Come Fly With Us: First Vacation as a Family of Three: Niagara Falls, Canada

Back in January, Lieutenant Lovemuffin had a three day weekend due to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, so we decided to head out on our first official family vacation as a family of three! Of course, we had already traveled over winter break to see family, but it wasn’t a real “vacation”, so we were pretty stoked!

It turns out, Annabelle is a great traveling companion, and she LOVES the snow! Sorry we’re moving to Texas in a couple weeks, kid… you won’t see much snow there. But seriously – it snowed the entire weekend, and she LOVED it.

We wanted to put Annabelle’s brand spankin’ new passport to good use, so we ventured to CANADA! Niagara Falls was beautiful, and it was all of our first time there. (Dan says he went as a tiny baby, but he obviously doesn’t remember it… much like Annabelle won’t).

On our way to Niagara, we stayed one night in Canton, Ohio so we could check out the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I had been wanting to go since we first moved to Ohio, but the three hour drive just didn’t seem worth it for one museum where there’s not much else going on. Since it was on one route to Niagara Falls, however, we got to see it! And how fun it was! There were so many cool Chiefs things to see, along with lots of players who have been inducted. I really enjoyed it, and Dan reacted exactly like he does to football games: he didn’t care. At all.

On Saturday afternoon, we drove the rest of the way through Pennsylvania and New York and ended up in Canada at our hotel. We had dinner and saw the Falls all lit up from our hotel – it was magical looking, but the windows weren’t very conducive to picture taking, so we saved that for the daytime when the Falls weren’t all lit up. We had dinner at an okay restaurant and saw the Chiefs lose their playoff game, so that was disappointing, but I was having so much fun with my little family that I didn’t let it bother me as much as usual.

Sunday, we set out for fun! We hiked through the snow, pushing Annabelle in the jogging stroller all the way. She was bundled up tight with a jacket, scarf, and hat and covered with a blanket AND her car seat cover, but the girl is warm-blooded like my side of the family, so the poor thing was sweating bullets despite the crazy cold and snow. We drove back to the USA for some New York pizza, and we hiked around some more. We checked out a cool gift shop in Canada, went to the Daredevil Museum (about people who have tried going over the falls in different contraptions), which was really neat, and ended up having dinner at the coolest Asian restaurant ever, where you pay a flat price, like a buffet, but you order from a touch screen at your table. They just keep bringing you whatever you want, so we were able to taste lots of appetizers, entrées, and desserts, and Dan even had some sushi. Annabelle was a ham, as always, and flirted with everyone around us.

We spent that evening taking pictures of the Falls and then went back to our hotel room. The next morning, we left pretty early since we had a long drive back home. We took better lit pictures of the Falls and hit the road through Canada to go through Michigan on the way back and add another state to our list. We stopped for poutine before leaving the country, of course.