Snowball Trees

Every Christmas my sister, Keren, and I make cookies.  We started this when I moved away from home for university, because it was a good way to spend some quality time with her while I was home for Christmas.  That and we both love baking.  Our specialty almost every Christmas is shortbread cookies, as we like to be able to cut out the shapes and more importantly, decorate them to the nines!  In the last few years, we have been trying new recipes out.  This year in my Christmas cookie hunt, I found a recipe for Snowball Tree Cookies from BHG, which are little balls rolled to be little Christmas trees.  You dye the majority of the cookie dough, keeping 1/3 of the dough out and roll the green dough into 1/2 balls, placing them in a triangle in rows of one, two, three, four and the white dough into 3/4 balls and placing them on the bottom.   Once they are backed, you make an icing to drizzle on the cookies and decorate them.  These looked like they would be a lot of fun to make and something Keren would enjoy, so the weekend before Christmas, we ventured to make them.

The dough was really quick to make up.  Because we had a busy weekend, we made the dough the day before we planned on making them, although in hindsight, I would have just make the dough right before we went to make the cookies, because it was easier to work with at room temperature, rather than straight from the fridge.

Dough fresh out of the fridge

Once we were ready to make the cookies, we recruited my mom to help, as I had read that making these cookies could be a little time consuming, and we didn't get started until late in the evening, after having Christmas at my Nanny's.

We took out the white dough and I proceeded to dye the rest of the dough green.  I found that this went a lot quicker than I expected.  I think it was because my last experience of dying something with food colouring, was when my sister-in-law dyed fondant red for my nephew's birthday cake and it took her like 2 hours to get the right colour...

Mixing the dough to make it green.
Mom's in the background making all the white balls.

The green balls!  Keren said they look like the French Peas from
Veggie Tales.

 Once I got the colour down, we went to town making the balls.  We had a hard time getting them to be the size they wanted, because they needed to be really tiny, which meant we didn't have enough to make as many cookies and the recipe had said it would make.  In the end we made 11 trees and I made a wreath with the extras.  Ta Da!

Since they were bigger, they ended up taking longer to cook then the recipe said.  We watched all of Merry Madagascar before they were done (so much for 8-10 minutes). Once they were out and cooling, Mom and I made the icing (Keren was done with the cookies at this point).  Instead of using the recipe that they said to make (as it makes A LOT), I made one my mom had used earlier that day on a cake.  It was only a cup of icing sugar, a couple tbsp of milk and 1 tbsp of vanilla.  Even at that there was icing left over.  Once that was made, Mom and I decorated them all pretty, just like real Christmas trees :)  Aren't they pretty?

They even taste good too!!

Snowball Tree Recipe
(originally from: http://www.bhg.com/recipe/cookies/snowball-trees/)

Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened

½ cup sugar

1 tablespoon milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

Green paste food coloring

1 recipe Powdered Sugar Icing

Decorative candies

Directions

1. In a large bowl beat butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add sugar. Beat until combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in milk and vanilla until combined. Beat in as much of the flour as you can with the mixer. Using a wooden spoon, stir in any remaining flour. Remove 1/2 cup of the dough. Tint the remaining dough with green food coloring.
2. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. For each cookie, use the green dough to shape ten 1/2-inch balls. On an ungreased cookie sheet, arrange balls in a row of four, topped by a row of three, then two, then one on top. As you arrange the balls, gently press them into each other. Use the plain dough to make a 3/4-inch ball and place it at the bottom of the tree for a trunk. Repeat with the remaining dough, leaving 2 inches between cookies on cookie sheet.
3. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until edges are light brown. Cool on cookie sheet for 2 minutes. Carefully transfer cookies to a wire rack; let cool.
4. Drizzle Powdered Sugar Icing back and forth over cookies to look like strings for lights. Add decorative candies to icing for lights. Let stand until icing sets.

Powdered Sugar Icing

Ingredients

4 cups powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 – 4 tablespoons milk

Directions

1. In a medium bowl stir together powdered sugar, vanilla, and enough milk (3 to 4 tablespoons) to make drizzling consistency.

