Taking a Baby to an Amusement Park

Kevin won two season’s passes to Canada’s Wonderland at work a little while ago – lucky him (and me!). I wasn’t sure if a huge amusement park would be such a good place to bring a 10 month old, but I spoke to another mom about it last week who had just gone with her family and she assured me it was fun. Her biggest tip was to leave during his morning nap so he could sleep in the car, and to only plan on being there for 2-3 hours. Sounded good to me!

On Saturday, we took the 40 minute drive up. I checked out free parking before leaving and we scored a pretty sweet spot on one of the side streets. It saved us about $20 and was literally as close at a lot of parking lot spots. The City of Vaughan rule (where we parked at least) states there is a 3 hour limit, which worked for us. We also brought lots of snacks and water for Benjamin. Apparently you’re not allowed to bring in food or drinks (I didn’t know this), but they only checked my backpack (which had nothing) and Kevin cruised right on through with the stroller contents. In all honesty, if they had checked under the stroller and tried to take away Benjamin’s snacks/drinks, I would’ve caused a serious ruckus. I mean, as delicious as it is, I’m not feeding him funnel cake and hot dogs.

Once we had our season passes (kids under 3 are free by the way), we entered the park. Just as we were passing the mountain, the divers came out so we watched them jump off the mountain. Very impressive.

Then we went straight to KidzVille.

There were about 5 rides that Benjamin was allowed to go on and we went on 4 I think. He mostly seemed indifferent. The rides were super cute, but I think he wasn’t fazed because the “ride experience” at his age level is akin to being in a car, and for him it’s a case of been-there-done-that.

 

We also passed by a stage where Charlie Brown and his crew were putting on a show. Benjamin was entranced. He leaned forward, mouth ajar, eyes wide open for the 5 minutes of the show that we caught. Next time I want to make sure we catch a full show because I’m pretty sure this was his favourite part of the day.

About halfway through our trip, Benjamin let us know he wanted to be nursed… his cues are easy to read because subtlety is not his strong suit

I looked around for a shaded area as he gets very hot and sweaty even when he’s nursing in the AC at home. Just as I went to sit down, Kevin pointed out a family pit stop area, called Parents Rest Zone. It was pretty great! I’m not sure why I didn’t bother looking for one of those. I mean, we were in Kidsville. It would make sense that there would be an area to change, nurse/feed babies. The nursing station looked like a triage room at a hospital – picture two “rooms” created with curtain partitions. I didn’t mind though. They each had a wooden rocking chair, and Benjamin happily nursed. I’m always grateful when I can find a quiet place to nurse him because he gets so easily distracted these days. He’ll break his latch over the slightest noise or movement to see what’s going on around him. 

We then made our way to the Water Park. I wasn’t sure what he would be allowed to do so I asked one of the supervisors. He said the kiddie pool was fine and there was a new water attraction at the other end of the water park that was geared toward the little kids. The kiddie pool was good though. Benjamin loves the water. I busted out one of my old swim suits (I only own bikinis), but after a bit on insecurity I also packed a fitted workout tank for a bit more coverage. Although I’m happy to say that once we got to the park, I felt fine just wearing my regular bikini top and bottom.

 

It ended up raining minutes after we finished up in the water, which was great timing. We were able to get out and into a change room with no line-up! People were running out of the pool in droves as we were leaving the water park, which had us a bit perplexed… I mean, you’re already wet, no? What’s a little rain?

 

My 7 tips for going to an amusement park with an infant:

