Canada & Erie, PA

A couple of weeks ago Paul and I headed up to Niagara Falls, Canada,and Erie, PA, to visit with his family - a lot of whom I had never met.  This trip couldn't have come at a better time considering everything that had been happening with my Nana passing away.

We started our trip out by flying from Jax to Buffalo, NY, and renting a car so that we could travel around at our own pace - our first stop was across the border to Niagara Falls.  If you've never experienced the Falls (this was my first visit) my main bit of advice would be to spend a little extra money to stay in a room with a view of the Falls - it really is spectacular!!!

Check out the rainbow

After we took in the view from our room we decided to check out the Falls up close and personal and I can't tell you how cool it was:

After spending the day walking around town we headed out for an early dinner so that we could get a full night of sleep to wake up early and make the most of the next day:

Side Note: be prepared to spend quite a bit of money on meals if you're planning on staying in Niagara Falls - we were told it gets quite a bit more reasonable as you get further outside of the city

On our second day in Canada we headed to Niagara on the Lake which is a cute little town about 25 minutes away from Niagara Falls.  We spent most of the morning walking around the town until just after lunch when we headed to Jackson Triggs, one of the local wineries, for a wine and food pairing that I had set up.  It was really cool because they had it planned out to be like a treasure hunt and we had to search around the winery to find the spots where they had the pairings set up.

We were so tired from our day, and the view from our hotel room was too nice not to take advantage of, so we decided to stop by a grocery store on our way back to Niagara Falls to pick up some cheeses, meats, figs, jam and crackers for a light dinner in our room.  We also had to wake up pretty early the next morning to head to Erie for the Gerrety family reunion so it worked out perfect!

I got to meet a lot of Paul's family while we were in Erie and Paul gave me the grand tour of the town he called home for his first few years of life.  Here's a few photos we got (in no particular order):

Paul lived just outside of Erie in a small town called Fairview

This was the house he lived in - pretty neat!

This was a group shot of some of us at the reunion

This is me at Lake Erie - it was a little overcast when we went to see the Lake so this picture really doesn't do it justice, it really was beautiful

 One of Paul's cousins is a DJ, in his spare time, and when he has a gig the rest of the family comes to sing karaoke - and they are AWESOME!!!

 On our last night we had dinner with Paul's Oma (grandma) and she loves her some Pauly :)

If you've never been to a Wegmans grocery store, you are totally missing out.  It's the only grocery store I've found where half of the store is all organic products (like at a Trader Joe's) and the other half is regular items that you would find at any other grocery store (like at a Publix) - if you're ever in the North, you have to check it out!

We had such a great trip and it really was wonderful getting to spend time with Paul's extended family - but it's also really nice to be back at home and settling in to our routine.

That's all for now, Happy Thursday!!!

Nana, Final Update

On Friday, July, 29th, my precious Nana passed away and she's now looking down on us from up above in Heaven.  Nana was such a blessing to all of the people that had the opportunity to know her and she will be greatly missed by her family and friends.  Thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers as we were going through such an emotional time - prayer truly was our saving grace!