The Blog of Harald

Last week we drove up to Ottawa, to celebrate Christmas with my family there. Christmas? In March? well, for a lot of different reasons we had decided to stay in Toronto over Christmas this year, instead of our usual, hectic, visit everyone whirlwind tour. Then in January my mum got sick, and this is the first chance we’ve had to visit since then.

We left Wednesday. The drive up was pleasant; good weather and less traffic than we’re used to. We stopped at Ponderosa in Belleville, and I had my first steak since I started Weight Watchers. I’d forgotten how _good_ they tasted! The kids slept most of the rest of the way to Ottawa, a pleasant surprise!

Because of Mum’s illness, we couldn’t stay at her house, so we we found a local hotel that has two-room suites, each with a kitchenette. A little grocery shopping and we were set for meals for the week. With my sister’s tenant discount for living in a building run by the same property managers, the week wasn’t that expensive.

The kids were climbing the walls (literally) on Thursday, so we needed to find a place for them to run off some of that energy before seeing granny for dinner. A quick trip to the yellow pages yielded a possibility, so we drove over (nothing is far away in Ottawa). It turned out to be _huge_; the climber was about 30′ tall, and big enough for the adults. I spent a couple of hours chasing the kids around the thing! There was a large game of “monster” going, with several parents chasing many children, by the time we had to leave for dinner.

On Saturday night my sister took the kids to Disney on Ice and a sleepover; we had an entire night to ourselves! We saw Chicago, which we loved… Saturday was Christmas (where the kids made out like bandits :-). Sunday we drove back to Toronto in our best time ever; 5:15 from downtown Ottawa to home, including a stop for lunch at Wendy’s in Perth. The weather was excellent for driving, and the kids played nicely with each other (and with us) the whole trip home.

It was good to see my sister again, although as usual we didn’t get much time together. Mum is looking better than I expected. All in all, a very good trip!