Phew!

This has shaped up to be one of the busiest summers I can remember. I'll be sharing detailed posts (hopefully) in the coming days, but for now here's a glimpse of what I've been up to.

My hubby & I took a week to travel to Canada to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. We took three days for our honeymoon all those years ago and in the 20 years we've been married, we took 10 days to go to England when our oldest was about 2 years old. He's now 17. Needless to say, other than a weekend here or there, we've never done something like this. It was fantastic!

We started out heading to Quebec...

St. Lawrence River in the background

We were there for a full day. Then we headed to Toronto for two full days. We stopped for lunch in Montreal.

There was a lot of very tasty food on our trip. I loved the portion sizes in Canada as well. They were perfect. I never left a meal feeling like I had eaten too much and had food left. I even felt many times like I could have easily eaten dessert. Delicious. 

We were in Toronto for two days. Our first day found us at the Toronto Zoo. The big draw for me (and many others) were the pandas.

This one was sitting and eating. The other was sound asleep.

The only con to our visit is we were there during the heat wave in July. It was hot and then some! We did a lot of outside activities that included a lot of walking. The first evening we were in Toronto we also had dinner at the CN Tower. It's hard to even explain what this meant to me. It is a very "fancy-schmancy" restaurant - the nicest I've ever been in. In fact, I had a moment during the meal when I thanked my hubby for all of the hard work he's done that allowed us to be able to go on this trip and eat at the 360 Restaurant. 

Did I mention that the restaurant rotates? We had water views and city views.

View of Toronto from the CN Tower

Our second day found us heading into the city to check out Casa Loma. It's a medieval style castle built on a hill in Toronto. It's used for a lot of movie sets. Care to guess one of them based on this photo?

It was an amazing building, but no air conditioning! HOT!

Then that evening we ate at Medieval Times. If you've never heard of it, the meal is served "medieval style" so no utensils and there is a show as well - knights, jousting, pages running all over the place...it was a bit cheesy but fun.

We ended our trip in Niagara Falls - the Canadian side of course. Here's a view of Horseshoe Falls from our hotel room.

My hubby took this with his cell phone. 

Ten days after we returned from our trip, I headed out to New Hampshire to SoulFest. It's a four day Christian music festival. I had to finish unpacking from Canada to get ready for this trip. I went with a friend, our third year, and we spent four days standing in the hot sun to hold our spots at the front of the stage to view all the fabulous bands that were playing.

This is how close we get to the stage!

Rhett Walker Band

For King & Country

Peter Furler

Jars of Clay

Chris Tomlin

 Crowder

Skillet

That's not even all of them. We spent well over 12 hours a day on the grounds listening to some amazing bands. 

I was then home for five days before I headed to a quick weekend visit to upstate New York. My brother-in-law (my husband's brother) is getting married in October. My mother-in-law & I headed to New York for his fiance's bridal shower. 

Home again for five days and then the boys & I headed to Massachusetts to visit relatives. My brother, who lives in California, ended up coming out last minute with his two girls so we were able to spend the whole time I was there with my boys. It was great for our kids to get to know each other though as they typically don't get to spend that much time together.

We spent a lot of time at the beach....

We spent a day exploring Sturbridge Village. None of us had ever been. Other than the horrific traffic we encountered on the way (it added two hours to our trip!), it was a great day there. 

We also spent a day in Boston exploring the New England Aquarium and taking a Duck Tour of the city. Three of the kiddos even got a chance to drive the Duck Boat when it was in the water.

My brother doesn't get to come east to visit family as often as we'd like so we did take advantage of the fact that he was here to have a family party one day as well. We also surprised our Dad and met him for lunch. We didn't tell him beforehand that my brother was here. He was extremely surprised. It was nice to have lunch together. We were only missing one brother and his fiance and a bunch of nieces and nephews. 

At "the bay" hunting for crabs and other sea creatures, shells, and rocks.

Needless to say, it's been a very busy few weeks for me! I have one last weekend away and then it's home and our school year will start. However, lots and lots of memories were made this summer and to me, it's worth all the time on the road.