Easter in Sudbury

Easter weekend is here and we decided to spend it away from home, away from work and away from other things that keep us busy these days. As the previous post mentioned, we chose to spend the weekend in Sudbury. And since our moving services were no longer required, we set off on our way pretty much right after work on Thursday evening. The 5+ hour trip was uneventful and we arrived at our destination at 11:30pm. We stayed up for a couple of hours before finally turning in to bed.

Friday was a very relaxing day as it pretty much consisted of watching TV and a couple of movies. But things finally picked up on Saturday. Today, Heather and her dad, Jim, took me on a little excursion to Science North. I was very excited since I've never experienced it. After grabbing a quick lunch at Arby's, we went to Science North.

We each bought an admission package which included all the exhibits at the science centre plus a feature at the adjacent IMAX theatre. We also got lucky as there was a display with the as-yet-to-be-lit olympic torch inside and we managed to get a quick picture taken with it. The Science North facility has four floors of very impressive exhibits. The highlights included an entire floor of animals (snakes, frogs, a beaver, a porcupine, and some very exotic insects), a room full of butterflies, a bush plane 4D simulation (I assume the 4th dimension was FUN), and a bed of nails.

After walking through the entire science centre and a quick visit to the gift shop, we went to the IMAX theatre to see Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk, a film about the history and the future of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon region. The scenery of the vastness of the Grand Canyon was breathtaking.

Once we got home, we had supper before settling in for more movies including the new Jim Carrey feature, Yes Man. Funny, funny stuff. It's hard to believe that the weekend is almost over and we will be heading home tomorrow morning. Happy Easter, everyone!

Heather holding a baby chick which later dropped a little surprise

Gift Registries, and Beauty and the Beast

This evening Tom and I went to see a play at Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate (KCI). The play, Beauty and the Beast, was put on by students of MacGregor Public School. Tom's co-worker Janine and her husband sat with us - their daughter Hailey was a member of the play's choir ensemble. With the exception of a few microphone and sound issues - the play was really well done...it sure could give the broadway production a run for its money!

Yesterday Tom and I went to The Bay in Waterloo to start the set up of our Wedding Gift Registry. We had an appointment set for 6pm and made it on time despite the early April snowstorm brewing. After some forms were filled out and rules relayed to us - we were given a scanner and allowed to explore the store. One would think that being given a scanner and the opportunity to scan whatever one's heart desires to be then received in the future as a gift would be a piece of cake. No so in our case. It took Tom and I at least a half hour to scan even one item. There is just so much selection and considering we have already lived together for a year and a half, we found it a bit difficult to make decisions on what we would even want to receive as a gift. We spent about 2 hours at the store and developed a reasonable list of scanned items - but we'll definitely have to make a few more return visits after we have had a chance to review the catalogue that The Bay provided us (so that we don't get too scan-crazy!). We headed home feeling a sense of accomplishment only to realize that we had forgotten our Wedding Gift Registry package and the contract we had signed. Not to worry as we will be able to pick it up on a return visit to the store.

This is a short week at work and we are both very exciting to be making a trip to Sudbury to visit my parents over the long weekend! We will be heading up north early Friday morning as Thursday has been reserved for the purpose of helping Tom's brother and his brother's girlfriend move into their new home on Thursday...I am sure they are very excited to move into their new home and from what we have seen of the outside of the house - it looks great!!!

The wedding gift registry in the process of being updated.

Spring, We Hardly Knew Ye

Winter's back, but hopefully for not too long.

Elmira Maple Syrup Festival

About a year ago, Heather and I attended our first Elmira Maple Syrup Festival. Thanks to great weather, the 2008 version of the festival attracted a record number of people. It would take almost a miracle for this year's version to match that number. But like it did last year, the weather played a major part in this year's festival.

Just as last year, we wanted to go early again this year. However, it was a great surprise when we woke up to temperatures hovering around the freezing mark, a steady stream of blowing, cold, hard snow and fairly high winds. Nevertheless, we were picked up early in the morning by our friend Janine and her daughter Hailey, and we were off to Elmira.

No more than 20 minutes later, we were walking the streets of Elmira. Our first stop was the pancake tent and as opposed to last year when it took us nearly an hour, we were having pancakes within 5 minutes of arriving at the tent. We didn't stay long, though, because we wanted to keep moving plus the winds were so strong at times, we felt the tent move and we didn't want to wait for it to come crashing down.

Once we were done with the pancakes, we did a lap around the vendors and about an hour after arriving we decided to head back. We felt the weather just wasn't going to improve any time soon. After dropping me off at home, everybody else went out on a wedding related shopping trip that, as it turned out, was unsuccessful.

Heather and I, then went to an open house, purely for browsing purposes, picked up new windshield wipers and a DVD and returned home to finish off our day by watching more than a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother.

Heather with a stick of a deep fried Mars bar.