Maritime Museum and Vanier Park

Finally, a beautiful spring day!  We wore shorts and t-shirts!  (Well, at least the kids did - it still wasn't quite warm enough for me.)  James found us a great website called Tourism in Your Own Town where you can get into various attractions in the area for free.  So, on Friday, the kids and I ventured out to Vanier Park and went to the Maritime Museum.  I wasn't sure what to expect, having never been there, but I figured we couldn't go wrong since it was free.  The boys loved it!  Lots of ships to look at and stuff about pirates.  What more could they ask for???

The first thing we did was tour the St. Roch, an RCMP boat that their great-great uncle served on.  They thought that was pretty cool and they loved looking around the ship.

Sorry, I still haven't figured out how to make vertical pictures show up properly.

This picture shows exactly what Sarah thought of the St. Roch.  As we were walking up onto the ship, someone opened an emergency exit door, setting off a very loud alarm.  I guess Sarah associated the noise with the boat and was terrified the whole time we were on it.  She clung onto my neck and wrapped her legs around me and wouldn't let go until we were off the boat!

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The boys enjoyed all the exhibits in the museum, especially the children's area, where they got to touch all sorts of cool equipment from boats.  I had to drag them away for lunch after an hour and a half!



 But the weather was beautiful and we had to spend a bit of time on the beach at Vanier Park!

First picnic of the year!

Doing some exploring.

Adam's not quite as adventurous as his siblings.  He's always happier at the blanket, playing in the sand.

Trying to sneak up on crows.

We ventured down to the cold water for a bit.

What a great way to spend a sunny Friday, when there's a professional day at school.  Unfortunately, the beautiful weather didn't last.  Saturday was grey and rainy and both boys ended up with stomach bugs.  :(  But it was a great start to our extra-long weekend and, in the next post, you'll see that the weekend does get better again!