Snap, Crackle, Elfie??? and a trip to Buffalo NY

Heheheee Elfie is taking over Pops job this morning!

Today we had an appointment for Aayla to get her eyes checked again as her left eye is starting to wander again. She had surgery 2 years ago and for now he wants to wait and just keep an eye on it.

There was lots of equipment and eye molds for on the spot learning :) Below daddy talking to the girls about the eye model and the parts of the eye. Sierra was quite grossed out when we took it apart and looked at it from the inside. She also didn't like the posters showing a needle going into an eye to let out a gas bubble pressure build up...

 Aayla getting her eyes checked...a bit blurry but she's there!

We are hopeful the Dr is right and we won't need surgery again. He says even though it's wandering again...she has good control of it...cross your fingers for us.

Then we were off to the States. We searched Groupon and found a hotel in Niagra Falls NY which was only about 25 minutes from Buffalo so we bought it. We bought it for $79 and it gave us a $20 credit to TGIF for supper (we used) ...

Posing outside TGIF's

Aayla loving her spaghetti dinner

(Sierra not so much...she ate her fruit salad and about 2 bites of spaghetti...not sure how she survives sometimes!!! There was nothing on the menu she wanted and decided she didn't like Buffalo because their restaurants had yucky food)

We also got a $30 casino credit (we didn't use). Regular price was $174 for the Groupon for The Sheraton at the Falls; for $79 it was an OK price but I would have been upset if we paid full price. The Lobby was beautiful, the hallways stunk and the room was OK. The reason we bought the groupon and not a cheaper Red Roof type hotel was that it had a pool for the girls. We rarely stay in hotels so a pool is a nice treat...their pool however was out of order :( We were able to walk across the road and go to one of their sister hotel pools but it wasn't very nice...the girls did enjoy their swim though and waking up in a hotel room is always fun.

Pretending to still be asleep

 When we finally woke up we found a note on the mirror saying: Found you! Can you find me? and we knew Elfie must have searched for us during the night. We found him in the shower...

Then we got ready and headed to Buffalo. While we were shopping I gave the girls a scavenger hunt (part of our countdown to Christmas activities) list with things to find like Santa, Rudolph, snowman, Christmas tree, wreath, icicle, train, star etc. They had a lot of fun with it and it kept them busy while we were shopping. They scored big time on this one window display!

I recommend this activity for anyone going shopping with young children. They had soooo much fun which made shopping soooo much more pleasant!