Home Reno 2.0

We have been quiet on the home reno front since we finished the basement.  When it takes you a year and a half to re-finish your basement, you feel like you need to take a good break.  Well we decided that the break was over!  I struck a deal with +Jonathan Wilson back in October to repaint the living room over Christmas, as he was taking 2 and a half weeks of vacation then and I would be off from the 21st to the 2nd, so I could help him paint as he is not too keen on that.  Repainting the living involves taking everything out of the living room, patching holes in the wall, cleaning off the ceiling (as we had a popcorn ceiling that had two rather large smooth spots, so John wanted the whole thing to be smooth), painting and then taking up the carpet and either cleaning up the hardwood underneath or putting laminate down.  This would then lead to ripping up the carpet on the basement stairs, having someone come in and lay new carpet on the stairs and then finishing off the trim in the basement and up the stairs.  As you can see, this is a fairly large project to tackle, but I have been itching to do it because a) I hate the colour of the main floor, it looks blah, dirty and a little like student housing and b) I want to be able to have the basement completely finished.  So I struck a deal, and the plan was laid.

Here are the before pictures of everything:

Living Room

Hallway and Front Entrance

Living Room

Living Room 2

Stairs

Before Christmas we emptied the living room and front hall closet of all it's possession.  It's amazing how different it looks without any of the stuff in it!  Everything is now in the kitchen, basement and spare bedroom.  A little crammed, but it's only for a couple weeks.

Ceiling beforehand

After scrapping has begun!

The weekend of the 15th-16th, John began scrapping down the ceiling.  I was gone for the weekend, so when I came back, it was quite a different.  He had most of the living room done and didn't look too bad.  He wanted to be able to have it all done before we left for Christmas, but with a full week of work and things to fill our evenings, it didn't look likely.  We asked our friend +Paul Dagenais to come over and help.  He came the Wednesday before Christmas and cleaned the ceiling off and patched up all the holes and did some sanding.  He did a great job!  Although we couldn't do anything else before we left for Christmas, we were happy with what was done!

We came back from seeing family in the morning of the 28th and John decided that afternoon to work on the ceiling some more, to figure out if he needed to scrap it more, sand it or maybe just painting it would be fine. He started with the paint, it didn't really work out that well, so he went online, watched some videos and decided that he needed to scrap it down to the drywall.  As he was doing it though, he kept wondering whether taking the drywall down was the better option.  I didn't really know, nor cared, as this is really his expertise.  He went back and forth, but finally he went out and just started ripping it all down.  He got most of the living room completed by the end of the day. *(this was totally unplanned to the original deal struck with John, therefore I doubt I will actually help much with the painting aspect of things, luckily Paul's going to helping him out!)*

That is just part of the ceiling pile which I was cleaning up
while John tore down more!

On the 29th, we went at it again. John finished taking down all the drywall in the living room, hallway and front entrance.  I was on clean up and photo taking duties.  I cleaned up as much as possible, until we ran out of garbage bags, which was pretty well around the time John was done taking down the drywall in that section.  We had been taking throughout this process about what to do for lighting in the living room, as there was no overhead light before, there was only a switch which lead to one outlit, which we had a lamp plugged into.  We decided that we'd like to do potlights.  So once we were finished, we decided to head to Home Depot and pick up some more garbage bags and everything we needed for potlights.  We got very nice ones which will match the other lights we have for the front entrance and hall.

John's less than impressed that he has to tear down the ceiling.

Putting up the potlights

 Once we returned home, we put up the potlights, which went really quickly.  The hardest part was trying to get the cable to run down the wall to the light switch.  It kept getting stuck on the other wires, so we couldn't see it or reach it.  Finally, we found another cable we had, taped it to the cable for the lights and pulled it through.  Had we only thought of that an hour before...

After another half an hour, John got it all hooked up and it looked great!  There is going to be so much more light in the living room now, I'm really excited now to have a living room that doesn't seem so dark anymore!

Don't they look pretty?

Book Review: A Train in Winter by Caroline Moorehead

*I have not written a book review before (or a least a non-academic one), so please bear with me, as it many not be a typical book review*

I recently finished the book A Train in Winter by Caroline Moorehead (and by recently I mean like in November, but I've been busy).  The book is based on a true story of the women who were part of the French Resistance during World War II and their time in concentration camps.  I really enjoy learning and reading books from World War II, not that I enjoyed that it happened, but there is something about the stories on that time period which really draw me to them.  I have a fair amount of knowledge about what happened from school, books I've read and shows I've seen on T.V.  But this was a completely new take on the war for me, which showed me that I did not know as much as I had thought.  Before this book, I had no knowledge of the French Resistance and very little knowledge of those who had fought the Gestapo, my knowledge was more concentrated on the Jewish people and what the Gestapo did to them.  This book opened my eyes to a whole new side of the war.

