Ten Days In The Valley - (Yes, really. There's still more...) - Part Four

I rarely get on Jim's computer where all our pics are stored, so it's been taking me foreva to get this little hometown glory photo tour wrapped up. I don't want to leave this never-ending post unfinished, so I'm gonna continue with it, even if it takes me all year.

Okay, so let's see... we left off with the kids and the dogs. Alright, I guess that means I can move on to our surprise Canada Day adventure.

When we left in the morning, Josie was under the impression that Amy was dropping me off at a friend's place in Ottawa. En route to the city, I asked her to smile for a Canada Day photo. She immediately saluted. Wonder where she gets that from? 

Little did Josie know that Amy n' I had planned an exciting day for her.

You see, Amy told me a while ago that Jo has two 'goals'. One is to fly on a plane to visit me. (Awe!) The other is to spend a night in a hotel. So, we booked a room in Gatineau, and planned to spend the day visiting museums n' whatnot. 

I wish I had put my camera on video mode when we pulled up at the hotel and told her. But you get the idea...

Jumping.

Dancing.

Blissed out.

After taking a wrong turn, we accidentally ended up at the Military Museum instead of the Museum of Civilization. While guns and uniforms aren't exactly my thing, Josie was kinda into it since her dad is in the army. Here she is posing in the cute 1950's style kitchen.

Finally, after lunch we made it to the Museum of Civilization, which is right across the river from the Parliament buildings.

While I didn't manage to take a picture of it, I just wanted to mention that if you've ever been to the Vancouver Aquarium, at the entrance you may have noticed the large native statue of a black orca. Well, if you're on the third floor of the Museum of Civilization, you'll find it's white twin. I remember learning about the twin statues on a school trip in grade 8 and thinking, "Someday I'm going to see the black one!" like it was some sort of life mission. Ha. Anyhow, I finally got to see it last year, although I didn't get a picture of that one either because our camera died.Wasn't meant to be, I guess.

Okay, now moving on....

The Museum of Civilization features more than native art and tools. Within the same building you'll find a special travelling exhibit, the Canadian Postal Museum and the Children's Museum.

The special exhibit while we were there was on horses.

Here's a mosaic of stamps (of course) in the postal museum.

And then, probably the coolest place of 'em all, the Children's Museum. Where kids can make crafts, like funky Canada Day masks...

Or self-portraits.

They can travel to exotic places.

And in each new country, try all kinds of nifty things...

Once we had enough museuming for the day, we headed outside to pick a patch of grass to enjoy the fireworks.

But it started getting a little chilly out and we still had a long wait ahead of us, so we decided to head back to the hotel for a blanket.

But once back at the hotel, with new toys to keep us entertained and pizza n' pop in our bellies...

None of us were motivated enough to make the trek back to the museum to catch the fireworks show.

That is until we heard the thunder of fireworks echoing across the city, which had us leaping to our feet and running through the streets in our p.j.'s trying to catch a glimpse above the buildings. Well, one of us was in our p.j.'s anyway. (Hint: It wasn't me or Jo. ;)

Alright, I think I have one more post left and that should be it for my Ten Days in the Valley series, which is taking me ten weeks to post...