The Garsides in Wonderland

I actually took last week off from work and had a real honest-to-god family vacation.  While I had a list of things I WANTED to do, the list of things I ACTUALLY did was a little smaller, but in some ways a lot better.

Last Saturday night I had the boys over for some UFC action.  We played a little UFC Redemption on the PS3, and then settled in for UFC 98 (Evans vs Machida).  I was looking forward to the Hughes / Sera fight, but I really wanted to see Rashad pound the crap out of Lyoto Machida, who I have always considered one of the most boring fighters on the planet, and a man who along with Anderson Silva is ruining my enjoyment of UFC right now (yeah, I hate Anderson Silva, probably the only man on the planet…but I just hate that stupid little dance he does at the end of his fights so much, and the fact that he’s been world champion for a year and still can’t give us a half hearted post-fight interview).

Unfortunately Rashad lost, and now we have “The Machida Era” to look forward to.  Oh bliss!

Sunday morning we got the kids packed up, and hit the road by 10:30 to go to Toronto.  We arrived at our friends Larry and Liz just before 1pm.  The kids were good as gold on the road, pretty much sleeping the entire way and I finally got to meet their little guy Callum.  He and Maks played with toys while Larry cooked up some burgers for us, and Kaylin hung out with everyone.  Their kitchen remodel is awesome and looks like it was always there, even while being totally up to date and modern.

After lunch we popped by Pete’s so I could grab my comics (and a massive box of TPB’s from the recent Marvel sale), and then headed to our hotel to meet up with Char’s sister.  Maks and Kaylin both managed to get decent little naps out of the trip, and Char and I marvelled at how much the north end of Toronto has changed in the last couple of years.  After a brief stop in our hometel as Kaylin calls it, we went over to Dave and Buster’s for dinner, and I showed Kaylin the cool games floor, promising her that if she ate her dinner we’d go out to it (sheeeyeah, like I wasn’t already going to the games floor.  One day the kid will catch on to me and I’ll be screwed).  She ate like a champ, and we hung out on the floor for a while, running into comic conventioneer Jason Truong, and earning a bunch of tickets.

Everyone was pretty exhausted, so we headed back, got Maks ready for bed, and got down to sleeping.  Maks had a tough time that first night, waking up several times, and finally falling asleep on me in the pull out chair (which I had really wedged in there poorly).

Next morning was Wonderland, and after a quick breakfast at our hotel, we set off to have a good time.  With our hotel literally a 5 minute drive away, we got there by 9:30, and had our pick of the best parking spots in the park.  We headed in, even though the rides didn’t start until 10, got sunscreened up, and marvelled at how much Canada’s Wonderland had grown.  The trees are all nice and mature now, and make the place look really cool.  There is so much natural shade, and green everywhere that it truly has become a wonderland.  It’s pretty cool how much stuff has popped up around it.  There are now houses totally surrounding the park, and one of the bigger malls in Canada is just to the south of it.

Kaylin had a blast, riding on pretty much every single ride in kiddieland.  She also got to meet Scooby Doo, Dora, and Blue from Blue’s Clues.  At one point I was taking pictures of K an Char on Dora’s Dunebuggies when Charlene made this face of horror at me, I turned around expecting to see Maks’ stroller wheeling away, and instead saw Blue crouched down looking at Maks.  He just giggled and continued eating on his toy…because he’s pretty much the chillest little dude around.

Kaylin one a couple of prizes, a duckie for herself, an Elmo for Maks (so that Maks won’t keep eating hers), and a little blue cloudy thing from Pokemon.  Kaylin also was incredibly brave, and rode the Ghoster Coaster (asking afterwars if we could go again).  Char and I each rode a roller-coaster ourselves, and because we were there so early in the season there were no lines, so we were totally done by 3pm.

We headed back to the hotel, and then went out to dinner at Vaughn Mills, before coming back to our hotel again and dunking the kids in the bath.  By 8:30 they were both sound asleep, and Char and I tucked in ourselves.  Maks was much better on night number 2, and slept much more soundly in his own crib/playpen.

Day three saw our trip to IKEA, where we picked up some side tables for our bedroom, and a cool new chair for Kaylin (her reward for potty training), and K got to go in the ball pit like a big kid.

The trip home after was uneventful, both kids sleeping, and by 5pm we were home.

The rest of the week was pretty quiet.  We had a couple of really big storms.  I cleaned out the garage like I had planned, I did a bunch of ANC work that needed to get done, and I mostly relaxed without thinking too hard about the internets.

All in all I did most of the stuff I wanted, but missed out on a few things.

Stuff I got done on my week off:

• Go to Toronto with the wife and kids
• Have an awesome day at Canada’s Wonderland
• Clean out the garage
• Play UFC Undisputed on the PS3
• Finish the July All New Comics update
• Trade in some games for Infamous (still haven’t played it though)
• See Up with Kaylin and Char
• Get a head start on next months’ Previews for ANC
• Get a plan together to re-build All New Comics in the new CandyPress

Things I started but haven’t completely finished:

• Build a planter in the back yard
• Get my SSL Cert working on All New Comics and start accepting Credit Cards
• Get our finances in order

Things I didn’t do:

• Clean out the basement and move everything to the garage
• Measure the basement for our basement plan
• Rough out the basement renovation on some graph paper (or Visio)
• Go to Scotia Bank and see about changing our banking over
• See the new Terminator movie
• Redesign HeadsDown and re-skin the site in WordPress
• Touch up the new All New Comics skin
• Build some All New Comics ads
• Build the doors for my cabinets