Imaginosity Dublin

I may have been overly optimistic about our jet lag situation as I the wrote blog yesterday. As soon as I hit "publish" at about 9:30 pm, both kids were up on-and-off until well after midnight. We're hoping to get them on a "European" sleep schedule of about 9-8 (instead of 7-6 at home), but we're not there yet. We'll see how tonight goes.

  I had to wake everyone up at 8:15 am so that we could get to our timed 9:30 visit to the Dublin Children's Museum. The place is small, and pretty busy so you have to book ahead for a 2 hour visit interval. They both fell asleep on the 20 minute drive there.

 The kids perked up when we got to the museum. There was definitely lots to keep them busy for 2 hours.

There was a cool looking outdoor garden area on the roof, but it was closed because of the rain.

 The museum was out in the suburbs, so we were able to stop back in at home for lunch and a much needed nap.

 After nap, we hopped on a double decker bus into the city centre. We wandered through Trinity College, and stopped in to the National Museum of Natural History for a quick browse before close. Jasper was asleep, but Ellis loved the cases full of taxidermied animals.

From there, it was on to St Stephen's Green to see the birds and flowers.

The kids were pretty pumped to see a swan, and lots of ducks diving for weeds in the pond.

It was raining pretty hard by then, so we stopped in a pub for a Guinness and "cold regular white milk" to warm up.

We walked back to the bus stop through one of the pedestrian streets, where Jasper could check out the "rock star" busker on each block. Riding in the top of the double decker bus on the way home may have been Jasper's highlight of the day.

Arrival in Dublin

Our flight over went about as well as it could have. We had the entire middle 4 seats of the front row of the plane to ourselves, plus Jasper and Pat took over 2 seats by the window.

Both kids slept pretty well, and didn't make a fuss, but it was still a very short night. I really don't understand why they serve 2 meals on a 6 hour overnight flight. 

We picked up our rental car and drove to our AirBnb in the outskirts of Dublin. Pat did a great job driving standard, on the left hand side, after < 1 hour of sleep.

Our house is lived in by 4 kids, aged 10 months- 6 years, so there is plenty of baby and kid stuff to use. If we were here the whole time, we'd only have needed 1 suitcase!

We were all pretty beat after the flight, so we stayed nearby, got some groceries and went to the park.

 Spring has arrived here a few weeks earlier than at home, so everything is nice and green.

Our hiccup so far is that we brought the wrong plug adapters. Although Ireland is in the EU, it does not have the same shaped plug. Oops! We couldn't find an adapter in the stores nearby, but shouldn't have a problem getting one once we're in a more touristy area.

Tomorrow, we're heading to the Dublin Children's Musesum and then downtown to explore. That is if the kids will leave this house- there's even a trampoline in the backyard!

3 years old

Jasper is now 3 years old! The day before his birthday, I took the morning off work and we took him for a special outing to see "Bunch of Munch" in Blyth. They acted out 5 of Jasper's favourite Robert Munch books. It was his first live theatre experience, and he was pretty mesmerized the whole time.

After the play, we took him to lunch at Cow Bell brewery. It's quite the impressive facility, I need to go back when I can try some of the beers. 

On the weekend, the whole family came over and we had a birthday party for Jasper.

Great Grandpa measured Jasper on the wall. He is almost 3 feet tall.

Ellis wanted to help with the presents. 

Aunt Heather made Jasper the coolest construction equipment birthday cake.

Jasper got some lovely presents, including a scooter, a tricycle and a rain coat that matches Aunt Heather.

Everyone was pretty tuckered out after the party.

Boston

The Beaton/ Hoyle family has a tradition of traveling on Easter. This year 18 of us met up in Boston. The weekend was very well documented by the Aunts. Compared to our last transatlantic flight, the 1h 20 min flight to Boston was a breeze. Aunt Kate had a great itinerary lined up for us for the weekend. After checking into our AirBnb we went right to a tour of Fenway "Pak"

 

That evening was back to the house for Indian food and family shenanigans. 

The next day, we caught the first brewery tour of the morning at Samuel Adams. 

 

From the brewery, it was on to a picnic in Boston Commons and a visit to the Cheers bar.  The kids went nuts for the duck statues in the park, and for a strange busking one man show.

After lunch was a tour of the Freedom Trail, by a Prince Hall historical reenactor.

We had dinner at a fancy restaurant, then out to Howl at the Moon in our matching t-shirts.

 

The next day, the kids found their favourite place at the Children's museum, while the rest of the family explored the city more or slept off the night before. 

We picked up lunch at Quincy Market and ate it at the nearby Armenian Heritage Labyrinth park

Some had to go home Sunday, and we had an intense Easter search at the house for the grown ups after the kids were asleep.

Our flight got delayed on the way home, but luckily we found a good kids play area in the airport. Ellis threw up in the airport, but luckily made it through the flight without incident.

Week in Toronto

I had a conference to go to in Toronto, and decided to bring the whole family! As amazing as 2 nights of uninterrupted sleep in a hotel bed would have been, it was fun to have the kids there.

We stayed in the brand new Hotel X, right on the CNE grounds. We stayed there the first night it was open. It is definitely the fanciest hotel I've ever stayed in, and the customer service was "uncomfortably good".

 

The kids were in vehicle watching heaven, with Lakeshore blvd, the Gardiner Expressway and the Island Airport right out the window. They could have spent hours at that window, yelling "truck", "airplane", "truck" on repeat.  The hotel was also a part of the "library collection", so they had hundreds of books in the lobby for guests to borrow, including tons of kids books. Jasper was in heaven!

While I was at the conference, Pat took the kids to the aquarium. Uncle Colin took the GO train down to hang out for the day.

The hotel had a wine and cheese reception every evening from 5-7pm that had enough food to count as the kids' dinner. Once we put them to bed at 7, we had to hang out in the bathroom watching Netflix. Good thing it was such as fancy bathroom!

The next day, Pat took the kids to nearby Fort York and out to a pub for lunch.

He walked the kids all the way up to Kensington Market during nap to re-stock on vegetarian beef jerky.

On Friday, Pat took the kids up to visit Grandma Beaton and then after the conference finished, we went out to Bowmanville to see Aunt Heather's new place. Pictured below is Jasper pretending to be a cat with Heather's couch blanket.