OTTAWA: Day spent at Parliament Hill

Sadly on the day we woke up to spend a full outside on parliament hill taking pictures and exploring, the weather dropped down to a negative 9 degrees (C’)!!! uh! And I DIDN’T bring the kids snow gloves, hats or scarves. The weather wasn’t supposed to get this bad when we packed. Well, I figured we’d do what we could do and try to make it work. So we all wore our warmest clothes and at least we had our snow coats and my gloves. The biggest challenge would be getting the kids to keep their hands in their pockets so they wouldn’t freeze to death. I luckily did have my driving gloves, so I gave those to Andrew but he still pulled them off.
The drive downtown was only slightly tensing I’m grateful to say. I’ve come a LONG way from my frightened car-driving phobia 9 years ago. 9 years ago I told my mom “forget it! I’ll never drive! I’ll just be one of those people who takes the bus to get everywhere.” Now, here I am, driving in another country with a tinny map that I JUST got off the hands from the guy at the hotel with a vague idea about where my destination was, working with many 1-way streets, crowed narrow streets with parallel parked cars, pedestrians j-walking everywhere, searching for parking garages, and working off signs that were written in English and French! Way to go me! I’m really earning my Girl Scout badges since we’ve been here.
We parked in a parking garage near parliament, we only had to walk a few blocks to get there. It was freezing cold outside! I did my best to keep the kids warm but I knew they were cold! Andrew REALLY didn’t like the cold on his face. I knew we’d only be here for a little while. So I didn’t get to take as many pictures as I wanted too, and sadly the overcast gray wasn’t helping out my picture taken experience either, but I did my best. And I think I got some pretty cool pictures. So enjoy!

This is inside the building where our car was parked, it was kind of like a business-mall. It was really cool they have beluga and narwhales hanging from the ceiling.

This is the main parliament building with a clock tower, it was SO beautiful! Sadly you cant go inside unless you work there, but we were able to walk all around the grounds and get some pretty cool building shots.

This was my favorite part of parliament hill. In the back on the main building, they have what’s called the “library dome”, I think it is SO beautiful! It was on top of my MUST sees while we were here.

The back of the parliament building is on the corner of a small hill that is surrounded by water and some other pretty famous sites. This is the bridge goes across the river.

You can see the museum from up here (we go there later)

This is the towns very own Notre-Dame church

This was a place I was really looking forward to visiting, but it was just too cold for the kids so we had to skip it mostly. It’s a palace that’s been bought and turned into a hotel! How fun would it be to stay there?

Another parliament building on the left.

Yet another parliament building on the right.

Just some other buildings across the road. I thought it looked pretty.

OTTAWA: Toy for an Angel

Ok, I’m REALLY NOT trying to toot my own horn and say “look at me and how generous and cool my family is” I just want to share with you how proud I am of Amanda and what happened when we finally got to Wal-Mart. First off I think I should tell you, even though I’ve been here for 5 months, we still feel very much alone. We don’t really feel like we have any ties to the community or people. So in the midst of this holiday season where there are ample opportunities to reach out to your fellow man, build stronger communities and spend time with families… we still just feel alone in the crowd right now. Well when we walked into Wal-Mart we saw their donation tree. It’s a Christmas tree with little paper cut-out angel ornaments with “GIRL 5” “BOY 14” “GIRL 11” written on them. you pick out an ornament of the sex and age of a child you would like to buy a Christmas gift for and then donate it. You’ve probably seen one like this in your own home town Wal-Mart. Well I think it was the “lake of community and family” that just wouldn’t let me turn away from this opportunity to reach out to someone else in need and feel that Christmas feeling or generosity. I told Amanda about the tree and what it was for and asked her if she would like to pick out a Christmas present for a little girl her age. Amanda really liked the idea. So we grabbed an ornament that said “GIRL 4” and went shopping. I was so proud of Amanda. She wanted to buy for the little girl something that she herself wanted for Christmas. She picked out this large Barbie fairy horse. She was very excited about the toy for the girl and I was very proud of her. The only then that Amanda didn’t like was that she thought the little girl we were buying it for was IN the store. That we were going to find her and give it to her then and there. So every small girl she saw at the store she’d yell “MOM! Look it’s the girl! It’s the girl! We give her the horse now?” before the little strangers eyes got wide with excitement, and I had to keep trying to explain to Amanda that the toy was for a girl “in need”, maybe even a girl that was in the hospital. That we had to pay for it and then the Wal-Mart people would give the present to the little girl. She didn’t find that much fun. I don’t blame her, it would be more fun to give it ourselves, but that’s the way the system works. She still proudly carried her horse all the way to the donation counter with a big smile on her face all the way to the very end. And we all felt very good about it all. We do home the little girl loves the toy horse.

