Christmas 2008 Cookies

The count for the Christmas 2008 cookies is 1,019. Margie spent the last 2 days making, baking, and decorating our Christmas cookies! Way to go Margie!!!

Bike ride on Labor Day

I have to brag! And I have to brag now that my legs still hurt going down and up the stairs!

We just completed – the entire family – ~12 miles of bike ride.
We took the new bike path from our home, across Northern Lights and in front of the Epic farm (yes, the bull was out) down to the Military Ridge trail; took a left turn towards Verona downtown and made it to McDonalds were we had lunch. Then we started heading back. We had one more stop at the Chocolate Shop where everyone was rewarded with ice cream and then we continued towards home. When we reached the right turn after the tunnel that would bring us up the hill at the Epic farm, we continued for ~2 more miles west till we hit PD. Then, we turned right back, followed the trail to the Epic farm hill, up the hill – not a small feat I tell you – and back home.

Sophia was behind Margie in the extension bike and Maria behind me in the Burley; Maria fell asleep a little after the stop at the Chocolate Shop! Before that she was all fun and singing, and talking to me (a change from the last time I had Sophia in there a couple of years back where she was just ordering me to go faster and faster J). We started at around 11am and we just came back… I am writing this email while the memories are still vivid and a lot of things hurt… really hurt… but it was fun! We plan to do it again!

Photos from the Canada trip have been uploaded...

It was yesterday that I finished uploading all the pictures from the Canada trip to Picasa online.
Many of these pictures were taken by Costas. He did an excellent job with his small camera.
Here are the albums in chronological order:

Canada - Lansing to Toronto

Canada - Niagara Falls

Canada - Casa Loma

Canada - Royal Ontario Museum

Canada - Toronto to Montreal

Canada - Olympic Park and Biodome

Canada - Old Montreal

Canada - Montreal to Ottawa

Canada - Ottawa - Parliament Hill

Canada - Ottawa - Science and Technology Museum

Canada - Ottawa to Toronto

Canada - Toronto Zoo

Canada - Toronto - CN Tower

Canada - Toronto to Lansing

Day 15 - Lansing, MI to Verona, WI

We are back at home!

We started the longest, but last, leg of our trip early this morning. We were on the road at 9am EDT. We stopped for iced coffee at Burger King this time and I have to admit that Margie was right! Their iced coffee is the best. Better than McDonalds and even better than Tim Horton's that was up to this point my favorite - Starbucks is in a category of their own; I am not going to compare their coffee with fast food chains, it will not be fair...

We reached Chicago at around 11:30am CDT and literally zoomed through it at no less than 50 mph. We were all very impressed as this is the fastest that we have traveled trough Chicago.

We were actually caught a bit by surprise as we were planning to stop before going through Chicago, grab lunch, and have the kids watching movies as we were driving through Chicago. It ended up that we did not need to worry about delays. We stopped at the Oasis outside Chicago and got lunch to go.

We were at home at 2:30pm. Margie started laundry right away and after a couple of loads were done we drove back to the airport to return the rental car. As I turned it in, the receipt registered that we drove 2,567 miles. Margie drove all of them - I just drove the car to return it to the airport.

We are all tired, but happy to be home. I am still off for a couple of weeks and looking forward to spending some time with our family at home and catch up on some house projects that have been postponed for ever.

And this concludes the Tsiolis's family Canada vacation 2008!

Day 14 - Toronto to Lansing, MI

Today we went on leg two out of three of our trip back home; around 300 miles from Toronto to Lansing, MI.

We left the hotel in Toronto around 11am. We stopped twice, once for diapers and once for a large chocolate brownie iced coffee from Tim Horton's.

We continued till around 2pm where we stopped before we crossed the border for lunch; Burger King this time...

This random photo is the place where we hit 2,000 miles in our trip; it is just before Sarnia, in the Canadian side, a few miles before we cross the border with the US.

The crossing was fast and uneventful; many trucks with a long line, but the car/RV lines moved fast without any backups. The US guard asked about our Florida plates and when we told him that the car was a rental and we were from Verona, WI, he asked about the floods in our area. We responded and realized how lucky we have been to have floods and damages to our north, to our west, to our south, to our east, but nothing too bad in our area.

We were all sure happy to be back in the states. Distance was measured once more in miles and not in these "random units of measurement" as Margie was calling kilometers.

