Toronto Highlights

Finally, I'm up to the last week of our trip. We flew to Toronto on Monday morning after the 1st days of Sukkos. Unfortunately, shortly before we left for the airport, Savti and Zaidy got a call from their builder in Florida that their house had been broken into and ransacked. They flew to Toronto with us as planned, but then went down to Florida on Tuesday morning for a few days to assess the damage.
We had fun seeing all the cousins in the Great White North. Here, in bullet point format, are the highlights:

• We went to an indoor playground (same place we went to the year before where Eli and Mashie conspired to break my new camera. All cameras survived this trip) where the kids all ran wild. David and Emme had a contest to see who could run up the slide more times. It was surprsingly very hard to do.
  
• Mashie, Emme and I went on a field trip to Vaughn Mills where Emme and I modeled super-cool sunglasses.
• Eli and Jack took turns tormenting each other. There was no clear winner but those 2 may be cut from the same mold.
• On Wednesday, Ducky flew up from Boston to spend the day with us. We were very touristy and went right from the airport to the CN Tower. It was very tall. Eli still talks about when he plays with Lego and he says "look how big this is. I built the CM tower. Want to see my shirt from the CM tower?" You have to walk through the gift shop on the way out of the tower and Eli insisted on getting a t-shirt. It was a good purchase because he wears it all the time.
• After the CN Tower, we met Mashie and TK for lunch. Eli ordered milk and when it came he tasted it and said "there is eggs in this milk?" We assured him that there wasn't and told him to drink it. He took another sip and didn't look happy. So Mashie tasted it and almost threw up. Then she made the waitress taste it and she also almost threw up. Should have trusted Eli's senses--he knows his milk!
• We visited Reptilia, possibly the most disgusting place on earth. We saw way more snakes than I ever needed to see in my life. Simon loved it because he is gross like that. He also picked out a stuffed crocodile named Snappy that he now sleeps with every night.
  
• On Thursday, we went swimming in the morning in an indoor pool that is supposed to be a wave pool but the waves weren't on. The kids had an amazing time and if TK ever sends me the pictures I will post them.
• The last days were full of eating and shul-going.
• I got a new cell phone which took a side trip to Alaska on its way to Toronto.

We finally managed to pack up our 7 pieces of luggage and make them more or less not overweight. Only breaking one bottle of perfume in the process. Somehow all of that luggage and all of us made it home in 1 piece. The flight home was considerably better than the flight there, probably becasue we only had a 2 hour layover in London so there was no time for the kids to go totally insane. They both slept a good portion of both flights but somehow still went to bed at 8:00 the first night we were home and slept until 8 the next morning. For the first time ever, they escaped jet-lag altogether. I, on the other hand, sometimes still use jet-lag as an excuse for needing a nap even though we've been back for almost a month!