I just love living on the Island. It has such a small town feel at so many times. This past week they have had the Charlottetown Festival of Lights going on daily. We went down to the waterfront to enjoy the festivities the day before Canada Day and were able to avoid the crowds. It was an opportunity to spend some time with our family enjoying some free rides, visits with the 2010 Vancouver Olympics Mascots, visit a petting zoo and have some cotton candy. Be warned, this post has a lot of pictures. It was so clean and there wasn't any obnoxious amusement park music going. What a wonderful gift to give to the community so that all were able to enjoy it.
Ryan was completely smitten with the mascots. He just loves everyone and wanted to stay with these extra large moveable stuffed animals. I think that was his favourite part!
After we dragged them away from the mascots it was on to the rides. Erin was first up with wanting to go on the strawberry twirl ride. It seems that the boys enjoyed it also.
Poor Allie, she wanted to go on it, but her mean mother told her she was just too little. Luckily we found a blow up activity that was more up her alley (no pun intended!).
The older children, while they were somewhat entertained with that bouncy activity, they were more enthralled with the Pirate obstacle blowup course right next door. Unfortunately, I only seemed to have taken a picture of Ryan entering and not the whole thing.
On to the petting zoo! They were completely captivated to see all of the different animals and to be able to touch and watch them. And yes, we sanitized like mad when they were through touching and feeding them!
Back to the rides we go. Ryan was saddened because the giant slide was shut down for whatever reason. The older children got him to be happy again when they went on the scrambler. They thought that it totally rocked and wanted to keep going back on it.
The next day was actual Canada Day. We went down to our local community centre for the festivities. It was so much fun. It started out with a potluck and door prizes. I won some flip flops with the Canadian Flag on them.
Then the children were outside for all the relies. They had jump rope, hula hoop, tug of war, potato sack, wheel barrel (where Patrick ended up dragging Ryan on his back to the finish line because Ryan rolled over. Needless to say, they took first!), three lagged and nail hammering, pie eating and ended up with a candy toss. The children were broken up in their age groups and awarded ribbons and prizes. I shouldn't just say children, they had a good group of teens there and they were very helpful with the children and they had the adults in the races as well. So much fun.
Afterwards we all went back in to the Community Centre for cake and ice cream and more door prizes! Rand won some lovely grape ice cube molds and Allie and toy truck train. Ryan decided to grace the audience with a lovely rendition of the ABC's in to the microphone that someone left down and on. He even had his fist pounding in the air for others to join him and he ended it with a round of applause. So much for telling him that it wasn't appropriate. He certainly is our little monkey. I hadn't even seen him get up off his chair to go up and get the mic! Great mother eh?
Well, if you have endured this long in the post, I really appreciate it. I love living in Canada, the true north strong and free. I am so proud to be Canadian, for our freedom and for the wonderful life we have here. Hope you had a fantastic Canada Day wherever you were!
