Travelling with kids...

Why do we do it?  Oh, right!  Everybody wants to see the kids!!!  So we headed off to Toronto for two weeks at the beginning of May.  We drove the 4.5 hours to Edmonton and hopped a plane to Toronto.  Got in around 9:30pm EST and made our way to the hotel for the first night.  We got settled and got the kids down and had a restless sleep.  The kids didn't sleep on the 3.5 hour flight and the only slept about 45 minutes in the drive to the airport.  YIKES!  The kids woke up at the crack of dawn the next day - literally the crack of dawn (about 6 sometime EST).  YIKES!  We made it to Phil's sister's place where we set up camp for the next two weeks.  We visited with family, took it easy, went to High Park (such a neat and huge park in the city), went shopping, saw more family, celebrated Taylor's first birthday (that's right, my baby is now a year old), ate lots of really good food, visited with some friends, saw more family, got completely spoiled, had to buy more luggage to bring back all our lute, ate more food and got more spoiled!  We had a pretty good time!  The kids manged to squeeze in naps every day and went to bed at the same time every day.  I went in expecting the worst and actually had a really great time.  We had warm, humid weather the first week we were there and the second week it got cool and it rained.  I was bummed because I really wanted to take Makayla to the zoo and because of the weather we weren't able to go... I guess we'll have to take another trip to go back!!!

We did however get a little frustrated with the people of Toronto.  I had forgotten how busy the city was and just how much crazy traffic there is there.  I also forgot how humid it can get and boy it got hot (and to make matters worse, the guest suite that we stayed in was super hot and they just turned the building AC on this weekend!).  Oh well... can't win them all.

We were able to take the Subway for a few days and Makayla loved it!  She would have rode that all day if she could have.  We also got to take the bus and she loved that too.  The suite we stayed in was in an apartment complex that was located right outside the subway station.  From Phil's sister's place we could watch trains and buses come and go all day and she loved that too.  We were also able to see Lake Ontario and we could see boats - which she loved too!  It was so much fun watching her have such a great time.  She also loved hanging out with the family.  It was so awesome to see her interact with her aunt and uncle, her new baby cousin, her grandma and grandpa and great aunts.  It's so fun to watch your children interacting with family and to see the joy that everyone had - it made me smile.  We don't have the luxury of having family around so these times were really special and it just made me happy to be able to allow both our kids and Phil's family have some time to spend with them.

The trip home was pretty uneventful and the kids were awesome.  This time they both slept a little on the flight and on the drive home - catching up on all the lost sleep.  The hardest part of the plane ride was keeping Taylor still - still for 3.5 hours was not easy.  He's into everything and crawling everywhere so being stuck on a plane on mommy's lap was not his idea of a good time!  But he survived and we didn't cause too much of a ruckus on the airplane.

Now to prepare for our Vancouver trip in August!  Oh and you probably want to see a few photos, so here you go!