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My vacation to the Great White North... aka Niagara Falls was fun. I stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge again. I liked it although this time there were many many many more kids around. Not bad but it worried me when I was in the tidal pool that they were not in an inner tube and some would just hold things up so that we would have a bottle neck. But it was fun. More on that later.

On Saturday, I helped with some of the setup for the MS Rona Bike tour that was on Sunday. I helped with unloading the rental truck with supplies and then helped my friend with putting up the directional signage on section 1 of the route. I think I did ok but was vary frustrated when I would screw up the ties when putting up a sign on a big metal pole. I was fine connecting two ties together but 3 or more and I was useless. I felt bad because my friend had to keep getting out of the truck at those spots to help me and he was still in pain from spraining his ankle the week before. But I am glad I could help.

I took Sunday to rest and tour around. I drove down to Fort Erie to drive around the area and to see Lake Erie. I ended up driving around a bit since I tried to do it all without opening my map but I got to see some really nice farms. (For those who don't know me well, I like farms and the open space and seeing the animals. I did like seeing the vineyards but there's nothing like regular crops and farm animals for me.)

My friend stayed with me on Friday night and Sunday night. He stayed at Brock University on Saturday night with the rest of the volunteers and some of the bike riders. Sunday night he crashed so I just had a leisure evening with watching tv and reading my book. Monday, we went to Ridgeway for breakfast, can't wait for the road construction to be done! We stopped at the Laura Secord house for a tour. He has wanted to do it and I wanted to see what a colonial house in the Niagara region looked like during the War of 1812. It's kind of weird in a way with so much War of 1812 stuff in the area, especially being that I come from "the other side". I had more to say but I decided to delete it in favor of being neutral. I also got to see a sampler of the time. None of the artifacts inside the house were of the Secord family but they had many original items of that time period to recreate what it may have been like it the house. They have found some artifacts outside the house that they have on display at the gift shop during some excavation of the land but it's hard to tell if they were of the Secord family or another owner of the land. There were no arrow heads though.

When we got back to the hotel, we went to the water park at the hotel. I went on almost all the big slides. There was one I skipped because it looked too dark. I was really impressed that I did as much as I did. I guess having the BP down and a little less weight helped out this time. Hopefully by the next time I go again I will have lost more weight! We laughed a lot with the rides especially the double tube rides. Neither of us knew what to expect. It was great. I am impressed with being daring enough to do them. I normally wouldn't do them on my own. It was a bit of an adrenaline rush for me. He left Monday evening at the end of rush hour and I took it easy Monday night as well but I did go to the bedtime story to see how she told the story and keep the kids attention. The stories were ok but I got great ideas for when I do story time. Hopefully I remember them when the time comes up.

Tuesday, I went for a massage (my back was not a happy camper so it really needed it) and then packed up to check out. The rest of the time I spent driving around and taking pictures. It was the best weather day of all the days I was there. It was sunny and warm with a hint of humidity but definitely not unbearable like we have had in Boston most of the summer. I have uploaded the pictures to my computer but I need to go through them to decide what I want to add to my webshots account and what I might put on my facebook account. Labeling might also be a good thing too while it is still fresh in my head although I know where I took the pictures. I am getting a bit better with the camera. I still had a few blurry pictures but that was mostly because it was really windy on Lake Ontario when I was at Niagara on the Lake trying to take more pictures of Toronto (at a distance) and pictures of Fort George with sun.

Oh, something I found funny was that the car I rented had a Rhode Island licence plate. I figured I'd get one from New York but instead I get one from New England...lol. This car was a Nissan Versa. I liked how it drove and the roominess. I finally figured out where the button for the flashers was located on my way back over the border. It wasn't in an obvious place. Also, there wasn't a truck opening button inside the car. If it was there, I never found it and neither did the lady at the Hertz return area. It was a great car otherwise and no smell like the last car I rented in Buffalo. I was all prepared with my Yankee Candle car freshner but instead I kept it in my bag and that smelled really nice the entire time. But since it's a Nissan and not a North American made car, it's not on my list of potential cars if/when I need to replace my Saturn. I probably will put it on my second list if I don't find anything domestic to buy that I like. I am picky about how it looks, how it drives and gas mileage. But that is a story for another day.

I didn't do any stitching when I was away even though I had planned on stitching on Halloween Fairy. It will stay in my current projects bag since it will give me almost 2 months to try to work on her more. I did finish a book so I can bring it back to work on Friday.

Finally, I wanted to mention my first week as a Children's Librarian. I really love it there. It was busy but I feel like this is where I belong. I don't hate going to work in the morning. I think the little extra sleep in the morning helps out since we open at 10 and not 9 like the rest of the library. I can't wait until the kids go back to school so we can put the room back into some order. The summer was really hard for the librarians with only the two of them. Summer reading list books are top requests as well as visits from camps and other summer groups. Then we have the usual patrons, especially the nannies. But I did enjoy watching families coming to the children's room and look at books together, especially seeing the dads with their kids. I got to close the room up on Wednesday. I felt good to feel responsible enough to do it. I think it helps that I already worked at the library so I know many of the procedures and what not. My goal is to get the children's room a bit more organized and get the technology upgraded as much as I can with what the library has available. The big part is getting more memory for the computers. I am glad I can help out with fixing the computers as needed so they aren't out of service if they don't need to be. Granted some computers will need to be replaced in time but it's weird. They are new computers. They don't think they are but I know they are. What we had in Soc Sci was really old although we did get some new computers in before I left.

Well that's it for another long post. I am hoping to maybe post a bit more as time goes on so that the posts won't be as long. More to talk about but not for today. I need to catch up on my blog reading. I have so many blog posts I didn't get to read before I went away and now I've got even more. No worries though. I will get caught up and hopefully will post a comment or two. Otherwise, I will probably use the "like" comment option on Google Reader instead of sending full comments, at least until next week.

Have a great day everyone!