We hot Flint and then very soon we were in Lansing. We checked in our hotel close to 5pm and after a short visit to a US Wal-Mart for milk and bread (with reasonable prices, still more expensive than WI, but quite reasonable) we had dinner and visited the pool. Kids have been asking about the pool for a couple of days now. This hotel (the same as the one we stopped on our way to Canada) had the coldest pool of all. Even though we were alone there again, we did not stay longer than 15 minutes - this is how cold it was.

We are all in our room now, kids are watching Mulan 2 and we plan for an early turn in so that we can hit the road early tomorrow morning. God willing we will sleep in our beds tomorrow night.

Day 13 - Back to Toronto

Day 13 today and what a day it was!

We started relatively early and were at the Toronto Zoo by 10:30am. The zoo is great. A lot of exhibits to see, many animals and species I have not seen before and the kid's attention was held well. Maria was her usual explorer following her own will and having endless energy and ideas!

Margie had the kids in their "Thing 1", "Thing 2", and "Thing 3" red t-shirts. Besides being very cute, it is easy to spot the kids in them in a crowd and God-forbid, if we get separated, we can describe the missing child very well: the kid in the red "Thing 2" t-shirt. We got a lot of compliments on the t-shirts - people just walking by and realizing what the kids were wearing were reacting in a very friendly and amused way - and a couple of parents just stopped us and asked where we got them! Well, we show them in the Universal shop in the Orlando Florida Airport, but yours truly being afraid that we were late for our flight that day did not get them then. It took Margie to look at the Universal Studios Web site and notice a line at the bottom of the page saying that you can order merchandise over the phone; she called and had the t-shirts delivered at our house for our trip!

We finished the day in the zoo by petting the sting-rays. We have done this before in a couple of places - Sea World in Orlando, and recently during a visit to the Milwaukee zoo - but it was a lot easier to pet them in the Toronto Zoo. They were just coming up to you as if they liked to be petted. Well, the personnel there told us that they indeed seem to enjoy the contact and seek it.

It was 4:30pm when we were eventually all beat by the heat and exhaustion that we decided to leave. I omitted to say that this was maybe the warmest day we have so far experienced in Canada - the temperature was close to 29 Celsius, thus 84.2 Fahrenheit today.

We did not encounter the traffic we saw yesterday as we came to Toronto from Ottawa. We managed to be in our hotel before 5:10pm and both adults had the chance for a quick shower. We had more plans for today. I had reserved over the internet about a week ago dinner for all of us at the 360 restaurant on the top of Toronto's CN tower.

The reservations were at 6:45pm and we left the hotel at 6:00pm. Delilah gave us once more great directions and we made it to our destination, parked and checked in by 7pm. Our table was ready and sat down as soon we made it to the top of the CN tower.

The experience was very similar to what we had seen at the Seattle Needle. The kids had never seen something like this before and they had fun. The restaurant rotates slowly (a full rotation in 71 minutes) and you get to see the entire city-scape this way.

The dinner was very good, we went down to the observation floor - the view was better from the restaurant - and then the glass floor. This was an interesting experience. They have several glass panels - OK, OK, this is not regular glass that we are talking about - that you could stand on and see all the way to the bottom of the tower. Margie did not come close. The kids had fun for a few minutes, but we cut it short to stop terrorizing our unfortunate mother, dedicated driver, trip organizer, etc, etc.

Unfortunately, today being the 13th day of the trip indeed, we had our first little scare. When we left the parking garage, the gas empty light of the van turned on. I had hoped to find a gas station before that, but I was wrong. By that time it was 9:30pm and it was dark. We asked Delilah for help, but she sent us to a couple of convenience stores first that we found, but they did not have any gas... We started to feel a little uncomfortable in a city we did not know having a van full of kids and stalled in the middle of a street - we exited the expressway promptly to not have to deal with a stalled car in the middle of the expressway at least!

Eventually, we targeted an Esso station (Mobil in canadian :-)) that we found... What a relief! We have never been happier to pay 134.9 cents a liter for gas!

The rest is history. We followed Delilah back to the hotel - it was 10:00pm by then - and the kids fell asleep almost instantly...

Tomorrow, we hit the road for home!

