Arlies Flamingo Fiesta!!!

We celebrated this perfect baby girl turning ONE with a flamingo fiesta!! 

Lucky for us Grandma & Grandpa had left over Taco bar from their wedding, Thanks guys!! 

How adorable is her Birthday outfit! A friend of mine hand made it special for her! Check out her etsy shop here.

Arlies smash cake. After a week straight making wedding cake I was DONE. Threw together this cute little angel food cake with stabalized whipping cream icing and fondant flamingos. It was perf! 

She was so unsure of what to do with her cake lol we all watched her for like 10 minutes while she played around with it. 

Arlie checking out her new toys!! Thanks for the gifts Moxley family, Grandma Chipman, Kiss family & Savanna and Jamie!!

Thanks to all who came and made this little ladys day special. 

Grad Trip- Niagara Falls

Niagara falls was a BLAST. I highly highly recommend you go if you haven't yet!! 

We were able to find a sweet deal on our hotel on groupon which came with a bunch of resturant vouchers, you can find that info here. We quickly discovered that even with the vouchers we still couldn't afford it! Ruth Chris steak house for example, we had a $100 voucher. You would think that would be good for the two of us, trouble was that it was only applicable if you ordered two entres and they were ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS EACH NOT INCLUDING SIDES OMG. 

Even east side marios was a solid $10 more per plate. Brutal. 

Parking was $20 no matter where you went and we already had to pay $20 a night for parking at our hotel. So we walked everywhere. We got in some serious steps! 

What we ended up doing is driving away from the main strip and buying deli food from sobeys. The hotels there don't have fridges either so thats annoying.

Our ride on maid in the mist, Arlie did AMAZINGLY! It was really cool!

Walking back up from the boat ride we met the hawk that is in charge of bird control around the falls. It was pretty funny because we were just walking along and I said oh Mark look, a hawk! and he was looking in the sky saying where where? I was like right there! and he's like WHERE?! And the lady was like, right here! hahaha

So when we walked back up from the maid in the mist it took us way further down then where we had started but we just went with it. There was so much going on including an Elvis lol. 

We ended up accidently finding the actual entertainment strip! That's where the Hard Rock Cafe, Rainforest Cafe, Ripleys museum, Haunted Houses, Dinosaurs, all kinds of really cool things. We went into rainforest cafe to look around and ended up sitting at the bar drinking slushies out of these cups lololol. 

Being BA at the falls at night. 

Grad Trip- Kingston to Palmyra

The awesome place we stayed in Ottawa didn't have the last day free, so we had to book one night in Kingston. Kingston is not a place we would have ever visited but I am SO GLAD we did. It was such a beautiful place! I would love love love to visit there again with more time and a boat to play with! 

The night we stayed there we had supper at a really yummy seafood place. It was so busy the only table we were able to get was near the bar and was one of those super tall ones. Poor Arlie was in a highchair like 3 feet down from us lol but she did awesome. 

Then we had gelatto- yum!! 

So the next morning Mark was anxious to get on the road. He admitted later that he was starting to feel homesick and thought the sooner we move along the sooner we get to go home :(. I was not having that lol. I wanted to take the scenic route which meant 3 ferries. So we headed over to the ferry dock and just missed it which means we had to wait 4 minutes until the next one. Lucky for us there was this adorable little farmers market right in the middle of the town sqare where we were able to walk around a buy some super yummy snacks. Chocolate covered cinnamon buns, are you kidding me!? So good!! 

So we got on the ferrier for free for whatever reason, it was a big one I would say 60-80 cars, It took us across to Wolfe Island. I swear the only people that live there are fisherman or farmers but the place is wicked cool!. We docked there are started driving across the island to catch the second ferry. It was such a beautiful place, the grass was GREEN. 

So we are driving along, the pavement turned to gravel and it really felt like we were in the middle of nowhere. Until we pull up to this boat dock that has the "ferry" attached. It was a ONE CAR FERRY! The platform to get onto the boat was flodded with about a foot of water. The two guys running the boat had to stand on the ramp so we could drive down lolololol. 

So we pull on, hand the guy a $20 and on we go. 

So as we get closer to the US side we get to be wondering where the boarder crossing will be. This was it!! A couple guys came out of that white house into that little shack. So funny. 

We made it to Palmyra! This is up at the top of Hil Cumorah. 

At the sacred grove- It was an amazing place although lets be real, it's more difficult to enjoy it with a little one squaking and boobing the whole time. 

Caught this cute pic right before she fell off the stump. 

Marks favorite art piece! 

The Book of Mormon publication site. Super neat! 

Hill Cumorah visitors centre. It was so great!! They had a couple theatres with every church movie ever made- something like 258!! We went there Sunday after church and watched the 3 new additions to meet the mormons. There was even one with a horse trainer which of course I loved! 

Marks souvenier from Palmyra lololololol don't judge us! 

Grad Trip- Ottawa

From Montreal we drove to Ottawa. 

Our original accomodations fell through but luckily my soon to be step dad steped up and helped us out! We ended up staying in Gatineu in a really nice condo with a HUGE tv. Not gunna lie aside from the first and last day we spent the entire time in our condo napping and watching friends!!! LOL

The first day we went into Ottawa to the Canadian History Museam. It was OK. The highlight was the Hockey exibit they had going on while we were there. 

Beautiful churches. 

Rideu Canal

Then we headed to Parliment hill. Parking was a NIGHTMARE. There was a ton of construciton going on and we had to park 5 or 6 blocks away and walk. Parliment hill was cool but it was CRAZY busy and the soonest tour they had was about 6 hours later from when we got there. We decided to go up to the peace tower instead of touring the parliment building. Still a super long wait but it was cool and the view was amazing. 

Next stop was Rideu Hall. I had seen this spot recommended on Trip Advisor and totally dragged Mark along lol. This is the building where the Queen stays when she visits Canada, and also the place where prime ministers are sworn in. It has a ton of rich history and is gorgeous! 

This is Arlie & I in the main ballroom- the actual room where the Prime Minister is sworn in and where they used to have grand balls. 

Arlie & I in front of the giant spider that is in front of the Canadian Art museam. 

A gorgeous church across the street. (I snuck in the back and snapped a pic in the middle of a serice) 

The park across the street. AMAZING. Tulips everywhere. We had a sit down and hung out there for a while, and Arlie Jayla clapped for the first time! 

At the other end of the park is this incredible view of Parliment Hil;. Looks like hogwarts am I right!?

Last day! Picture in front of a cute mural they had at the mall.