The Cottage Trip (Goderich) - 2015

This past Victoria Day weekend I visited the Port Albert Cottage and Inn at Goderich, Ontario for the consecutive year.  After a beautiful 2 hour drive it was hard to believe we were really there. When I hopped out of the car with my friend Nathan we took a look at the beautiful inn. Inside I sat with Nathan near the fireplace and instantly felt warm. Shortly after we were allowed in to our cottage called “The Mill House”.  Soon my other friends Josh, Jon, Luke, Mark, Kynan and Frank slowly trickled into the house one by one. We decided to help our parents unload the cars and discovered that Nathan had brought a multi-use sports net.  We set it up and played tennis, volleyball and badminton right up till sunset. Towards the night our parents let us use our iPads. We built traps and raided castles in minecraft. We also roasted marshmallows after an amazing dinner of barbecued chicken and burgers. We also caught up on a movie called The Longest Yard. My first day at the cottage was amazing.

On our second day we visited a cheese factory, I sampled so many types of cheese that I lost count. From the ones I do remember I tried a 9 yr. old cheddar, cheese fudge, munster, and cheese curds. I also milked a fake cow. I went fishing with Nathan but we were out of luck so I decided to head back to the cottage. When we got back home we played games like 7 tiles which was a lot of  fun but really confusing. I enjoyed the games but unfortunately we had to stop for dinner. Dinner was really good, pasta and meatballs. When we had finished I decided to watch my favourite show Shark Tank, a show about investing in small businesses. Then it was time for another flick Furious 7, I liked it because it had a lot of action and adventure. All in all my trip to the cottage was great, I got to try a lot of new things but most of all I got to be with family and friends.

Brussels and all its' mussels.....

During the March break, my parents and I visited Brussels, the capital city of Belgium. Before we saw any tourist attractions we went to our hotel the Radisson Park-in. After checking in, we got down to business and bought tickets to Bruges and Ghent. The train ride was amazing. Both Bruges and Ghent had a lot of antique shops and some fascinating buildings. We also visited a few churches - the Basilica of the Holy blood and Church of our Lady of Bruges. The church’s architecture was stunning, it was all done up with huge pretty murals on the walls. Another tourist attraction in Brussels was the Manneken Pis,  a sculpture of a bronze boy peeing into a fountain. Manneken Pis also happens to be the symbol of the city of Brussels. What’s interesting about the boy is that they dress him up for different celebrations and events. For dinner, we went to a place called l’Escale they served us shrimp roasted in white wine. Delish!!!  I had some local Belgian pasta. The food was really good. The next day we went to a market which was really bustling with people. We got some fresh fruits and vegetables, then some chocolates and sweets from a candy mstore. Brussels was a lot of fun! I hope I can visit again soon.

What Christmas means to me?

Christmas may be a time for new presents, Santa Claus and meeting family but there is more meaning to Christmas than that. On Christmas 2014 years ago a little boy named Jesus was born, he is the Son of Man and did important things and performed miracles like turning water into wine, raising the dead back to life and dying on the cross for us. I believe that ‘’Jesus is the reason for the season’’ and that we should ‘’Keep Christ in Christmas ‘’

Christmas is a time to think of the less fortunate than us. For the last two weeks of advent my family & I went to our local food bank to donate food and help out. I got to see how sad it was to watch people have such joy over one meal but it also made me think about not wasting food and eating whatever is served to me. You can also give your time caroling at the senior home. I am sure that will make them happy. During the season we can all be more patient and caring towards others like showing more forgiveness and tolerance. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and remember:

Christmas is coming

It’ll go fast

Give someone joy

 Joy that’ll last

My Vacation in London and Paris

Recently my family and I went to London and Paris. We spent 10 days in all and had a great time, let me tell you all about it. The best place that we went to was the Harry Potter Studios. There I dressed up as Ron, accepted a challenge to find 15 hidden snitches (which I won), I climbed and flew a Nimbus 2000, drank butter beer, visited HOGWARTS!!!!!, bought Bertie Botts every flavoured Beans, saw all my favorite characters WANDS, walked through the shops of Diagon Alley, made my own spell, made and bought my own wand and my audio tour guide was Tom Felton. Another day we went on the Big Bus Tour where we saw the top-secret foreign intelligence spy organisation facility, Big Ben, London Eye, St. Paul’s church, the |Shard, RAF bomber memorial, Stonehenge, Hyde Park, Buckingham palace. Boy, was that fun... We also went to Paris we spent three days there doing a lot of touristy stuff. The first place we went to was the Eiffel Tower, got great pictures there, saw the Mona Lisa in person, we went to Notre Dame and attended a mass. The next day we went to Sacre Coeur and the Arc de Triomphe.  When we got back to London we headed to Salisbury where we saw some of the Magna Carta documents, Windsor Castle and the Greenwich Mean time. Then it was time to head back to Canada. I will never forget this trip, this amazing trip filled with lots and lots of fun.

