The girls and I spent the day in London, Ontario a couple of days ago.
The Children's Museum was a lot of fun for Celeste. I personally wouldn't call it a museum. I think it would be better named "Children's Discovery Centre". It was a huge playground for Celeste, which was wonderful for her.
The museum is divided into different rooms. We visited the Dinosaur room :
We liked this whale tail on our way to the Arctic room:
and this stained glass window:
The museum had a special exhibit on the Winter Olympics. The girls tried out a couple of the stations set up, skiing and paralympic hockey:
on the podium!
Celeste's favourite section is next...
She loved the little town set up there, playing in the grocery store, the McDonalds, and the house.
There was an interesting space area too:
Adrienne and I enjoyed watching thePoi demonstration at the end of our visit, on the museum's grounds. Poi comes from New Zealand and is mesmerizing to watch. One of the performers skipped with a rope full of fire! There was also a fire breather. They handed out some of their tools at the end of the performance for the kids to give it a try (without the fire part!). Adrienne loved it!
Our vacation was perfect. The weather was almost perfect, only had rough seas the first night on the cruise and heavy rains on our drive back home. I took over 300 photos, so it was difficult to choose just a few to share! I created a slideshow that you can visit by clicking on the link below:
The Disney Wonder is a wonderful cruise ship for families. Lots of fun activities for the kids, and quiet (if you want it) for the adults. To be honest, whenever our kids were busy having fun in their programs, my husband and I didn't really know what to do! We're just not used to it! We did enjoy some quiet moments by the swimming pool and walks on the beach at Castaway Cay. Castaway Cay is Disney's private island in the Bahamas and it's my favourite place to be. We wondered if anyone would noticed if we "accidentally" missed the boarding call at the end of the day...The boys went snorkeling together for the first time, and Andre loved it. The kids and I participated in a crab race. We chose our crab's name and cheered him on as 8 crabs raced to the finish line! Lots of fun stuff..We kept away from the high heat in the early afternoons by visiting the movie theatre on board, seeing Up and G-Force for the first time, both in 3D.
We were up late every night..a pirate party one night, followed by a viewing on the top deck's huge TV screen of the Pirates of the Carribean movie, another night was a first..watching the soon to be released blue-ray version of Snow White, seen outside, top deck, under the stars..another night was a Broadway-style show..
We also lucked out with our dinner mates, we were paired up with another family, with 3 children from Texas, and had great dinner conversations!
So much fun on board the Wonder, my post could go on and on about all that we did!
The other half of our vacation was a stay at another Disney property, this one on the Atlantic coast of Florida, in Vero Beach. Vero Beach is a beautiful, relaxing spot, with still lots of fun stuff to do with the kids. A great pool with water slide, mini-golf, a small splash-pad, and of course the beach!
I took part in a beach clean-up, picking up garbage as part of the Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup. I was the only guest that showed up for this activity, which I thought was sad, but I really enjoyed spending the time to help out with the resort staff.
I also went on a nature beach walk where I witnessed the Disney Animal protection people (can't remember their title!) dig up an empty sea turtle nest. They do this after they know the eggs have hatched to count the eggs and log the information with the state of Florida. That nest had 128 eggs! Only 3 were unfertilized, all the rest had hatched! It was amazing to see.
During both of these early morning activities, my kids were catching up on sleep! We had many late nights on the cruise!!
We spend one day with my husband's grandfather, his wife, and grandaughter, and my husband's aunt also came up. They all live in Florida and it was so great to see them and spend the day together.
We will soon be leaving for a long road trip. We are driving from our home in Ontario to Florida. It takes about 20 hours one way. Whenever we go on vacation, we usually drive, so our children are used to the long distances. And I usually bring a few things to keep them occupied in the car. This time, this is what I am planning:
~ I reserved a couple of Harry Potter books on cds from the library to listen to in the car. Last road trip, we all enjoyed listening to Inkheart and the Narnia series.
~ I am bringing a few small notebooks to journal or doodle in, for myself and the kids. Little notebooks will be a good size for the kids with pencils, colouring pencils, and markers. For myself, I started a new art journal, after finishing the Wreck this Journal project, so I will be bringing that one along with a few micro pigment ink pens.
~ We have 2 felt books with many felt pieces that the girls love playing with, and we will be bringing our Guess Who travel game too.
~ We found a couple of fun sticker books(from Usborne) that will keep all 3 kids busy with their hands too :)
~ Another fun find was theHoliday Doodles cards (also from Usborne) that has many different write on/wipe off activity cards like mazes, finishing the doodles, decorating things...
We are starting to pack for our trip, part of it will be spent in Florida on the Atlantic coast, the other part of our vacation will be spent on the Disney Cruise and we had to choose a few of our "dressier" clothes...a difficult task somewhat because we don't usually dress up! But we managed! We will be packing the rest of our suitcases next week. The pink suitcase is Adrienne's, a wonderful and useful gift from her Nana.
We are all getting very excited and counting down the days!!!
