Tag: outings

The Ex

August 28, 2014
Rainwater

We headed down to the Ex on Thursday. The weather was great, 22°C and no rain in the forecast. The girls had the Ride All Day passes. Here they are taking the Sky Ride.

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The good weather brought out a lot of people. The rides and midway filled up fast.

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Here are the girls waiting in their car on the Blitzer.

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It was a longer than usual wait, as they would only allow one car on the track at a time. Here they are coming down the first hill.

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Angela and Claudia at the end, Gillian is in the second row.

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Next it was on to the Polar Express.

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Gillian and Angela strapped in on the Bonzai ride.

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Click on the picture to see a close-up of Gillian’s expression.

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Angela and Gillian on the Bonzai.

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Angela went on almost every ride.

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Taking a break from the rides to go through the Rock & Roll Funhouse.

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They went on the Fire Ball during the day and at night.

The Crazy Mouse Roller Coaster wasn’t running earlier in the day, but it opened up and the girls didn’t have to wait that long.

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Click on the photo to see a close-up of the girls facial expressions.

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Posing with Pachi, the Pan Am Games mascot.

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The girls posing on one of the Swans from Ontario Place. There are a bunch of them scattered around the Exhibition grounds.

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Lots of minions were available as prizes this year.

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Walking towards the Farm building.

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The girls getting ready for the duck race.

We sat and watched the sheep shearing demonstration. Lots of wool.

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Completely shaved.

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The girls holding up their catch of the day.

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Next to the giant inflatable pig.

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It was back to the rides.

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Angela and Gillian went on the Fireball (or Ring of Fire).

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By mid afternoon it was getting even busier.

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The Ride All Day pass was a good deal.

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Angela pointing and saying she was going on the Mega Drop.

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Angela was also the only one brave (or crazy?) enough to go on the Mach 3 ride. Here she is strapping herself into her seat.

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Here is a video of Angela on the Mach 3.

A 37-metre arm connected mid-way whirls riders 360 degrees upside down and inside out. The relentlessly robust arm rotates at up to 13 revolutions per minute, producing a g-force of 3.5-g.

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Survived!

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We saw the acrobatic show called Mirage.

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After dinner, we made one more trip down the midway. The food building was packed at 7:30 pm.

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Some of the rides lit up at night. There was a time when we rarely ventured into the adult midway, let alone be there at night. We took a stroll through the kids midway earlier in the day and many of their favourites as a kid were still there.

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After a long day it was back to the Go Train for the ride home.

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R.A. Dickey Bobblehead Day

April 27, 2014
Rainwater

We headed down to Rogers Centre for the Blue Jays game. It was R.A. Dickey bobble head day and R.A. Dickey was pitching.

Before the game we were down near the field. Brett Lawrie waiting to take some BP.

The first pitch.

Jose Bautista.

Edwin Encarnacion with one of his 2 hits.

It was a good game, mainly because the Jays won after losing the previous 4 games.

Happy fans, a bobble head each and a victory.

After the game we went for noodles for dinner. We tried Oniwa on King Street, but they were closed. So we headed up to Dundas Street to go to Kenzo Ramen.

The box score from the game.

Rick Mercer Report

March 14, 2014
Rainwater

We headed downtown today (sans Gillian) to see the taping of the Rick Mercer Report. We went to park at the Yorkdale subway, only to find they had torn down the parkade. Here is where we use to park all the time.

These are the doors we use to always walk through to take the overhead bridge to the parking area. The TTC website says it is closed until Fall 2015. I also heard they are enlarging the mall.

As always we enjoyed Rick Mercer.

Here we are with Rick Mercer.

Rick signing his autograph on our tickets.

Princess Mononoke

January 3, 2014
Rainwater

We headed downtown today to the TIFF Bell Lightbox located at Reitman Square on the north-west corner of King and John Streets. Since December they have been showing films from Studio Ghibli. Princess Mononoke is one of the few films of Hayao Miyazaki that we have not seen.

We took advantage of the extended family day pass for the TTC over the holiday break. For $11.00 we can all tavel on the TTC. With the weather so cold today it came in handy as we did the subway and streetcars. Here are the girls on the subway on our way downtown.

The girls with Totoro.

Afterwards we headed up to Dundas Street and the Japanese Noodle House Kenzo Ramen for an early dinner.

Apple Picking

September 22, 2013
Rainwater

This morning after breakfast we headed to Big’R Apple Farm to pick some apples. It is located only 6km from the house on Heritage Road.

We went for the macintosh apples.

There were lots, here are Angela and Claudia trying to reach the high ones.

