Our NY vacation -- On to Indian Lake, NY

So we headed off from Niagara Falls and went to the Adirondack Mountains...Indian Lake, NY. Here we stayed at family's house. Here are Paul and Shirley, with whom we stayed. On the way to their house though we came across this great pizza place and bar found in Poland, NY. It is such a small town and it was such a great place I wanted to mention it. Here is where you can find out more about it (apparently it is the "nightclub" of Poland, NY). Anyway, I had to put a note about it. Jason's cousin, Sam, works at Adventure Sports as a white water rafting guide. So, he was able to get Jason, John and I on an all day white water rafting trip that starts on the Hudson River and then continues on to Indian River. This was John's first rafting trip, and he did a great job. We weren't sure if we were going so we forgot to bring our camera with us. Here is a picture of some other people on the same river. But, you get the exciting ride we had! It was a great thing to experience with John and we were so proud of him for doing it. He was paddling along with everyone else during the rapids, he loved jumping out and swimming at all the slow parts and he even jumped off a 14 foot rock into the river during one of those parts. He didn't want to at first, but he got over his fear and did it. It was great!

We stayed in Paul and Shirley's extra house out in the woods. The first night Paul was so excited telling them of the bears that were in the woods around the house and he threw out cookies to get the bears to come so the kids could see them in the middle of the night. And then let them know that they had recently found a lot of mice were running around Campo (their camp) at night. So below is a picture of how I slept for the next two nights. John and Jason took the bed in the other room. It was a very bonding experience! 8-)

Love, pure love.

Just to let you know, we never saw mice (although there were lots of traps out) and we never encountered a bear (I think it was because we left the security light on all night). But, at least they felt safe! 8-) I was tired, but they felt loved...that is all that matters, right??? 8-) Here is a picture of the beautiful house, that they have built themselves. It is amazing all the work they have done on it, and it was a blessing for us to be able to stay there and they had breakfast food waiting for us so we didn't have to rush back to their main house (16 miles away). We were very thankful.

They also had raspberry bushes and black berry bushes around their house that we got to pick. Then Shirley made a great berry pie from all of our pickings. Yum!

Here is a closer look at those yummy berries!

This is Peppy, their dog...that Emily LOVED!!! We couldn't get her away from him.

The mountain that Jason use to climb up when he was a kid was Chimney Mountain. So, we took the kids there to climb it too!

The kids did a great job! No complaining...we were amazed!!! John even volunteered to take the bag (that held lunch and water) for me. What a gentleman! If you notice, Karli...yes, Karli, is the one leading the pack. She made sure the whole time that she was the one leading everyone. She would get so frustrated if she couldn't be the on in charge. And boy was she a trooper...she amazed everyone on the trail that day.

Our view from the top! There were lots of little caves and stuff to go through. We didn't even do all the caves Jason did when he was younger, but we will have to make a return trip to finish those.

The view we enjoyed while we at lunch. It was worth the climb!

I love this family! We are truly blessed!

Another great view!

Here are my boys on top of their mountain! Here them roar!!

Now it is on to West Point and NY City!!

Our NY vacation - Our last day in Niagra Falls

So as we were coming home from our Canada we arrived at our hotel to find this praying mantis. John was so excited to find it! We found it in the parking lot and it was about to be stepped on by the people going in and out. So John picked it up and then we placed it in the grass away from the traffic of people. Here is John and his praying mantis: The girls were so proud of their brother for holding it for them to see.

The next day, because of our delay the day before (click here)
and because we had purchased this pass we had to finish what we started and were excited to extend our stay in Niagra Falls for a few extra hours. We got to see the aquarium, ride the tour trolley and see the discovery center. The day before we had seen the IMAX movie.

The girls were having fun taking their own pictures.

I love this picture Jason took of both the American and Canadian falls. It is beautiful!

Watch out John, Jaws is going to get you!

After we saw all the attractions we missed we headed to Indian Lake, where Jason's uncle and aunt live. More about that in my next post. It is beautiful!

Our NY vacation - Canada

After we had gone to Maid of the Midst, we headed back to our hotel and the kids swam in the pool while I downloaded pictures and Grandma took a nap. Then the moment the girls had been waiting for...they were going to go to another country! We had our passports and the birth certificates and headed to our neighbors in the north. And this is what beheld our sight when we got there: The picture can not contain the intense beauty that was before us. It made the kids break out in their new favorite song: Double Rainbow
Us all on Canadian soil. It was fun!
Below is a picture from the restaurant we ate at overlooking the falls, Elements. Note to those going, make sure it is the correct menu on display before officially starting to order. They had the lunch menu out when we walked by, so we thought the prices were OK, especially for the view...apparently they had switched to the dinner menu and we didn't find that out until later. Life lesson learned. But, we enjoyed the food, and it was good food.

