Vacation 2013: St. John's Newfoundland

Hello out there!  Well it seems I've fallen into the somewhat dismal cycle of only posting once/year - when we go on vacation.  But for now I'm going to go with "better than not at all".  This year we packed ourselves up, got on a plane and flew to St. John's Newfoundland.  The catalyst for getting us here is the wedding of one of Gordon's younger cousins, Justin.  I really love visiting G's family in Canada - it's always a fun time, his family is full of super nice, fun people and we get to visit Canada at the best time of the year - spring and summer.  I actually am not quite sure I believe all these stories about "terrible winters".  From where I sit Canada is fabulous every time I'm in it.  So when we found out Justin and Meghan were getting married here in Newfoundland we were excited to explore a new part of Canada.

Gordon did pretty much all of the arranging and found us a fantastic rental house that we are sharing with his parents and his brother and his family.  There are ten of us staying in this awesome home in downtown St. John's.  The house is close to everything, has plenty of space and a backyard.  It's been a really fun home base for all of us and a nice way for the young cousins to get a lot of together time.  The four of them even get to figure out how to share a room with two beds! (see what I did there - I made that sound fun, didn't I?)

We arrived in St. John's Sunday afternoon after flying through Halifax. Did you know St. John's is 1.5 hours ahead of Boston?  I certainly did not.  In my sheltered, Boston-centric world there are NO time zones eat of Boston that aren't in Europe.  Horizon-broadening lesson #1 - and only about 5 minutes into the trip.   The kids were really awesomely-behaved on the first flight from Boston to Halifax.  Our biggest accomplishment was getting all four of us from Union Square Somerville to the Air Canada gate in under 30 minutes.  I'm pretty sure we couldn't do that twice.  Feeling nice and smug about that -the transfer in Halifax was a little dicey for Quinn.  He was just tired and a bit excited, but ended up being a bit of a handful.  I will say though - flying with a 4 year old an a 6.5 year old is WAY easier than any other stage.  It's so nice that some things do really get easier.  

Gordon's aunt and uncle, Karen and Peter, met us at the rental house soon after we arrived here.  They took us to the large, nicely stocked grocery store complete with a separate escalator for shopping carts and free covered parking.  Then we went to their house for dinner.  Lily and Quinn spent a good long time picking and then consuming raspberries from their back yard.  Karen and Peter were such gracious hosts, feeding us and very kindly putting up with Q's over-tired rambunctiousness.  We had a yummy dinner complete with home-made "dan tat".  We got a brief cameo appearance from Justin's younger brother Matthew and then went back to our home for the week to get settled and go to bed. Well, I went to bed with the kids and G stayed up waiting for his brother and parents to arrive.