Spaghetti, Sunshine and Santa

Huffle and I watched "I'm a celebrity" last night. Will someone please put Helen out of her misery. What did she expect? Get her out, she is not entertaining!!

I woke up again just before 2am - that bloody noisy water softener and sump again, put my headphones in and listened to Miles Kane, good album but didn't cover the 'noise', so I ended up going downstairs and reading some of The Hobbit. It was about 3:30am before it stopped and I went back to sleep. AAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

We got up this morning, had a quick breakfast, washed and changed and were out the door by 10am - not bad for us. We had our hats, gloves, scarves, coats etc just in case. Today was the Toronto Santa Parade.

Pair of sillies

The drive was quiet due to the fact that the boys were listening to their MP3 players, the traffic wasn't too bad and we found a cheap parking spot on the waterfront.

Hello sailors

We walked to St Lawrence Market and watched the people already lining the streets though it was three hours away, sitting there with their fold up chairs, blankets and cups of coffee - they had a long cold wait!

Toronto buildings

More buildings and look at that sky - it's November!

We then had dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory which is an eccentric restaurant which has an old tram carriage in it and huge stained glass lights. The food was tasty and filling, perfect preparation.

Apparently the two lions, outside of this hotel Downtown, are copies of the ones that stand outside The British Museum, London, England.

Hockey Hall of Fame

We found a good place to sit until the parade came past. There were people lined up for miles. The crowds were about six deep. All of a sudden, people rushed into the middle of the road and all those people that had camped there for hours to get the best spot, were pushed aside. However it did mean that our boys got a spot right at the front (well when other people weren't pushing them and standing in front of them).

Many many many people

The boys were watching a window cleaner cleaning some windows very very high up (they were also laughing because he was splashing lots of water on people and we could see it happening before the unsuspecting public felt it!).

Food vans lining up to feed the hungry

The parade soon started. The kids collected high fives. Lots of marching bands.......

Lots of clowns and floats...

Lots of people dressed as animals....

Mounties, snowmen, gingerbread men, teddies....

There was one little incident where some kids were driving these little cars and one of them knocked a Marshall over. She stumbled, fell and then couldn't get up for ages. She got a round of applause when she got up and walked courageously away. It was quite funny.

...........And at the end, Santa with his reindeer. We couldn't quite see the kids faces but I could see them looking at each other. They absolutely loved it.

We were cold, achey, the boys had cold bottoms from sitting on the road, my foot hurt, Huffle's back hurt from standing too long and joints ached from too much leaf raking yesterday.

We walked back down towards the waterfront, stopped at a cafe and had a hot drink and biscuit. Then we made our way back to the car, and attempted to find our way to the correct road. It was tough going because my sat Nav took us the wrong way (or Huffle ignored it) but Huffle used his inbuilt map and got us on our way. The traffic was bad but we got home eventually.

Small had a shower. Huffle and I put all outerwear away and then we played Table Tennis to get warm, smallest joined us.

When small came down, the boys had their tea and we all watched a bit more of Harry Potter.

We attempted to watch the Santa Parade in the TV but quickly turned it off - very cheesey. We had a lovely day today. It was planned well by us before hand so we wouldn't have to walk for miles, get grumpy and not know where we were eating etc.

A year ago today, we left our lovely little house in The Village, England. Our furniture had been taken the day before, Huffle and Small stayed at Grandmas and Smallest and I stayed at Moo's. we told the boys today we were celebrating our first year here as they would be at school and Huffle at work when the proper day arrived.

 

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