Toronto Temple

In between days at the cemetery, we went to the Toronto Temple and did a session. Even though this temple only does three sessions a day on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, Jef and I were the witness couple because we were the only couple. There were about five other people in the session, but only one couple. Plus, there were only about six temple workers in the whole place. A crazy thing after being used to Manti, which is always crawling with workers and patrons. But it was beautiful, both inside and out, and I was glad we went.

Finding Ethel May

In this same cemetery, there was also buried an infant daughter of Harold and Ethel. (That would be Grandma's older sister, for all my family out there.) We were told she was buried in the "Infant Section."
Now, for the rest of the cemetery they had maps showing where the plots were and who was buried in them. Not so for this section. The map had been lost, and although they still had a record of who was buried there, they had no idea where they were buried.
That's a problem. And it's not as easy as going out and writing down where the headstones are, either.
Can you see in this picture how the headstones are pretty thick along the edges, but there is this big meadow with nothing in it? In that meadow lie the bodies of over a thousand infants. Only one has a headstone. Here and there in the ground, you'll see a brick with a number on it. I never saw a number that wasn't a multiple of five, so I don't think the others were all missing. I think they only gave a brick to one out of every ten or fifteen graves. Ethel May was number 934.

We thought we could see where the rows might have been, and after finding numbers 930 and 940, we went back and asked what number the only infant headstone was. He was number 933.
My sweater is rolled up and placed where we think she may be buried. The little headstone on the right is the infant (number 933), and the one on the left is part of an entirely different numbering system. This cemetery has some issues.
Did I mention that all of these records for this enormous cemetery are handwritten and kept on 3x5 cards in old card catalog drawers?
In a trailer?
One fire, and all these records go up in smoke, and no one will ever know who all these infants were.
Or any of the other people who don't have headstones.
Just gives you warm fuzzies all over, doesn't it?

Second Wives Get the Last Word

One of the main purposes for this trip was family history, so when we got into Toronto, the first thing we did was to go find the Park Lawn Cemetery. Being from a small town, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. The thing was huge. Despite there being a large mausoleum in the middle, we still found ourselves lost, without being able to find either the large building, or even the edge of the cemetery!
We quickly abandoned that project until the next day, when the offices were open. They told us that Edward Thomas Swain, his wife Clara Charlotte Cooper, their sons Godfrey and Harold Albert Gordon Swain, and Harold's wife Ethel Banks were all buried in two adjoining plots. (For those not of my bloodlines, that means my great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents.)
Jackpot! I was so excited. So we found the place, found Harold Albert Gordon Swain's grave, took a picture, and then looked for the others.
Well, there were no others. He was the only one who got a headstone. Edward Thomas and Clara are on the other side, where the headstone is blank, and Godfrey (a baby) is at their heads.

And Harold's headstone reads, "Harold A. Swain, Beloved Husband of Jean Huntley." Jean would be his second wife. But it makes no mention at all of his first wife, who happens to be buried right beside him. Ouch.

Master of the Self Timer

On this trip I mastered the Self-Timer function on my camera. Sure, you can always ask someone to take your picture if you're at Niagara Falls, or some other high-traffic area. But in a cemetery? Not a chance.
So we got very good at finding rocks, garbage cans, headstones, etc, on which to set the camera while we took pictures of ourselves. It worked pretty well most of the time.

Unless your husband is asleep in the car, and the only place you can find to set the camera is on the back of a sign which doesn't let you look into the view finder while positioning your camera. Then it becomes difficult to figure out how to get both yourself and the lighthouse in the same picture.

Great Lakes

Lake OntarioLake Huron

Lake Erie

I'm sure I don't really even need to label these pictures, since all of you are already familiar with your Great Lakes, and will know at a glance which is which. But those of you who are getting a little rusty, I thought I'd add them anyway. No one has to know that you needed them. ;)
I can't say which lake is best, but I can say that I enjoyed Huron the most, just because I got to spend the most time enjoying it. I always called it Lake Hure-on, but the locals say it more like Hure-un, with the emphasis on the Hure. We quickly adapted, eh?

