Sitting by the dock of the river....

Finally it's warming up and we are making summer plans! This weekend it's time to put the dock in and get the boat in the water! It will be so nice to have the boat right in the back yard and we won't have to pay launch fees all summer.

A lot of the wood was rotten so Ian had to dig down and add a face board to strengthen it to hold the dock. Next year we will be upgrading this whole area but for this summer we needed a quick fix.

Mark came over to give Ian a hand.

Now to get the dock in the water. We bought ours at Costco.

Then it was time to launch the boat and bring it home!

Ian relaxing with a book down on the dock

We are glad to have "MS BIAS" at home.

Why did we name our boat "Ms Bias"? The Ms stands for Meadow Spilchen my daughter, the BIAS is for Brooke, Ian, Aayla and Sierra.

And we are so happy to have her sitting in the water at our dock...now let the summer fun begin!

Preparing the Garden

Neither Ian nor I have green thumbs but we really like the idea of growing some of our own food so we are building a garden!!!

Wasaga Beach is built on sand so we had to build a raised bed.

Our bed is made form a 4X12 cedar box that Ian built and it is notched together. We have so many trees on our property we picked the sunniest spot in the yard in hopes of success!

We filled it with a mix of soil, manure and peat moss.

The extra soil we used to cover the barren yard in hopes of grass this summer...(the photo beside show some grass starting but it took a lot of tries to get the yard full of grass)

We planted some seeds... while we waited for warmer weather to arrive.

And while we waited for them to grow we did a few activities to learn about the growing process.
We read the book Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert . We learned about all the different colours that grow in a garden and made this diagram of the flower parts with tissue paper and paint. The rainbow petals formed a color wheel flower.

We also made mathematical flower gardens. I gave the girls a number on each stem and they had to draw that many petals on the stem. Then they added some finger printed bugs to help their gardens grow.

Aayla's garden picture

Sierra's garden picture...i love the spider in the web!

Now we just wait for the sun to arrive so we can plant the seedlings when they sprout.

Easter 2013

Wasaga beach put on a wonderful Easter extraveganza! It was a great family event.
There were pony rides...

and the Easter bunny arrived to hide eggs for the egg hunt. All the kids got to search for 5 eggs and had to try to find one of the golden eggs hidden to win a gift basket.

There was also face painting, wagon rides, rock climbing wall and lots of activities like bouncy castles and crafts inside.

We made some Easter crafts at home too. We coloured Easter Eggs.

and painted large Easter eggs

Finally Easter morning arrived...the Easter bunny hides eggs inside and outside. The girls had a blast finding the eggs outside :)

and one last photo of Aayla sitting and reading the paper as we start a campfire I have to share just because :)

Great Wolf Lodge, Niagara Falls, Ontario

Over the past couple of months Sierra has asked numerous times to go to Niagara Falls to see the falls. We thought we'd combine it with a mini get away to Great Wolf Lodge. We waited until after Spring Break as we were afraid it would be crazy busy while everyone was off from school. Not only was it less busy, it was way cheaper as well :)

Since it was March and winter is still in full swing here... the Falls were all icy and the mist basicaly froze as it headed towards the land. All I had was my phone on me for pictures because it was too miserable to pull out my Canon.

Apparently when it's not so blustery you can actually ice skate around the top walking area. We will definitely have to take another trip to Niagara Falls when it is warmer so Sierra can really experience them. We wanted to go back and see the falls at night time all lit up but after the 5 minutes we spent here in the cold the girls had NO desire to go back again right now :(

Next we were off to sign in at Great Wolf Lodge.

We rented a KidKamp Suite (water park tickets are included with room rental and only guests staying at the hotel can use their water park). It was a bit higher priced then the regular rooms but it added another experience to the trip. The kids LOVED sleeping in their own private bunk tent inside the room. They thought it was a real treat!

 Here is the floor plan of our room (courtesy of their web site). We had an outside deck on ours but it was too cold to spend any time out there. Sierra did go out and howl like a wolf up at the moon a couple times :) Having the fridge was great so we could have cereal in the morning for breakfast!

Aayla on her way up to join the tickle party

Tickle Party!!!

Tucking bear into bed

But of course the rooms are not why we are at Great Wolf Lodge...No...we are here for the water slides!!!

A little fish in the making

And when you need a break from the water they have the Cub Club where the girls had lots of fun playing a giant connect 4 game and colouring. The activities here were mainly for younger kids but both Sierra and Aayla enjoyed some down time in here.

There is also an activity called Magiquest where you buy a magic wand to explore the enchanted kingdom to learn from a wizard, outwit goblins, fight dragons and more. It looked really interesting but it takes place around the hotel and there are some dim lit corridors that scared Sierra and she didn't want to do it...so we didn't. On the last night she changed her mind as she saw so many kids running around doing quests but there wasn't enough time left to justify spending the money for the wand to do the quest. Next time we will :)

We spent 2 night here which was plenty of time especially since you can enter the waterpark at 1:00 on your arrival date even if your room isn't ready. Also on your departure day after you exit your room you can remain in the waterpark until closing. Joining in the Magiquest next time will fill in some of the daytime lolls. Lets face it there are only so many hours in a day that you can stay in the water!

There are other things you can do while at the hotel like visit the Scooops Kids Spa, the Northern Lights Arcade and a stuffing station to stuff a wolf cuddly, mini golf (weather permitting)  but all of those are added costs. There is also a fair size shopping area and plenty of places to eat. There was a mini fridge in the room so we brought milk and cereal for breakfast, ate lunch pool side and then went to Denny's downtown for supper. That helped to save a few pennies as Great Wolf Lodge is expensive to eat at. Next time we go we will splurge on the wands as that looked like a lot of fun!

If you want to go and see for yourself click on any of the links above and it will take you to their website.

Here are the directions from Toronto taken from their website:
Navigation or GPS device:3950 Victoria Avenue Niagara Falls, ON L2E 7M8

From Toronto:Take the QEW to Niagara Falls / Fort Erie Exit at Hwy 420 towards "Niagara Falls/Bridge to USA" (The Rainbow Bridge is the bridge they are going to drive towards, but won't have to cross). Hwy 420 becomes "Robert Street at Stanley (first light). Continue straight in right hand lane. Go through next set up lights to exit ramp towards "Victoria Ave". Turn left on Victoria Avenue, follow Victoria for about 2 km/1 mile. Great Wolf Lodge is on the right.

Almost forgot to mention...each night they have a PJ story time in the lobby. I didn't get any good pictures here but the girls enjoyed it.

If you go we'd love to hear how you enjoyed your time at Great Wolf Lodge!