Tales From the Mothership: Vacation !

So, please bear with me. I'm trying out a couple different things for the pictures on the blog. Originally I wasn't going to post alot of vacation pictures because, really who wants to sit through the equivalent of someone's vacation slideshow? And then I thought, "who cares? I want to display the photos and if you don't want to look at them, well close your browser".

Here's the Plane ride. John just didn't care about being on an airplane. He didn't care that we were on vacation. He didn't care about all the new toys I brought to surprise him. He didn't care that he was allowed to have a Cars sucker at 10am. All that mattered was that there was a TV screen just for him. ALL HIS!

He's such a trooper. He didn't even want to go to the bathroom on the airplane.

ME: Let's try and pee on the airplane. It's a long flight.

John: No. I no have to pee.

Me: Just try.

John: No. I wait.

John: I wait until Cape Breton.

Well alrighty, then.

Now there are some people who were (and still are) giving me grief for having the entire trip scheduled. Or almost the entire trip. Now in my defence, since there were mutliple demands on our time and both my family and Steven's family obligations, we needed to plan this trip. Don't worry, I'll bitch about this again. I had an itinerary, people. An ITINERARY! Not of the activities or sightseeing, those were merely penciled in but I had the flights booked waaayyyy back in September and the accomodations were done in January. An added bonus to being such an early bird? We were still able to have 2 bags each and 2 carry-ons without paying an additional fee. So neener, neener.

Here's our first night in Halifax and the Bedford motel. Less than $100/night. Nothing fancy but it was clean and easy to find.

We hit Costco, met up with James and drove to Cape Breton.

I know there are too many pictures on this collage, but I am testing this entire collage thing.

These are two of my favorite pictures from the Canso Causeway bridge.

First Day at the cabin

This is the view from our sun porch.

How beautiful is this?

I love this picture.

Our first visit to the beach.

For months, we've been telling John that "for vacation, we're going to the beach in Cape Breton."

Meeting Uncle Winston, Auntie Em and LalaLou. Let me tell you, John instantly took a shine to all three. Winston, because well he's just a big kid who kept feeding him cherries and letting him spit the seeds. And he thought Auntie Em and LalaLou were fantastic. I mean, it was from the moment he met both of them that Auntie Em and LalaLou became "The Ones".

For those not familiar with LalaLou.

This is LalaLou.

Otherwise known as Uncle Robert.

And John can say Robert and he can say Uncle.

We don't know why but he calls Robert, LalaLou.

And we encouraged it because it was so darn cute.

And this is....

Number One Cousin. (thanks alot Mary)

Steven doesn't have many memories of his dad but what few he does, he hangs onto. We joked that this trip was called "Walk Down Memory Lane Tour 2011" but in reality, he wants and needs to create memories for John. His dad took him to the fish farm when he was a boy and he vividly remembers feeding the fish with his dad. I think perhaps too, that in a way by visiting the same farm, doing the same thing, his dad joined us to create memories for John. I'm not sure who had more fun, Steven or John.

Fish Farm.

After feeding the fish, we walked around, visted the museum and skipped some rocks.

First beach day!

Hiking to Egypt Falls. Ever since Ed showed us pictures, Steven has wanted to go. It's gorgeous. There's barely any people there. We saw 2 couples coming out when we were hiking in. And it was just us when we got to the falls. Just us, the falls, the trees and the bugs. Did I mention that the hike was like this.../. It was a steep, steep hills and you had to use a rope to help you. And of course, as responsible parents, when the lady half of the older couple said that she was turning around and not going down the falls because it was too steep and that she wasn't letting her small dog go down and that we should consider not taking John down because it was too steep. Well, I'm afraid Steven may have taken that as a personal challenge.

It was steep but not dangerous. It made me sweat but I wasn't out of breath or hurting. Although, I sweat at everything. For goodness sake, I sweat when I change clothes because I'm a weirdo and a part-mutant.

Anyway.

So when Steven decided to hike onto the rocks by the Falls and onto the rocks in the Falls, my first thoughts were... "how am I going to carry John out if he falls?" and "if he falls, how fast can I get out to get help?"

gorgeous, no?

Skyline Trail on the Cabot Trail. It took us 1 hour, 20 minutes to hike in and 40 minutes to hike out. John is such a trooper, he walked in and ran out. I really don't know where he gets all his energy from. Or his love of hiking (but only short hikes, mama).

He's pouting in that picture in the bottom right corner because I took his walking stick away.

I just couldn't believe how beautiful the trail was.

Lunch afterward. Probably the only thing I would change. We should have taken our lunch with us and eaten on the trail as opposed to only having a snack.

Poor guy had a fever. On one of Steven's golf days. On one of the ONLY HOT HOT days. I had planned on going to the beach for the entire day with John but he woke up sick and got sicker. So the furthest we went was to the CO-OP for tylenol and juice.

But we did see a coyote. And I did manage to drive for the first time by myself. Well, me & John.

So his fever went away, he slept for almost 5 hours during the day and we decided to air ourselves out by going to the beach for an hour before bedtime.

Fisherman Days!

Another thing that we heard about from Ed was the boat trips. We went on 2 different ones. The first one was Lewis' family's boat. And on the second one, the guy let all the kids have a turn to drive the boat.

Inverness Beach.

Before and After the Boat rides.

Beer Garden

We all went to the Beer Garden but after awhile John got bored. So John & I went to walk on the beach and look for rocks and glass. Then we went back to the Beer Garden and got bored again. We left Steven to socialize and John & I went back to the cabin for dinner and bedtime.
(I drove again! Go me!)

It does look like Maria is at the Beer Garden but we actually met up with her on the Boardwalk before the boat rides.

Beach Day!

Good God, that water is friggin cold. But John wanted to go on his raft and Steven wouldn't take him in so I sucked it up, went in and temporarily lost the feeling in my legs due to the hypothermia that set in. The things you do for your kids, eh? Walk in water, post pictures of yourself in a bathing suit because it shows your darling son on his raft!

Every day I would look out the window at the cabin and see this field above the beach. I could see a path and I always saw people walking up there. I swore to myself that before we left, we'd go for a walk to see what was up there.

A spectacular view, that's what was up there. A really high, high edge or if you'd rather describe it as a long, LONG drop to the water and the rocks.