Little Transporter

While I have been busy with my little project this last week, Ben has been busy with his own. We made a video of Josi when she was about Hyrum's age. I wanted to put it on here, but I haven't found the disc we saved it on. Ben thought it was time to do one with Hyrum. This one didn't turn out as well as we hoped it would. We need to work on the green screen thing. But, here it is anyway. We hope you enjoy!

Monkey See Monkey Do

A few weeks ago I (Ben) was making the ball disappear for Hyrum by putting it behind my back and pretending to throw it. Josi caught on, grabbed the ball, went behind the couch and then came back and asked him, where'd it go?

Memory

It's not too bad and even probably common when you go to another part of your house and forget why you went there, but to open a file on your computer and forget why in the same instance is just plain demoralizing.

Chicago O'hare Airport

The trip home from Toronto we had a 4 hour layover in Chicago. To pass a little time Ben and I walked to another Terminal to see the light tunnel. It was pretty cool. These pictures don't do it justice.

On the way there, we passed a dinosaur and this neat Lego display. The Statue of Liberty is actually made of legos. She is holding a windmill instead of a torch though. The display was basically an add for the wind power energy company.

Canada Day 2- Casa Loma

Sunday was our last day and we had the entire day to do whatever we wanted. Our flight didn't leave until 2:30. Ben's boss, Kenneth, and his wife invited us to go with them to Casa Loma (house on the hill). It is a 98 room mansion that they call a castle. Sir Henry Pellat built it and eventually when bankrupt, before it was even finished. He began the project of building it in 1911. It took 3 years and $3.5 million. The Kiwanis Club owns it now.

This fountain is right out front.

This is the swimming pool in the basement. It didn't get finished. In the basement there was also a space that was supposed to be a bowling alley. It just has a cafe in it now for the tourists.

My favorite room was the conservatory. It was Canadian Thanksgiving and they were setting up for a brunch so we couldn't go inside.

This is Sir Pellat's room.

When the house was built he had top of the line everything, including this shower that sprayed from every direction when most homes barely had running water.

This room belonged to Lady Pellat. She was in a wheelchair so she spent most of her time in her room. Looking at these pictures, Josi said she wanted this room. I have to agree with her. I wouldn't mind have a bedroom like this.The closet was amazing too.

This room is called the Round Room. It is perfectly round and all of the doors and windows were specially made to fit with the curve of the walls. Look at the detail on the ceilings too! This was intended to be a sitting room for when royalty was visiting.

Ben's favorite part were the secret passages.

There was one on each side of this fireplace. One went up to his room on the second floor and the other went down to the wine cellar in the basement.

There was also a passage that went from the basement to under the stables/garage/potting shed. It felt like it was a mile long. You couldn't really see the other building from the main house, so it was far even if it wasn't a mile.

You could go up into the towers of the castle. To get there you climbed 4 sets of stairs, two of which were these spiral stairs. It was tough for me going up and even worse coming down.

And this is a view from the tower.There was only a tiny window to look through. The other tower was closed for repairs, but normally you could go out on top of it.

This is the back patio and a view of the grounds from it. I love the fountain.

The grounds were so beautiful, probably my favorite part of the whole thing. This is a little of the formal part of them.

You'll need to click on the photos to see them better. The one on the left has a a cool gazebo in it.

And this is a path to the informal part of the grounds.



This is a really neat sculpture that was on the grounds.

When we got closer I discovered just why is was so neat. And then I read the plaque.

Toronto Day 2- Royal Ontario Museum

After the CN Tower we walked two miles to the Royal Ontario Museum, the largest museum in Canada. It was really cool. I enjoyed it more than Ben. After our two mile hike to get here our feet were pretty tired so Ben just cruised around each floor and then found a comfy place to sit while I took my time with each exhibit. This was probably my favorite part of the day.

In this "little" 5 floor building with over 100,000 sq. ft. of stuff we visited many countries.

