October was a big ol’ month as we took a holiday to Canada…so I’ll do my best to condense it all into one blog post!
The month started strong with a new Taylor Swift album drop! I am still pretty stuck on her last album, The Tortured Poets Department, but that didn’t stop me from listening to all of The Life of a Showgirl the minute I woke up on Friday the 3rd. I also talked Joel into going with me to the album release party at the cinema that evening. It was fun to get a behind-the-scenes peek at the music video for The Life of Ophelia, and get Taylor’s thoughts on each song. It hasn’t knocked TTPD off my repeat playlist, but a couple songs will make it on to our list for the year!
The next day at Caldicot was our annual Pet Blessing service. We had a few regulars this year and a couple of new ones, including an assistance dog. The couple was coming to the church for a different meeting, and were delighted to be able to join in getting their service dog blessed. All the dogs were so cute this year!
On Sunday, it was time for Cafe Church, and I did a whole service around pumpkins and Jack O’lanterns. I love a good theme! I had high hopes this pumpkin I carved would survive until Halloween…which it did, just barely. Check out our IG feed to see what it looked like by the time trick or treaters were knocking on the door.
The next week was full of work, thought the following Sunday the 12th, I randomly had off! That worked out well because it was our 12th wedding anniversary! We celebrated with a trip to the movies and splurging on some ice cream.
Most Tuesday evenings, I play Mario Kart with my brother for about half an hour or so. About mid-October I snapped this photo of when we were tied! I love that we both get crowns.
Sunday the 19th was a special day at Caldicot as we got to celebrate a member’s 100th birthday! We let Wilf choose the hymns, the choir sang some of his favourites, we decorated the sanctuary and had cake at coffee hour. I really enjoyed getting the giant rainbow balloons!
On the 20th, it was off to Niagara Falls! I know we just visited last summer, but we loved it so much we wanted to go again, particularly in the fall, so we could see the leaves in full glory. We flew out from Heathrow Monday afternoon, landed in Toronto, rented a car, and drove to our hotel in time to get a good night’s sleep. The next day, we took advantage of our jet lag to get up early and catch sunrise at the falls!
While waiting for the sun to rise, we chatted with a local who gave us a recommendation for breakfast - The Flying Saucer. At first, Joel mistakenly thought this was a local name for the Skylon Tower (it does kinda look like one) but it turns out it’s a really cool themed restaurant in the Lundy Hill area, which is away from the main tourist sections of Niagara Falls. The theme was on point and the food was delicious!
From there, we went to Niagara-on-the-Lake for the day. We missed that destination last time so wanted to be sure we made it this time. It was a cute town, but it wasn’t really our speed - everything was very expensive! On the way back we stopped at the tiny chapel, which was cute to see. I was most excited that it was at a farm stand that had Honeycrisp apples!
For dinner we went to Margaritaville, which I know is an overpriced tourist trap, but I do love it so. We had a margarita flight and shared some delicious nachos.
On Wednesday night, we went back to Skylon Tower for a fancy dinner. The views were just as good as we remembered, and I got the lamb this time which was so good. We also finally tried Ice wine! It comes in very small glasses, which, as soon as I took a sip, I could see why. It is incredibly sweet! They were both good, but I just took tiny sips of each and let Joel have the rest.
On Thursday, we took a tour of Costcos (there are a ton in the area) because they had a deal on some Magic cards that Joel couldn’t resist. We also had dinner at Red Lobster (I mostly ate cheesy garlic biscuits!) and then we went to a Commander night at a local game store. It was fun to play with new people and I won a new way with my 20 Ways to Win deck!
On Friday, we took another local’s suggestion to have breakfast the Falls Manor, and wow was it so good! The breakfast sandwich comes with homemade Hungarian sausage and the baked beans were the best I’ve ever had.
That afternoon, as we took a walk along the falls, we spotted rainbows! It was absolutely, stunningly, gorgeous. If you look closely, you can see the double rainbow!
We went to the Clifton Hill area and shared an appetizer at the Rainforest Cafe (I’m a sucker for a themed restaurant) and then shared a Beaver tail for dessert.
Then we played glow-in-the-dark Wizard themed mini golf! I’m also a sucker for mini golf, and this was a fun course. We were glad it was inside as the weather was overall a bit colder than we expected!
That evening we took a walk around the casino and found a very different view of the falls!
On Saturday we took another walk by the falls, before going to another local game store to play Commander for the afternoon. Can you sense a theme to this trip? Falls and Magic! Two of our favourite things.
On Sunday morning the sunrise was absolutely incredible, and I captured some birds in my favourite photo ever. The way the sun was hitting the mist, it started to look like candy floss!
That afternoon we took a drive along the way back to Niagara-on-the-Lake and stopped to take some walks among the leaves. We also found a new, local poutine place called Michelle’s Fries. It was even better than the poutinerie in town! Having a rental car really added to the whole trip as we could get out of the tourist traps and try more local places. The fries were freshly made and were incredible.
On our last day, we caught a final sunrise, and Joel took a time-lapse video with this phone. It was worth standing out there for almost an hour in the cold!
On our way back to the airport, we stopped at Tim Horton’s for one last box of Timbits, which turned in to two boxes when the first place didn’t have all of the flavours we wanted. We have determined we like the Timbits even better than the actual donuts!
The day after we got home, still with some jetlag, we dragged ourselves out of the house to go meet up with Amber and Luke. It was so fun to see them and to meet the new addition to their family! He has a good arm and kept throwing berries at us during breakfast, it was hilarious.
Then it was time for Halloween! We stocked up on candy at Costco and stuck the pumpkin from the beginning of the month out front. It had turned into a sad old man with no teeth by that point, but it did the trick. Nothing we did was going to outshine our neighbours. In addition to their Hocus Pocus decorations (see October 2023 for a photo) this year they added a giant skeleton! We had trick or treaters for a couple hours and then spent the rest of the night watching scary movies.
All in all it was a pretty fabulous October!