1. Check the forecast! It’s just not worth it to go if it’s going to rain or if there’s a heat alert. Babies have a harder time regulating their temperature and can get dehydrated very easily.
2. Leave your house at the start of morning nap. Stay for 2-3 hours. Leave the park at the start of afternoon nap. But be open to leaving earlier if your baby seems tired. We arrived at 11am and left at 3pm. Benjamin slept from 8:30pm-5am that night, which was AMAZING! Any parent of a young baby will tell you that a good night’s sleep is worth its weight in gold!
3. Bring some baby snacks and lots of (frozen) water. We fed Benjamin right before we left so a container of Cheerios was sufficient for food. We brought a few bottles of water and his sippy straw cup. I froze 2-500mL bottles of water so that we’d have a nice steady stream of cool water.
4. Bring your stroller! And maybe a stroller lock if you’ve got a nice one because you have to leave your stroller at the ride entrances. I took my backpack onto the rides, but we left the diaper bag in the bottom of the stroller without issue. We made sure to lock the wheels and put a carabineer around one of the wheels so that someone couldn’t just run off with our stroller. You’d have to remove the carabineer and unlock the wheels first. This didn’t make it steal-proof, but I basically just wanted our stroller to be a bit harder to steal than the others! It was very convenient to be able to put our belongings with the stroller (babies come with a lot of stuff…) so do yourself a solid and just bring it.
5. Figure out parking before you leave. At Canada’s Wonderland, the parking prices are pretty crazy and the spots are FAR!! You have to arrive at or before the time the park opens to get a “close” spot. We arrived at 11am, parked across the street (for free) and walked 5 minutes to the front entrance. To us, it was totally worth it.
6. If you're still nursing, bring whatever you need (a cover or blanket or nursing top) so that you can nurse comfortably in the open. We were lucky that there was an air conditioned private area to nurse, but I would’ve nursed him under a tree. I don’t have any issue nursing in public, but I don’t want to nurse in the hot sun!
7. Bring your camera! I wasn’t sure if I should bring it, but I’m glad I did! I really wasn’t fussy about getting amazing photos, so I barely touched my settings. I just wanted better than phone quality photos, which is what I got (except for the water park one).

One Year Later

Sam Obeid Photography

This past weekend marks mine and Kevin’s one year wedding anniversary. To say the time has flown by is an understatement! A lot has happened in that time, but I still can’t believe that it’s already been a year. And I thought I’d be sad about not being a newlywed anymore, but I’m not. At all! I actually feel way better about being a regular ol’ married couple now that we have that first year under our belts. I hear the first year is supposed to be the hardest, but we’ve been together for almost 7 years now, lived together for a couple years before getting married, and have pretty much had every trial and tribulation thrown in our direction in that time.

For those that say that marriage is just a piece of paper and doesn’t change anything... I think those people are mostly the ones that have choose to co-habitate before getting hitched. I agree mostly that the day-to-day doesn’t change much, but marriage makes everything feel a lot... heavier. Like, this is FOREVER. It’s a pretty heavy decision to willingly choose to commit the rest of your life with someone! I think way too many people out there reach a certain point where they think they’re “at that age” and just marry the person they’re with, or they get wedding fever because their friends or family are all getting married. Don’t fall for the trap! I was so glad when all the wedding planning was over and Kevin and I could get back to just being us. I actually said as much in our speech at the wedding, which got everyone laughing.

A great piece of advice I heard about relationships is regarding the fact that you have to be happy with yourself before you can be happy with someone else. It went something like this:
Remember, you’re the dessert and your partner should be the cherry on top! Definitely not necessary, but nice to have :)

So anyway, the whole point of this post is that I wanted to share what we did for our anniversary! The weather was AMAZING, so we took a weekend trip up to Niagara-on-the-Lake. If you’ve never been, it’s really quite beautiful up there. We bought some passes for a wine event called the 2014 Discovery Pass Wine & Food Pairings. With each pass ($40+tax), you get 8 food and wine pairings at different wineries (you choose from a list of 20-something wineries) and they had a Designated Drivers pass ($30+tax) where you get a mocktail instead of wine, so I got that pass. It was definitely money well spent! I made a little map that showed where the wineries we wanted to visit were located and the food/wine pairings they were offering. It was very handy to see everything laid out like this while we were driving around so we knew what order to visit them in.

My favourite food was HANDS DOWN the grilled calamari bruschetta with toasted fennel, tomato, marinated olives, and basil at Inniskillin! It was so delicious. Other great food locations were Kacaba Vineyards, Good Earth Food & Wine Co., and Trius.

