Is This Fog?

Back to the September monologues…

At the beginning of September, Travis surprised me by suggesting a day of shopping across the border in Buffalo. I know this is common practice for a lot of people, but we have *never* been shopping state side. Luckily, we were able to drop the boys off at my Mom's for a weekend sleepover, so the trip became a bit of a vacation!

When we drove into Niagara Falls, we were hit with a huge fog bank. It was almost verging on Marathon fog, it was kind of shocking really. Turns out it was all from the falls! It was kind of crazy looking, I wish I had gotten a better picture, but we only had a second and then we were in line at the border crossing.

It was a little strange being in the US. I haven't been there since I was 6 and my parents took us on a good old fashioned family road trip to Florida. It's pretty much exactly the same as Canada, but with small differences that were unsettling. Signs in miles instead of kilometers, tolls at every single bridge, and the accents! Our GPS actually went a little crazy when we crossed the border because we usually have it set to "No Toll Roads" and apparently those are impossible to avoid in the US.

Shopping was amazing. Travis couldn't have come up with a more perfect day trip! Some prices were pretty much identical to Canadian prices, which was surprising. The Children's Place and Old Navy both didn't show much of a price difference. Target was pretty awesome though, as was Toys-R-Us! We had to constantly fight our deal seeking instincts to buy all the things…

I kept chuckling about that wording, thinking of the Hyperbole and a Half meme, but I think Travis was confused as he had never seen it. You can click the image above to go to the post the meme came from. If you haven't read Hyperbole and a Half before, it's one of the funniest blogs I've ever read and you should totally check it out!

Just before we we leaving Buffalo, we stopped at a gas station to gas up. The gas is insanely cheap in the US, I have no idea what they're complaining about. It was about $0.30 a litre cheaper there!!! Anyway, we walked into the gas station and it was like heaven for Travis. He was very impressed with the cost of beer. I was just disappointed that I couldn't find a t-box at Target a la Rants from Mommyland. Anyway, I eventually had to convince Travis *not* to buy 8 cases of beer, and stick with a more modest 2 cases. I really didn't want to try to bring a ridiculous amount of booze across the border and end up getting the van torn apart in a "random" search. Which worked out well, the border agent we saw on the way back was very nice and friendly and we were soon on our way home.

Our haul :)

We were pretty efficient shoppers, despite spending an awful amount on lunch at P.F. Chang's, so we found ourselves in good spirits and with a lot of kid-free time on our hands. Since we were in the Niagara area, and safely back in Canada, we decided to stop at the winery that makes our favourite wine! Tawse Winery makes *the* best Riesling, called Sketches. It's pricey at the LCBO, but was a pretty good deal direct from the source. The winery itself was impressive!

We got to do a tasting of some of their other wines and wound up buying another Riesling as well. Travis even found a red wine that he actually likes (finally!). This trip has had the added benefit of making Travis more receptive to red wines, which I am grateful for. Sometimes a good red is just what you need!