Niagara Falls

One of my favorite things about living in the Midwest is all of the fun places we have been able to visit! Since we didn't go back home for Christmas, we thought we would take advantage of Nate's time off, pray for some decent weather, and go somewhere fun. It was between Niagara Falls and Gettysburg. When we saw that the weekend weather was going to be in the 50's we decided to take the 5 hour drive up to Niagara Falls.

We figured that this time of year wouldn't be too busy there, so we looked up a few hotels on hotels.com and took the phone number to call and reserve a room while we were driving. I called and told the guy we wanted a room in Niagara Falls, NY and he got it all set up for me, told me his spill about the cancellation policy, (of which I didn't listen to well, we knew we would be there) no problem...at least we thought! We got there at about lunch time, so the first thing we did was grab some lunch. The kids got a kids meal to share at Burger King, they loved the toy and still fight over it more than anything else they got for Christmas. Its a little toy that shoots a wheel looking thing up into the air. They think it is fun to push the button and watch it go flying, maybe I should just start buying Christmas gifts with happy meals. ;)

Back to the story...we left Burger King and when we were in the parking lot, we put the address to the hotel into the GPS and it wouldn't bring up anything. I kept trying it, but nothing. We stopped at a grocery store just down the street to look it up in a phone book and to try calling hotels.com. Nate found a different address so we put it in and headed to it. It was no where to be found! We finally went in to a Denny's and Nate asked about the hotel and they told him it had closed a few years ago. We looked up the same address we originally had and put in Canada instead of NY and there it was in Canada, where we couldn't go! Great! What do we do now?

After a few tries, and being hung up on 3 times I was finally able to get someone from hotels.com to stay on the phone with me. I told him what was going on and that I had told the guy I talked to we wanted a hotel in NY and that we couldn't go to Canada. Luckily, he was able to cancel it with no charges, otherwise we'd have been paying for 2 hotels or making a long trip back home that same night!

We got all set up in a different hotel, on the American side, and walked down to see the falls. We had heard that it is better to see from the Canada side, but didn't look in to what we would need to take the kids across the border. We figured it would still be fun either way. It was warm and kinda windy so just ignore the fact that my hair is crazy in some of the pictures!

I know, you are so jealous of the crazy hair!

Brynlee thought it was pretty fun to look out and see the waterfall. Gracen didn't know what to think, he was just hanging out in the stroller, he even fell asleep for part of the ride!

Even though the water wasn't as clear as it would be in the summer, and we couldn't see it from the Canada side, (and some hotel issues) it was great to go somewhere as a family and spend time together seeing something as amazing as Niagara Falls. It really was a fun place! We decided we will probably try to make it out there in the spring or summer and even over to the Canada side sometime before we leave the Midwest. We have lots of other places on our list of places to see, Chicago(if I can talk Nate into it), Gettysburg, Columbus, Amish country, Nate wants to see a Cleveland Indians game...the list goes on! Hopefully we can make it back and enjoy it again!