Our “First” Family Vacation!

I guess technically you could say that we’ve been on a few family vacations before. We’ve visited friends in Hamilton before, visited Jon and Kate in Guelph, Camp Manitou, and we took Joel to Montreal when he was 9 months old. But this is the first time the trip was mostly about Joel, planned around what Joel would enjoy.

It was a seriously jam packed week and this post is so long it will be a 3 part series!

DAY 1 - Tuesday

We left the house at 9am on Tuesday right on schedule. Unfortunately after about 5 minutes we heard Owen have a giant poop! So we had a pit-stop at Tim Hortons for a diaper change before we even got out of Sudbury! We stopped in Nobel so I could feed Owen and made it to Barrie by noon. Funny story, at lunch I bumped into a friend of my friend Jen’s (also named Jen) who I don’t know, but she reads my blog (through Jen’s blog). She recognized Joel and so she said hi! So hi Jen!

The car ride there

Joel had an allergist appointment at 2pm (more on that in another post). We were out of there by 3:30pm, and Joel had a 15 minute nap on the way to Andrew and Cindy’s. We had a really nice visit with Andrew and Cindy that afternoon and evening. They made us some delicious homemade pizza and salad and they made Joel a birthday cake! Joel was thrilled to open another Thomas themed present. A stuffed Thomas toy that he has slept with every night since (plus 2 books)!

Happy Birthday Joel!

Hanging out on Andrew and Cindy's deck

DAY 2 - Wednesday

Wednesday morning we got up and headed to the zoo! Andrew had to work, but Cindy was off so she came with us. The day was not the greatest weather wise. We dressed as though we were going to get poured on the whole time. The weather really held out quite well for us though! It was overcast and drizzled a little bit, but it never poured and we were able to take cover under trees to not get wet when it rained a few times. I’d definitely recommend the Elmvale Jungle Zoo to anyone who has small kids. It’s perfect to see in about 2 hours. There are lions, tigers, lemurs, monkeys, deer, goats, flamingos, jaguars, giraffes, ostriches, ponies, etc. And the animals are very close so you can see them. A lot of the animals you can feed and the lemurs even roam outside their cages and eat out of your hand! Highlights were probably the giraffes, lemurs, feeding the goats and the monkey with a teeny tiny baby!

Cindy and Joel ready to see the animals!

Looking at the monkeys

Feeding the lemurs

I can't remember what these things are called, but they were sitting in order of size!

Feeding the other lemurs

A scary looking lemur!

A lion

A girrafe

Feeding the giraffes

Again with the giraffes

Owen enjoyed the zoo too!

2 sleeping boys!

We had Tim Hortons for lunch and then we were off to Burlington/Hamilton. We got there around 3pm. I figured Joel would have a good nap in the car, but he only fell asleep about 15 minutes before we got there. So this was day 2 with only a 15 minute nap! We went straight to Ikea. It was fairly successful, except that I was super disappointed that they were all sold out of these and these. Are those not the cutest things you have ever seen!? We picked up some chicken for supper and headed to check into our hotel in Burlington.

Joel in the bunk beds at Ikea!

I will make a long story short when it comes to the hotel by saying we did not have the best experience at the Best Western Burlington. They gave us the wrong room (we had booked a 2 room suite). They wouldn’t give us the room without charging us more than we had booked for so I fought with the manager for a half an hour while Joel, Trevor and Owen waited, our food got cold and everyone got impatient. The issue of what we were paying didn’t really get sorted out at that point, but we needed a room to eat and so that Joel could get to bed and so we just took a room and did what we needed to do. This was just the start of the many things that made this hotel one of the worst we have stayed at. I do not recommend it!

Anyways since the hotel had no in room movies (even though they advertise they do on their website) I ran out to Blockbuster and while Joel slept, Trev and I watched a movie.

To be continued . . . next day – Marineland!