George is currently on vacation, which is really nice and the kids are seriously loving that. We’re doing the whole “vacation at home” and “play tourist in your own city” thing this year which is fun to do. On Sunday we took it easy by going to our favorite little second hand bookstore (I’m still determined to go there without the kids some day so I can just really browse and take my time). George and I each got a book and the kids picked out two each. I got Reading Lolita in Tehran and look forward to reading it as soon as I finish the ridiculously good Three Cups of Tea.

On Monday we had our first real excursion by going to the Montreal Biodome. That is honestly my favorite place in all of Montreal (Chinatown comes a close second, Old Montreal/the Old Port third). It has four ecosystems – the rainforest, the Laurentians, the St. Lawrence sea way, and the Arctic/Antarctic regions. And naturally, it has all kinds of animals, birds, and fish to go with each.

Breanna is about the same age that Hayley was for her first visit and she reacted the same way – she loved all the fish. She was completely entranced by them, especially the giant tank that had fish bigger than she is. She kept screaming with excitement every time she saw something new. She was also a big fan of some of the brightly colored birds. However, the biggest hit for both Hayley and Breanna was the penguins.

Every time one would dive down and swim past us, there was a lot of laughing and shrieking.

I think the best part was that we had told her about the penguins but she didn’t really understand. Then we got to the Antarctic region and they had a film about penguins being played on the big wall when we walked in. She walked right up and started patting them and I really think that she thought that was it. When she turned around and wandered over to where the real penguins were, her eyes were huge and she had such a gigantic grin on her face. It was very cute.

Hayley has been three times before but it still hadn’t lost her charm. She was also really enthused by the learning center downstairs where they’ve had taxidermists stuff a lot of different animals, they have microscopes, fossils, and all kinds of things that they’re not only allowed to touch, but encouraged to handle. She really wanted to stay in the center longer, but we were hungry for lunch. She also kept wanting to go in and do stuff with the animals. I told her in the car that if she really wants to do stuff like that, she can study science when she’s older and work with animals just like that. She was pretty keen on that!

We ended the day by going to McDonalds for lunch (always a hit), letting them blow off some energy on the play structures there, and they each picked out two toys when we picked up some stuff we needed at the dollar store. So far the two biggest hits from the store were Hayley’s indoor bowling set and Breanna’s mini dinosaur collection (we have more dinosaurs here than some girls have Barbies or Polly Pockets).

We’re also hoping to do some swimming at the nearby pool if it ever stops raining, we want to go to a petting farm, and some day next week we’ll be going to a water park.

Vacationing at home is a lot of fun!

You can see a full set from the Biodome over here. I took a ton of pictures but you’re not allowed a flash (of course) and you’re not allowed tripods to compensate for the low light, a lot of pictures came out blurry. Still, I got enough decent ones and the kids are happy so many penguin shots came out well. Enjoy!