A gift, with love

Sophie got her birthday present a couple days ago.   :)

This was a joint present from us and many relatives and we are so grateful that our girl can have an Ipad to learn with and play on and maybe, one day, communicate with. 

Hoping for great things.

Look at that open hand and great eye contact.  Love it.
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The Haircut.

Sophie always gets her hair cut shortly after her birthday,  I have done this with her every year since her 2nd birthday.  I like to have her hair nice and long for all her birthday photos and then we cut it to a short little bob and it grows for another year until it is a matted mess that has to be tamed again.

I often think about what Sophie's hair would look like if she was a typical little girl who was running around and didn't have her hair worn away at the back because it is always rubbing on her wheelchair headrest.   Or if she didn't have her little baldspot from the pressure sore she got in the NICU. 

When her hair is first cut it goes into these beautiful little curls or ringlets and I know she would look so cute with it really long, but I think she is pretty darn cute with it short too.

Mini getaway part deux

Our next full day in Montreal we headed to the Biodome and the Botanical Gardens which also has a butterfly conservatory.  Lucas really enjoyed the Biodome, he loved all the different regions of Canada and how diverse they are.

Then it was off for a long walk through the Botanical gardens, it was a lonngggg walk and Lucas was not enjoying it.  But we finally got to the maple sugar shack and a museum about trees and he really enjoyed the museum.  It had alot of interactive displays and it was just the perfect place to warm up for a bit.

We got some boiled maple syrup/sap to roll on the ice, it was really neat and none of us had done that before.  It was super sweet and then of course we had to buy some Quebecois syrup too. :)

 Next it was the long walk back to the Butterfly Conservatory.  We had a long wait (over an hour) that wound through the greenhouses.  There were some really beautiful exotic flowers and some incredible century old bonsai trees.  Lucas thought it was amazing that these trees were 70-100 years old yet still so small and fragile.

Then the butterflies!  Sophie would have loved these and it really made me miss her.  She is my butterfly girl (hence the name of my blog) and I wish she could have been there to see them with us.  There were hundreds of them and they were so incredibly beautiful.

 This one is as big as you think, it was gigantic!

Lucas was very excited to take this picture for me, a butterfly had landed on his hoodie that I was holding.

This is a photo of Lucas in the hotel elevator.  His highlight of the hotel was the window in the elevator that let you see the whole city as you went higher and higher.  We would actually wait for the elevators on that side of the building so that he could see out.  It also helped that we were on the 25th floor!

On the last day Lucas and I did a little shopping in the underground mall and I found some super cute clothes for Sophie in a french children's store.  They have the best clothing and style in Montreal, I realized how stale my wardrobe has become since leaving there many years ago.  We hit Eggspectations for breakfast, a place that we used to frequent when we lived there.  And Jason made the trek to the St.Viateur bagel shop and we brought home our dozen Montreal bagels, we couldn't leave without that.

We will have to head back to Montreal soon, there was so much we didn't do and we all had so much fun.  

Mini getaway

It has been a while since I have had a moment to blog and now that I do, I don't know where to start!

So I will start with a request to keep in your prayers a little friend of Sophie's, he had emergency surgery this morning.  He has had a rough winter but he is a fighter, just like my girl, so we know he will be up and about soon!

We have had a busy few weeks with Sophie's birthday and she has had an increase in seizures the last week and a half, we aren't sure why, but she is doing well otherwise thankfully.  

We had a mini getaway with Lucas last weekend.  Jason was in Montreal for a conference so Lucas and I decided to join him part way through his trip.  Lucas had been really wanting to go on a plane again.  He doesn't remember his first plane ride at 7 months old, so we thought this would be a fun little trip.  We had enough aeroplan miles for free tickets for the 2 of us so we booked it!  I hadn't been to Montreal for a number of years (pre-kids) and have wanted to go for a while.  Jason and I lived there for a few years and I miss it quite a bit.  We had a great long weekend.  This is pic heavy, so be prepared :)

 I have not seen Lucas so excited in a very long time.  He was giddy at the airport and boarding the plane.

Lucas and I arrived after midnight and he was exhausted.  But he was very good the next day even though he was still tired.  We went down to Old Montreal while Jason was at his conference.  We did the Pointe-a-Calliere Museum and had a nice lunch.  

I had planned to search out this authentic Art Nouveau Parisian Metro entrance which I had come across online before our trip.  It was a gift from France and is the only one in the world other than in Paris.  I hadn't been to this metro stop when we lived in Montreal and I was going to look for it, would you believe it was at our Hotel metro stop.  When Lucas and I arrived at it I did a double take and was so excited!!  I love art nouveau style and this entrance was beautiful.

Notre Dame Basilica in old Montreal

 Old Montreal and port

Time to go. lol!  The freezing wind whipping up off the water was unreal at this spot.  It was bitter cold walking around and Lucas was needing a break so we headed up to the downtown to meet Jason.

  

One of our old apartment buildings is in the background of this photo.  I used these fence posts many slippery winter mornings to steady myself while walking (sliding) down Peel St. from our 1st apartment.  We were there during the infamous ice storm and it was unreal.  All winters in Montreal are pretty intense and we lived halfway up the mountain, so it was pretty steep.

This is the law school at McGill where Jason went.  The dark brown building on the right of it used to have our 1st apartment there, they tore it down to build the law library that is there now.

In our infinite wisdom we decided to climb Mont Royal that afternoon.  Apparently we actually lost our minds.  It was an ice fest and we didn't know how we were going to get back down once we had made it to the top.  So Jason said lets try another route, even though I assured him that we couldn't get to Mont Royal metro station off that side of the mountain.  Apparently I am always right ;)   So we walked around the entire top of the mountain, and let's just say Lucas was not on board.  At least on the way up/down Mont Royal  some of the areas have stairs now, they didn't have those when we lived there. 

 It was a beautiful crisp day and it was fun to see the views again from the top of Montreal.

It's hard to tell in this photo, but it was pure ice and very steep.  Not exactly a leisurely stroll up and down the mountain.  But we made it and had a nice dinner downtown and then headed back to the hotel so the boys could have a swim.  We fell into bed exhausted and were ready for another fun day the next morning.

To be cont'd...