O Canada!

We went on a whirlwind day trip to Toronto on Saturday as a last hurrah before Brad started his final (and longest) rotation during 3rd year. It was amazing! We crammed so much in and loved every second of it.

We started early (around 6 am), which was brutal for me and my pregnant self, brutal for Brad after staying out with the boys until 2 am at a game night the night before, and brutal for the kids because they normally get up at 7. Oh well, definitely worth it.

Our first stop was the Toronto temple. That sounds like it will be a lot closer to Toronto than it actually is. It was under construction, but still beautiful. And it was tender to me how much the kids loved that part of the day. Recently one of James' favorite songs is "I love to see the temple". He was sad as we left. However, that sadness was soon quelled when we got to the zoo.

The Toronto zoo is amazing! It's supposedly patterned after the San Diego zoo. I didn't notice that many similarities, except that they are both phenomenal. We cruised through the huge zoo. I told Brad I didn't think we could do this zoo in the amount of time that we'd allotted, so he was on a mission to show me it could be done. And thanks to his mad stroller-pushing skills, it was. The highlight of the zoo for James was the hippo. He's been talking about seeing one for weeks. Even though the hippo just slept, we stayed there for a long time. The highlight for the rest of us was the polar bear. He put on such a show. He ate a corn husk, did the backstroke, got out of the water and dove back in, etc. He was fantastic! We also loved the zebras, giraffes, and white lions because those are all things we don't have in our zoo in Rochester. I thought the Canadian animals exhibit was super fun too. I am obsessed with grizzlies. They scare me to death, but I'm so fascinated by them.

After the zoo we went into Toronto proper for crepes. We ate at a fantastic creperie called Crepes-a-go-go. It was very authentic and very delicious! And the staff was SO nice to the kids, despite that it's not really a kid place. From there we headed to the science museum. There was only an hour until closing time so we went straight for the kids' area. Annie and James had a blast. We looked at human skeletons, did mazes, mixed colors, made a hot air balloon float, and played with lots and lots of bubbles. Annie's favorite part was closing time because one of the workers told her the museum had to close sot that he could go home and have his dinner of underpants. She thought this was the greatest joke and has brought it up multiple times since then. Ah the sense of humor of a 4-year old.

We ate dinner in Chinatown. It was very fun to be in Chinatown, and the food was fine, but not quite as good as we were hoping. But what it lacked in quality, it make up in quantity. We ordered 3 dishes for the 4 of us, and one dish would have easily filled all of us up. We drove by the CN tower both going into Chinatown and leaving.

On our way home we stopped at IKEA (we couldn't resist). We spent a little while wandering and daydreaming about what we'll purchase one day soon. Except for two unfortunate trips to the restrooms, it was also very fun. Overall, it was a GREAT day!

(Apparently we stopped taking pictures after the zoo.)