Vacation Round 3.3: Last day in Winnipeg

The kids went to bed late and were up super early again. I am quietly happy that I decided to go with 2 nights in a hotel over 3. I'm not sure we would have survived 3. Day 3 started early and we ate in our room. We hit the pool one last time before packing up and checking out of the hotel. I hit the market across the street (I love weird things: signs, bikes, grocery stores) and we took the kids for what we thought would be a quick stop at the children's museum back at The Forks.

The Forks had this very cool observatory for viewing stars. Park with cool art by day, observatory by night.

I was a little concerned about the "under construction"sign...sometimes that means it isn't a great time to visit the attraction.
Even the front door was not accessible

All my fears were washed away when I saw they had a digger in the lobby FOR KIDS TO PLAY WITH. Suddenly, I was more worried about getting the kids out of there. Ever.The big light up crazy clock inside the door.

There was also a real train engine parked inside for kids to crawl around inside. The headlight on the font is actually a tunnel with a window on the end.
William enjoyed "driving", although there weren't quiet enough buttons/switches to press.William explores inside the engine
Amelia rings the train bell
There was also this beautiful kaleidoscope slide the kids loved
I just loved taking pictures of it
Amelia peeks
Happy face
Teasing mama and not smiling big
JOhn and William spent a LONG time in this area building with a crane
Here they are getting ready to place another block on top of their tower. It was so much fun to watch them work together
Another attempt
Also popular : water table
Both kids were so engrossed by the water area. They would have played here ALL DAY LONG.
The look on his face here sums it all up: total, 100% concentration
William wasn't happy about being pulled away from the water play area for a craft area (he isn't so into the craft stuff, sadly). He put up with it once he realized they had SCISSORS and GLUE and other TOOLS to work with.
There was a SMALL music area for the kids to fight over - we didn't last long there

A tunnel went under the great big engine and led to this:
A huge lasagna play area. The green layer is spinach and if you look carefully there is a layer of meatballs, cheese, noodles and tomatoes stacked up to the roof. This was a climbing/play area with little puzzles to complete on each layer.
William liked peeking through the cheese, but put away his smile when I pulled the camera out.
Daddy and Mimi. The hardest part about this area is Amelia was to small to come climb with us. She cried the entire time I was up there with William. William really wasn't able to climb by himself either, which just confirmed she would not have been able to do it.
In the mirror area - fun self portraits...forgot I was supposed to be chasing kids.It doesn't really look like it, but this is a GIANT cow display. The top is close to the ceiling. Unfortunately, I waited for a long time to get a shot WITHOUT people. Now I'm thinking it could have used a person in the shot to give it some perspective. For reference, the "grass" in front of the cow was about Amelia sized.

Just on the other side was a HUGE milking exhibit - everyone enjoyed this one. So much that we didn't take a single picture!

If you can't tell, we LOVED the children's museum (which is good, because it is the most expensive this we did). I have a feeling if we lived here, we'd be season pass holders/members!

After the children's museum, we were scheduled for some divine lunch in the car. It was such a gorgeous day, neither John or I really wanted to. And it is a good thing we decided to eat down at The Forks (across the street from Children's museum) because they had the ever elusive POUTINE.We don't eat out much when we are at home and we ate out almost daily during our trip. We saw a vast improvement in William's coloring skills during our trip - on this occasion, he even added a self drawn sun in the corner (other portions were colored by an adult in the name of being sociable).

I love signs. Here is Donald Street
Maximum 100 KM/Hour sounds so fast...but it isn't.
I'm not sure we were even out of the parking ramp when Amelia fell asleep. If only she'd sleep at night!
The rest of us pretty quickly followed suit. John took this picture right before waking me up to go through customs.
The busy border crossing. It was June 30th, the next day was Canada day (National Holiday for Canadians) so I guess a lot of them were going to celebrate in the USA.


We loved Winnipeg. People were so friendly and helpful. There were so many kid friendly/family friendly attractions for us to enjoy. We were a little sad to see our mini "vacation" come to an end!