The first floor was dedicated to the Asian countries of China, Japan and Korea. Another entire floor was just the Dinosaur bones and a section full of real animals that were stuffed, one floor was dedicated to the European countries, the 4th floor had all of the South American countries, Africa and everything else. The 5th floor was not yet finished. They actually are in the middle of renovating the whole thing. It is an old building that they have built around to expand the museum. It is actually pretty neat to see. I should have taken a picture of it.

China

A chinese throne. Must have been a pretty big guy, this king.

These statues where all carved from wood. There were at least this many more in other places in this exhibit.

Korea

I thought these boxes were really pretty and the butterflies in the back are cool too. I think they were light stands.

Maybe my Dad can translate for us:)

Japan

Samari armour

Canada

These is some cool Candian Inuit clothes. The one on the left with the decorations is all done in tiny seed beads.

Dinosaurs

Lots of cool Dino bones. The huge one is a sauropod dinosaur called barosaurus. I couldn't get the whole thing in the picture. His tail went on for several more feet. And that T-rex on the left is just a juvenile. To his right is a stegosaurus.

Europe

some cool armour

There were many room set up like this.

This is the train of Marie Antoinette's dress.

EGYPT, Africa

a real mummy!

Greek/Roman

By the time we got to this exhibit we were so ready to be done walking and we still had to walk the two miles back to the hotel. So we really rushed through it.

This is a really old toilet seat. I thought it was funny.

Canada Day 2- The CN Tower

We started our day early, especially since Toronto is 3 hours later than Arizona. We had breakfast at about 7am. Then we went to the CN Tower which is the tallest building in the World at 1815 ft. They kinda cheated a little in my opinion because they just stick a big spire(antenna) on the top to get a few more feet. It isn't actually functional space like a couple of the runner's up are. So the coolest part about this building is that they have an observation area that has a glass floor.

Here is Ben standing on the glass floor

This is the view from 1185 ft in the air.
This is me looking down. I couldn't stand on it. It just freaked me out.

I did eventually let Ben drag me onto the glass floor but I was only able to glance down and

I didn't let go of him.

Here is me and the view of Toronto from up there. It was pretty cool.

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

These next few blogs are catch-up blogs. If I don't do them now, I probably never will. The beginning of the month Ben and I had the opportunity to go to Canada with his work as a special trip to reward all of the managers and their spouses in the company for all of their hard work. Not all of them get to go. It was pretty fun. Karin watched the kids for us and we got to have a grown-up weekend. We got there Thursday afternoon and our baggage got there a couple of hours later. That night we had dinner at the Hockey Hall of Fame. We didn't take any pictures, because neither of us really care for hockey, we just had to be there. The food was pretty good though; we had fajitas. The next day was the big trip day. We all went on a bus trip to a vineyard where they make ice wine and had a really, super delicious lunch. It included Butternut Squash soup, Vodka Smoked Salmon, and a yummy cut of beef that I can't remember the name of. For dessert they had several choices and I chose a pistachio pear torte that was really yummy. Next we went to Niagra Falls another hour away. It was pretty neat. Then we went on "The Maid of the Mist" which is a ferry-like boat that takes you into the middle of the horseshoe falls part of Niagra Falls. It was amazing. It was so powerful the boat had it's engine going full blast just to stay still in the middle. And you are there almost completely surrounded by the falls. They give you these little blue plastic rain ponchos because you get totally drenched by the mist coming off of the falls. I will have to add pictures later because, after I had made sure to empty the storage card in the camera and plugged the battery in to make sure it was fully charged, I left the battery in the charger at the hotel and so I only took a few pictures with my phone camera. I am still trying to figure out how to get the pictures off my phone without paying to text each picture. We got to hang out and walk around the area for a while then got back on the buses and headed to a dinner theatre for dinner. It was called Oh Canada, Eh. It was kinda funny and the food was so, so; it was probably the low point of the day, but still fun.