It was a fantastic night!

Then we hit the town! It was beautiful! On the way back as we were crossing into the United States the car in front of us got detained. Apparently, the driver had dumped something out of her cup as she was coming up to customs. Her and her daughter were taken out of their car and they were searched as we watched. Thankfully, it only took us two minutes to get through. Note to self: don't dump any liquids out of your car as you are approaching the border patrol, it might be a long night.

Our NY vacation -- Maid of the Mist

We headed to the Maid of the Mist the next morning. I have always wanted to go up next to the falls, so I was quite excited. They gave us some blue ponchos this time (Cave of the Winds gave us yellow ones, and shoes remember!).





Jason was excited to take this picture of me putting mine on while it was really windy. I love you too, honey!

It was a sea of blue wherever you were on the boat. The kids look so adorable in them. I think they bring out the blue in their eyes. *smile* Don't worry, Karli was not under there very long. I added the wrong picture. The right one has her face OUT of the blue suffocating poncho...the way it should be...but that is Karli for you.

For some reason Jason loves to gets shots of us "randomly" pointing to fascinating things on vacation. Here is one of my famous poses.

Great shot of Jason and his mom.

Aren't they beautiful?

After this wonderful tour we were stuck at the bottom of the falls because of a power outage in Niagara Falls. Does that make sense to anyone? Yeah, the most powerful falls in the world and we didn't have power for about and hour and a half. So, we played hot potato with one of the girls socks and entertained everyone around us by this fun game for a while. We kept thinking they should have had stairs to get people out in case of an emergency...we found out as we were getting on the elevator there were stairs...they just didn't think anyone would want to have climbed 400 stairs. Seriously, um yeah all of us...we had a lot more to see and it is ONLY 400 stairs.

Note to Niagara Falls...if power goes out and you can only load about 10 people on an elevator at a time every five minutes, and peoples mother-in-laws are getting low sugar and you really don't mind moving the feet God gave you...offer people IF THEY WANT TO...to use the stairs. I would have been first in line, along with all of my kids! At least we got to play hot potato for an hour and a half in front of the most beautiful water fall in the world. I guess that will do! 8-)

See they don't look like it was torture. 8-)

Our NY vacation--The Beginning

It began at 5:00 in the morning...Jason and I woke up to run the Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon before heading on our vacation. After running (I do have to mention that I only came in 22 minutes after Jason, I was quite excited), we collected our medals and finally found our car (we forgot where we had parked) we headed home, took a shower and met the kids and Grandma at church before we set on the road to Toledo, Ohio. We stayed at the Baymont Hotel, enjoyed a late night swim in the pool and got ready for the rest of vacation.

The next morning we got up and headed to Niagara Falls, NY. During our car ride we enjoyed listening to Arthur's 12 Anniversary CD and learned to tie our shoes, the girls I mean, I already know how (just in case you were wondering). Since we got there in good time we decided to head to the falls after dropping our bags off at the Hotel. We decided to start our adventure so we went to Cave of the Winds (by the way, if you go on this they give you some great souvenir sandals). Here is a picture on the hurricane deck.

We had been looking at an advertisement in the hotel lobby and realized that Canada was having a holiday and were celebrating by having fireworks over Niagara Falls. It was a great evening and the lights on the falls were beautiful! When else do you get to see fireworks over the falls. It was a pure treat!

Our family on the Today Show with Kathie Lee and Hoda

Ok, so while we were on vacation (more blogging about that later) we were at Rockefeller Center...here is our debut on the Today Show. It cracks me up everytime I see it!

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Picture this!

The other day I found this great book at the library. So, on this fine summer morning I decided to do a small lesson on Impressionism. We discussed Camille Pissarro's painting entitled The Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning. As seen here:

After discussing his techniques there was an opportunity and activity to try out one of the techniques he used in some of his paintings. So here are some of our pictures using oil pastels/crayons and watercolors. We had fun. I made the rule that the kids only had one sheet of paper to work with so they had to really focus on what they wanted to do. Here are our "Pissarro" paintings.