Vacationing with the 5-and-under club

We're having a fabulous time. Vancouver, B.C. is really beautiful. The girls are still thrilled with the hotel room, as well as everything else we see.

Somehow I really feel as if, for these few days, I've left much of my stress and worry behind.

Yes, I still have to be aware of Baby E's allergies. Figuring out what we're going to eat is a challenge. But I'm beginning to get used to those things.

We're having a wonderful time just being together as a family, with nothing in particular we actually have to do. We enjoy each other's company a lot.

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Best of all, we found a Whole Foods not too far from our hotel. They seem to have more things we can eat than any one store we've tried yet. The selection of everything from fresh fruits and vegetables to corn- and soy-free crackers is amazing.

They had pomegranates much cheaper than I've seen them in the USA, so I bought one. I even found a few things we could eat in the salad bar and deli.

Right now DH is out having pizza with the older girls while Baby E and I are relaxing in the room. I was going to heat up some soup in the rice cooker we brought. But then I realized that neither DH or I remembered to bring anything remotely resembling a bowl or a spoon.

So Baby E and I shared half a pomegranate and ate some crackers and Amaranth Snaps cereal. We shared some pomegranate seeds with the others before they left, too. It brought back great memories--pomegranates were a rare special treat when I was growing up. It was fun to pass on the memories to my girls.

We visited Stanley Park today. Much of it wasn't open on a Monday afternoon in the fall, but there was still plenty to do and see. We played in the hollow tree, fed yeast-free kamut bread to the ducks and squirrels, saw the seals, sea lion and beluga whales, and played on the playground.

We were walking past the aquarium just as the trainers arrived at the seal and sea lion pen. We had a great view of the seals and sea lion eating dinner and performing their tricks.

Then the beluga whales kept coming to look at us and standing on their heads and tails in the water. They were beautiful. I'd never seen one of the graceful white whales before.

The ducks were Baby E's favorite thing. She loves birds of all kinds, and especially ducks. Her favorite book right now is "Quackety Quack Quack," a book about a baby feeding bread to ducks. The forced rhyme and the almost-but-not-quite-regular rhythm are annoying, but Baby E loves it. Every book is "Quackety Quack Quack" to her right now. When she sits down to look at a book, the thing she says more often than not as she turns the pages is "Acky-Ack-Ack".

The ducks all clustered around us at Stanley Park, trying to take the bread right out of our hands. Baby E sat right down in the midst of them and cooed. We stayed for a long time, watching the drakes try to chase the ducks away from the bread and race to get the crumbs. We even saw a jet-black squirrel that came down to try to steal a piece.

As we left Stanley park and all the way back to the hotel, Baby E couldn't stop talking about the ducks. She kept saying, "Du! Ack! Du! Ack, ack!" over and over.

AJ and M&M both said their favorite thing was the playground. Kids this age are so easy to please.

My only regret about the day was that we forgot to bring the camera along.