This book opens with some background history of what was going on pre-war France and leading up to the Germany take over and the formation and action of the Resistance.  While I found the beginning of the book a tad bit boring and slow, I think this had more to do with my desire to the actions of the Resistance and what happened, than my desire to have the background information.  That being said, the information was helpful in putting together pieces of what happened.  My only complaint to this section of the book was that is was confusing to try and keep all the people straight and to understand some of the terminology, which I believe Moorehead thought was more common knowledge to people, but for someone as young as myself and living on this side of the world, I found myself constantly going to Wikipedia to understand what certain words meant.

As the book transitioned from the background history to the stories of the Resistance, I found that I really enjoyed it, albeit that it was confusing at times to remember whom was whom as she jumped around a lot with the timelines and people (something she did throughout the whole book).  Through this section though, I got a clear view of what the Resistance stood for and how they tried to retaliate against the Gestapo.  It saddened me each time a member was caught and thrown in to prison, a camp or killed.

The last portion, which was easily half of the book or more, was the experience of the women in prison and moved into concentration camps.  While their treatment in the prisons were hard, it seems like a summer camp in comparison to their experience of the concentration camps, especially Auschwitz.  Reading their experiences and the things they saw in the camps broke my heart.  While I knew some of what the Nazi's had done in their camps, I had not fully understood or comprehended the severity nor intensity of the actions they took.  I found this portion of the book brought me so much closer to God.  I went through two main emotions, sadness over the fact that these things to could and anger towards God for letting these things happen.  As I first began reading this section, I was brought to tears more than once and kept praying for the families effected by this and was sort of amazed that people could think that treating specific men, women and children was somehow justified in their mind. It saddened me to see how inhuman humans can be towards each other, when God is left out of the picture.  More than once I had to put the book down and leave it before I could come back to it as the things described sickened me so much.  Finally, as this section moved on, I began to move into anger towards God, for allowing such things to happen.  I know that God is sovereign in all things, yet at times it is so hard to understand how He an allow it.  I did not expect this book to move me towards God as much as it did.

The final part of the book spoke of the freedom brought to the fewer than 40 women who had survived their 2 years in the camps and their transition into the 'real' world.  Every single one of them found it extremely difficult to go on with their lives, although they did, and found that they could not talk about their experience with anyone but each other.  They had formed a solid friendship during their Resistance and concentration camps days, which could not be broken and was the only thing that really helped them make it through the ordeal.

All in all, I enjoyed this book.  I gained new knowledge of what happened in Auschwitz and the French Resistance.  I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in World War II or wants to have their faith stretched and grow.

I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living, my Poppy you'll be

A year ago today my Poppy went home to be with the Lord.   It some ways it doesn't feel that long, in other ways it feels long, most of the time it doesn't feel like it happened, but all of the time I miss him.

To give you a picture of who my Poppy was, he was born in the late 20's in Newfoundland.  He had 4 sisters and 1 brother and was the second oldest.  He grew up in the Depression, and started working at 12 years old.  He worked on boats and trains and finally ended up as an iron worker.  He moved to Toronto in his late 20s, went back to Newfoundland for a while when he met my Nanny and married her within 6 months!  He built their first home in Newfoundland (which still exists) and moved to Ontario when my mom was 8 months old.  They settled in Whitby and my Pop worked in the Toronto area, helping to build such buildings as the GM plant in Oshawa, the Sheraton in Toronto and the CN tower. He was a home body, and always had to be doing things around the house or little projects.  He had a shed in the back which he would be almost year round, as he got older at the first sign of spring he would be out there doing something.  Although coming to the Faith later in life, his faith and commitment to the Lord was always strong.

There are too many things that I missed about my Poppy for me to even but I am going to try and give you a glimpse into a few of the ones which come in my mind at this moment, as I reflect on this anniversary.

I miss my Poppy’s baking and cooking.  The one thing that you could always expect when you went to my Nanny and Poppy's house was Pop's bread.  Once a week he would be up early making bread from scratch.  I have so many memories of getting up to help him make bread as a kid.  I loved being able to help him, getting to knead the bread, covering it up to raise, breaking it apart into bread pans, waiting for it to raise again and then getting to bake it!  My favourite part was that Pop always made sure there was a bit of dough left over to fry up to make tiffins. 

