lemonade

 46 days until the wedding.  Crazy!  Things are coming along, plans are being finalized.  Exciting!!

Meanwhile summer fun continues.  Today Arden came over, the girls bathed the dog, played with AG dolls and had a lemonade stand where they made some money!

Ethan and Hannah are still in Ohio.  It is very strange having them gone.  It's been too long. 

Traveling home

We are in Albany for the night. Upstate NY is beautiful I want to go up there with all the kids and spend a week! It's so gorgeous!

On our drive we face timed Penny! I could eat her up! 

We had a great visit. I was very sad to say goodbye. 

Montreal Day 3

Every day that we have been here Grandma has had a little surprise ready for Grace.  Today's surprise was a bottle of foamy soap.  She enjoyed showering with it this morning.

Our big activity for the day was to go to Cabane de Sucre, the sugar shack.  It was really cute.  They have a maple farm and harvest sap to make syrup with.  They do tours and serve a traditional Quebecois meal.  It was very interesting to learn about how they get the syrup and the food was plentiful and tasty.  There were two tour buses there as well as a couple of other families. It was a lot of fun getting to know some of the other guests.  One family that we talked to quite a lot was real friendly.  The dad is Irish, the mom Catalone and they live in Switzerland where the children attend an international school.    They had live music at the dinner and it was very good.  At one point he sang a German ballad and invited all the Germans in the room to sing the chorus, which they did with enthusiasm.  Grace got to participate in a multi- national spoon band :)

The big bottles on the table are maple syrup. Yum-yum!

On the way home we stopped at a very fun farmers market.  I wanted to get some syrup for our doggie sitters and we bought some delightful fruits and walked around looking at all the flowers and food.  So fun!

Later in the afternoon we left Grandma and Grace (G2) to play phase 10 and we walked the streets, looked at the shops, people watched, and bought pastries.

Me and Papa with the important job of picking dessert!

Cute fountain in a park around the corner from Mom and Dad's apartment.  I felt like I should be singing "how will she know you love her??"

Montreal Day 2

We got up early and headed over to the botanical gardens.  Mom thought that if you got there before 9 it was free.  It was not.  That's okay.  We walked around a bit on the outside of it and had a wonderful time looking at the fountains.  They also had a fun "sense" garden for the vision impaired where you could smell and touch the different plants.  It was a lot of fun actually to smell them.  One was a pineapple something that really smelled like pineapple!

After we were done we went to the biodome.  That was really cool.  In the rain forest section you walked in and it's like a forest, no cages, animals about.  We spotted a lemur, a poison dart frog, a monkey, a tapir, lots of birds and a crocodile and turtles and fun stuff!  We enjoyed all the ecosystems and animals.

We also went to the planetarium.  It was terrific.  They had a special telescope with a filter that let us look at the sun.  That was pretty amazing.  I had never done that before.  They also had two wonderful shows.  One had tons of bean bags on the floor and it was a huge imax that made you feel like you were moving through space.  We all were super impressed and liked it best.  Grace was afraid, she thought we would fall off :)

In the evening a young woman from the singles ward volunteered to baby sit Grace so she came to the apartment and we went to the temple.  It was very pretty.  We had a wonderful time.  I wish I could write, but will have to be satisfied with saying it was a special evening.   The temple is small but very pretty and since we arrived a little early we got to wander around a little and see the grounds.

We got home late and then we had a late late night snack.  Pate and baguettes and brie and salami and other tasty morsels.  Very European.

Montreal Day 1

It's so fun to be here with mom and dad.  We are staying at their cute little missionary apartment. It's tiny but cute.  I can't wait until we get to serve!

We went to the mission home this morning and saw where they work and met some of the missionaries they work with.  Then we were off to do some sight seeing.

One really fun thing we did was take a carriage ride through old town Montreal.  It's beautiful and feels very European to  me.  It's funny seeing all the signs in French and hearing people talk in French.  Most people have been really good about switching to English when I talk to them.  We ate "beaver tail", queue de castor, and it was quite yummy!

Grace sat in the front with the driver, who was so nice and funny.  He let her have a little turn at the reins, which she loved.

We visited a beautiful chateau, the home of the first Mayor of Montreal.

Loved this chandelier made out of antlers and painted red at the cute little patisseire we stopped at.  I would totally love that in my house.

We walked around and looked at some really cute shops, and some really quirky ones.  If you ever wondered where to buy a stuffed polar bear, genuine.  It's in Canada.  A grizzly bear rug will set you back 12,000 dollars (Canadian) but a cougar rug is only 6000 (if you are on a budget) .  We saw lots of really amazing street performers, and subway performers and jazz festival performers.  It was just really a lot of fun.

In the evening we went swimming at Grandma's pool and ate lasagna and plopped into bed.  It was a good first day!

On the road

Spent a happy day driving through some beautiful country to visit Papa and Grandma! Grace was an excellent traveller. Now we will spend a traditional July 4th in Canada!!

Mother of the bride dress

Jenna has been working so hard making beautiful wedding plans. It's often very hard living so far away from my family. I can't wait to see everyone in August and to help with the last week of prep!!

Which reminds me dear husband plane tickets need to be purchased before they go up in price.

I really like the top dress but its a little more $ than the others and maybe too much?