Monday we did a little shopping for daddylonglegs G. I swear, if I could invent a type of clothing that could fit around that tiny waist and still be appropriate in length, I know I could be a millionaire! Besides that, just weeding through the totally inappropriate CRAP they make for young girls now just blows my gasket. Come on people, do you really wonder what's wrong with our world today when we're dressing 5-10 year olds like girls you see on the street corners? It's really disgusting. I'm probably one of the last of the archaic moms who refuses to let her daughters show their bellies with bathing suits, either. Try finding a one piece that doesn't show more skin than the tankinis these days. It's all very stressful for a mom of four future teen girls. Good grief, but shocker...i'm digressing. I do that a lot. Must be one of my character flaws.
Shopping and the library on Monday. Check.
Tuesday, we headed to the Buffalo Zoo. Bought a family pass, c-h-e-a-p! I think we can get into all kinds of zoos for free, maybe even the Knoxville zoo, too. But I also hear that the zoo in Toronto is amazing and we can get in half price there. Nice. That will be fun.
The zoo was adorable. They have all kinds of animals and it's just small enough, (half if not, 3/4 smaller then the Kville zoo) that we were there for about 3-4 hours, had a picnic lunch and saw everything and had enough time to hit the Dairy Queen for their buy one get a second blizzard for .25. I love deals. We even had a guest join us, the wonderful daughter of the mom who gave us the gift of a date night last Saturday wanted to come, too! Her name is Eileen, and she's just finishing up college and my kids LOVE her! She went with us and was a HUGE help, not to mention, a really great person to listen to crazy ole me talk her head off. I know, you probably find that incredibly shocking that I could talk someone's ear off... She probably wished she hadn't volunteered to go, but I sure was glad she did!
Today, we met up with one of our RELATIVES! Yes you heard me correctly, for the first time in almost 14 years, we actually live about an hour away from someone we're related too. Now, I'll try to explain how we're related, but don't get upset if I lose you, cause I get lost all the time. Her husband is my father in law's cousin. Her husband's mom and Ricky's grandmother were sisters, I believe? Anyway, she's awesome, too. She has four children, all grown, and my kids all call her Grandma Lori. They LOVE HER! Her husband works out of town during the week, so we haven't met Grandpa yet, but if he's anything like Grandma Lori, they'll love him, too!
Anyway, she met up with us in the eastern part of Amherst and drove up to the Niagara Power Vista. This HUMONGOUS (that just looks completely misspelled, oh to have a proofreader for this laborious job of blogging....) power plant that pretty much powers the ENTIRE STATE OF NEW YORK! It was awesome. It's has a free little museum type center that basically shows you how it started and gives you some history and teaches you about electricity. The entire building of the place is unbelievable, what a history lesson to research if you've got time. Some impressive massive amounts of money, (built in the 1960's and cost something like 700 million dollars at the time?????) Anyway, it was very cool and I would love to go into detail on how it came to be and how there are tunnels under the Niagara Falls area from right before the Niagara Falls themselves, that go underground all the way to the power plant to another gargantuan (yea, I made that up) reservoir that actually circulates the water into the electricity twice! It's so massive, I can not even begin to give it the credit it deserves. Google it some time. It's unreal. I'll hopefully post pictures on another post when I get them downloaded. Be patient, grasshopper. One thing at a time. I am the old woman who lived in a shoe, remember?
So we had a picnic lunch, Grandma Lori arranged for a personal classroom demonstration of how electrons travel and the kids got to touch that ball that makes their hair stick up, and we stood on the observation deck out over the massive dams on both sides, Canada and the US, we waved to tiny little dots of people on the Canadian side! How cool is that? Then when we were finished we headed to her house in Youngtown, that is right on Lake Ontario. Very cute little neighborhood that was originally built for the construction workers of the power plant. Really cute, very quiet and soooo peaceful. If it wasn't such a long commute for Ricky, I might definitely have suggested living there, but I'm selfish with my Ricky... :)
So now it's 10:00pm and the kids were all whiney and crabby from sheer exhaustion, but it sounds like the last of the whiners has finally collapsed and is asleep. I'm talking about Ricky on the couch of course!
Tomorrow we have plans to venture to another country and see the falls from the Canadian side. They (you know, THOSE people) say the falls look even better from the Canadian side, so we'll see. It looked pretty darn impressive back in September when I first came up here from the American side, so I can't imagine! But I'll let you know!
Alrite that's it for now. I'll download some pictures soon, but for now, I must get some sleep. Have a very blessed Thursday!
Hi! You're staying busy!! Let's plan a get together soon. The falls from the Canadian side really are better. We've done Maid of the Mist, on the American side, however, and it was awesome!!
ReplyDeleteHi Sarah! Let's do plan a get together! We are planning on doing the Maid of the Mist when it warms up. I couldn't believe the temperature difference by the falls! So cold!!
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