Niagara Falls and Great Wolf Lodge

As soon as we found out we were coming to Canada I stopped off by the book store and picked up a copy Frommer's Canada to browse.  That's when I realized that Niagara Falls was only about a three hour drive from Sarnia.  I came home and told Jacob that we had to go!  For one reason or another, it took us two and half years to get there.  Jacob's time has been limited this summer due to work commitments, so we tried to squeeze in a short two-night trip over the July holiday weekend.

We drove down on Sunday to avoid the Canada Day crowds.  We got an early start and were in Niagara before noon.  We decided to stop off by the hotel to see if they could hold our luggage until check-in while we toured the Niagara Falls area.  We were surprised to hear that they already had a room available so we checked-in and got settled into our room.  Another benefit to the trip was this was our first stay at Great Wolf Lodge.  It definitely lived up to all it's rave reviews from friends and the trip turned out to be more about Great Wolf than Niagara.  She was so excited with the whole place and loved having her own separated little space with TV and bunk bed.  After promising that we would have time to try everything at the hotel, we convinced her to leave so we could go tour Niagara Falls.

Mom and Me Day - Rock Glen Falls

After we had such a great time exploring the caves and beaches at the Baths in Tortola, I decided Brenna might enjoy another adventure for our third annual Mom and Me Day.  We packed a backpack for the day and drove over to Arkona, which is only about 30 minutes from our house, to Rock Glen Conservation Area.  This was one more place on my hit list of locations that I wanted to make sure we visited during our stay in Ontario.  We checked in with the park's attendant and started our day at the Arkona Lions Museum.  The area is known for its fossils and the park encourages visitors to search for them in the waters around the falls and near the river.  The museum houses a collection of fossils that have been recovered from the area and explains the different types of fossils you may find in the park.  You're only allowed to take one fossil per person from the park, but the park attendant said since it was Brenna's first visit and nearly her birthday that she could take three!

Toronto Spring Break with Disney Frozen

This year, we did Spring Break alittle different.  Usually we stay close to home and enjoy the company of friends and all the activities that Houston had to offer.  Not surprisingly, there's nothing going on here and everyone leaves to get away from the cold weather.  While we didn't travel south to Florida like every other Canadian in the country (almost literally!), we did have an action packed Spring Break with some traveling.

Our school gets a week and a half off for Spring Break, so we had a nice long break.  We kicked off Spring Break early with our first family hockey game.  The Sarnia Sting is a member of the Western Conference Junior Hockey League, which is basically the minors leagues of the NHL.  We went to see them play the Guelph Storm.  We were fortunate, because Imperial has a luxury box and Jacob hosted a game for his team where they could bring along their families.  The box definitely made it a more pleasant for the kids, since they had room to move around both in the row seats and in the box and there was an endless supply of popcorn.  The game was fun and I enjoyed getting to met Jacob's team and their families.

In true hockey fashion, there was one fight that I found amusing.  While I won't deny there is their fair share of fights on the football field, it's handled a bit differently in hockey.  In football, the first punch is usually quickly followed by a separation of parties by the refs and everyone is pushed to their appropriate sidelines.  In hockey, the first punch is followed by a beat down.  The refs circle the participants, preventing anyone else from joining in, but allow the parties involved to duke it out until they’re too tired to continue or blood is spilled on the ice.  You can image how fun it was to explain that to Brenna!

Buzz and Baby Buzz, the official Sarnia Sting mascots visited the kids in the box.  At halftime the kids got to Chuck the Puck onto the rink.  If your puck made it onto the targets at center rink, then you won tickets to the next Sting game.  We were alittle high and I feared for the safety of the people below us, but Brenna did mange to chuck it all the way onto the ice from our box.  All around it was a great experience and I look forward to making another game next season.

Sarnia Then and Now

One afternoon, I suited up with determination to brave the cold (especially cold on the lake) and get some pictures of Lake Huron and the St. Clair River.  I revisited some of our favorite places that we spent time at this summer.  After returning home I realized that I had inadvertently captured several of the same images that I had taken this summer.  It provided some very interesting "before and after" pictures.  The summer images were all taken in late July and winter images were taken in early January.  I'm considered another outing because since then things have continued to significantly change.  These pictures were taken before we plummeted into sub-zero temperatures and had not yet accumulated the significant amount snow that we now have.  Eventually I may have "after the after" images!