As I got older, he always made a batch of buns for me, which I loved to melt cheese on.  He would always send us home with whatever buns were left and a loaf of bread. It's been almost a year since I last had Pop's bread, as he continued to make it until the end, although smaller batches.

The other thing Pop was known for was his pies.  He would always have a pie made and ready for us when we came.  And he usually would cut into or put extra dough on the top of the crust to put our initials on the top.  His crust was always so good and I can think of many many time were I helped him make pies, where he would be teaching me little trick, which I have always used to make pies. 

I think the hardest thing to get used to is not having Pop's breakfasts when I go down to visit.  Whenever I stayed overnight, he would always make these large breakfasts for me, which included eggs (cooked the way I wanted), my choice of bacon, ham or fried bologna or all three, harsh browns, Pop's bread toasted, orange juice and slice of cheese.   As I got older, he would take my order the night before so that as soon as I was up (which he could always hear me, even though he was half deaf), and have it ready, or almost ready by the time I came downstairs.  

Pop ALWAYS had a joke to be said to make you laugh.  Even though I heard most of them more than once (or two or three times!), it was always funny because he had a way of telling them that made you laugh.

He always loved to tell stories from his life, some of them funny, or some of them now.  My favourite one will always be when he was working on the Bell building in Toronto and electrocuted himself, blowing the electricity to the whole building but surviving.  A few months later, he's out with some other iron workers after work, sharing stories, when one guys talked about this guy who was working on the Bell building and blow the electricity for the whole building and he wondered if that guy ever lived.  My Poppy just said “You’re looking at him” and they all laugh and the guy telling the story, couldn’t believe it.  I miss this and all the other stories he used to tell.

My Poppy loved to work with his hands and he NEVER threw away anything.  His shed is full of jars of old rusty nails and screws that “could be used for something”.  Which I’m still benefiting from, as we found something in Pop’s shed that we needed to fix something on our house.  All I could do was laugh, because even now, Pop is still giving us the things we need!

Poppy was so good at coming up with a solution to fixing something, such as an old favourite purse of mine which one of the straps had come off, he glued it together with plumbing glue and used two pieces of dowel and a clamp to hold it in place until it dried.  He was also good at just making something that you wanted by telling him and/or giving him a picture, such as a necklace holder, which after the first one he made for me, he ended up making a dozen more for all the women in the family haha!  

I always loved helping him build things.  There is a picture of him and I, when I was 2 or 3 in our apartment in Lindsay, where he came up to put up some shelves and I am there beside him holding the tape measure, measuring the shelves with him.  He made a few little tools for me, like a little handle with sandpaper, or give me the smaller tools and let me call them “mine”, so that I always had some as I went after him to help.  I think what makes me most happy this now is that my husband has taken all his tools to use to make things around the house, so every time I go into our garage I see Poppy’s tool and the memories of use working together with them come flooding back.

I could continue to go on and on about the things I miss, but I’ll end now with one last thing, and that is his love for Christ.  He came to Christ later on in life, but from the time he gave his heart, he was full in.  Pop never missed a Sunday to go to church, until he got really sick.  Pop could always be seen reading his Bible, which he kept beside his chair.  One of my favourite last memories was when I spent a weekend with them just over two years ago, when I woke up early and decided to go down to the living room to do my devotions.  There was both my Nanny and Poppy doing their devotions, so I sat down with them and shortly after, Pop finished reading and got down on his knees to pray.  This wowed me as despite being sick and having bad knees, he still bowed down to speak with his Lord.

Pop, you are never far from my heart or thoughts.

Anniversary Weekend

This weekend we celebrated our 2nd anniversary (which is really on Tuesday).  John planned out the whole weekend and I had no idea what we were going to do.  We left Friday night after work.  We came home and packed first before leaving because we needed to leave after the traffic had died down a bit.  All I was told was that I was going to need something warm, for 0 degrees temperature and then something nice to wear for dinner.  It made packing a little interesting as I didn't know exactly what to pack, but I was able to do it.  We left the house by 6pm and then proceeded to go to dinner at Moxie's at Riverside and Hunt Club. Not going to lie, I was wondering if we were just going to be staying in Ottawa for the weekend, which would have been ok, but I had been prepared to leave the city.  It turned out though that it was just a stop so that we could wait for traffic to be not as bad.  Dinner was really nice.  John got steak and I got salmon and we shared a banana cheesecake dessert.  

