Sunday 19 November 2006

Back To Brantford

Another weekend, another trip. It seems just like yesterday that we were in Brantford. Adam took the boys to his mom's this weekend to give Tina some time and space to clean and organize the laundry room, everything room and part of the crawl space.

The trip to Brantford was uneventful, though it seems the volume of traffic is getting higher every year. They are finally widening Highway 401 between Wellington Road and replacing the Wellington Road overpass in London, Ontario. This has not meant too many delays as there are no lane reductions, yet. It will be nice not to have four lanes of highway traffic merge into two lanes. Highway 403 from Woodstock is carrying more vehicles each year - I suppose that some day it will have to be widened to three lanes each way.

When we arrived, the boys naturally wanted to play in the basement - where all the toys are. Adam unwound and relaxed. The next day Adam, Babcia and the boys headed to Toronto to visit Adam's aunt, Genia (Adam's Dad sister) and to do some shopping on Roncesevalles Ave aka the Polish area. We arrived earlier than anticipated, so we decided to shop first. Babcia bought some tasty goodies at Granowska's, a Polish bakery and cafe. We stopped a bookstore and a few other polish stores before heading back to the van.

Adam managed to find a parking spot in front of the senior's building that Ciocia Genia lives in. The four of us headed up and spent a wonderful time with Adam's aunt. Jeremy felt right at home and instantly told Ciocia Genia that he was hungry - he even started opening doors to find food. Corbin noticed that his GameBoy needed charging so he plugged it in and had some food too. Ciocia Genia showed us some old pictures (from 30s and 40s) of Adam's grandparents and his dad. Everyone had a great time and Jeremy actually cried as we left the building - seems that Ciocia Genia had left a good impression.

The rest of Saturday and early Sunday was spent relaxing and playing with the boys. Adam packed the boys up and they headed home shortly after 1:00 pm. He took the back roads back to Windsor, to give Tina some additional time to tidy up. Four hours later, the boys were back home.

Sunday 12 November 2006

A Weekend Getaway

In what seems to becoming an annual event, Tina and Adam returned home from a weekend getaway. That is code for time away from the kids. Yup two whole nights with no kids.

The whole family headed up to Brantford on Friday. The boys were spending the weekend with Adam's mom (aka Babcia). We unloaded their stuff from the van, went over some rules and issues, gave hugs and kisses and head out to Oakville.

Adam and Tina were amazed by the volume of traffic on the QEW. It was heavy and there was lots of braking. We finally arrived at the Fairfield Inn - Adam had been under the impression that last year we stayed at a Holiday Inn. In reality, we had stayed at this Fairfield Inn. We laughed. We took our belongings out and relaxed for a bit. We were getting hungry, so Adam headed out to get some subs from Quizno's and a some pop and munchies from a nearby convenience store.

The next we drove out to Square One in Mississauga to do some Christmas shopping for the boys. Our main goal was hitting the Disney Store to find some Cars stuff for Jeremy and Narnia goods for Corbin. We had a quick lunch in the very busy and very packed food court. Done shopping, we drove back towards the hotel. We stopped in at the movie complex to see when Borat was playing, and much to our surprise, the next screening was in a few minutes. We bought our tickets and headed up. The theatre was not packed but it was busy. Adam sums up Borat as "disturbingly funny".

Back to the hotel to unwind. We then took a drive along Lakeshore Road through Oakville and Burlington, just to get out of the hotel and to maybe find a nice place to eat. Now Oakville has it's share of very fancy restaurants - maybe next time. Arriving at the hotel, we decided to order Chinese food from Ho-Lee-Chow. The food arrived promptly and hot. We gorged ourselves on the food.

After eating breakfast at the hotel - they have a complimentary expanded continental breakfast buffet that included freshly made waffles - we packed up and drove back to Brantford making a stop at IKEA in Burlington (naturally). We bought a few things for the home and arrived at the craziness known as Babcia's house. Everyone had a good weekend it seemed.