When Claudia would pull one off, a couple more would fall off and hit Angela.

Angela taste testing.

We bought two bags.

After yesterday’s rain, the sun was out briefly while we were picking.

This one is for Gillian.

For those that didn’t want to pick from the trees, they could pick from the crates, I wonder if they go around and pick up the good ones off the ground.

A short video of Angela and Claudia picking apples.

Grand Slam of Curling

April 18, 2013
Rainwater

Gillian and Angela had the opportunity to go to the Grand Slam of Curling Player’s Championship with their school curling team. This years event was at Ryerson’s Mattamy Athletic Centre at the old Maple Leaf Gardens. Claudia wanted to go, so I bought tickets for the two of us and we headed down as well. The corner of Carleton and Church. We went into the Loblaws to buy some snacks.

The main entrance on Carleton.

There is an NHL sized hockey rink on the third level. The facility can seat 2,539 people. Seating is mainly on the east and west sides, with a couple of rows of end balcony seats.

The Players Championship is the world’s 15 highest ranked men and 15 highest ranked women curlers competing for high stakes, but more importantly for some of the Canadian teams a berth in the Olympic Trials in Winnipeg in December.

We were there for the 7th and 8th draws. Here is Team Howard warming up.

Manitoba’s Chelsea Carey.

Team Koe’s Rycroft and Simmons.

Mirjam Ott of Switzerland, Kevin Koe and Glenn Howard.

Team Gushue, they played Team Howard in the feature game. Team Howard won 5-4.

Brad Gushue.

Kevin Koe lost to Team Frans 7-6 in extra ends.

The curling zamboni.

Gushue pondering his next move.

Glenn Howard.

Jennifer Jones watching the action.

After each draw they kick everyone out of the seating area.

Warm-ups for the 8th draw.

Rachel Homan and Heather Nedohin were playing on the far sheet.

Claudia had a good time, any time you get off school is a good time.

The Mount Carmel curling team.

Angela hidden in the photo above.

Team Jones beat Team Tirinzoni (SUI) 8-6.

Claudia and I moved down to sit in the first row. Nkeiruka Ezekh of Team Sidorova of Russia.

2013 World Champion Eve Muirhead.

Stephanie Lawton of Saskatchewan defeated Team Muirhead 7-5.

Team Jones third Kaitlyn Lawes.

We had a good time, our seats were up in the end balcony right above Claudia’s head. It gave you a good view down the sheets of ice. It was kind of tricky figuring out how to get there initially and to get food or go to the washroom you had to go out and then go to the side areas. For the second game we had a waitress come around and take orders.

Afterwards the Mount Carmel curling team got to meet Team Middaugh, the lead for the team is Leigh Armstrong who one of the coaches knows well.

They sign autographs for the kids who bought scarves.

Angela and Gillian came with Claudia and I instead of going back on the school bus. We walked down to Yonge to have dinner at Kenzo, the Japanes noodle house on Dundas, west of Bay St.

We stopped at Dundas Square to watch Billions Cobra a street performer.

He uses fire in his show, he starts with some juggling.

Then moves up to a flaming bull whip.

And his grand finale is fitting his body through a tennis racquet on fire.

A little contortion juggling.

The flaming tennis racquet.

2012 Tanabe Skating Party

December 29, 2012
Rainwater

We rented the ice at Meadowvale 4 Rinks on Saturday night, it is the first of what may or may not become an annual event. We did it last year for the first time, but that was for Gillian’s birthday, so technically it doesn’t count. We invited some family and friends and brought out a few sticks and pucks as well.

Gillian and Marcus, looking like they are set to duel.

We had the ice for 90 minutes from 9:30-11:00 PM.

Stella had a good time.

Claudia playing goal against Alex.

Claudia was looking forward to skating almost as much as Christmas.

Steve dressed up as a Habs elf.

Angela and Katie.

Abbey taking a break.

Katie trying to hang off of the net after watching one of the bigger kids (Emi?) do it. She couldn’t quite reach.

Instead she was hanging onto the net.

Gillian had a bunch of her friends out for the skate.

PA Day

September 14, 2012
Rainwater

The girls all had a PA Day on Friday, only twice this year do the high school and elementary school have it the same day. I took the day off and the four of us headed downtown in the afternoon. We were going down to see the season premiere of the Rick Mercer Report. Due to the early morning tragedy on the TTC subway line at Yorkdale, there were delays on all the subway routes. I was trying to figure out how to get downtown by avoiding the Yonge-Spadina line.

