July 19 – Grandma & Grandad Camp and Momofuku Noodle Bar

After leaving Brighton on Sunday we hatched a plan for the girls to get a little more Grandma & Grandad time.  Two days is too few to enjoy the delights of the country and reconnect so we packed Charlotte and Jacqui up and took the GO train to Oshawa to meet G&G and do the handoff.  Natalie is still not ready for G&G Camp and I thought that the girls could use a little break from each other.  It’s been a lot of familial togetherness over the past few weeks!  Jack took pity on me and not only took Char & Jacqui on the train but scooped up Natalie as well so I could have a lovely and relaxing couple of hours reconnecting with my college gal pal, Lisa over a lovingly prepared coffee at Boxcar Social on Yonge Street.  Nothing beats that!  

It was a warm afternoon so we took advantage of the facilities in our condo building and took Natalie for a swim.   Jack has seemingly unlimited energy for playing slapstick comedian for the kids and he had Natalie and 2 other random kids in stitches!  As I watched them playing, I could hear the Loonie Tunes music playing in my head.

Since our carefully selected and vetted babysitter in Toronto flaked on us at the last minute, we had to choose an evening activity that Natalie would enjoy too.  We walked north on University to Nathan Philips Square.  If Montreal is the city of summer fun, Toronto is all business.  I guess the center of Canadian commerce can’t just close down city streets for yet another festival!  We walked from there to Momofuku Noodle Bar for dinner.  Natalie roundly rejected the kid’s ramen noodles (good thing we smuggled in a hot dog) and we had Dan Dan Noodles, cold Ginger Noodles and their famous pork buns.  We are certainly burned out on restaurant meals but this highly-anticipated culinary experience only rated a ‘meh’.  Dessert from Momofuku Milk Bar upstairs was more interesting with the cereal milk ice cream (it really does taste like the milk from your bowl of fruit loops) and a few goodies from the case to take home.   (C&S –  we got the crack pie, for old time’s sake)