Vacation!!!

Be prepared for a lot of pictures. Truth be told, I'm guessing most people aren't interested in reading about another family's vacation. With that theory, I'm giving those who actually want to read about it several options.

1. Just read this post
2. Go to Cookie and look at the "SHORT VERSION" slide shows.
3. Go to Cookie and look at the "LONG VERSION" slide shows and watch videos.

So, to whatever degree you want to read about our vacation, you can. :o) And of course, the pictures of the kids are on the Cookie blog. These are just the generic pictures and ones of me and Brad.

It started off a little rough. There was lots of flooding in the area and roads were closed leading to backed up traffic on the bridges out of Philly. Not the best start.

For what ever reason, there were TONS of fish eggs in the ocean. A bunch of people were saying they were jellyfish, but as time went on and more and more came, it was clear they were not jellyfish.

This is how many there were when we first arrived:

After an hour or so:

And finally, close to the end of our trip:

Keep in mind, this was just a hand swipe through the water, not a net or something. Oh joy! This picture looked a lot better before I uploaded it, but each black spot is a fish egg. CRAZY! (you can click on the picture to see the detail better)
Here are some real jellyfish and maybe a sting ray stinger we found. And crab shells or something. They were huge!
And this is how the beach looked the second day of our vacation. They closed the beach.
And this is how my knee looked the entire time we were in NJ. Some stupid person *ahem me* forgot to pack her anti-inflammatories. Nice. Oh, how it hurt!
We found this adorable monster shirt in Cape May. It could be yours for the small price of, what was that?! $36?! For a shirt?! Are you kidding me?! I really wanted one, but that was crazy!
And finally, the Montreal, Canada pictures.

Here is the Olympic stadium.

And the botanical gardens.

The next pictures are the view from the top of Mont Real.

Here is the building at the overlook.

Here are some more scenery pictures:

Some just for fun pictures of the money. Pretty, huh.

China town:



Other landmarks:

This is St. Joseph's Basilica

And a crazy building in the middle of the street by the Notre Dame

The Montreal Notre Dame

The Biodome

The Notre Dame college built in 1881. HAHA! My house is older! So there! :o)

The Montreal temple.

A money splurge, besides going to the boardwalk on the beach (which was amazing but I didn't get a single picture) was for day passes on the metro. We spent the day riding around town. The kids loved it! But you'll have to check out a slide show to see them on it. :o)

A TOTALLY AWESOME metro stop. :o) I love Monk. And this stop is where we happened to get poutine. YUMMY!!!!

Brad eating his big ol' plate of poutine from the Green Stop restaurant he loved when he was a missionary there.
A neighborhood in the town we were staying in. No, the town didn't all look like this. These houses are AMAZING!




We had lunch with a sweet lady named Maria that Brad knew from his mission. We ate at an Indian restaurant. YUM!! We had beef vindaloo, naan, samosa, chicken tandori, etc. I love Indian food. The kids did pretty good too! Okay, not really, but as good as you can expect. :o)

The really cool water fall at the base of the dripping water glass thing. LOL!
Here is some of the signage:

The stop signs say ARRET.

And here are 3 pictures I photoshopped into 1 of the street lights. The red was a square, the yellow a diamond, and the green a circle. Have you ever tried to get a picture of a yellow light? It is dang hard. Seriously. It has to be timed so perfectly. We gave up and parked and I just stood there like an idiot waiting for the light to change. Crazy Americans. :o)
You can tell from the picture we had lovely gray skies while we were there. There was even a rare tornado. I think we just bring them with us. When we first moved to MI, they had one. Watch out, Philly.

Not that we ate at any of these places, but American food names there were kinda funny.

Nope, not KFC, it is PFK or Poulet Frit Kentucky. haha!

Notice the maple leaf in the big M.
And because I know you are curious, Burger King was still the same. LOL!

Almost home!!!! Well, back in America at least.
This was the line to get into Canada. When we went into Canada, the line was forever long too. There was no line to get into America. hmmmm....

A couple of stories to explain pictures and stuff:

Jamo got stung by a bee on the top of Mont Royal. Poor kid. He kept his tears to a minimum, but they were probably also caused by not getting any ice cream from the vendor at the top.

We took Emmanuelle with us on our subway day. She was amazing and kept the kids in line. She kept asking Brad why our boys didn't talk about normal stuff like games and things and instead talked about nature (tornado facts, hurricane facts, etc). When we got to Green Stop, the place mat was about a girl with cancer. Of course, they had a billion questions about that since Grandma Jones also has cancer.

We had a lovely time on the boardwalk in NJ. The boys went on their first roller coaster ride. Roo came off of it crying and Jamo said that he liked it except for the parts that went down. haha!

We had such an amazing vacation. And it wouldn't have been possible without some amazing friends. A nurse from Brad's work let us stay with her family at their house near the beach. They were incredibly hospitable. We felt like family with them. I just love them to pieces. And Montreal wouldn't have happened without the amazing Carpentier family who let us stay with them for so long. Their kids were helpful, my children had a blast, and they are already begging to go back. What a blessing amazing friends are.

Pretty PA

Okay, I'm not really here, I'm still on vacation. But I'm behind on some posts so I thought I'd just set them to post while I was gone. :o)

Here is a picture of the place I was telling you about with the water going over the road.



Here we have some lovely pictures of Philly. It is beautiful here. Really beautiful. Here are some pictures of a local park that we ate lunch at on Sunday. On the Cookie blog are some pictures of the kids there. Keep in mind, they were taken with my camera phone so most is completely washed out. And there are tons of pictures on there. Sorry.




