today we all fell...... a long way down at Niagra Falls

Good evening. Christmas Day was fabulous.... it snowed enough to be an official white Christmas, we switched pressies, Michelle cooked up a storm for lunch, although we only managed to eat about a 'shower's' worth, we went for a walk around the suburb and then ate desert at around 5:30 in the evening. Then we all sat down to watch The Dark Knight movie. Which everyone managed to do successfully except Ashleigh and I. We successfully snoozed instead. Jess wants to make sure that you know we had yummy Dairy Queen ice-cream cake for desert (with chocolate biscuit crumbe in the middle).

So today, in recovery mode from Christmas Day, we headed to Niagra Falls. Luckily, they are only about 1 hour from here, so it was a fun drive. Things we saw on the way included ice wine vineyards (where they make wine out of grapes that are frozen in the first chills), lots of industrial landscapey type stuff including housing that looked like it mustn't heat very well in the winter and the canals from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. "I gotta mule, her name is Sal...15 miles on the Erie Canal. She's a good ol' worker and a good ole pal, 15 miles on the Erie Canal."

Things that we now know about Niagra Falls that we didn't know before are:

• it isn't a rain day, it is mist from the Falls (but we sure wouldn't let the kids out of class to play in it). Ashleigh's feet turned pink and froze as her sneakers battled with melting snow and mist/rain.

• it is hard to stand on edges covered in ice, but the icicles are very pretty.
• there is a LOT of water that flows over the falls each day.
• it is where the Canadians fought off the Americans in the 1800s and had them surrender (don't often hear that, do we?) - thank Nathan for that piece of history.
  
• the falls in american (the American Falls) are smaller than those in Canada.
  
• It is weird to watch cars drive on the other side of the falls and think that is was a completely different country that you were looking at.

• There is a Tim Horton's shop there (like just about everywhere else), which is a bit like a dome coffee shop mixed with a muzz buzz, but coffee only costs about $1.40 a cup.
• it doen't matter if it is only mist, it is still really really really cold.

After visiting the Falls, we went to a little town called Niagra on the Lake. We looked in lots of shop windows and bought jam for brekky. It was cold too. But rather than go on about the cold, we could celebrate that at one stage it was 2 degrees. yay! :)




We're home again now. We probably won't add to the blog now for another week. Tomorrow we are off to the shops to post postcards (are you reading this Rebecca?), participate in post-Christmas sales (Ash is looking for only in Canadia converses (gym boots) to spend her present money on), and go to an ice hockey game in the evening. The next morning we are off to Blue Mountain ski resort for about 5 days of pain, torture and.....snow/cold.