ended up putting the kiddos down around 7pm and watching the crazy wind blowing the trees with thunder and lightning from our patio. It was pretty crazy!

And the next morning, we headed out for a walk. We wanted to do the hiking trail that we had done on Mothers day but when we got there we were instantly eaten alive by mosquitos so we had to run out of there fast!

We ended up walking along the beach instead. And on the way we saw tons of tree branches everywhere broken off from the storm!

At the end of the beach walk, the ice cream store was conveniently right there and conveniently opened right when we got there (because 10am ice cream is totally reasonable..). Ice cream for breakfast!!

Although we had the place for another night, we packed up on the Sunday because everyone had to work the next day (not me.. what's work?).

Beach, cottage and friends weekends are the best!