Friday, January 13, 2012

Thursday, January 12, 2012

J and DaddyBray urban adventure 2

Destination: Downtown on Freddy Beach Milk Run
Objective: Ride the only escalator in Freddy Beach and get hot chocolate at Tim Horton's

The bus stop.
The long wait.
Can you spot Sarah's (Julia's daycare mom's) house?
The uptown bus.
The downtown bus.
Tim Horton's.
Before the floor pulled the white hot chocolate to the ground - see straw.
Eating Tim Horton's delicacies.

Picking sprinkles off of the strawberry vanilla donut.
The return trip home on the bus.

J and DaddyBray urban adventure 1

Good morning friends. As you may know, Erin and Luka are currently on an exotic Caribbean cruise while Julia and I are enjoying the crisp, fresh, snowy world of the wild Great White North. So I said to myself, "why not have our own exotic tour while our other half is touring the sunny South?" Julia and I started with adventure 1 to the exotic Regent Mall food-court where we could sample the exotic cheesy-fries and veggie burritos and bottomless pop-cups at Taco Bell, Canada.

After watching an episode of "Dora the Explorer", Julia thought it would be appropriate to wear her Dora backpack chair, complete with our Fredericton Transit map in the "map" pocket and a flash-light and her pink Fisher Price digital camera in the other. She also "needed" her lip-gloss and her shiny goldfish stuffed animal that she won last summer at the Morrisburg, Ontario Summer Carnival. We loaded up the adventure mini-v   affectionately named the "Nino Van" by Julia shortly after we acquired it. Julia was safely strapped into her four-point harness adventure seat and I buckled up tight, hit "play" on the cd-player to blast "Yo Gabba Gabba" tunes.

We traveled through the dark snowy landscape to our destination, "El Mercado commercial Regent". We hit the frozen asphalt and Julia loaded her adventure gear, she turned on her flashlight and we set out towards the red glowing sign on of our port of entry. "Chapter's!", Julia exclained. We entered the Mall through "Chapter's" and within seconds of our entry Julia decided that her backpack was too cumbersome and that "Daddy should carry it now." Julia put her essentials into a "Chapter's" wire shopping basket and attempted to carry it with her - it was a little bit more cumbersome. Within one-minute of our entry inside from the cold bracing wind of the Wintery night of the Great White North of Canada, we met a fellow traveller which Julia met with an excited exclamation of "Grandpa!!!!" After exchanging greetings and travel stories, we arranged to meet up for food at the central food court plaza. We said our goodbye's. I convinced Julia that we should ditch the wire basket and stuff the few light adventure items into the pockets of her arctic jacket. We ventured out into the Mall. We stopped at the coin-operated machined and then at the gum-ball machine in "Toys R Us". I convinced Julia that Grandpa might be convinced to give her a quarter for a large pink gum-ball if she asked politely since Daddy didn't have any change - and that was the truth.








More later..... 

Saturday, January 7, 2012

New Orleans 2012

Hello from New Orleans!  Team Bray has been temporarily fractured.  Mark and Julia returned safely to Fredericton yesterday while Luka and I joined Meghan and my mom for a journey south to New Orleans. 
We had gorgeous weather today and I even busted out the flip flops.  Luka had a great time discovering grass as a crawler.  Here we are in Jackson Square:



Despite my mom's insistence that it's a "waste of $30", Meghan forked out the bucks for three mini hats.  I think that we won my mom over in the end because she ended up getting a bunch of compliments on her little red top hat.  

 I thought of Julia when I saw this:

We chowed down on a sushi feast.  Luka loved the veggie roll.  
 Our little globe trotter:


 We ate a mexican feast for lunch today in a beautiful old building with skylights.  We put a ton of miles on the ol' stroller today and covered every inch of the French Quarter. 
 I had an idea that this was a party town but I had no clue just how lively it is.  The artists, antique stores, and live music make for a jolly good time.  There were some strange sights:
 Lukie sucking on a lemon: 
 Our sweet boy finally surrendered to the Sand Man.