Also over on Cookie I have pictures of the kids making and eating this:

Bound to happen

When your driveway looks like this

Eventually your car will look like this

Poor Odie! And yes, I still hit my door on the wall every time I get out of the car. Argh.

Conquering Philly traffic

If you guys are sick and tired of my posts on Philly traffic, please don't tell me. I have a feeling I could devote an entire blog to it.


Today, I had the pleasure of meeting one of my blogging buddies. Such a fun experience. It is so much fun to know someone cyber-ly and then finally get to meet them IRL. Bea's hubby is a resident here too, so we had plenty to talk about. :o) My kids couldn't get enough of her brand new baby and Bea was a champ letting my kids hold and pretty much maul her new baby. Okay, that isn't entirely true, my kids did really good with the baby. I was impressed. Roo spent most of the time at the park chasing pigeons. He is convinced he can catch one. Sugar spent her time chasing Roo chasing pigeons. We really had so much fun. And then the boys found out Bea has a game system at her house, which in their minds equals heaven. Anyhoo, back to getting to the park...

Since I'm finally getting the hang of this Philly traffic thing, I decided to be brave and go to her place. If you had asked me a few months ago if I could handle Philly traffic, I would have laughed at you. I seriously thought Philly traffic would have me in tears by now. And while I truthfully don't love it, I'm not as scared of it as I thought I would be. I can't tell you how proud I am of myself. The very fact that I'm still willing to get on the road is a surprise to me.

In that vein, let me tell you of my Philly traffic experiences today. First thing, what is it with the streets not being divided?! I'm driving down a road that could probably fit two or three cars comfortably, and there are no dividing lines. None. Okay, the two directions are divided, but not the lanes. I need to take a picture. My problem arises from the fact that I don't know where to drive! Do I drive on the far right and leave room for a car to pass me on the left? Do I drive on the far left in case someone wants to pass me or turn? Do I drive down the middle? Most everyone I've seen does the straight down the middle thing except for near intersections, which is a problem in itself. You don't want to be behind someone turning left, but if you go to the right side and they go straight, you are in trouble if there is a car parked on the road. Anyway, I'm probably only making sense to people who live in Philly.


The place where Bea lives is narrow. Really narrow. 'Some places I was driving on the sidewalk to avoid hitting cars' narrow. And there is no parking lots, so the streets are crazy. Okay, there are parking lots somewhere, but not that I saw. Here are the pictures I took today (and this was a good street):

Most people put in the rear view mirrors so they don't get clipped.

Yeah, try going down the street with a truck there. It was there for over an hour. Nice.

Views from the park:

The park was beautiful. It was hard to believe we were so close to soooooo much traffic. This is what I drove through today. I'm so proud of myself. See all those little narrow one way streets? Yeah, not fun. And I had to do a couple loops (one on the big one and 2 around the small one) on the traffic circles near the river before I figured out how to get to the bridge. I wasn't even stressed at all. Well, maybe a little since Sugar kept yelling "boo boo" and I kept thinking she was saying "poo poo." :o)

Me being grateful I'm not on the parking lot, I mean I-76 at rush hour.

This drives me nuts. To go home I turn from Wynnefield right onto 54th. And RIGHT THERE is a street light. Can I tell you how close I came to blowing through that light? You turn the corner and immediately have to stop! I was totally not expecting it. Yikes.

Yeah for Philly Monsters!!!
These are my reward for not letting the ivy engulf the rose bushes. Pretty, huh. Well, one is, the other looks like a glorified petunia. Roses are supposed to have rows of petals! The neighbors have some kind of bush or something in their bed. But the ivy grew over it and not it just looks like an ivy bump. When I pulled the ivy off these bushes, it had already weaved its way through most of the stems. I didn't think the bushes were going to make it, but they are starting to bloom now!
Sugar's photography skills are improving! She take pictures of things other than her eye now. :o)

My Saturday

This is how we spent our Saturday.

This was the side that had all the flowers die. So, I was able to fill it with dirt and then transplant the ones that didn't die from the other side.

This side had all the flowers that lived, so I transplanted them to the other side so I could fill it with dirt. This is what it looked like before:

Brad did awesome with the bricks and the siding, huh. Makes a huge difference! These flowers are now on the other side.

And this is the before of the ivy garden

I can't even tell you how many hours and how many bags and how much shoveling and pulling it took to rip out this much ivy. Ugh. And just so I don't forget the experience, I have itchy rashes all over. I've scratched so hard, I'm bruising. And that was from last week's pulling. We pulled it all last week. This week was prettying it up.

We made it a hosta garden. Why? They were free. We got them from the driveway. This is where they used to be.

It looks kinda silly there, huh.

I love it now. I think the rocks are so pretty. I didn't feel like investing in flowers, but the mulch was a must since I don't see myself enjoying weeding here as much as I did in MI. Oh, and the plant in the pot was brought from MI. Jamo got it in school and it has grown from an itty bitty little plant. It has beautiful purple buds. And this is what the neighbor's side looks like. Yes, I will be spending plenty of time keeping the ivy and weeds from coming back over. Joy.

I knew it!

I knew I should keep a camera in my car at all times! Argh! I just went on a spectacular drive. It was so pretty. Perfectly manicured multi-million dollar homes. There was greenry everywhere. It was gorgeous! And I got to drive through a washed out road. I'm not one to drive through flowing water, but since I didn't have my kids with me, I figured I might as well. I wish I could have taken pictures!