Friday, June 29, 2012

Okay, so I haven’t done much these past few days. We went to a conservation park on Wednesday. We walked an estimated 4 miles while we were there. Normally I’m not the biggest fan of nature, but while we were there a group of about 10 butterflies came around me. The moment was to be quite magical like in a movie.  Yesterday my mom took us shopping with her. She wanted to explore the surrounding grocery stores. Then my dad got off of work just early enough for us to go to a park. We went to a huge park first. Everywhere we walked there were picturesque views. It was beautiful. Then when it was dark we went to another park where we were able to walk along Lake Ontario. I didn’t put my feet in the water like my brothers, but decided to take pictures of the family instead. These past couple days have been so relaxing that I’m afraid I will be in for a big shock when we go home and I have to jump right into school again. There have been record highs in Canada, although their record temperatures are in the high 90’s rather than 100’s. Other than that I can’t think of anything else that we’ve done

• All the McDonald’s signs have a maple leaf in the center of them

                                          Skipping Rocks!

                                          Not sure what this is???

Monday, June 25, 2012

Today we went to the Ontario Science Center. I was afraid that it was going to be juvenile, but I came to quickly realize that it was nothing but fun. My mom got a membership and I am so thankful for that because we were there for four hours and we didn’t even finish one out of six floors of fun. Of course we did eat lunch there and watch“To the Arctic” at the omnimax, so some of our time was occupied with those activities. I’ve never watched Star Trek, but today I got training on how to be a cadet. In the middle of the training a whole bunch of fur balls shot out at us, and one came right at Autumn’s face, and I caught another. I believe they were called tribits not flying fur balls. No matter what, when they exploded out everyone jumped out of their skin. I am now an official cadet and some little boy in the audience1 is going to be the first person to walk on Mars. After that I learned a lot about myself. I found out that high frequency noises stress me out and create a very quick pulse/ heartbeat. I learned about acupuncture, neurologists, cat scans, and much more. I and my mom sat on opposite sides of a blending mirror where you can blend your face with another person’s face. Well when you blended our faces they lined up so perfectly that you could barely tell that there were two different faces. We moved onto my favorite area that was specified for ages 14 and up. In this area I could have stayed for hours. Well I guess I could have in the other areas as well but this new area was unique. I was able to use my physics concepts to conquer some of the challenges, such as how do I power a fan using batteries, a switch, and wires. It was like a game and a worker was watching me and gave me even harder challenges, which I could not refuse from accepting. I cannot say how much fun I had there in words. I was so preoccupied with the museum fun that I forgot to take pictures, so you will have to go to our family blog to see pictures. Right now if you went outside you would be blown away by the wind. It is extremely windy and feels quite nice even though it is only 74 degrees.

                                          At the Omnimax Theater

                                     Chandler trying to fly

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Friday night we went out to eat at a place called Boston Pizza. I ate Hawaiian pizza. My absolute favorite! Yesterday we stayed at home while dad went off to work. Sadly he has had to work over the weekend again. Thankfully he went to church with us this morning before heading back to work. We went to a small church called Trinity Baptist Church. They were a very welcoming and friendly church and I was able to feel more at home. The church is about forty minutes away which is twice the normal distance we drive to FBC, but for a bible believing, bible preaching church it is well worth the drive. Hopefully we will go back tonight for night church and a strawberry social. My parents are also considering trying out other churches as well. Last night mom, dad, and I took a drive through downtown Toronto right along Lake Ontario. The view of the glass high rises reflecting the water with the sun setting in the background was absolutely, breath-takingly beautiful. You know when you are driving between a Lamborghini and a Maserati, and you’re in some small car made by dodge you start to feel as though you don’t quite fit in. Well I can say I’ve had that feeling. Last night these two cars pulled up and there we were in the little, blue car. Such wonderful memories this trip will create.

• Bathrooms are referred to as washrooms

• I asked for a sweet tea and all I got was a confused look on the waitresses face. She asked me what that was. Apparently they don’t serve sweet tea up here.

                                    Grayson's meat loaded pizza

                                    This is where we are staying

                                              my bathroom

                                              my bedroom

This is Autumn. Wednesday was the best because we were surrounded by animals! A dream come true! I got to see animals closer than ever before. There were zebras, giraffes, lions, babboons, ostriches, peacocks, bald eagles, and my favorite goats. If only I had my puppy up here.:( My brother and I swam all day Thursday! Yay! It is so weird going into a gift shop and seeing items with a big, colorful, sparkly stickers saying, made in the USA! I get a room all to myself and I love it! Since I love Conner Prairie, it was wonderful going to the Black Creek Village. We learned how they wove rugs and where rag rugs got there name. I also learned how they created shoe sizes. It is based upon barley corn. Interesting.

  English Front  . . . . . . . . . . .French Back

                                 Giraffe at the African Safari

                                          I LOVE GOATS!

                                  Escalators are sooo scarry!

Friday, June 22, 2012

                Today we adventured to Black Creek Pioneer Village where I heard for the first time a Canadian accent. I said I would never speak like one of them, but once I heard it I realized that if you mixed the way a French person speaks with an English accent you get a Canadian accent, which is not so bad. This village is an interactive historic museum similar to Conner Prairie. We were able to learn about Canadian history which doesn’t go back as far as U.S. history, since the Canadians didn’t settle in Canada until they realized that the English would not give up any of their land. We spent approximately four hours exploring the 1800’s different housing styles, trades, and meeting houses. As we explored the thirty acres of fun, we learned about Canadian history, tasted some homemade food, played games, and ate lunch. At lunch mom poured a packet of sugar in her mouth because our waitress was sloooow and mom’s blood sugar was low. At the meeting house we sat through a debate. There were two different school groups, who had to either play the role of the farmers or the government in the debate. The farmers were arguing that the government was not being fair to them by making them farm and create roads for transportation, but the government had some great comebacks on how “gracious” they have always been to the farmers and that the queen was the one, who was really in charge. Anyways to say the least it was quite an intriguing park that I wouldn’t mind revisiting. On the way back mom got lost on the interstate. Oh great! Now we are back at the hotel resting before dinner. Hopefully tonight we will go out for pizza!

Grayson, Toni, Bobbi

                                                    pictues at the hotel

                                                    Swimming!!!

                                          Last night- Beautiful

                                                    1850 photography studio

                                          I LOVE this jacket!!!

Lunch

                                                    We were bored :)

•    Chandler’s friends Bobbi and Toni, the little boys from Egypt, taught him how to say “hello” in Arabic “Alun” it is pronounced ŏ-lōōn. The first “o” is short the two “o’s” sound like the two “o’s” in the word cool.

•   The one dollar coin in Canada is called a “Loonie”