Memories of the whirlwind

We are back at home. Got here last night around 8 pm local time. Unloaded the van, plugged in the adapter and phone, called the parents, put the kid to bed, picked up the dog, unpacked a few items, went to bed in our own beds. It was nice...

Our trip ended with a very LONG car ride that we forced into two days, with a stop halfway in Columbia, Missouri. Keith and I both got two new states during the trip - Missouri and Kansas, and Kai picked up three - MO, KS and Ohio. The kid is 3, and already he's been in 10 states! The drive was pretty uneventful, but we got to watch a very cool storm to the south of us as we left Kansas and travelled across eastern CO. Thankfully, the only rain we got was as we drove down the hill of CO 36 coming into Boulder... and it's been raining ever since. I can't complain. We get somewhere between 5 and 10 days per year of "all-day-rain", and we've been having drought-like conditions for the last month(s?), so it's good for our reservoirs. Bad for flooding, but that's another story.

A snippit of conversation from the trip:

Keith and Me: blah blah blah Toronto blah blah blah

Kai: I was born in Toronto, Canada.

Keith and Me: that's right, Kai.

Me: And do you know what that makes you, Kai? You were born in Canada, so you are a ...

Kai: a HOCKEY PLAYER!

Me: uh... well, sure... you could be... but sadly that's not um... innate. you kind of have to work on that one.

So Canada was good to us. We haven't actually counted the number of people (friends, family, and old colleagues) that we saw, but it was pretty high. A little overwhelming at times, but we still didn't get to see everyone that we would have liked to have seen. It was nice to be in Canada for Canada Day, and it was fun seeing Kai experience a bunch of new things. Some highlights, in pictoral form:

Kai got to sit inside Bob Frank's Massey Ferguson tractor, which happened to be attached to a John Deere Round Baler. VERY exciting! (Kai's excited face is a little on the "mildly intrigued" side. We know that he's really excited about something when his mouth is a little pursed and he becomes super-observant. It doesn't really scream excitement, but it's there.)

Then he got to ride a bunch of rides at Centreville, on Centre Island in Toronto, including the old fashioned fire trucks, a few boat rides (including a swan boat), and his very first roller coaster! He did say afterwards that the roller coaster was a little too fast... Sometimes I'm not so sure he's my kid.

On our last full day in Canada, we went to the Greenview Aviaries near Blenheim, which is actually a pretty big zoo with a big playground attached to it. My favourite was the ostriches. Those things are WEIRD.

It was a good vacation. Lots of catching up, lots of relaxing, lots of activities, and lots of berry picking/eating (mmmmmm... strawberries...) :

I guess I should actually unpack our belongings now... but that can wait until tomorrow. (Ah... laundry.)