Then we were off to our destination. As we drove through downtown, I had figured that we were going to Quebec (which I had kind of assumed).  While I had been wondering if we were going to go to Montreal, once we drove past the turn off for Chelsea, I realized we weren't going there.  Finally, we made it to our destination, which was Wakefield (this I only found out because we missed our turn off and had to drive through the town and I saw the Canada Post with the sign on it for Wakefield, haha).  John had booked us in a little country B&B, called La Grange.  It is a converted barn, which houses the B&B on the lower level, the owner on the main level and a yoga studio on the 2nd level.  It was very nice.  We got a nice suite room which included a small kitchenette, our own bathroom and exit from the house.  We got settled in around 8:30pm and realized that we didn't bring anything to do, so once we explored the lounge, we found a 1,000 piece puzzle we figured we would tackle.  It was the first time we had done a puzzle together.  Below is the beginning stages. 

The next morning, after a nice breakfast, we set out to explore the town and see the sights.  We found a covered bridge which runs over the Gatineau River from the 1800s which was rebuilt after a fire in 1987.

The scenery there was so beautiful, the fall colours were very rich.  John said the reason he picked it was because he knew I would like it.  I probably said "look, it's so pretty" about a million times because the trees everywhere were red, yellow and orange.  It made me wish for a nicer camera to take better pictures.  These will have to do.

One view from the side of the covered bridge.

Next we drove up around the Wakefield Mill, which is a big deal because it was sort of the center of the town and the MacLaren family who essentially founded/owned the town.  The Mill is now a fancy resort (which apparently books up fast as John tried to get in there, but only Friday night was available) and spa.  Just past the Mill is the MacLaren Place, the house the family lived, and the cemetery.  We decided to drive up to the cemetery to see why they had signs up to it.  I wanted to see if someone famous was buried there.  Well, the scenery up there was so beautiful up and around it.  I took many pictures, but I'll just share one.

 

After taking a bunch of pictures, we drove up and got out to see the cemetery.  We found a plaque there for Lester B. Pearson which the Government of Canada had placed there and then a cement sign on the ground saying "L.B. Pearson" and an arrow pointing up.    

I figured it meant that he was buried there, but John didn't think so because there had been a sign at the entrance saying that it held the MacLaren family and town residents. But we went to investigate the cemetery anyways and what do we find but Lester B. Pearson's grave. Apparently people like to put rocks on it?

 After our little adventure, we came back to the B&B for a bit before lunch and our afternoon activity.  We worked on our puzzle a little bit, see the progress?

We went for lunch at Tim Horton's and then went to the location of our afternoon event.  We ended up at Adventure Lafleche to go for a cave exploration!  Lafleche is an aerial park along with cave exploration.  At first I thought that we were going to go zip lining as there were a lot of people outside getting ready to go, but once we went into register, I found out we were going to the caves. It was really cool!  We started off going through a tunnel where there were a bunch of bats already hibernating for the winter.  Then we climbed down one flight of very narrow stairs and saw some pools of water with the cave.  The guide explained a little bit of how they were digging it out and where all the tunnels led.  Next we went up 7 stories high to the top of the cave.  It didn't seem like it, but I think it's because it was dark and you can't see down when you are climbing up (which was just as good because I may not have been able to do it otherwise!).  While up there, we went into one room which the guide had us turn off our lights and see the true definition of pitch black.  No natural light can get into this room.  It was really interesting to see how your brain plays tricks on you when there is absolutely no light for you to see.  I kept thinking I could see a faint light to the left, even though I knew there was not.  Finally we ended up in a great room, which the guide told us they had found blue whale bones in.  They have some theories as to how it would have ended up there, but no conclusive evidence.  Unfortunately it was too hard to get many pictures in the cave, but I got some when we exited looking back it.

Marble stone which is all in the cave. This is what it looks like when it has just
broken off.

This is what it looks like once water has rubbed against it.

After the caves, we went back into Wakefield and toured the shops.  John got some almond bark and fudge.  I think that made the day for him.  Afterwards, we went back to the B&B to relax before supper.

We had supper at the Wakfield Mill restaurant.  We got a seat overlooking the waterfalls they have there, which was so nice.  They had different dining options on their menu, we decided to go with their 'Discovery Menu'.  This included 6 courses of the chef's choice.  It was very interesting.  We had a lot of things we had never have before, many of which I can't even name and most of them we did not enjoy too much.  While it was not the most enjoyable meal, it was a really nice evening, as I really enjoyed our conversations throughout the meal.  It felt rather relaxing.