Before we left they had re-opened the subway north of Yorkdale. We drove to Kipling and parked there for $2. Our first stop was Chinatown to have dinner, we went to Xam Yu and had the BBQ pork noodles in soup and the deep fried shrimp balls. It was the same restaurant we went to with Uncle Tak back in January.

From there we walked down Spadina and along Queen and hit the Chapters at John St and Adelaide St. It is only a short walk to the CBC Broadcast Centre where the Rick Mercer Report is taped in front of a live studio audience every Friday. Our seats were third row on the floor.

This is the 10th season for his show.

The show will air on Tuesday September 18th, check it out, his flyboard segment is hilarious. “With great powers, comes great responsibility”.

This fridge may be unused for awhile. The studio portions of Hockey Night in Canada are filmed on the same floor.

We were close to the front of the line for meeting Rick Mercer. This was Gillian’s first time and Angela and Claudia’s second time.

The girls in front of Mr. Dressup’s treehouse.

Larger than life Rick Mercer.

The girls with his star in the CBC building.

This was the second last night of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), parked on Wellington was Gene Simmons tour bus. Kiss had a concert at the Molson Amphitheatre on Thursday night. Across from the bus is the Ritz-Carelton hotel and there was all kinds of activity out front and people waiting around.

There was a guy in a black leather jacket and long hair and he had some items that were autographed, so I thought maybe Gene Simmons was in the middle of the crowd out front. It turned out that it was VIP’s for the movie English Vinglish. The movie is an Indian drama directed by Gauri Shinde.

People milling about the front of the hotel, including us for awhile, trying to figure out who we were waiting to see.

The VIP’s got in their fancy Audi cars and drove across the street and then up a makeshift driveway on the Metro Hall square to more waiting fans and photographers.

We still weren’t sure who we were seeing, but interesting to be part of the crowd none the less.

It turned out the big star was Sridevi, a Bollywood actress. This was her first film in 14 years, she had come out of retirement.

Everything was TIFF, even the Toronto Star newspaper box. More importantly I noticed all kinds of Orville Redenbacher popcorn bags in the garbage can, I said to the girls we missed the free samples. But once we made our way to King Street, there was a couple of people handing out small bags of the Sweet & Salty popcorn. So good, Angela and I went back for seconds.

The movie was being shown at Roy Thompson Hall, there is a display of Audi cars in front of the venue. Eventually we made our way to the subway and headed home. It was a fun day with the girls.

MEC and Christie Pits

July 22, 2012
Rainwater

Today we headed down to Mountain Equipment Co-op. Here are Angela and Claudia on King Street. Gillian stayed home to study for her physics test tomorrow.

The MEC store on King Street.

The corner of King and Blue Jays Way.

From MEC we headed up to Christie Pits to watch the Toronto Maple Leafs Inter-County Baseball League game. They were playing the Burlington Twins. They almost picked off this guy at second.

Here he is shaking the dirt out of his uniform.

It was a good game, but it was a hot day. This was the second last home game of the season.

The centre fielder, Raul Borjas.

Here is one of the Maple Leafs getting caught in a rundown.

This bird landed a few feet away from me. Shortly after a foul ball came my way.

When we left at the bottom of the 7th inning, the Maple Leafs were up 3-1. The final score was 5-4 Toronto.

A final shot from left field, the guys on the field are the bullpen. It turns out the GM of the Burlington Twins is an old high school gym teacher, Doug Kelcher. The Twins use to be the Mississauga Twins, they played in Meadowvale for a couple of seasons before moving to Burlington.

The girls in their TML baseball hats, the hats were free with the purchase of a raffle ticket. For $2 we each got a New Era baseball hat, not a bad deal.

Jays Game

May 20, 2012
Rainwater

We headed down to the Blue Jays game on Sunday. It was Brandon Morrow Bobblehead Day against the New York Mets. The crowds weren’t as busy as last year when it was Robbie Alomar Day.

This guy had a baseball hat on, no really it was a baseball hat, his sister had Mickey Mouse ears with a baseball theme.

It was a great day and the roof was open. Our seats were in the fourth row in the 500 level and it just so happened that the bank of lights shielded us from the sun all afternoon.

We met Carolyn, Danny, Alex and Emi at the game, they had bought the tickets next to us.

It was a good game.

Encarnacion went 0-5 with 2 strikeouts.

Jose Bautista hitting his 11th home run of the season.

Can you see Claudia on the big screen?

Unfortunately the Jays came up short and lost 6-5, the attendance was 41, 857, the bobble heads were given out to the first 20,000.

Elvis outside the stadium.

The final box score.