Day 12 - Ottawa to Toronto

Today we started the first of three long legs of the return trip - Ottawa to Toronto, Toronto to Lansing, MI, and finally Lansing to Madison. Today's leg was around 300 miles.

We said goodbye to Ottawa - Margie's and my favorite city so far - and after replenishing our water and gas supplies we hit the road around 10:30am.

The weather was nice and made good progress shaving time off Delilah's estimated arrival time to Toronto. I have not driven the rental car once so far... Margie has been the sole driver on this trip!

We passed, in the order listed, Athens, Spencerville, and Shannonville on the way to Toronto. We also saw a coyote crossing the road in front of us and race the train for a few miles - the train won this one...

We stopped for lunch at a Flying-J's station with their restaurant called Country Market. Don't ever eat there! We did and that's why we warn you. We had the buffet and let the children ran a bit - literally ran around - on the grassy area outside the restaurant to burn some energy. When we got back into the car, it was time for movies. Sophia and Maria were watching Atlantis - Sophia's favorite movie of the time - and Costas saw Cars.

We made another brief stop right before Shannonville at the local McDonalds for some coffee for the dedicated driver. We had to use Delilah to find a McDonalds at this stretch of the road as we managed to drive several miles without seeing one! Strange!

We hit Toronto around 4:30pm, right on traffic time. We did not do too bad and we were at the hotel around 5:15pm. The room is bigger than before and everyone is resting now getting ready for tomorrow's big day at the zoo.

Day 11 - Ottawa Day 2

Today we were up and out of the hotel relatively early again; we managed to leave before 10am. First stop was the Ottawa Science and Technology Museum. The museum was very close to our hotel. It is huge! We found it very interesting that they had 3-4 parking spots for expecting mothers.

It seems that the schools in Canada have not stopped for summer vacation yet and that this is their last week. We have been seeing a lot of school groups visiting the sites we have been also visiting for the last couple of weeks. The Science and Technology Museum was not an exception. However, the place is so vast that with at least two big groups in there at the same time we were visiting, the place still looked empty.

It was also one of the few museums that I have visited where almost everything displayed had a "hands-on" experience. And they had a lot show. From canoes to steam locomotives and ships, to space exploration and neutron studies. We spent more than two hours in the museum and we left with the feeling that we missed a few exhibits.

For lunch we went to a fish-and-chips place that Margie found. It happened to be on York Street that resembled a lot a European market street, full of outside merchants and action and the street itself ended at a large number of stairs bringing us back up to the Parliament Hill.

After lunch we decided to leave the car parked where we had it and walk to Sparks Street, a pedestrian street, parallel to Wellington Street that goes right in front of the Parliament buildings. We had lunch on Sparks St. yesterday, but we did not get the chance to visit the Currency Museum of the Bank of Canada, located on the same street. We walked there and spent 30-40 minutes in the museum seeing currencies across time and the globe. Kids seemed to be more interested in the earlier types of currency (shells, stones, furs, etc.) than the current money...

It was almost 4:30pm by the time we were done with the museum and some shopping on Sparks St. Maria fell asleep in my arms on the way to the car. We made it back to the hotel a bit after 5pm. We rested a bit, had dinner and visited the pool one more time. Speaking of dinner, yesterday we stopped at a local grocery store to buy some milk. After $8.88 I walked out of the store with half a gallon of skim milk and half a gallon of 2%. We have it great in the states...

Day 10 - Ottawa Day 1

We spent the day in Canada's capital - Ottawa. The plan was to visit Parliament Hill, the area in town where, as the name says, the Canada Parliament building can be found, along with other attractions of the city.

According to our AAA guide from late June to late August daily, at 10am, you can watch the change of the guards in front of the Parliament. It is not easy to get three kids up and to any destination by 10am in the morning, but Margie had us all up, fed, and at the front lawn of the Parliament 5 minutes to 10. Unfortunately, after asking, we found out that the changing of the guards does not start till next week! Oh well... we got a good start of the day. Weather was wonderful and it turned out that Parliament Hill was only 10 minutes drive from our hotel. Parking was not too hard to find either.

The Parliament building was spectacular. From the outside views, the surrounding area, the Peace Tower, everything was impressive - and for the first time in our trip, free. The grounds were covered with statues related to persons and events of the Canada history. The views from the top of the hill were spectacular.

