Dubin Birthday Fun

Working backwards here, the weekend before the pig roast, the boys and I headed to New Jersey to celebrate Avery and Olivia's birthdays.  Their party was at a roller skating rink.  I thought Tyler might do okay with roller skating, since he wouldn't have to contend with slippery ice and would be on 4 wheels, unlike when ice skating.  But, it was basically just a flash back to ice skating and he couldn't stand up for even a few seconds.  However, he did not want to take off his skates, so he just crawled from one seat to another and hung out while Brennan skated.

Here is Brennan with one of the birthday girls, Avery.

Brennan came in for a little break.

It was a huge party, with about 60 kids invited, since they had invited kids from both kindergarten classes and their daycare.  It was fun though and it was nice to have the entire rink to ourselves.

Afterwards, we went back to the Dubins with the other out of town guests.  The kids had fun playing in the backyard before we headed back to Virginia.  We really had a nice visit and I was so glad we were able to make it up to celebrate!

Pig Roast

Before leaving for Montreal, we planned to celebrate Brian, Brennan and Tyler's birthday in style with a pig roast.  With help from our family, we got the yard set-up for the party.  The guest list was a mix of family and friends from church, work and school.  I was happy to see how nicely everyone mixed together!  I didn't take any photos during the party.

I loved how the beverage table looked!

The caterer (Hog Wild BBQ) arrived right around 5 with the pig.  Everyone enjoyed seeing him pull up with the 110 pound pig!

Winnie, a 30 year veteran of BBQ, gladly talked about the pig and let the boys pull the first few bites of meat.

Tyler wanted in on the action as well.  After that, they got to work prepping the meat to serve.  They brought mac n cheese, cole slaw and potato salad as well.  The food was delicious and having someone else do the cooking made the party easy for me!

I don't know how I forgot to take pictures of the cakes, but we sang 3 times... one for each birthday boy.  Brian was first, then Brennan and Tyler.  We had a great time celebrating with everyone!

The day after the party, my parents took Zelda back to NY with them.  They were going to watch her while we were away.  It was hard for the boys to say goodbye, especially Brennan.

Montreal's Old Town

Wednesday was our last day to enjoy the city before leaving on Thursday.  The weather was perfect for walking, so we headed to Viex Montreal (Old Montreal.)  It was beautiful and reminded me a lot of Old Town Alexandria.  The building pictured below with a dome is the Bonsecours Market - just a large old building that houses many shops.

We walked through the market and they had a neat display of women's fashion from the 1880's to the 1920's.  All the dresses were made from paper.

We headed over the water and noticed a playground.  The boys enjoyed that for a bit.

They really wanted to go paddle boating and we agreed to give it a try and paid for a 30 minute session.  Brian and I were having a really hard time making the boat go where we wanted it to though.  Thankfully, we both laughed through the struggle, but unfortunately, we didn't make it very far.  After struggling (and probably looking ridiculous) for about 20 minutes, we were ready to turn the boat in!  After we were back on land, Brennan told us that he had been holding onto the rudder!  No wonder we were having such a hard time.  Ha!

Here is a photo of the made pedestrian walk through Vieux Montreal.

As we made our way back to the Metro, Brennan got sight of these soldiers dressed in old uniforms in front of the Chateau Ramezay (Montreal's first governor's mansion.)  They were doing an exercise and he wanted to stay and watch.

Brennan really wanted to go inside the house, so we humored him.  We learned a lot of interesting information about Montreal's history by going through the house.

One part of the house talked about crime and punishment in the early days of the city.  We learned here that some criminals would have to stand in the town square, wearing the iron collar around their neck with a sign to display their crime.  Brennan picked up the thief sign and we laughed that Tyler chose "seducer."

Here is another shot of Montreal's beautiful old town.

This is the city hall.

Back at the hotel, we had our last swim of the day.  The boys and Brian went again on Thursday morning before we left for the airport.  There were huge art pieces on display by the pool area.  The one photoed below was Tyler's favorite.  I asked him what it was and he said it was cars driving.

I had read some terrible reviews about the Montreal airport.  You go through US customs on the Canadian side, so you don't really know how much time you need to budget.  We got to the airport WAY too early, so we had a lot of time to kill.  We ate at an airport restaurant and then found these cool lounge chairs to chill out in by the gate.

The boys were watching as our tiny plane arrived at the gate.

Thankfully, the turbulence on the way there hadn't freaked them out and they were ready to fly home!  It was a smoother ride home and we landed safely!

Montreal Science Center, Insectarium and Botanical Gardens

We explored more of Montreal's family friendly exhibits.  On Tyler and Brian's birthdays, we headed to the science center, located at the Old Port.  It was a rainy day, so really perfect for being indoors.  The boys posed in the cave-man display.  During our visit, we saw a 3-D IMAX movie on the Galapagos Islands.  It was fascinating and I was happy to see both boys did well at the movie - I wasn't sure if they would both be willing to wear the 3-D glasses, but they did great!

