Ottawa!

This past week-end, we had a long overdue visit to Ottawa/Quebec, home to my little brother and step-brother. It was hot, but it was fun, and a perfect mix of family time and cool sightseeing around town. 

Day 1: a stroll through town with the Parliament buildings in the background. Requisite dorky siblings shot.

 The museum of civilisation in Gatineau is impressive, especially the children's museum. After taking it all in, we saw an Imax 3-D movie. Chuckles was keen at first, but then was utterly terrified by the sights and sounds and fell asleep for most of the movie. Thank goodness you don't have to pay for 3 year olds, this kid's movie experiences to date have mostly resulted in naps.

 The kids were doting on their cousin Jujube, who was sweet and always willing to submit to more cousin play. Here the M-cat has a turn:

 There was also some music lessons to be had, courtesy of Uncle Woog.

 And cookies! This sweet delight was from the bakery in Byward market recently made famous by the visit of Barack Obama, who ate a sugar cookie there during his winter visit. Now there are HUGE signs everywhere (is that really necessary?) hawking "Obama" cookies. M-cat went for the flower cookie, though. Way to resist the trend, kid.

 L-man was keen on one thing: touring the mint. Here they inspect their souvenirs, coin collecting books.  I must admit that the mint was pretty fascinating - they make all the collector coins in Ottawa, and also the Vancouver Winter Olympic medals, which were on display. While a certain child was disappointed that there was no coin giveaway, the tour made us all kind of geekily excited about how coins are made. We've started scavenging our loose change for rare coins now.

 And here, just minutes before a slightly bad parenting decision by dad. Hey! Let's prop the 3 year old way up high on this statue in front of parliament hill! What a great photo op! What was NOT captured on film, of course, was how Chuckles got stranded up there, refusing to be lowered down even by a friendly off duty firefighter (for the record, if you ain't wearing big boots and a big red hat, you can't really convince a 3 year old that you're a firefighter, but thanks for trying, Keith) Uncle Woog saved the day by scrambling up the back of the monument and coming to the rescue.

 And it was Busker fest in Ottawa too. This group from Australia was the biggest hit. Paul even took the bigger kids back later that night for the evening show, complete with lots of dangerous acrobatics involving flames. They're still talking about it.

 We had the good fortune of spending lots of time time with the two cutest toddlers in the family! After a hot afternoon of busker watching, we found a haven in the local wading pool and park.

 Our visit ended with a tour of parliament. It was cool, but there was lots of crankiness since it took half an hour to pass though the metal detectors, which put our tour just around lunch time. So we bailed after the House of Lords. At this point, Chuckles had already cashed out of the tour and I got to lug him around town until a restaurant was found. But everyone perked up after that, and we said our good-byes and headed home. We'll be back, Ottawa.