We even saw the Parliament Hill cats; a special shelter built for stray cats that live in the area; all such cats have been spayed and vaccinated properly! I also saw for the first time black squirrels in the area.

We visited the inside of the Parliament as well; specifically the Peace Tower, which is the main tower in the middle of the Parliament building. I was able to take some great pictures of the vicinity from the top of it.

After that, we stooped for lunch at a nearby restaurant - Yesterday's was its name - and exchanged some more currency; hopefully enough to finish the trip. The exchange rate today was 0.9955 Canadian dollars for 1 US dollar.

We then walked at the bottom of the hill, crossed the Rideau Canal on the Ottawa river and climbed the hill on the opposite site of the Parliament. Once more, we were rewarded with spectacular views of the area.

We finished our tour for the day with the visit to the war memorial (monument of the unknown soldier) just across the street of the Parliament.

We plan to return tomorrow for more sight-seeing in the same area of the city.

The day ended with a run to a local store (Lobe's) for milk, dinner at the hotel, and a long visit to the 4th floor pool. We were alone in the pool and it was the warmest pool of all the pools we have visited so far. Kids and adults enjoyed it a lot and managed to stay for almost an hour. Kids watched the movie Atlantis and are now sound asleep. We are all looking forward to the second day in Ottawa. I have to admit though, that home also sounds very good right now...

Day 9 - Montreal to Ottawa

Today we traveled from Montreal to Ottawa. We left the hotel around 11am for the relatively short trip - only 109 miles this time. Check in time was at 3pm so we tried to make a couple of small stops so that we won't arrive very early.

The trip was the most scenic of all so far. The day was rainy but the drive was still beautiful. Everything around us was green. There were tall evergreens in both sides of the road and we saw for the first time moose crossing warning signs.

We made two stops - Dunkin' Donuts and Wendy's for lunch. We made it to the hotel around 2pm.

The hotel this time is closer to the downtown than Toronto and Montreal. It is very nice and the room is huge compared to the other two we have been in - the Toronto room was the smallest, the Montreal room was bigger, and this one is a treat.

By 6pm the clouds cleared out and a nice sun came up. The forecast for tomorrow is very nice. The plan is to drive close to the center of the city where the Parliament - Ottawa is the capital of Canada - and other sights we plan to visit are.

We ordered dinner from the hotel and the donuts were a nice touch after dinner. We are all resting now for the walk we plan to take tomorrow.

Day 8 - Montreal Day 3

Today we really took it easy. Both adults and kids needed a break. We woke up late and apart from a run to a nearby Wal-Mart, we stayed in. We went to Wal-Mart to replenish our water supply and get a new book for Margie. She finished "The Name of the Wind" which she enjoyed a lot, however it is part of a trilogy with the next book not appearing in print before April of 2009! I am doing well with the 2nd book in my set of four; I have finished "River God" and now I am reading "The Seventh Scroll" (see more here http://www.wilbursmithbooks.com.)

Today we also visited the pool for almost an hour. Kids had a lot of fun. Pizza Hut was served for dinner. We went out for the first time without any help from Delilah (yes, we know have an official name for the Garmin GPS unit) and picked up our order from the local Pizza Hut. It is very interesting the different varieties of pizza Hut that you can find here. Greek and Mediterranean seem to be two popular styles that we would have loved to try, but, to please the kids we stayed with the safe bet - half cheese and half black olives and bacon. The taste of the pizza and the cheese is slightly different and pleasantly better, we both agreed, than what we get in WI...

We are almost packed now for tomorrow trip to Ottawa; this should be a short one, probably just a bit more than two hours.

Day 7 - Montreal Day 2

Today was great! We did what I think is actual sight-seeing. We got in the van, set as destination the Basilica de Notre-Dame and in 15 minutes we were in the Old Montreal.

The church of Notre-Dame is among the biggest churches in North America. According to our guide, it opened its doors in 1829, and it took 40 more years after that to be completed; even today many renovations and alteration are taking place. We spent almost 45 minutes in the church being very impressed with the size and decorations. We left because there was a wedding starting in the church at the time.

