Spring Breakers – Part 1.

Firstly, Happy Easter to all of you reading this post! Hope you are all indulging in just a little chocolate goodness, maybe a chocolate martini cocktail or two (which is what I did). Being away all week, I hadn’t gotten around to getting any eggs for the boys. But I snuck down to the grocery store and got some today, so tomorrow (Easter Monday) we’ll put out some easter treats. They won’t know any different, just have to make sure they don’t get asked by anyone today whether the Easter Bunny came.

How was the Spring Break? Great fun. Cold, but fun. First stop was Pittsburgh which is a very old steel mining city. The original Heinz factory is there. There are lots of museums and activity centers and is really great for kids. Sport is also big in Pittsburgh. There is a big baseball and football stadium side by side and an ice hockey center near where we were staying. We take the kids to the Science Centre, Children’s Museum and Andy Warhol Museum.

Black and yellow are the signature colours for the sport teams and so lots of the city, including three big bridges are painted yellow. The big football stadium is also very yellow. If you’ve seen Dark knight Rises, the big scene in the football stadium with the Gotham rogues was filmed in the Heinz stadium. (Bit of Trivia for you) and hence the Gotham Rogues signature colors. The Steelers are Dylan’s favourite team so he’s pretty excited about seeing the stadium. A rock climb and fondue dinner are also new experiences he can tick off.

Today brings no words, just some good fun on our cold Spring Break. Tomorrow I’ll post some Pics of the second part of our visit.

Flu, Leprechauns and Loch Ness Monsters.

Yesterday was the first day of spring here. Great. The kids and I have had the Flu – a really bad one and all I can say is if you are debating whether to get a Flu shot then my answer without hesitation is DO IT! I was in bed for 5 days straight. There were days when I didn’t even want to get out of bed to drive the boys to school but then that would mean that they’d have to stay at home. That was enough motivation to drag my sorry butt out of bed.

We all had Flu shots before arriving here and there was different medical advice given about whether we should have more shots upon going into winter here. Some advice was that we should be covered going into winter here too. Some were not willing to risk having an opinion at all. They gave them out free at school for Dylan so he had an extra dose and although he came down with this Flu he recovered far quicker than Hamish and I. Over here you can have it in the form of a spray mist that goes up the nose. Far less painful!

Saint Patrick’s Day was not really celebrated in our house. Actually I made a corned beef and cabbage soup if that counts?  The kids don’t even have green shirts to wear to school. Hamish came home with yet another bag of candy that his teacher said was from a leprechaun who had delivered it early as the other kids were getting theirs later in the day. So he has now discovered Skittles, which he calls jelly beans.

Dylan has also discovered the section in his school library that has all the books about mysteries and other weird paranormal phenomena. And so while on my deathbed I’ve had to have in-depth conversations about Bigfoot, UFO’s, Bermuda Triangle, ghosts and ESP. You can imagine the delight of hacking up a lung while explaining that I have no idea what the Loch Ness Monster likes to eat.

Next week is spring break. One week off. If I were 20-something I would be running around Mexico in near nothing in a drunken haze. But being OLD, we do family friendly sensible things like road trips to Pittsburgh, Niagara falls and Toronto.

Today brings no words, still rugged up as Spring has not received the memo yet that it’s supposed to bring warm weather. Hopefully some more tales on the go for you all.