Day 8 of Jada’s stay was a “Hamilton Day” as they are called in our house. Hamilton Days involved going to appointments (in this case chiro and dentist) and running errands (Wal-Mart, groceries, bank, etc). Hamilton Days usually are done while Rob is in school … drop him off at school, run errands, pick him up when he’s done and return home.
On this particular day we skipped the errands part and just went to appointments and inbetween that had some fun seeing and doing some things in Hamilton. There are a few things we miss about living in Hamilton and one of them is the easy access to trails for walking and beautiful scenery and waterfalls that we loved to go out too and were only minutes away. While it’s a city it is still full of these neat little places you can go to get “away from the city”. We would go for walks along the escarpment and feel like we were miles out in nature when truly we were surround by city above and below us. We miss those quick spontaneous “let’s go for a walk” walks!
After we dropped off Rob we were off to the chiropractor and then we had some time to kill until the dentist appointment, so we first went to Sam Lawrence Park, which is on the mountain brow giving a nice view of the city below and usually is really a lovely park with it’s flower beds and green space. We were a bit disappointed this year as the weeds were overgrown and it did not look as well maintained … although there was a crew there that day doing some weeding. But it always provides a good opportunity for photos.
Anytime spent at Sam Lawrence is always a reminder of the first time we went there (see here). While the kids are learning to remember the name of the park, it is mostly still referred to as James’ park in our house
Love this picture!
Jada was having a grumpy moment and refused to smile for the picture. Thankfully she snapped out of it a short time later. Mostly we had a good experience during her week long stay, but there were a few grumpy times that we had to deal with … this was a short one, one of them lasted all day shortly after she came and we were a bit concerned about what we had gotten ourselves into … but it all ended fine!
Our little guy really isn’t so little anymore
It was a warm day, so after our walk the kids were ready for some cool down fun. We headed off to a play park this time for snack time and water fun.
After a visit to the dentist it was time to pick up Rob from school and go have some lunch. We just chose the closest park to the school, which turned out a good pick because it also had a wading pool (free) and Soupies program (a city employee “entertains” the kids with various games and interactive such things to teach kids how to use their leisure time in a positive manor). So Rob and I took our turns snoozing (okay, mostly Rob snoozed) while the kids played with the Soupies group (which was basically our girls plus one other kid a bit later on) until the wading pool reopened after lunch and then they had cool down time in the pool.
The kids were having fun, but it was time to move on if we wanted to spend some time at our next stop, and I knew our girls would want to as our next stop was Albion Falls and they love climbing and “playing” in the waterfalls.
Rob and the girls decided to venture to higher levels of the falls
Since Matthew and I were hanging out at the bottom we decided to go for a walk of our own along the creek … and take some pictures
Matthew felt it was necessary to take some picture of mom as well
Can you tell he’s getting tired of this picture taking thing?? He’s acting like Jack the monkey
After a busy day we decided to relax by the fire in the evening. Once Matthew was tucked nicely in bed the girls and Rob set up the tent and got it organized for a campout. Then we started up a fire and had some relax time with hot chocolate, wiener spiders and marshmallows
Rob has always had a love for laying outside watching the stars and moon and listening to the night sounds. Having spent five years in the city he has an even greater appreciation for this then he used to. While I can appreciate that we can now see the stars more clearly, I’m not one for hanging outdoors at night. Seeing stars in the city is not a regular occurrence as the city lights take away the visibility of most stars, but out in the country it is truly beautiful on a clear night. We lay down for a little bit to do some star gazing, unfortunately it wasn’t a truly clear night, so we couldn’t get the true effect of a country sky.
To end off the night the kids ran off some energy playing with sparklers and we gave them some glow bracelets which they put on their ankles and then ran around in the dark (looked really neat but I couldn’t get a good picture of it)
Lighting sparklers
Jada wanted to take a picture of us … too bad Matthew wasn’t there.
By this time it was getting late and the kids were quite ready for bed … but I’m sure some chattering went on in the tent before they actually went off to sleep.
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