We then hired a horse-and-carriage for a stroll in Old Montreal. It was really fun. The guide was very nice, excellent English, and pointed out promptly old buildings and history of the old town as well as places to stop for lunch later - unfortunately all her recommendations were closed when we tried them, so we had to pick on our own... And of course at the end Sophia had to feed Jack (our black percheron horse) and sit on the driver's seat for a photo.

After that... lunch for the rest of us. We wondered alone in the streets of the old city (narrow, cobble-stone roads, with high buildings on both sides) to find a good place to eat. We settled at a small cafe. The food was good; I am starting to develop a taste for paninnis now.

We then walked down to the piers. There is a road - no cars allowed - that runs parallel to the lake front where one can walk, bike, roller-skate, etc. The day was great and we started walking down the street. We ended up renting a quad-cycle and spending half an hour going up and down the street one it... it was harder than we thought. It had six seats, Maria refused to take an actual seat and insisted on sitting either on my lap or Margie's (mainly Margie's) and since all of us could pedal, you can imagine Maria going up and down on each rotation of the pedals... well, it was fun.

We made it back to the hotel around 5pm. After a little rest we ventured in the nearby neighborhood for food. We ended up with KFC (or PKF locally) and some great treats from Adonis Market. The name seems Greek and the pastries we got looked pretty much what you can get in any Greek bakery - the small, personal-sized cakes with full decorations and great taste.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a low profile day... no excursions planned as of now. But,who knows, tomorrow is not here yet! Happy first day of summer to all.

Day 6 - Montreal Day 1

Today was our first full day in Montreal. The weather was cloudy and in the low 70's. There are two main areas in Montreal that we plan to visit: one is the historic downtown area and the other one is the Olympic Park. Since we plan to do some walking in the downtown area, we decided, based on the weather forecast to do this tomorrow and today visit the Olympic Park.

GPS had us pretty much on target around 11:00am. By the time we found parking and got oriented, it was almost 11:30am. We took a guided tour in the 1976 summer Olympics stadium. The tour included the Olympic pools and the main stadium where all the track events took place. The stadium is all made of concrete and is huge. The top of the tower only is steel and was completed later (almost 10 years after the Olympics). The only use of the unfinished part of the tower was to hold the cover of the stadium with steel wires. The stadium was open during the Olympics, thus the top of the tower did not need to be finished by then...

Next to the stadium, you can see the Biodom. It was also used during the Olympics of 1976 (if you recall Nadia Comaneci was the "queen" of the 1976 Olympics) but now it has been converted to a closed ecosystem with a good variety of exhibits. The kids enjoyed both destinations today very much.

We ended back at the hotel around 5pm and went out for dinner at an Italian restaurant: Oggi's. It was pretty good and cannot beat a good bowl of spaghetti for the kids... We are now relaxing at the hotel room and the kids are enjoying the Bee Movie.

Day 5 - Toronto to Montreal

Having visited the pool the night before, we were ready to hit the road right after breakfast. Breakfast is included at Hampton Inns and this is pretty good as we all get a good start of the day.

We left Toronto at about 10:30am for our 338 mile drive to Montreal. Montreal is the furthest we will get into Canada. In addition, today is the last large distance we will be traveling in one day; every other "leg" of the trip is going to be smaller than what we have covered so far.

The GPS unit has been very good so far... We have a million jokes about the tone the female voice of the unit has when she says: "recalculating"... and we made her recalculate a few times so far! A fun part was today when we decided to stop at a Wal-Mart to get a couple of pillows for the kids to have in the care for the long rides. So as we had already set our destination for Montreal, we asked the GPS lady to find the closest Wal-Mart to our current location. It turned out that we had to go back a couple of miles for the closest Wal-Mart and once we got there, purchased what we needed and resumed our route, she somehow decided (this is more probable a user error) that we had not yet reached the Wal-Mart we were targeting, so once we got on the road, she got in a frenzy of "when possible make a U-turn" instructions... We had to reset the destination to the hotel in Montreal for her to relax...

During this leg of the trip - specifically at exit 538 on 401 East (close to Belleville :-)) - we hit 1,000 miles of our trip!

We stopped at a very interesting place for a late lunch. It was called "Shoeless Joe's" - go figure -, a bunch of police officers were just leaving the place as we were going in, and it had a really great menu! It was a sports Grill type place and the service and food was excellent.