Back at the B&B after supper, we ended up working on our puzzle until almost 2am!  John wanted to finish it before we left and we didn't keep track of the time too well.  We just kept working on it until it got to the point that none of the pieces would fit, so we gave up.  This is the progress through the evening.

Sunday morning we slept in and finally I finished off the puzzle!  It felt like such a huge accomplishment! 

We checked out after 10am and went to a little bakery to get pastries for breakfast.  We were going to find a trail to go on, but it was really damp, so instead we decided to come home, unpack, do some laundry and then relax for the rest of the day before starting our weeks again.  I really enjoyed the time away with John, particularly because I had him for the entire time (unlike in Hawaii).  It was romantic and I could see that a lot of thought went into it.  I can't wait to have more weekends like this with him in our future!

Happy Birthday to me!

Well I'm officially another year!  Yesterday was my 25th birthday.  While I had some reservations about becoming 25, I had quite a lovely day and felt very loved by my friends and family.  

As usual, I have been able to spread my birthday out over a long period of time. In September, I celebrated my birthday with my parents, sister and Nanny as I was not going to be home for Thanksgiving, when I usually celebrate it with them.  It was nice to have them up and be able to celebrate with them, even if it was a month early.  Of course this meant that when I called my Nanny last night, she had completely forgotten it was my actual birthday, seeing as she had already celebrated it!  

This past weekend, my mother-in-law, sister-in-law and nephew came up and brought my birthday gift, a nice Ontario cookbook and a new Kinect dance game.  The game has a workout mode, which I am excited about using over the winter!  

On Monday, my small group celebrated with me by having party hats, non-noise makers, cupcakes and a gift!  My favourite party was when I came in and they all jumped up and shouted happy birthday and Chrissy slid on one knee to the floor doing jazz hands...the only one doing it.  :)  THAT is one reason I love you, Chrissy Vance.

On Tuesday, my actual birthday, John sent me a beautiful fall bouquet of flowers to my work.  It's complete with a small pumpkin in it!

My work got me a cake and card for me.  While I knew they were doing it, I did wonder at first if they had forgotten, but then realized when I went to get the mail that they were going to have the cake ready when I came back, which they did. You can trick the woman who plans everyone else's birthdays in the office :P

Tuesday night John planned a lovely special dinner for me. He told me that I was not allowed to come home until after 6pm, so I went grocery shopping after work and then into some other stores at College Square until I was allowed to come home.  When I got home, John was waiting at the door to take the bags from me, with my slippers all ready :)  He had all the curtains closed with candles lit leading to the dinning room...

He had the table all set up with an appetizer bread tower with vinegar to dip in it.  It was really cool!

Then we had a main course of lemon pepper shrimp fettucini, with a giant brownie and lemon-blueberry tart for dessert.  John won't sing in front of me, so he had a youtube video set up on his phone to play "happy birthday" while he brought out the desserts with candles.

It was a wonderful dinner, followed by a movie and some time in the hot tub.  All in all, it was a great birthday!

Hawaii Day 7 & 8 & Back to Reality

After a great time at Pearl Harbor, John and I made it back to out hotel, picked up our bags and headed for the airport.  Our flight didn't leave until 7:30pm, but we didn't have anywhere to put our bags, so we were at the airport at 2pm.  The time went quickly though.  We got lunch once we got there then over to Cold Stone for some ice cream, and then hung out at our gate until it was time to leave.

United Airlines made for another exciting trip for us/me.  We ended up being delayed due to mechanical issues and didn't actually leave until 10pm, which meant we missed our connection flight in Newark to Ottawa.  However, they did provide us with a coupon for a free alcoholic beverage and 10% off our next flight with them.  Can I just say that this is the most ridiculous coupon I've ever received from an airline?  What airline provides a coupon for a free alcoholic beverage when at least 50% of the flight don't or can't drink?  I realize it ends up saving them money instead of having to provide everyone with a free meal, but still, this is just show their crappy customer service!

Anyway, the flight to Newark was uneventful.  Mostly just slept and tried to watch Madagascar 3, I fell asleep 3 times while trying to watch it, the 3rd time I saw most of it though, very funny. We got put on a new flight later on in the afternoon on Sunday.  And made it to Ottawa by 5pm.  I have never been so happy to be home before!  Safe to say, we are now more than willing to spend the money to go with anyone other than United when we fly next!