Blue is Back

Our first night in Canada was spent at a motel that advertised "Retro Rooms, Retro Rates."
The rooms were indeed "retro." (But so was the price, so it was all good.)
We laughed at the blue toilet, admired the pink and black tiles, and even took pictures.
But a couple of days later we arrived at a Bed and Breakfast in a beautiful, modern home. And what color was the toilet in our bathroom? It was blue, of course.
So is it a Canadian thing? Or is just that if you hang on to that blue toilet, lava lamp, or anything else long enough, it will eventually come back into vogue?

Niagara Falls

Did you know that they light up Niagara Falls at night? There are giant lights across the street, and they shine them at the falls, so they they show up in different colors. Here are blue, yellow, and rainbow. (You really should click on that blue one and view the larger image. It was my favorite.)
They even turn on all the colors at once and have a rainbow of waterfall colors. Way cool.
There is always tons of mist coming up from the falls from the water hitting the rocks at the bottom. You can pretty much get soaking wet (and we did), just from the mist in the air. From the American side of the falls, it looks like there's a giant colored cloud.Yes, we did go back and see them in the day time, but the night was my favorite. So if you ever go to Niagara Falls, I recommend seeing them in the dark.

I'm Back!

My trip to Ontario (and upper New York) was amazing. It was so fun, so relaxing, and so great to just be me for a few days. Not that I'm not me with my children, but you forget who you used to be before you were the Mom.
I was also shocked and amazed at how much time there is in a day when there are just the two of us. Every day at 3:00, I panic because the kids are coming home from school (which means my day is over), and I haven't accomplished even half of what I needed to do.
But on this trip, the clock seemed to be slowed down, and when I saw the clock at 3:00 (Yes, some instinct tells me when 3:00 is, even in a different time zone), I would be amazed at how much we had accomplished already, and how much we could still do.
Our trip was just the right length. I had just started to miss my kids the day before we left for home, and I was glad to come home and get to work again.
I took almost 500 pictures on our trip, and I know you would love to see every one of them. But I'm going to have to limit you to just a few as I take the next few days to post the highlights. You'll have to be patient, though, because back in the presence of my six beautiful children, the clock has sped up again and the To Do list is back to its usual short-novel length. But, like everything else, I'll get around to it eventually.

Canada, eh?

I'm going to Canada!
True, I've been there before. But it was just straight north to Alberta, and I didn't do much sight-seeing while I was there.
This time Jef and I are flying to Buffalo, driving over the border, and going into Ontario to do some family history research.
I know, only a true fanatic would spend their vacation walking through cemeteries, but I am so excited, I can't even tell you.
We'll see three of the Great Lakes, Niagara Falls, some lighthouses, and hopefully some pretty fall scenery. But we'll also get to see an old family Bible owned by a distant cousin, visit graves of some great-greats, and catch a peek at records only found in Ontario archives. Am I crazy?
Maybe. But this will also be the first time I've spent more than one night completely children-free in about eight years. So call me crazy if you want to, but what other job besides mother would give you time off only once every eight years?
So it doesn't really matter where I'm going. It just matters that I'm going! Yippee!

What in the World is That?

Jef went out to pick some corn the other day, and came back in with this thing. It used to be a cob of corn. But at some point, some kind of grey, soft rubbery stuff took over. It was kind of creepy. After everyone looked at it, poked it, and we took a picture, I made Jef take it back outside. It seemed a little too reminiscent of aliens to me. Luckily it's been the only one.

StoryTelling Festival

I took along a couple of friends from the PTO, and went to the StoryTelling Festival in Orem the end of August. It wasn't quite what I expected it to be, but it was still lots of fun. Carmen Deedy and Bill Harley were definitely my favorites. If you ever get a chance to hear either of them, then don't miss it!
In between "story sessions," there were various other entertainments going on, such as live music and puppet shows. One puppet show seemed to be a collection of every puppet they had in their collection and every fairy tale, bedtime story, or nursery rhyme they'd ever heard, put together in one very long, very twisted story obviously made up by socially-challenged college students sometime between one and four a.m. There were a bunch of kids watching, and they all just sat there with their mouths open, wondering what in the world was going on. Crazy.
But other than that, it was lots of fun to go, hang out with friends, talk, and occasionally laugh so hard the tears rolled down my cheeks.