Random

Dru's got two real close mates at law school.
One of them is a guy called Ben (he's the one in the green)
I like Ben, he's really nice, likes my cooking, loves my kids and would do anything Dru asked of him. Good guy.
One time we were just talking and I asked him if he'd baby sat our kids.
Here's his reply "Well sort of like I baby sit Takeshi when you guys are here"
I was cracking up for ages.
It's true.
See, Takeshi is a people person, he wants to be a part of the crowd. I've noticed in the last few weeks that if I'm just around he's fine, if I walk out, he usually looses it.
He doesn't wanna be shoved on the ground and left while we're all up at the table eating, he wants to be part of the party.
He also knows people now and can spot a sucker.
Ben is one of these suckers AKA good guys.
When Ben walks in, Takeshi will be just fine right, then he'll spot Ben and start 'crying' until Ben comes over and picks him up.
Ben does, every time and he'll sit with him till he HAS to do something else.
So he sits there and baby sits him, while Dru and I are around!!
LOL
What a great guy.
Takeshi needs a bit of attention, more than Masaru but not as much as Yuki, but sometime it's pretty close.
He's just so cute though that I find I'm a little softer with him.
Maybe I'm just getting softer in my old age.
Maybe I'm just getting tired in my old age.
I wonder what I'll be like with my 5th kid?

Temple

Dru and I went to the Temple last night.
It was the first time I've been in one of the smaller temples.
It was pretty small man, but beautiful all the same.
Some of it was in French.
It was a bit baffling to me. It's funny how it all just sounds like a bunch of sounds thrown together to make gibberish to me, yet to most it makes perfect sense, and all it takes is a bit of time and study and it'd change in my ears.
It might as well of been that sound on the Charlie Brown shows that the teachers make.
It was good to finally get to go.
It's funny, I don't ever attend the Spokane Temple, yet go in Montreal..............two words, free babysitting, makes all the difference.
I"m pretty upset at myself for never going to the Spokane one, there's no excuses, and now I'll probably never go.
Sometimes I disappoint myself, that is one time.
Anyway it was nice to go out with Dru last night and see the temple together.

'I've lost my swimming mum'

I love how Masaru was swimming great yesterday but 'lost his swimming' today. I told him it's just takes a bit of practice to get it back, cause once you have it, you can't loose it............usually.
So it's been AWESOME weather here in Montreal.
We're having the time of our lives man.
32 degrees Celsius, 90 degrees Fahrenheit, can't ask for much better than that.
In three days Masaru has gone from white to a dark brown. It dumbfounds me!! Yuki's a bit slower but she's already got a little naked swim suit tan line around her body.
We'll do the normal stuff in the morning, breakfast, chores, scripture study and school, then we'll have lunch and it's in the pool till dinner time.
It's tons of fun and we're loving it.
I haven't even been away from the house yet, apart from church, and I don't even care.
Masaru will swim for 4 to 5 hours a day. By the time we leave he'll be a fish. Now I feel a little stupid for signing him up for swim lessons this July at the Bountiful rec centre. He'll be leaps and bounds ahead of the game.
Even Yuki gave up her ring she usually wears around her waist as well as the arm floaties.
Loving it.

How's your Spring time going?
Hope it's just as fun.

So far Montreal is two thumbs up for me.
The Kayberry's have a HUGE basement that's ALL OURS.
We couldn't ask for a better living arrangement.
Plus she's a free range/fly by parent like me, so there's no drama's there, thank goodness!
Just enough discipline and just enough free range.......................Perfect.

I think we'll see some of the sights in the weekend when Dru's home and can come too.
We asked them what there is to see in Montreal and they came up with a couple of things, not much though, anyone else been here or have suggestions?
We might try and get to Quebec City, we hear that's amazing and it's only 2 hours away.
I know I said no more than 20 mins in the car but if Quebec is all it's cracked up to be, we might just have to do it kids an all, unless we can convince the Kayberry's to look after our kids for a day and Dru and I just head there.
Hmmmmmmmmm we'll see how that passes over...............LOL

TV

DISCLAIMER: I talk about the Lost finale so if you haven't seen it READ NO FURTHER.
OR skip down to my Dora part.

So we watched the 'Grand Finale' of Lost the other night and I was a little disappointed. They said it'd answer all the questions, and it answered a lot but, what happened to those on the plane?
What happened to Richard?
I mean I looked up online and they were all always dead and stuck in the 'inbetween' stages of death and the other side.
That doesn't even help at all knowing that.
I've still got so many questions it's not even funny.
Some stuff had nothing to do with anything.
Enlighten me people?
I need answers.
Anyone can give me their take.
Even though I feel like this I still loved Lost. I'm glad I watched all of them and it's nice that everyone met up and were happy at least.
Who doesn't like a happy ending right?



I was reading my book while Yuki was watching another show...................Dora the explorer.
Now my question about this show is, why is Dora always yelling at us?
Does she think we're all deaf?
Was she raised in a yelling family?
Is she deaf?
Does she think we're not going to listen to her unless we're yelled at?
I'd like Dora just to talk to us.
There's no need for yelling unless there's a fire right? I thought that was the golden rule, anything else is not very nice.
Does Nickelodeon know this?
Whoever does Dora's voice is gonna loose it sooner or later, then what are we gonna do?
No Dora?
Will the world end?
Maybe Yuki's.

