My nephews turned 9 in August. Deciding on a gift for them is a struggle for me. It’s not that they don’t want “stuff” but it seems like such a waste of money as they are excited about toys for about 5 minutes and then it goes in their toy room… which I’ve never actually seen them play in. So I decided to do something with them instead, an experience rather than more stuff.

This past weekend the three of us took a road trip. Niagara Falls was the first stop on Friday night and Pittsburg on Saturday. The “gift” was tickets to see the Pittsburg Penguins game. They loved the game but they found a gift in everything that we did.

Our room in Niagara overlooked the falls and at night the lights changed colours, there was a lot of excitement and many pictures taken! They ran into the hotel room to check it out and were excited by many things that I wouldn’t even think about.  The hair dryer (?), the fact that they could watch the Jays game FROM THE BED and the desk chair that spun around.

If we could all see the world through eyes of a child, we could see the magic in everything.

There was a long wait at the border and I was getting impatient, perhaps yelling, and Andrew said to me “Tia, it’s ok, we’re not in a hurry”.  And he was right. We had all day to get to Pittsburg so why worry about how long the border crossing took.

They watched the signs and were anxious to cross the Pennsylvania state line as none of us had ever been to the state. We HAD to stop at the PA Welcome Centre. There was a fascination with the number of Ontario license plates we saw going to see the Jays play in Cleveland. They could NOT believe that people would drive that far for a game. It was totally lost on them that we were driving further than that for a regular season game.

I think the highlight of the trip was when we walked to our room in the hotel in Pittsburg and there was a vending machine RIGHT ACROSS THE HALL! This was a hot topic of conversation and there was a great deal of time spent looking at the treats inside. Inside the room was AMAZING as we had a view of the PPG Arena, RIGHT FROM OUR ROOM.

Andrew came out of the bathroom before bed with a bloody kleenex announcing that he just pulled his tooth out. Did you know that if you are in the US the tooth fairy pays in US dollars?

The morning after the game there was a 6.6km Mario Lemieux run ( As Andrew pointed out multiple times – it’s 6.6kms because Mario’s number was 66). We could see the finish line from our window. These boys are no strangers to spectating at running races so they insisted that we go out and cheer on the runners (my heart almost burst!) So we did and they got to meet Iceburgh, the Penguins mascot.

Driving through Buffalo on the way home we got to see (from the highway) where the Buffalo Sabres play, which was SO AWESOME!

We spent a lot of time in the car and as we got close to home I asked them if they thought all of the time in the car was worth it. Alexander responded “You’re kidding right?”

I think this was more of a gift for me than it was for them ♥