My least favourite food was easily the thai-style chicken (too soggy!!) at Hinterbrook Estate  and the Jamaican jerk slider (too dry!!) at Greenlane Estate. Also, the drink samples they gave at Greenlane Estate were SO STINGY!!!!! Kevin got about a thimble of Riesling, and I got about 3 thimbles of lemonade. I’m not sure why they were so stingy, especially with my lemonade… it’s freaking lemonade! Oh well.

The Discovery Pass event is still going on next weekend, so here are some iPhone photos I took if you’re interested in seeing what we got

1. Good Earth Food & Wine Co offered a trio: an Italian vegetable caponata with rosemary and Bella Vitano cheese; a Jamaican beef patty with lime and papaya slaw; and a Vietnamese cold roll with tamarind dipping sauce
2. & 3. Kacaba Vineyards offered: BBQ five-spiced pork medallions on arugula, with a navy bean and fennel mix, topped with sweet tomato ginger drizzle. The vegetarian option (which I ate) had all the same, minus the pork, and with the addition of feta cheese and a ciabatta bun.
4. Trius offered: a fresh strawberry cupcake topped with Chantilly cream.
5. Reif Estate offered: fish tacos – blackened tilapia with avocado cream, shredded cabbage, and pico de gallo on a soft corn tortilla.
6. Jackson-Triggs offered: Jerk chicken roti with cilantro, habanero, and cucumber.

Have a great week everyone :) This is our last week before summer officially begins on Saturday!

Weekend Getaway to Chicago

Over the July long weekend, Kevin and I took a road trip to Chicago, Illinois. He’d visited once, years ago, and it was my first time. We loved it. We’re trying to make this the Summer of Road Trips because I still have 25,000 KM left on my car lease and only five months to use as much as I can. May as well! That explains the drive to Florida (~5000 KM round trip), the drive to Niagara Falls (~300 KM round trip), this most recent trip to Chicago, IL (~1700 KM round trip) and our upcoming trip to Boston, MA (~1800 KM round trip).

We stayed just outside of Chicago, which saved us big bucks on the hotel costs. My preference is to stay in nice hotels, but we knew we’d only be in the room for sleeping, so we were just looking for something inexpensive and clean. Our hotel was super dated, but very clean, and it came with Wi-Fi, a mini fridge, a microwave, and a free shuttle to and from the subway’s blue line, which went directly downtown – very convenient!

The best purchases of our trip were 2 CityPasses ($84 each) and 2 3-Day CTA passes ($14 each) for the train. We hmmed and hawed for a while about buying the CityPasses because we weren’t sure if it was worth it, but I highly recommend purchasing these! Just being able to skip the admission lines made buying these worth it! And even though we drove, we didn’t want to have to worry about parking and traffic, so took full advantage of the CTA passes too.

The weather was crazy that weekend. Super hot and humid with crazy thunderstorms every day. We were incredibly lucky and missed all of them though! The rain always came when we were inside or on the bus, but I had quite a scare when I checked the weather on my phone before leaving and saw this:

We visited a ton of places so I have lots of photos! I made a collage of Navy Pier because it was pretty easy to group those photos together.

For those who are interested in seeing some more photos (the architecture is stunning), keep reading after the jump!

Weekend Getaway

Kevin and I left work a bit early on Friday to head to Niagara Falls for the weekend – it’s about 1.5-2hrs southwest of Toronto. We got a Teambuy deal for a hotel for 2 nights for $69 (sah-weeeeet!) and then an R-Deals deal for wine tastings for 2 at 4 different wineries (and a chocolate factory) for $39! Great deals all around.

The first night we took a stroll around the Falls. I’d never seen them at night before. This is the only shot I managed to get that was overpowered by the crazy mist.

The next day we did our tours. The four wineries were Joseph’s Estate Wines, Caroline Cellars, Riverview Cellars, and Reif Estate Winery. We also visited Chocolate F/X and a Peanut store. The way the tour was set up was pretty awesome – a mini bus picked us up from our hotel, then drove us to each of the locations, and then dropped us back off at the hotel. Kevin’s not a wine fan (except ice wine because it’s super sweet) so I drank most of his reds and whites and he drank most of my ice wines.