OTTAWA: nap in the car

Right after our lunch (breakfast really) at Cora’s we were heading towards a Wal-Mart that was supposedly nearby. But half way there BOTH the kids fell asleep in the car. I felt like we had 3 options at that point. A – I could go to the store as planned, wake them up and have them cranky the whole time (I don’t like that idea at ALL). B – we could go back to the hotel room, hope the maid is done cleaning, wake them up to get them inside, having them kick and scream along the way up to the room, and then PRAYER they’ll go BACK to sleep which was unlikely (I didn’t like this plan much either). Or C – I pull over and we all take a nap together in the car. So as oddball as it sounds, I went with plan C. I felt a little weird about it, worrying if someone saw us if they would think we were homeless people or something and call cops or something. I don’t sleep in public and the privacy of our car only goes glass-deep ya know. But we were fine. I pulled over and we weren’t facing anyone or in anyone’s way really, and then we all just took a nap together. The kids napped for 2 hrs! they needed it so I’m glad I did what I did. AND, I’m happy to say, I got about an hr nap myself too and I really needed that! So it ended up turning out to be a really great thing for us all to do to recharge our batteries.

OTTAWA: breakfast at Cora’s

Derick was telling me about this place called Cora’s and how they make really good breakfasts there and that I should take the kids there to try it out. We finally got there at lunch time but their breakfast menu runs for lunch too so we were fine. Their menu sure was different. All packed with fruit and veggies and cut up and served in the most unusual ways. Thankfully they still had 1 plate that was more traditional so the kids had something they would like.

OTTAWA: good morning!

Time to start the day! Today was going to be very laid back and easy. Eat out, explore a little, and do a little shopping for things we needed (snacks and diapers, stuff like that). We checked in last night when it was very dark so the kids were finally enjoying the view from the window.

OTTAWA: our Hotel

This is our very fancy hotel

This is a very nice hotel they have a private spa and fitness center, pretty decorative ice trees around the doors and a white sports car in the lobby, don’t ask me “why?”- I don’t know. What’s REALLY weird about this hotel is that it’s main floor actually shares space with other stores like dentists office, a makeup boutique, things like that. Kind of weird if you ask me.

Our room was very modern. Very high ceilings with huge curtains that go all the way from the floor to the top. Gray-blue color walls, coach and curtains with one red wall behind the bed. And I was SHOCKED to see naked people on the wall in frames… no I’m not talking about the mirror – sicko. They took what looks like collage art pieces from student’s who were learning to pant people in the nude and they framed it up as art for the hotel. I felt like asking for another room but derick said I was just being silly and that the whole hotel is like that. So I put up with it. I just tried not to look. flashbacks of high school showers again. I’m just glad I don’t have a teen son and second guessing every few second of what he’s looking at.

