Saturday, October 04, 2008

Beth's visit: Day 2 and 3

Whew, finally a quiet (sort of) moment to catch up on everything we've been doing.

We had plans, as you heard, to go to the Butterfly Exhibit at Carleton until I realized that the exhibit didn't start until today (Saturday). Instead, we jumped on the bus and rode it down to the Byward Market area. Our first shop, as it often is when Beth is in town, was The Tea Store. We both love that place. Their range of loose-leaf teas is incomparable. We also love their Tea for Two. The scones they served us with that were about as big as Kate's head, or so it seemed. My girls had hot chocolate and ate buttertarts and brownies. Or wore them anyway.


From there we perused the amazing vegetable displays for sale in the market right now. The colours were beautiful and we bought gorgeous broccoli and cauliflower and brussels sprouts. I would have bought even more if we didn't have to carry it all on the bus.


Kate took a giant three-hour nap yesterday while the rest of us chilled out. My dad and Donna arrived in the afternoon. With all those adults around, John and I took the opportunity to go out for a late dinner of Indian food. It was, simply, great.

Today was a big day. A really fun day. This morning we all headed out to the Metcalfe Fair. Metcalfe is a small farming town just south of us. This year was the 157th year of the fair. It is very agricultural. There were countless cows being preened, primped and hairsprayed (no joke) getting ready for show. We watched sheep being shown by their 4H members. We surveyed the winners of all the homecraft categories (I plan to sweep them next year). The kids went on a couple of kiddie rides. We watched the steam powered machines. Emily sat in a fire truck. We had tea and squares at the Women's Institute tent. All in all, it was a perfect morning doing something I've wanted to do for a very long time: revisit a fall fair in a rural setting. It totally takes me back to growing up in Niagara and going to the Niagara Regional Exhibition every fall. Metcalfe will be our new fall family tradition.


The rest of the day was lazy. Tomorrow we plan to go to the Agricultural Museum (what we simpy call The Farm) and then out for Dim Sum at lunch.

Seems that farming and all things agricultural is quickly becoming a theme of the week.

2 comments:

H Munro said...

We were there also, too bad we didn't run into each other. I love that fair and I can't wait to go back next year. Sara was in a really weird mood yesterday so we didn't get to enjoy it as much as I would have liked.

Shan said...

Sounds like a fantastic two days. I'm looking forward to you sweeping the categories next year. I'm already planning my attack for next year as well.