In terms of decor, I liked Reif Estate Winery the best. It was definitely the most luxe among the group. I’d been looking forward to going there for a few months because I had some red wine at a friend’s house in the winter that came from this winery and they don’t sell it in the LCBO (pretty much the only store where people from Ontario can buy wine) so I wanted to buy a couple bottles. The wine was Gamay Cabernet if anyone’s interested – it’s delicious! Reif also had the best ice wine out of the wineries we visited. I think the Niagara Region produces most of the world’s ice wine. It’s definitely the wine I associate most with that area. The grapes for ice wine are harvested in the winter, creating an incredibly sweet wine – a dessert wine. Reif’s ice wine was the most mellow (I didn’t give that sample to Kevin lol) so I bought a bottle of that too.


In terms of the actual tastings, Caroline Cellars had it going on! They give each person a list of their wines and let you choose 4 from the list. I’ve done wine tastings at several wineries and this was the first place that let me choose my samples. So Kevin and I (mostly me lol) went down the list and chose 2 samples each of reds, whites, Rieslings, and ice wines. 

Here’s the wine I added to my collection:

1. Caroline Cellars Riesling Late Harvest 2008 – 500mL
2. Joseph’s Estate Wines Late Harvest Vidal 2008 – 375mL
3. Riverview Cellars Fontana Dolce 2010 Vintage – 750mL
4. Reif Estate Winery Gamay Cabernet 2011 – 750mL x 2 bottles
5. Reif Estate Winery Vidal Ice Wine 2010 – 200mL

I haven’t bought this much sweet wine at one time since my university days when I’d buy 1.5L of strawberry Zinfandel for my Friday nights out… so classy!

The tour bus also stopped at Chocolate F/X. A guide explained to us how the chocolate is made and the shipping processes. Most of the chocolate gets sent to third party retailers who wrap the chocolate in their own brand’s labels. The sample set up here was awesome. It was basically Bulk Barn, but free... And ALL CHOCOLATE!!!



It got pretty crazy up in the sample section for a good 5-10 minutes. There were about 20 of us on the tour and there was no lining up whatsoever…everyone just rushed the chocolate. It was hilarious.

That night we went downtown for dinner and stopped by for some photos

On Sunday we did a bit of shopping at an outlet mall near our hotel. I bought a new pair of running shoes, which I have been needing for way too long. My old pair had no more cushioning and a hole in the right shoe!

Have you been to the Falls lately? Maybe for a little cross-border shopping…

My Trip to St. Lucia

I don't go on vacation very often, but I was lucky enough to go two times at the end of 2011. The first trip was to an all-inclusive resort, Sandals St. Lucia, with my family and some friends. I've been meaning to share some photos for a while now, so here they are!


Alright, to start off, here's the crew. From left to right we have Luke (with his Movember moustache), Jody, Alana (Luke's girlfriend), my mom, Daniel (my brother), me, Katie, my dad, and Michelle (my sister). After looking at this photo, I laughed because it reminds me of old school 90210 with all the bright colours.

I have so many beautiful pictures I wanted to share from St. Lucia, so keep reading after the jump to check out the rest of them!

Happy (Belated) New Year!

I know this is a little late, but I hope you all had a great holiday. Kevin and I went on an 8-day Caribbean cruise for the holiday so I was a little stressed before leaving because I over-committed myself a bit. The vacation was great, but coming back to work was hard. I spent a good 30 minutes lying in bed yesterday morning debating whether to take another day or to just bite the bullet and come in. It was also weird not having Christmas dinner with my family. For the last 27 years I've been with them on Christmas, so it didn't feel too Christmas-y to me while on this huge boat - even though there were Christmas decorations everywhere.

via

I have a bunch of things to blog and have just about caught up on all of the blog posts I missed over the past week and a half. Janice over at Life Begins at Thirty is preggers (congrats!), John and Sherry at Young House Love painted their kitchen cabinets and they look awesome, and I won a Designer Series Programmable Crock-Pot® Slow Cooker. from Britt at My Daily Randomness!! Seriously, that Crock Pot is pimped out.  