Pretty close to Montreal we crossed from Ontario to the providence of Quebec. Talk about a cultural shock! The moment we crossed the providence lines, all signs were in French; not French and English, just French! Thankfully GPS continued to speak in English :-) and got us more or less (some Margie finesse required) to our final destination around 6:00pm.

We spent the rest of the evening settling in and taking it a bit easy. We have not settled on the places to see in Montreal yet; we are researching! We want to see the Olympic village for sure; the rest will be a surprise when I update the blog again :-)

Day 4 - Toronto

Today was our first full day in Toronto. We decided to visit two famous attractions of the city; Casa Loma and the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). We cannot do more than two attractions a day, so we will be coming back on our way to the states to visit the zoo and have dinner at the CN Tower on the 27th of the month.

Casa Loma was interesting. It was actually built in the 1900's to resemble a medieval castle. We spent at least three hours there.

We then went to the ROM. Had lunch at the McDonalds across the museum. Canada is expensive; we spent almost $30 fir lunch! The museum was very good; there were 5 levels, one level hosted ancient Egyptian and Greek artifacts. In the 2nd floor they had a great dinosaur exhibit. On the lower floor they had a special exhibit on Darwin. I wish we had more time to spend there... We made it back to the hotel around 6pm (the museum closed at 5:30pm.).

After a visit to the pool (we were again alone there :-)) we are now resting and getting ready for the trip to Montreal tomorrow.

More tomorrow!

Day 3 - Niagara Falls

One word: AMAZING!

Niagara Falls is 1.5 hours away from where we stay in Toronto. We left around 10am and made it home around 8:30pm. It was a full day... The experience was wonderful and we took many, many pictures... but now I am tired and going to bed. I will write more tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will be in Toronto. The plans are to visit the Royal Ontario Museum and the Casa Loma castle. The day will be full once more!

Day 2 - Lansing, MI to Toronto, ON

We are in Canada! We made it safe to Toronto Canada and I am posting from the Hampton Inn near the Toronto Airport.

We started the morning with a visit to the hotel's pool at Lansing. We were the only ones in the pool. It was a bit cold, but we all had fun! We stayed for almost half an hour there, and by noon we were on the road. Well, kind of one the road... right next to our hotel there was a Krispy Kreme and we visited for some sugar for the road; fresh doughnuts and milk!

The distance we were to cover today was a little shorter than what we had to do yesterday; 300 miles as opposed to 370. We made it to Canada without a stop. It was fast to cross. The authorities checked our passports asked about our plans and here we went. We also changed some money at the border with an exchange rate of 1 to 1. I checked later and it was pretty close: 1 US dollar was equal to 1.02 Canadian dollars... gee...

And then miles became kilometers; cool! Margie was a bit shy at the beginning driving, since she was not too comfortable knowing how faster she could go given the current speed limit... we ended up following the flow.

The drive for several miles was scenic and quiet. We stopped for an early dinner at a local chain: Tim Hortons; soup and sandwiches. It was very good and appropriate for the time.

We made it to the hotel in Toronto around 8pm local time. We had time to rest (went to bed a bit earlier this time) and plan for the next few days. Seeing what we could do in Toronto we decided to extend the stay in Toronto on the way back for one day; we will stay two full days in Ottawa instead of three and spend one more full day in Toronto on the way back.

Tomorrow is Niagara Falls day!

Day 1 - Verona, WI to Lansing, MI

We made it safe to Lansing, MI around 11pm local time!!!

I am tired and I am going to write more at later time, but here is the short story of our first day.

We got a 2007 Honda Odyssey from Hertz! That was a good surprise. Trying to get the van loaded and take out the garbage, and do all the last minute things that need to be done, we did not leave the house till noon. Then, we stopped at Monona for lunch - good food at BW3.

The Garmin navigator has been great. We made it through Chicago without any problems or delays. We stopped at a McDonalds for dinner somewhere in MI and the kids even played at the playland for 15 minutes. The worse part of the drive was a 30 minute delay because of construction; we had to move at a speed of < 5 mph!

We are in the hotel now and about ready to go to sleep. More later...

Costas (who we all in the family fondly address as "our known puker") had to uphold his reputation. Around 3am he got up - Margie heard him and I got up and ran to him - had to empty his stomach after he consumed two full handfuls of skittles before going to bed. The good news is that we caught him in time and no accidents occurred on the bedroom floor...