Summer's come and gone...

...and it was practically non-existent. We only had a very FEW really WARM days and then that was that. We live in high rise condo and usually, for most of the summer, I keep the air conditioning on high (we have western exposure) and all the blinds closed. This year, I was able to have the blinds open most of the time and leave the air conditioning off and the windows open for days at a time.

Lauren saw a squirrel on Saturday and remarked that his tail was not very fluffy. Hopefully this means that we will be getting more of the same kind of summer weather over the winter, with not too many storms and generally mild weather.

What did you do for the last long weekend of summer???

On Saturday, we hit the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition for my unfamiliar readers) and had a reasonably good time. I say reasonably good time because Scott and I REALLY enjoy the airshow that is put on over Labour Day weekend. The kids? Not so much. As such, it's usually a bit of a struggle. This is also usually when I pull the "I brought you into this world, I carried you for nine months, you get to do whatever you want for most of the summer, you want for NOTHING, we are WATCHING THE AIR SHOW and we're watching it from START TO FINISH!"

We started the day off at Ontario Place where the kids got to go on a couple of their favourite rides. Colin went with Scott and Lauren to ride Wilderness Adventure and I stuck with Jonathan so he could the cars at OP Driving School. Unfortunately, as he was running (yes, I've told him NOT to do that!) to get to a car, he took a tumble - scraped both his knees, both his arms and his chin. Of course, this didn't deter him from wanting to continue on with the ride - SUCH a boy!


After Colin was done his ride at Wilderness Adventure (he went on twice) and Jonathan was done at OP Driving School (three times) we headed over to Bob's Boatyard to ride the paddle boats. Normally, we all ride together (there is a little spot for Jonathan in between the two boat pedalers), but this time Colin went with his Dad and Lauren and I were Jonathan's slaves. Truth be told, I think Scott was just out to have a nap as it looks like he made Colin do all the work.

Then, it was time to head over to the CNE. Our first stop was to be Kid's World, because the good folks at Pizza Nova always have something for the kids to do. They let them mess around with pizza dough and show the kids how to throw it to make their own pizza. Most of it ends up on the floor, so they don't actually eat it. The best part is that when they are done with the dough they get a slice of pizza (free lunch!) and a goody bag that contains an activity book, the last page of which is a coupon for a free small, three topping pizza...and who doesn't love free???

Unfortunately, we were a little too late for the 11:45 a.m. "showing" and so had to wait around for the 1:15 p.m. demonstration, which cut into air show time.

Being the man that he is (my knight in shining armour), Scott stayed with the kids while I went and scoped out a seat for the airshow - he's just AWESOME that way. The kids got their pizza and came to join me to watch the airshow just before 2 p.m. Unfortunately, that meant Scott missed his favourite plane - the Spitfire - but I did get a picture of it along with the CF 18 doing its "Heritage Flight" which seems to have become a tradition since they celebrated a hundred years of flight at the CNE a few years ago.

The Rogers Chinese Lantern Festival is on now at Ontario Place, so that's why you see the "Eiffel Tower" on the right. It's really pretty at night when all the lights are on.

Following the airshow (where we had ribs for lunch - not as good as the ones we had during opening weekend), we headed off to check out some more of the Ex.

Lauren got herself some lip gloss and nail strengthener where they were selling off Sally Hansen products for cheap and we all got sweet treats (cotton candy for me, candy sticks for the boys and fudge for Lauren). We checked out the sights, had perogies (Lauren and me), hot dogs (Scott and Colin) and pasta (Jonathan) for dinner. We checked out the Arts and Crafts building and capped off the evening with "Jump Jet" (a pyrotechnic/acrobat show), that we really could have skipped.

Colin and Jonathan wanted to go on Crazy Mouse (a ride), but it would have cost $18 (yes, you read that right) for the boys and Scott to ride. Plus, there was a HUGE line!

The boys were bribed out of the ride with a promise of Playdium (picture over 100 arcade games all under one roof - yeah...I got a headache too!) which ended up costing more but resulted in almost 2 hours of fun versus the 30 seconds of Crazy Mouse fun.

Yesterday was Playdium and Scott and I went out for dinner (our 17th anniversary), but I'll save that for another day since this post is already well beyond WAY TOO LONG.

Thanks for stopping by!