via

For our vacation, we drove down to Fort Lauderdale, Florida with one of Kevin's cousins. People thought we were crazy for driving, but we saved a ton of money!! The total cost for the gas and tolls for the drive from Toronto to Fort Lauderdale to Fort Myers and back to Toronto was $320 US. The cheapest direct flight from Toronto to Fort Lauderdale was $800 Cdn each. The conversion between Canadian and American money is pretty much 1 to 1 at the moment. We saved just over $2000 between the three of us (just under $700 per person). Sounds like a win to me!

People asked if I'm glad I drove. Yes, I am. The money I saved more than covered Christmas presents, Kevin's birthday present and drinks/excursions on the cruise. 

The only part that was tough was driving at night. That was brutal. I took the first driving shift out of Toronto and after about 5 hours of driving at night through fat snowflakes, I started to feel like I was on the Starship Enterprise going warp speed. Side note: I may or may not have seen pretty much every episode of The Next Generation - I loved that show as a kid!

via

I had to call it quits and let Kevin drive. When I woke up, the sun was just about coming up (I think we were in Virginia) and the view was gorgeous. It looked a little something like this:

via

On the way home after the cruise, I drove the last 8 hours or so, which ended up being through a gross snow storm in West Virginia (I think) and Pennsylvania.  I wasn't very lucky for my driving portions...

via

I guess the bright side was at least this part of the drive was during the day... Yay to no more warp speed! When I drive at night I open my eyes really wide like it's gonna help me see better lol But all it does is give me dry eyes! Why do I do that? Does anyone else do that? 

How were your holidays? Do anything interesting? Did you go away?

Toronto Zoo

On Saturday, I went to the zoo with Kevin, Michelle and Deric. We bought a few group deal coupons a few weeks ago so the admission price was $10 each instead of $23, plus parking was free! A word to the wise, I'm posting almost entirely pictures of cute animals in this post

My family loves all of the BBC animal documentaries - Planet Earth, Blue Planet, Life of Birds, Life of Mammals, etc - and we've been watching them non-stop over the past month or so. As we were about to enter the zoo, Deric said, "I feel like Planet Earth was the trailer and now we're about to go see the movie!" So true!


This poor guy fell out of the nest as a baby and broke his wing in three places so he can no longer fly :( They made his living area all low and close together so he can jump from branch to branch

Rhino! When this guy turned around and we saw his saggy skinned bum, Kevin said to me, "That's what your bum is gonna look like when you're old" to which I replied, "Joke's on you! My bum already looks like that!"

 This orangutan mother was hiding from her son in this tarp. Very cute. 

We saw lots of animals lounging in the sun...

These animals that were looking right at me! And I just have to say this jaguar is beautiful. Stunning.

Parents and babies...

I grew up loving elephants. They're so majestic! And when you're learning your letters, they always say, "E is for Elephant" and obviously E, being the first letter of my name, is my favourite letter....

 My sis and Deric looking very celebrity-like with those glasses. And me and Kevin next

 I had to chase this peacock down for this shot. I love the colours!

 This cheetah was in the middle of dinner. He's the fastest runner in the world, but over long distances the pronghorn (from the prairies in Canada!!) can run faster. 

As soon as the zoo staffer pulled out the fish to feed the penguins, this seagull swooped down and stole a couple of fish right out of the penguins mouths!

We all loved watching this polar bear. I think he was the most playful animal we saw. He went nuts over that blue ball. 

Group shot! I got to use my tripod for this one :) And we got the tiger in the background!

 I'm smiling in this shot, but I'm thinking, "Please, please, please don't bite my fingers off...."

And finally, Kevin posing strategically so it looks like he's balancing the world on his finger. Yes, we're geeks like that!

Have you been to the zoo lately? I have to say, going in the late fall is the best! We lucked out with some really great weather, not a cloud in the sky. It's less busy when it's cooler and I think it probably smells a lot less when compared to coming in the height of summer when it's 30+ degrees Celsius (86F)!