(Jon picked a picture of a giraffe for his creative writing session. Jon’s teacher wrote: “Breakthrough day! I insisted Jonathan give the giraffe a name. He struggled with it, greatly distressed. It was like watching a computer short-circuit. I thought for sure he would crash because the information couldn’t be located. It took about 20-25 minutes for him to finally give me a name, but then seemed to understand “making things up”, hence the creative process begins. The rest of the story took about 5 minutes, (with) leading questions …”)

I love seeing graf. I want to call her name Lady Cook. She is drinking water. I want to visit Lady. I like to do spelling with her. It will be fun. Lady woued liek to spell grass. I am going to spell read.

Jon

Grandma took us to the Toronto Islands yesterday. And what a day it was. It was Jon’s first time, for the ferry and for any sort of ride.
It was so good that I’m still exhausted from it. So I’ll let the photos and captions do the talking.

A bit of trepidation on the ferry, but it quickly faded.

So then it was time for lunch. Whenever we go somewhere new, first thing is it’s time for lunch.

Jon with Franklin at the new Franklin Children’s Garden, a wonderfully gentle place. Not quite as wheelchair friendly as they think in places (wood chips are very hard, and soft sand is a no go).

The watering-can fountain at the garden, which provides small cans for the kids to fill up and then water a large assortment of vegetables, including eggplants (one of Jon’s favourites).

First ride ever, the antique merry-go-round. Waiting to start was hard, but we got the idea.

So this was our next quarry. Circa 1890-something.

He cackled with glee each time we dropped over the precipice.

We rode this three times over the afternoon. Becuase of the length of the ride, it even outranked…

The flume. In line, Jon noted a number of people were screaming and I asked him whether he was a laugher or a screamer. He said he was a screamer. He was wrong, from the moment we started to plunge, he laughed his head off.

A lovely dinner at The Rectory on Ward’s Island. Jon and I were to split a hazelnut coffee chocolate layer cake, but it had a very mature flavour and a heavy crumb, so the little bum ate way more than his share!

On the way home from the very perfect day. Jon is a little fazed because the evening ferry makes two stops before heading home.

I

can quit

anytime

I

want…

5 rides at the zoo yesterday. All but one on Scootles (Sally’s daughter). Thanks to all the wranglers and sad goodbyes to Jessie, who moves from camel wrangling to special needs teaching.

(More about our trip from Mr. Local Forecast—excusez-moi, M. Prévision Locale—himself. Carol and Tom drove us around Kingston so I could see the differences in the place since I left. Unfortunately Jon could not use his portable DVD player (we left the car adapter in our car with Peter); he was totally snacked up with junk food, so he was happy as a clam during the whole drive — L)

Jon

I love going to Gananoque. I saw Tom and Carol. I went for a drive in the van to Kingston. At Gananoque I saw the French wether channel.