My Amazing Summer!

This summer was an amazing experience, let me tell you why. After school ended I could have easily been the happiest person alive… no work, no teachers…no worries…. what could be more right? So let me begin the summery of my amazing summer. This summer I went camping for the very first time with my friends and parents. We roasted marshmallows, slept in tents and overall had a great time. The next big I did this summer was paddle boarding, a new sport I learned while at day camp. It is a lot of fun but can be a little bit dangerous if you are not careful. Paddle boarding is stand up canoeing on a surf board. I had a lot of fun with this new sport and it taught me a couple of thing - first of all it taught me balance and trust. The trust part of it is because I couldn’t go alone so I had to trust that my friends don’t tip the board or lean it when we get on. Another cool thing I did this summer was the U.S. trip, I went to Michigan to see my cousins. We played catch in the pool and did an icy challenge where we would go into the hot tub for 3 minutes and then jump into the freezing cold pool. In Michigan we visited a place called Frankenmuth a little German town about 20 minutes away from Saginaw where we enjoyed live music, food and the company of family. The rest of summer went by with visits to my friends houses when we had no camp. Our typical day consisted of video games, TV, outside fun and great food. Playing in the park was another thing I did this summer with my friends; I hung on the monkey bars a lot and my friends and I invented games like “The shoe game” and “Sand volley / basketball”. My summer was awesome and I will never forget it. This summer I did so many new things and I enjoyed them all, I hope that my next summer is as good or better that this one.

The Camping Trip

This past Canada Day weekend I went with my friends and family on a camping trip to Algonquin and I was really excited. Considering it was my first time I didn’t know what to expect but that just made me want to get there faster. 

I had heard from my friend that bears lurked in the forest that we were going to but when I got there it seemed like a really nice place to spend the next 4 days… other than the fact that Algonquin was swarming with mosquitoes. 

At Algonquin I got to solve a mystery about a bird called a Black-Capped Chickadee and why it disappeared. I was very interesting as I have never even heard of this species of bird before. Algonquin also gave me the opportunity to learn about loggers at a Loggers museum. A logger is also known as a lumberjack. At the museum we were taken through an open forest where they displayed a variety of machines and axes loggers used. After the Loggers museum my friends and I decided to take a break. So we went for a swim in the lake. Despite the fact that the water was FREEZING, it was awesome once I got used to it. Another highpoint of the trip was roasting marshmallows. Boy were they good & I asked for s’more! 

Camping was a great experience and I would love to go again. :D

The Cottage Trip to Goderich

On this past Victoria long weekend my family joined 4 other families and headed out to a cottage in a SMALL town called Goderich with only 8000 people living there.
Day 1

The cottage was a lot of fun when we got there. In the morning we played soccer, pump and basketball. Towards the afternoon we went on a walk to the Nude Beach yes you got it the Nude Beach. Why it was called that, I have absolutely no idea. At first the Nude beach was weird with 4 dead fish lying in the sand in the warm sand. Then it got interesting: I found 5 fossils and 3 really cool rocks, they were amazing. At 2 o’clock we went to a cheese factory and sampled 9 year old mozzarella and we even got to eat homemade ice cream. The cheese factory was definitely a cool experience for me. After the cheese factory we went back to the cottage and played till about 6 o'clock on our iPods. We then gathered arounf the fire for some ghost stories...... boy were they scary, when we had had enough we went inside and watched Broken Arrow. That was a great start to the cottage trip.

Day 2

I woke up and played video games for an hour with my friends and then we got out of the house and played soccer. We went to a another beach a little farther from our cottage and there I found more fossils and cool rocks. When we got back we built another fire and this time I roasted my first marshmallow and ate my first s'more, it was delicious. After we roasted AWESOME smores my friends and I performed an improv about a miner that encountered some monsters. Later we watched Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban, I liked very much I am a huge fan of Harry Potter. We finished the movie and went upstairs to play video games even though it was 1 o'clock in the morning. When I was at the verge of dying of exhaustion I turned off my iPod and went to sleep.

Day 3 

I woke up today realizing with a sad and sleepy face that we only had till 12 o'clock to leave home and the time was 8 o'clock so I woke up my friends to make the most of our last few hours there. We went for a walk along the beach and we skipped rocks on the calm lake Huron.

It was a truly enjoyable weekend, one I will remember for a long time to come.