The first stop in the science center was to make a newscast.  Brennan was a little too young for this, but I thought it was awesome and wish I could have done it myself!  They gave you a handful of topics to choose from.  Once you picked a topic, you then watched expert testimonies related to the topic and chose which clips to include in your newscast.  We then made our own introduction and conclusion to the story.  It all was put together and for a 2 minute newcast-style video.

We headed to the hands-on exhibits for science exploration.  The exhibit below allowed you to see how hydro-electric power works.  You could control the speed of the water flow, which impacted the speed at which the transformer spun, which impacted how many lights would light up on the display.

Brennan was testing out the pulley system.  He could lift himself up because it was a 3 pulley system.  There were two huge rooms of all sorts of hands-on experiments/observations to make.  It was fantastic.

The main room wasn't quite for Tyler's age, so we headed to the 4-7 year old room.  Tyler spent at least an hour playing with this "brick" house.  He loved spinning the wheel that would transport the bricks to the roof of the house.  You could basically contract the side walls of the house and the roof tiles with the bricks.  There were at least 10 other kids working with him.  It was fun to see him interact in this setting.  He did pretty well.

The next day, the weather cleared up, but it was MUCH hotter!  It was the only hot day of the trip.  We went to the Insectarium and the Botanical Gardens - both part of the "Space For Life" center, which includes the Biodome.  The insectarium had thousands of bugs (mostly dead) on display.  It was very neat!  The photo below shows a live exhibit of ants, which you can't really see in the picture.  There were thousands of ants at work bringing food all along the branches of the tree.  We saw insects related to areas all around the world.  We got to explore the differences between male and female insects, explore the life cycle of insects and see some exotic insects like tarantulas, big leaf bugs, etc.  The boys loved it.

We then walked through the Botanical Gardens.  Our favorite was the Japanese Garden.  The photo below is of a tea house.  I would have loved to go in for a traditional tea ceremony, but obviously, with the kids, that was a no-go!

 This was the view from the tea house.

The boys were all up for walking through the gardens and checking out the Japanese styles buildings.  It was beautiful.  They even enjoyed the other gardens as we walked.

It was a hot day, maybe too hot and too much walking in the heat!  But, we had a nice time and the boys spent a ton of time in the pool that night!

Montreal's Biodome

We headed to Montreal on July 5.  We had a turbulent flight, but arrived safely and stayed at the Hilton Bonaventure right downtown.  Our first day in town, we had dinner at a burger place called m:brgr and then hopped on the green line to pick up some supplies at Target, only to find out that Target closes at 5 on weekends!  We laughed at ourselves and thought, "aren't we Americans?!"  It seems like everywhere else in the world enjoys weekends, including store employees!  We headed back to the hotel for some swimming, since the pool was open until 10:30 pm.  The next morning was Brennan's birthday.  He continually sang happy birthday to himself while eating breakfast.

Brennan's choice of activity for his birthday was to head to the Biodome.  The Biodome is a permanent exhibit in one of the former Olympic stadiums.  It displays four environments: a rain forest, the Lauretian Maple Forest, the Gulf of the St. Lawrence River and the sub-antarctic islands. The boys posed for a quick photo before we headed in.

When we arrived, the penguin feeding was just about to begin, so we headed straight there.  The boys liked playing in the giant penguin egg.

The antarctic region was the smallest of the exhibits, but it was really neat to see penguins at such close proximity.  They had four types of penguins and I don't remember what type is pictured below, but it was the biggest of the four.  The emperor penguin is the only breed of penguin larger than this one.

The penguins were swimming right up to the glass.  This one below kept following Brennan's foot with his nose when Brennan moved his foot from side to side.  It was really cute.

There was a special exhibit on the sloth bear in the center of the building.  There were big lounge cushions everywhere to just take a load off and relax.  In the center, was a man made "tree" and the sloth bear was placed up there to hang out for a bit.

In the same area as the sloth, there were turtles and lizards.  The little lizard below was following Tyler and a few other kids all around the display glass.  They were having a blast circling the display with the lizard following.

Below is a view of the St. Lawrence River environment.  It was the most "fake" feeling of all the spaces, since the scene was created with a backdrop.  But, in person, it really was quite lovely.  There were birds flying around and you kind of felt like you were there by the riverside.

The rain forest on the other hand was fantastic.  You felt like you were really in a forest.

The boys were eager to jump on the frog.

Of course T had to take a turn!

In the photo below, there is a 60 pound rodent (bottom left side.)

Beautiful birds were there to see.

We even walked through a dark cave full of bats - there was glass to separate us from the bats!  Brennan posed with the bat ears.

The little monkeys were very cute and very active.

The Maple Forest was also nice.  We enjoyed watching an otter swim around and they had a beaver cam set-up inside the beaver's dam, so you could see him live at work.

After leaving the Biodome, we headed to the Olympic Tower to get a view of the city.  The tower is the world's largest leaning towers at 165 meters, on a 45 degree angle (Pisa's leaning tower is on a 5% angle!)  I didn't really take pictures in the tower, since they are all scenic, but was a fun ride up the side of the tower in a glass enclosed funicular.

Here is a view of the olympic stadium with the tower in the background.