OTTAWA: Drive up to Ottawa

we had been planning on celebrating Thanksgiving this Thursday, but Derick’s work really needed him in Ottawa for a couple of days, so we decided to postpone our gluttonous, I mean “thankful” feast until next Tuesday and take a mini family vacation together to Ottawa. For us this year, it’s no big deal for us postponing thanksgiving, we’re pretty much just “pretending” that there’s a holiday on the 25th of Nov anyhow. After all, EVERYONE here already celebrated thanksgiving over a month and a half ago! So Tuesday, Thursday, there’s not much of a difference since it’s only US who are calling it “thanksgiving”.

We had fun driving up, derick and I always like a chance to chill on the open road and listen to music. And we’ve busted out the Christmas music for this trip. It feels more like Christmas than Thanksgiving here anyhow.

And of cores I have my camera by my side for the whole ride too. I caught a few “artistic pics” when we had to pull over to the side of the road. That means taking pictures of plain or boring things. It’s the kind of art you’d find at IKEA. IKEA’s very big here in Canada too. But if you’d looked at these pics and thought of them as large canvas prints on a plain wall, you’ll get my drift. It’s a “modern edge” type of photography. It’s somewhat wondering knowing that in this world you can take a picture of a weed, printed it to big scale and sale it for hundreds of dollars. It somehow feels like sticking it to the man, cheating the system. But I still prefer pictures that are meant to capture certain places, and people.

The only BIG bummer was that we got a FLAT TIRE on our way up! Luckily, derick felt very confident to take care of it and he did a fine job getting on the spare for us. He wouldn’t let me take a picture of him changing the tire for the blog, so I’ve got these instead.
Ha ha! Leave it to nikki to find a loop-hole in her husband’s commands. That’s derick bending over changing the tire in the side view mirror.

We at least got to a tire place soon to buy a new tire cause we didn’t think the spare would take us all the rest of the way on our journey. And thankfully the car rental place reimburses us for things like this.
While we waited for the tire to get fixed, we walked thru the store and we bought an orange hockey street ball for Andrew and a ballerina ornament for Amanda.

I got for myself, my holiday-treat of choice… the chocolate orange. Creamy enough to satisfy your chocolate craving and fruity enough where you don’t want to eat all of it at the same time, so you’ll nibble on it now and save the rest for later.

Gas sure is getting high isn’t it?

Actually that’s in pennies, I don’t know WHY they do it that way. Just another Canadianisms. It still freaks me out when pulling into the gas station $101?! Lol.

Jim Carrey's Christmas Carol

“A Christmas Carol” one of the (if not THE) most retold Christmas story of all time. Everyone can find their own personal favorite version with so are many to choose from. My personal favorite one is “the Muppets Christmas Carol” I think the message is more uplifting and hopeful than most out there and the music is an instant holiday tradition. But derick and I were flipping back and forth on the decision of BUYING “the Christmas Carol” DVD BEFORE even seeing it, we finally decided to just rent before we buy and man-o-man I am SO happy we did. I HATED this movie. It is by far the creepiest, weirdest version out there to date. I mean come on, even the ghost of Christmas present was creepy and scary? come on. and my goodness… the 2 kids on his cloak, they always scared me in the other versions of this story, but they went really beyond, showing them being crazy and frightening. And when Scrooge finally dose change, he’s still… so bony creepy. Oh, I’m SO happy we didn’t watch it in front of the kids. The movie creeped ME out enough as it is. uh!

What did yall think of the movie?

Prayer WISH list

You know it’s that time of year when your kids are relaying their Christmas wish list in their personal prayers.

We sat down with Amanda and told her how “prayers are NOT gift wish lists… but thanks for letting us know what you want for Christmas”

Box of blessings

I got the sweetest gift in the mail! I got a package from my visiting teachers (Katie and Sarah), you guys are SO sweet! They were feeling sad for me cause they know it’s hard for me to be away from family this time of year AND to be separated from all of my decorations too, makes it hard to make our town house feel like HOME. So they put together a box of Christmas things for me! and it’s going to make a BIG difference for our Christmas here so THANK YOU girls SO much! Really you guys rock and went totally up and beyond the call of duty. Love yall and thanks again!