Once we got home, we went grocery shopping, had dinner, watched Battleship (since we went on the USS Missouri the day before, we both wanted to watch the movie again to see what we could recognize) and went to bed.

Thanksgiving Monday was spent doing laundry, fall chores around the house and preparing dishes to take to a Thanksgiving meal at a friend's house.  While it was a different Thanksgiving for us, it was nice to get together with our group of friends and share in a meal together.  We don't get to do it very often, but I hope it will be able to happen more in the future.

Now we are back into our regular work week and John's off to a board meeting at the church.  I feel like we are back into our busy schedule and the relaxation of Hawaii is behind us.  I'm hoping for more trips like this in the future (maybe with less flight hassles and me not getting hurt at all).  I'm out now to catch up on some tv shows and try to remain awake until bed time, as jetlag has not been my friend today.  Thanks for reading!

Hawaii Day #7 - Pearl Harbor

After a terrible night sleep and a lot of begging, we ended up going to Pearl Harbor Saturday morning.  We had planned all week to go Saturday morning, but after Friday night's incident with my knee, John was pretty adamant about not going.  But after a lot of begging and walking around the room to show him I could do it, we went :D  (AND I'm happy to say that it didn't hurt at all!  I was just slow getting around).

We had ordered a shuttle to come pick us up and drop us off at Pearl Harbor.  We got that at 7am and got to Pearl Harbor around 7:30am.  They suggest being there as early as possible as they have a limited number of tickets for the USS Arizona Memorial (as it is free), so it is a first come first serve basis.  We were able to get 8:15am tickets and then also bought tickets to go on the USS Missouri (aka Mighty Mo).  We had a bit of time to kill, so we walked around a bit and looked at some of the things they had at the Visitor Center. Here are a few pictures from the visitor center...

Map on the ground when you first come in of what the Pacific looked like in 1941

Anchor from the USS Arizona, it weighs almost 20,000lbs!

USS Bowfin

Mk 45 Nuclear Torpedo

I think this is the MK14

Two Ballistic Missiles

The USS Arizona Memorial begins with a 20 minute video of real footage from the attacks on Pearl Harbor taken from Japanese fighter plane footage.  It helps to explain what happened leading up to the attack and on the day of the attack.  It was very moving and sad to watch.  Once the movie is over, we then go over to a boat which takes us out to the memorial.  Here are a few pictures from the boat ride over.

One of the moors which all the battleships were tied up to the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The USS Arizona Memorial.

Once inside, there are two guides who give you a brief history on the boat that lays in the water and the monument built over top of it.  It turns out the man who built the monument was a Austrian-born American who had been detained for three months in a detainment camp after December 7, 1941 attack.  Despite this, he didn't feel any resentment towards the Americans, and later settled down in Hawaii.  He made it so that the lowest point was directly over the boat and the two higher ends represent the war in Europe and the war in the Pacific.

One of the turret sticking up out of the water

There is still oil seeping out of the boat more than 50 years later.

Shrine room with all the names of the men who lost their lives on the Arizona

Mighty Mo in the background.  Mo is in the location of where the  fighting stopped at Pearl,
while Arizona is resting where the fighting began.

After this, we went back to the Visitor Center and made our way over to the shuttle which takes us over to Ford Island to Mighty Mo.  We were detoured around the island a bit because there was a cancer run going on, so we got to see a bit of the old airfield and building.  We were told that some of the buildings still contain the bullet holes from the attack.  Here are some pictures from the drive..

Radar Station

Pearl Harbor Airplane Museum

The famous red and white control tower, seen in such movies as Pearl Harbor.
Apparently it's in need of repair so they are trying to raise money for that.

Once we got the the Missouri, we were given the option of the type of tour we wanted, we opted for the Ipod, although we sort of followed a group who were getting a guided tour.  There are only 5 levels you can go on the bridge, 3 above and one below.  We did all but the one below.  They saw to give yourself a good 2 hours for the tour, we had about 1 and a half and with me hobbling around, it made it a bit slower.  It was really cool though to see all the old guns, the rooms the officers slept, the officers mess, the drivers room, the tactical room and the captain's rooms (yes, the captain had multiple rooms).  It's surprising how many rooms there were on the boat.  You would have needed to know the ship really really well to get around because it was easy to get lost.  Here are a few pictures from the boat.

After we were done, we had to leave for our hotel so we could check out and then get to the airport.  Watch for the next post for all the details of our return!