It's Beginning to Look Alot Like Christmas...In February

Blizzard like conditions! 

We leave tomorrow morning at 9:30am! 

Ack!

It has been snowing here all day long.  By 1:30 today it was snowing like crazy...sideways crazy.  It's not terribly cold, around 35 Fahrenheit, so definitely not cold.  But the snow pelting your face...not so pleasant.  Just ask Tate...he was not a fan.

Yesterday, Susan let her kids stay home from school and we loaded up the kiddos and headed to Parc Omega in Quebec, a little over an hour away.  It is a reserve of sorts for all types of beautiful animals in their natural habitat...bears, variety of species of foxes, deer, caribou, bison to name a few.  We loaded up with bags and bags of carrots and entered the reserve.  It was gorgeous.  The animals were amazingly beautiful, and it was so much fun to see them putting their whole faces into our car trying to get at the carrots.  Tate was none too enthused about feeding any animal though he was the first to yell out the window "Food!  Animals!! Food!"  Once they ventured near him he couldn't move far enough away from the window insisting "Mommy you feed them for me.  Thank you!"  Alex and Katherine had a blast as did Susan and I.  It was a fantastic experience.

Once home the kiddos played and watched tv...Thomas to be exact.  Alex and Katherine were beyond kind letting Tate watch as much Thomas as he wanted.  I believe that Tate will always want to go on vacation as I'm sure he'll think that means he gets to watch Thomas and Curious George!!! 

Only problem with yesterday is that Tate woke up at 5:18am.  Yep 5:18.  I could not convince him to go back to sleep, so we were downstairs by 6am.  Ugh.  He did fairly well most of the day, but by bedtime he was just exhausted and whined himself to sleep after arguing with me about the amount of toothpaste on his toothbrush.

He has been much more whiny this vacation.  I don't know if it's the cold weather, coming off being sick and still having a cough (minimal though), the food looking so very different (he's balked at the french fries when they were crinkle fries, seasoned fries, didn't want the hot dog as it's slightly different looking than ours, he's turned his nose up at cheese quesadillas which though the tortillas are whole wheat like he's used to...they do look different, and the cheese is different, so eating has been a challenge...he's subsisting on cheerios and milk pretty much), he's been really reticent to talk to Dan as well as Susan which is unlike him.  It takes him a bit to warm up to people, but he's usually good about 2 days in....he did much better in Germany where the people we stayed with didn't even speak his language.  I suppose though they are 'family' and he'd met them before albeit at the tender age of 5 months.  His whininess grates on my nerves, so I'm shorter than usual.  Oh and then there's the fight over getting dressed to go out of the house.  Coat, hat, gloves, boots...all of which he hates apparently.  And it takes forever to get him dressed to go out...sigh. But when we're alone, he's fine for the most part, save the toothpaste meltdowns. He's happy as a clam.

Hmmmm...will have to sort that out!


Anyway, today we hung out at home while Susan took the kids to school, and when she returned Tate and I ventured to The Museum of Science and Technology whereupon we saw some fantastic TRAINS! Tate and I of course spent 99% of our time in the locomotive hall. After 2 hours of looking at trains I was ready to go.

We headed out into the now pelting snow and returned home. It's been 15 years since I've lived in Chicago and driven in snow, much like snow approaching blizzard type blowing. It wasn't so much the amount of snow, but the way it was coming down so very hard for so very long.

Once home, we took a break to watch a Thomas episode, then headed out to pick the kids up from school. We made our way back home slowly and the kids, Susan and I went back outside for one last romp in the snow. I made my last snow angel for a while, and Tate busied himself walking in any and all snow that was pristine...his favorite snow pasttime!

So he's asleep now, and I'm about all packed. I'm crossing my fingers the snow slows down and we make our way back to the fabulous U.S. of A. in the morning!