Videos

Here's some video's from yellowstone

Day 8: Niagara Falls to Montreal

So we let the kids go swimming in the morning. Turns out 4 star hotels don't do a breakfast or internet. They said 'That'll be $13 for 24 hours thanks' and I'm like 'What a rip off, no thanks'
I gave it to them in their little 'comments' paper that they left there.
The pool bathrooms were gross too.
Over priced mate, that's all I gotta say.
BUT great view of the falls and wonderful room. I'm glad the kids had a chance to finally go swimming.
These are my favourite pictures.
Then we headed out to see the falls. Parking was a joke so we drove and found this random parking right on the road for $3.
Sweeet. So we got out the prams and walked along the fence line looking at the falls and getting these shots.
We were really happy to be able to get out and see them.
It was raining, but when we decided to get out it stopped. Awesome.
They're amazing. But there's just so much mist coming off the main ones.
They're still amazing.
Dru's brother said that the ones in Brazil put these ones to shame though.
Dru and I will have to go there as well, one day.
We had a great time.



Yuki's sure lucky she's cute man. With a face like this, she pretty much gets whatever she wants, just not from mum.












Dru and I sure have aged since we took pictures like this while we were dating, little more wrinkles, little more fat, but I wouldn't have it any other way, age means experience and fun times together. 10 years next year and we love each other way more than our first day of marriage, yet we thought we loved each other so much back then.
It's great to be BFF's still after 9 years and I'm sure we'll just get closer, although that's hard to imagine right now.
Maybe I should do a collage of these hand held shots as time goes past, I think that's a great idea!!
I'm gonna do it.
Maybe put them up in our room, no one else wants to see that kinda stuff.
Alright Melissa, back to the day at hand.


We spent an hour around the falls then headed out.
We had no idea of where our mates lived and since the hotel had no internet were kinda in a pickle.
When we got close to the border we rang out mates and had them email our Montreal mates putting 'SOS' in the subject box in hopes they'd read it and let us know their address.
Dru was MTC companions with this guy we're staying with and they're still really close, so it's worked out great.

Palmyra was about an hour and a half from the falls and so we decided to stop there for our lunch break.
Here's the 'Hill Cumorah' This is where Joseph Smith, eventually, was given the gold plates from the angel Moroni.
Fantastic.




These pictures were around the bottom. Four of them.
The three witnesses were the three other men who were allowed to see the plates in real life by the angel Moroni.
The eight witnesses were allowed to see the gold plates from Joseph Smith, so that they could be witnesses to the world that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God and what he was doing was from God.


Then we went down the road a while to the Sacred Grove site which also had a couple of houses that the Smith family lived in that we got the chance to look through.
Now I don't know if this is the original bible that Joseph Smith's family read from, but why do they have it in this box under this picture like this? Maybe, I guess it's up to us to decide.
This is the original foundation but not the original house. This is where the Smith family lived.
Look at that highchair!! It was tiny. I had to get a shot of it.
Birthing room which was attached to this room underneath.

Here's looking from that bed into the birthing room.
Here's the refrigerator.
Pretty cool idea.
Kitchen and family room.
This is called the 'wife saver' as it moves by the hinge in that left corner out from the fire so the women didn't catch their dresses on fire. Pretty cool.
Here's the upstairs of the house. Eight kids and their parents lived in this place. I'm sure they were happy enough as well. Just goes to show that you don't need much room to live right?!?!


Here's the pathway on the way down to their other house, which was bigger and nicer.

On the way down the path, if you stop at the right spot this is what you see, the Palmyra temple peeking through the trees.
Awesome.
Now this house is 85% the original.
Pretty cool aye.
Here's the place where Joseph Smith hid the gold plates from the robbers one time.



This sink is wonderful.
See how much bigger the kitchen is.
And the fridge............
Way bigger house.
Here's the shed where they made things.

This is a huge barn that the Young's owned and it was brought here to this site.
Threshing barn for all the wheat.

Here's the pathway toward the Sacred Grove.
It's an area, and so you can choose from about three paths to walk along and it makes a circle around a section of the forest where it all happened.
Joseph Smith was praying to know which church to join and decided to go out to this section of the forest and pray to the Lord to see which church to join.
Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ visited him here.
It's truly a sacred place. There was a peace to it and it was a true blessing to be able to see this place.
Never in my wildest dreams as a girl growing up in NZ did I ever imagine I would be here at the place. It just wasn't in the cards, NZ girl from Dunedin all the way over in a little town called Palmyra New York? I don't think so.
But it happened and there I stood, in the same place Joseph prayed.
In the same place where it all began, the restoration of the true gospel.
I'll forever be grateful for being able to see this, forever.
I know Joseph Smith is a prophet of God.
I know with all that's inside of me.
I want all who read this to know that I know this.
I hope this is something you'll all be able to see in your life time as well.
Inspiring.

Then we kept going across the border to Canada. It's one of the most beautiful places I've seen in a long time. Thousand Islands, I think it's called.
Some of the houses on the Islands are half on USA and half on Canadian soil.
Maybe you could be eating dinner in the USA and sleeping in Canada!!
Those people must have lots of money man.
We got a hold of Leonard and he guided us to his place.
We got in around midnight.
We had finally made it.
A week long trip.
The best road trip I've ever been on.

406 miles in the car
7 hours in car

3154 total miles in the car
57.5 total hours in the car

Here's to three fun weeks in Montreal and no longer than 20 mins in the car!!
Spew free road trip, can you even believe it?
Go figure right, we've got this awesome spew kit made up just hanging out in the car and it doesn't even get used.
What's the bet if we take it out, that'll be the trip one of the kids spew.