Canadian Critters

We have the smallest back yard that I've ever lived with.  It's tiny!  But, it has one very big saving grace.  Our home backs up to a nature preserve.  Our back fence is a woven wire fence that allows nature and all its wildlife to visit us!

Since we moved in this past spring, we've experienced a constant array of "friends" that visit our back yard.  We get the usual stray cats and dogs, snakes, and mice.  But it was the uniquely "Canadian" critters that we enjoyed the most.

Our first experience came with the squirrels.  We have all kinds of squirrels that I'd never seen before!  I've named the guy below Grey-Back.  I'm not sure if he is suppose to look this way or if he just had a very bad winter!

Canatara Park and the Ontario Visitor's Center

Canatara Park in Sarnia is a beautiful area on the lake that offers so many adventures!  It has huge open grassy areas, lots of shady spots, multiple playgrounds, long stretches of sandy beach, and even an animal farm petting zoo!  We've made several trips to Canatara Park this summer, sometimes to just enjoy a few minutes on the playground and other times for a full day of fun at the beach.  Our church even had service there on the beach one Sunday followed by baptism in Lake Huron.

One weekend this summer they held the first annual Bluewater Beach Fest at Canatara Park.  It was a collection of vender booths, jumpy houses, and local bands on the beach.  They had professional sand sculptors come in and create a large display of the Bluewater Bridge.  There was also a amateur sand castle building competition.  The festival was fun and after viewing the sand castles, Brenna spent the rest of her time jumping in the collection of bouncy houses.  It was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

Bluewater Bridge

My Mom and Dad came up for their first visit to Canada over Brenna's birthday.  We didn't get to do anything big, but we all enjoyed seeing some of the sights in our fair town of Sarnia.  We took a scenic drive through downtown Sarnia on the waterfront of the St. Clair River.  We stopped off at a few of the beaches of Lake Huron, and we visited the Bluewater Bridge.

The Bluewater Bridge is the second busiest crossing between the United States and Canada. The first bridge was originally built in 1938, with the second twin bridge following in 1997 after it was determined that crossing had become so busy that it surpassed its capacity.  The sight from the peak of the bridge is beautiful.  From that high of a vantage point you get a clear view of Lake Huron opening into the mouth of the St. Clair River.  On our first visit to Sarnia, Lake Huron was a complete frozen plain of ice and I watched as chunks of the ice would break away and float down the winding river.  Ice breakers are frequent to clear the path for freight ships making their way across Lake Huron and down the river.  During the summer the water is a beautiful blue in both the lake and river.  A far cry from the muddy Mississippi River that I'm so familiar with.  You can see the lighthouse on the Michigan side and sandy beaches that stretch up the Canadian side.  If you travel the bridge often enough, you're sure to get a lengthy look, as its a common occurrence for the border crossing to get backed up and cars get stuck on the bridge.

Beneath the bridge on the Canadian side is a park that hosts a french fry truck.  It's a popular tourist attraction to walk under the Bluewater Bridge enjoying the best french fries in town.  And yes, they come with gravy, although I still prefer my fries without it!

We walked the park trail beside the bridge and eventually made our way down the river bank.  We watched boats, freight ships, jet skies, and even people in tubes float by beneath the bridge.  We also watched daredevil teenagers cross the railing of the observation deck at the base of the bridge and make the 20 foot drop into the freezing river water.

Mom and Me Day at Lake Huron

Last year we had our first official Mom and Me Day.  You can check it out here Mom and Me Day 2013.  We had so much fun that I decided to make it a tradition each year just before Brenna's birthday.

This year, what better way to spend it than at Brenna's favorite place; the beach!  So we packed a beach blanket and picnic basket and headed out to Lake Huron that morning.  This was our first real visit to the beach since we moved to Canada.  We've stopped by several times for a quick walk through the waters but never for a full day of fun in the sun.  It was a perfect day with the sun shining bright and clear skies, but a bit cool for us.  That didn't stop us!  We just put jackets on over our swimsuits!  Once we got there and got everything situated, it quickly warmed up to about 72 degrees, which still isn't exactly our typical beach weather but it was warm enough to shed our jackets.

We had the whole beach to ourselves!  It was just us and a goose who stuck with us the entire day!  The lake is gorgeous in the summer with beautiful sparkling blue green water against vibrant clear blue skies.  The shore is lined with lush green trees and grass.  It was beautiful when I saw it for the first time in early March frozen over and completely covered in snow like a massive plain of white for as far as I could see.  I never could have imagined then that it would become so alive and beautiful in a totally different way just a few short months later.