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!

Vacation Round 3.2: Winnipeg

You'd think with going to bed 2 hours late, we get to sleep in. Both kids were up early in the neighborhood of 6:30am. Ouch.

We ate breakfast in our room before going down to the pool. Today was all about learning lessons.

Lesson One: Swim Diapers do not always contain "messes" (use your imagination)
Lesson Two: It is nice when the pool area is empty and no one else has to witness the walk of shame after a diaper failure. However, it still isn't fun.


We all got cleaned up before heading to the first stop of the day : Western Canada Aviation Museum

They had airplanes, of course. We got in right behind a school group having a last day of school field trip. I'm not sure we were supposed to tag along, but even I found the museum pretty interesting with the entertaining tour guide.They had a few biggish airplanes (aren't you impressed by my technical explanation?) but more of the smaller aircraft.
Back end parts of an airplane (I'm quite sure John will read this and feel compelled to change this)Royal Mail airplane

They had a never used spy hovercar

They also had a GREAT children's area that the kids loved. William liked being in the flight tower

and flying the plane with his copilot, Amelia. Or is he the copilot?

It is hard to tell, but there is air rushing out of the cone. Both kids liked trying to balance a ball on the airflow

Amelia liked the shopping...

We left the airplane museum (not without significant complaint from William) and went to the Assinboine Park Zoo. We ate our picnic lunch in the car and set out to see some animals. The zoo was...underwhelming. We were tired, there weren't many open exhibits or animals we haven't seen a hundred times before. While the zoo wasn't terrible, I wouldn't be recommending it to anyone as a must see in Winnipeg.

The tiger was just lazing around. William attempt to inspire him with his ferocious tiger impression. While we could hardly contain ourselves, the tiger was less inspired.
Amelia's fierce tiger face
One of the more exciting exhibits was a white buffalo...oddly enough, we didn't capture a picture of the beast, just a quick snapshot of the sign. ???Amelia crashed hard. There was not any traditional napping that occurred in Canada.

William was pretty peeved that Amelia had the audacity to fall asleep in the stroller. Over and over he demanded she give it up so he could take his nap turn. Unfortuantley for him, neither John or I was about to wake up an overtired 2 year old. Not happening.
He was forced to make alternate arrangements. Poor kid.

Shortly after this, we left the zoo and John requested a visit to Lower Fort Garry. It was about a 45 minute ride in which William and I slept HARD. Amelia was well rested from her stroller nap and kept John company.

Here is a sign about it if you want to know more. In short, it is a fort that operated as a trading post during the late 1800's and early 1900's.

Amelia admiring the commemorative stone
A sample of the boats used to bring supplies to the fort area over the river from Hudson's Bay. Someday, I'll find the time to come back to this picture and crop Amelia picking flowers out.
Isn't she sweet?
The fort had many historic building and was living history museum. This means there are real live people working there, reenacting historical...stuff. In this case, the reenactors were focused on how life would have been from day to day during the 1880 time period in this region of the country.
We LOVED that it was living history! Paid people to answer William's questions? Worth every penny. If we lived closer, I'm sure we'd be season pass holders or something. Here are the kids watching a blacksmith demonstration. You'd be suprised how long it takes to make one nail.The fort wallsWilliam and John checking out the fort walls
Amelia's turn
Inside the replica general store
Unable to resist the different green colored bottles in the sun

We closed down the place. We were enjoying ourselves so much, we didn't realize everyone was closing up and leaving until we were the only people around. I'm not sure why someone didn't tell us at any point along the way (there were LOTS of people around) that the park would be closing soon. No hours were posted on any of the doors, signs or maps that were given to us nor the receipt from purchasing admission with less than an hour left in their day. The kids were not happy about leaving (they aren't happy about much when they are this sleep deprived) without any notice. We made it up to them by eating at The Original Pancake House. These kids love pancakes! We followed pancakes with another trip to the pool to a) get our money's worth and b) ensure tired kids at bedtime. Here is when our second set of life lessons occurred:

Life Lesson Number 4: Don't get on an elevator without your grown ups.

William raced to be the first one on the empty elevator car and the doors shut before the rest of us could get there. About three seconds after the doors shut, the screaming started. Luckily, a quick thinking teenage girl (I suspect she was not sleep deprived) hit the elevator down button. The door magically opened again. You would not believe the amount of care William gave from then on to making sure he was not getting on the elevator alone. He was not about to let that happen again.

Life Lesson Number 5: Don't press the "EMERGENCY" button in the elevator.

After our swim time, Amelia raced to be the first one to press the button up to the fifth floor and instead pressed "EMERGENCY" so that a loud alarm sounded. John and I simultaneously went to yell at her and stopped after one look at her expression. She got it. Don't press the EMERGENCY button. Check with the grownups to make sure you are pushing the right thing. We went over it with her calmly a few times, but she got it. Loud and clear.*

*Funny enough, William was about this age when he pressed the emergency button himself at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. He, of course, had no recollection of this event and had a grand old time reminded Amelia not to push any buttons without his express permission.