It's my party and I'll cry if I want to...

So for all of my loyal followers who did not realize it, it was my birthday last Wednesday (I expect my belated gifts in the mail pretty much as soon as you finish reading this). I am definitely not one of those people who prefers to keep their birthday under wraps in the hope that by not celebrating they might halt the aging process in its tracks, I prefer to devote an entire week (two if the day falls on a weekend) to birthday celebrations and provide friends and family with lists of potential gifts weeks (sometimes months) in advance. Which means I reminded the husband daily for the last month that he better come up with something good if he didn't want to be served with the divorce papers I keep updated and prepared in the desk drawer to hold over his head on such occasions. Well, I awoke on Wednesday to the baby crying...the husband was snoring, I changed the poopy diaper....the husband snored....I cleared my throat, coughed in his face, kicked his leg as I walked by...still snoring. Finally I just sat the baby on his bare chest and it took a handful of chest hair being ripped out for him to wake up...somewhat. After that he did redeem himself slightly by running out to get us some breakfast, however the gesture was lost when he announced the 'plan' for the day...to do whatever I wanted...wow, that took a lot of creative thinking, he figured out my level of satisfaction with this idea quickly (pouting in the corner like a 5 year old with my arms crossed is pretty obvious). While he was fetching coffee I googled "fun day trips from Toronto" and casually left the page open when he walked in. I didn't say anything about it, but when I stepped out of the shower he proudly announced that he had a great idea if I didn't know what I wanted to do, we were off to St. Jacobs for the day (#2 on the list)....and finally we get to the review, how baby-friendly is a road trip to St. Jacobs?

Well, I do have it a little easier than some, the baby naps pretty regularly, so we timed our drive there for the morning nap and the drive home for the afternoon nap. It's about 1 1/2 outside of the city, we passed Milton and....that's all I remember, I stopped paying attention pretty quickly. It's mostly 401 driving so not a lot to look at, but we did manage to fill the time quite nicely with a frequent driving argument we tend to have revolving around my husband refusing to believe that the GPS might be incorrect which follows with me accusing him of having an affair with the British lady who lives inside the machine.

Once we are in the village we did the only thing there is to do, walk around and go into stores that you would never go into if they were in your local plaza, so we checked out the crochet store, the aboriginal quilting store, and of course the fudge store (why is it any pseudo-touristy street in Ontario has a fudge store...are we well known for our fudge making abilities...not that I really care, there are always a lot of free samples so I'm happy with their presence in local tourist areas, I just feel that if we are sticking with fudge as a local delicacy we should really play this up a bit more, maybe that guy in that Ontario commercial "There's no place like this" should be holding a piece of fudge in his hand while he sings!?!?). 

When it was time for lunch we decided on an outdoor patio (I believe the place was called the Shady Tree). There was a booster seat and high chair we could use, both were wet, rusted, and full of spider webs....so we decided to feed the baby while she sat in the stroller, but the condition of the aforementioned baby gear made me feel much less guilty about the huge mess we left on the patio floor.  We ordered burgers and fries ( it was that or hot dogs and fries...really, those were the only menu items) which had a very nostalgic feel, with the first bite I was immediately taken back to my childhood and reminded of those nights where my mom and dad were too tired to really cook and we ate frozen beef patties that were barely heated through on the grill, topped with some processed cheese, watered down ketchup (don't pretend you've never watered down your ketchup before! ) and a wilted piece of lettuce, tasted like home.

Overall, fun family day trip. Just hit the antique shop first so you can buy yourself something pretty and then you don't really care what you do for the rest of the day...or at least that's what works for me.