The Long Awaited Vacation: Part III

So, we were in Grand Rapids, just got done eating a lot of Happy's pizza, watched a little league game, and played some tennis. Then we hung out with these folks. Really great, really sweet, nice people. Khara was my college roomie for almost three years in college. Her and her boys Stephen (a.k.a. her man), Jude and Lazarus were loads of fun to hang out with and talk about life with little boys.
I really wish I had pictures of the place we ate at for breakfast the next morning but I forgot to take it out. "Real Food Cafe" is THEE best place to eat breakfast in GR. The pancakes were made from scratch and were as big as the plate. My stomach expanded nicely for the occasion.

Needless to say, we were extremely full and barely ate anything on our way through Canada to get to Niagra Falls.

BUT, there was no way that we were going to go through Canada without going to a Tim Hortans. I've heard that Tim Hortans are as prevalant in Canada as McDonalds are in the U.S.

Whether or not that's true, I have no idea. But I do know it was a nice little donut.

We checked into our hotel on the US side, which apparently is the dumpy side. If you ever visit the falls, get a hotel on the Canadian side. Good advice from a gal who works in Niagra Falls.

Then we headed to the Niagra Falls, sat under the stars with the sound of the falls in the background, and watched some serious fireworks fly overtop.
They also light the falls up at night. It was gorgeous.

The next morning we ate at...
and went to a friend's place over in Canada.

Josh, Kyle's college roomate, and his wife Yvonne, live right on Lake Erie and so we set our feet in the gigantic lake while we talked for a while, ate some burgers and then decided to take a tour of his family's greenhouse. Josh and his family sell their flowers wholesale to independent flower shops and I was really excited to see the flowers he talked about during our college years.

However, when I thought of a family owned greenhouse I wasn't expecting greenhouses spanning 25 acres. But that's what we found.
We were knocked over by the wonderful smell of Gerber Daisies, Snapdragons, and a few other flowers of which I have no recollections of their names.
It was absolutely beautiful.

I took 4 times more pictures of the greenhouse than I did of the falls.

It was a field of flowers as far as I could see. I think this is a little bit of what heaven looks like.
AND they sent us out with bunches and bunches of flowers!

Later that day we toured the falls again. This time we sawing them in the day light.
Kyle decided to go RIGHT up to the rapids, which were a couple hundred feet away from the drop off on the US side. I was practically having a heart attack and yelling at him the whole time.

We didn't eat at the rotating restaurant. Instead, we made it into a hat.

The falls were beautiful, but BUSY. There were so many people there and everything cost money. It was a little tiring.

Or maybe it was day 6 of our vacation and all the activity was catching up with us. So from there we headed off to my aunt and uncle's house in Rochester.

They took us in and fed us much too well and gave us a nice bed to fall sound asleep in. We saw some smaller falls (which were lovely and practically deserted--a nice change of pace)

and toured the Eastman Mansion. George Eastman is the guy who created Kodak and his house is pretty crazy. Apparently he liked hunting as well as photography.

Aunt Sharon and Uncle Jack also took us to the Finger Lakes in NY to go wine tasting. There were some really great tasting wines and I had my first dessert wine ever. (P.S. I decided I like to have dessert WITH my wine, not as my wine. It was too sweet for my taste. And I MUST know what I'm talking about because I mostly drink the boxed stuff .)

The next day we traveled back home and made it as far as the edge of Iowa. We had to pull over twice because of downpours.

And we saw at least 20 cop pullovers on our drive. (Up and back, not just back.)

Luckily, we only one part of one of those pullovers. Oops.

After a nice priced hotel stay because of priceline.com (thankyouverymuch) we traveled impatiently through Iowa so we could get our hands on some of this chunky sweetness.
And some of this silliness.
This gooberness.

And this adorableness.
Ah, they're killin' me with the cutes.
We had a great reunion. The kids were a little speechless when they first saw us. They grinned from ear to ear because momma and daddy were back.

Hey kids, we're HOME.