If you're referring to Marineland as the aquarium on the Canadian side, it's closed until May 21. However, there is the Aquarium on Whirlpool Street on the American side (http://www.aquariumofniagara.org/) which is open year round. I haven't been there since I was five, so I can't offer feedback (I'm sure things have changed in 30 years.) The Buffalo Zoo recently changed its hours due to county budget cutbacks, so be sure to double-check its hours if you go. It's one of the oldest zoos in North America. Work is (was?) being done to add new, modern exhibits. Some of that work is done, some of it just got put on the back burner (see budget problem.) They have a new river otter exhibit. The zoo is open Wednesdays through Sundays from 10am to 4pm. Some of the older exhibits do, however, have a more, um, victorian feel to them. The Convention and Visitors Bureau has a nice list of things to do, broken down by type. See http://www.buffalocvb.org/Attractions_0.html for details. Nurseries... on Niagara Falls Boulevard (but not near Niagara Falls) at Robinson Road in North Tonawanda is Menne Nursery, which, in season, has a nice collection of more unusual perennials and a nice spread of annuals. Seeing how it's March, and it's snowing out, I'm not sure what they'll have other than house plants and nursery items like pots, and of course seeds. The Botanical Gardens would be a nice breath of spring air. Their page is linked from the CVB page cited above. I think their spring flower show goes through that weekend. If your kids are budding history buffs, take them to Fort Niagara in Youngstown (north of Niagara Falls) for a tour of an actual fort that predates the War of 1812 (which was fought in the area.) If not, there's a carousel museum in North Tonawanda, Museum of Science in Buffalo, Historical Society in Buffalo, a children's museum in East Aurora, toy town museum (also East Aurora), and a host of other things of that ilk. See CVB page for links and info. (I have nothing but great things to say about the CVB, who helped us out getting area info for a conference we hosted at the university some years ago. They are very helpful and have a well-organized site. They even link to things on the Canadian side.) If you go to Canada, be sure to bring ID for you and the children. Good luck.

We went visiting on New year's Eve, and the house was very rough looking, but rather tidy and clean. By rough I mean that most of it is in need of painting etc. in a big way. This made me feel better about my own half finished house and I came home and have been cleaning like there's no tomorrow, and prepping to get more painting done! It's hard for me to believe these people lived in that house for 10 years and have been just letting it go downhill. Now I feel so much better about being here for 6 months and only having half the house done/!

"...cindylou, imagine if you can what it would be like after all you and your husband have experienced with your MIL if your own children grew up and estranged you..." If I had a child who estranged me, I would not think it had anything to do or not to do with my MIL. I would not think that they owed me a relationship because I tolerated my MIL (maybe I misunderstood what you meant by connecting my MIL into that idea). If my child estranged me suddenly and with no warning and if I asked and they said, "You know", and I truly didn't, I would make the assumption they didn't quite didn't know themselves. That they have feelings and upsets they don't quite understand themselves and that they needed time away from me to work them out. (This is assuming there's no mental illness or addiction. If there is mental illness or addiction, then I do know and frankly, maybe I'm just getting too old, but I've seen the hopelessness and heartache of addiction and mental illness, and I think I'd just be grateful for being cut out). More likely, I would have been told the answer. And I'd accept it, even if it didn't make sense. "Because you wore blue to my kindergaren graduation." Huh? Ok. I don't think I'd argue. I can't imagine arguing with an adult child. They are an adult. I barely argue with them now. My parents didn't argue with me, I never saw them argue with their parents. My aunts and uncles on both sides didn't argue with either their adult children or their parents. It's just not done. I can't imagine it. There are differences of opinion and hurt feelings and misunderstandings and on rare occasions, conflict between adult members of my extended family. Of course there is. But everyone seems to understand a basic rule. I live my life and you live yours, and I can offer my opinion and it's fair if you don't follow it. The person who's business it is, gets the final say. The person who has the most responsibility gets to decide. The person who takes the biggest risk chooses. We are none of us perfect people; but we don't squabble and manipulate and gang up on each other and form one alliance and then another to force family members to do what we want. And we don't stab each other in the back. That's such a bizarre concept to me. And we are very close--without melodrama. There's not a lot of conflict. So if a child told me, "I don't want contact from you because you wouldn't let me go to Aruba on spring break." I'd respect that. I'd figure sooner or later they'd understand. Or if not, sooner or later it wouldn't matter any more. I would absolutely believe that eventually they'd come back. Not the way they were, it wouldn't be the same relationship, but had we stayed close, it wouldn't be the same relationship at 30 as it was at 20 or 10. Would I miss them and be hurt. You bet. But I'd be comforted that I would see them again and focus on the other blessings of my life while I waited. I truly believe that if you love something you let it go, and if it loves you, it will come back. And if it doesn't come back, you never had it to begin with. If after 10 or 20 years there was still no contact, I'd have to face the fact that it's probably for the best. We didn't have the relationship I thought we had; I didn't know them, and we obviously weren't a match even if they have half my DNA. Do I hope to have close, intimate relationships with the families of my adult children? Of course. But I will be happy with any non exploitive relationship my children feel comfortable with. I may want more contact or less, depending on the personalities, but perfection doesn't happen in relationships; it's like tension between togetherness and individuality that has to be worked out in a marriage. When your children are adults with families, you renegotiate your relationship, and if it REALLY doesn't work for someone, you might have to walk away. Sad, painful, but realistic. I have a coworker who is retiring and moving to be closer to her daughter and grandchildren. They are delighted to have her. On a recent house hunting trip she was dismayed that her daughter seemed to expect/demand a lot of babysitting from her. She's not moving there to take on the responsibility of babysitting her grandchildren, altho she does hope to see a lot of them and participate in their lives. Things were tense as she attempted to come to understanding with her daughter. She came back and asked if things don't work out in the other state, can she have her job back. I sometimes in the past had wondered if she's a meddling MIL so much does she talk about her grandchildren. But I see now she's got a life outside them and is not exploiting her daughter's family to fill the emptiness (if any) in her own life. And she's not going to allow herself to be exploited by her daughter however much she loves her family. She sees her standing up for herself may result in a cut off; and I respect her handling of this delicate situation. I'm sure it will all work out, but I can see myself in her place; in any relationship, there's always the possibility that you or the other person will walk away for whatever reason. You may think, oh yeah, you are so philosophical, just wait until it happens to you. Well, like anything, what choices do you have: you either accept with grace or you don't. How does not accepting with grace help anything? The ends don't justify the means. Bullying, manipulating, harassing, yelling...none of that is going to help. If you accept with grace, while you are waiting for the problem to resolve itself enough so the child talks to you again with a willingness to compromise, at least you can still have meaning and pleasure in your life. It also gives you time to reflect as well. It might not be that you did something WRONG, it's just that you don't mesh well. And you can measure in the absence how you and your adult child's family don't mesh and what you are willing to compromise to make the relationship more pleasant for EVERYONE. "Mom, you can never be unsupervised with my kids." "Why?" "Because you are a taurus". Huh? Well, that makes no sense to me. But why jeopardize my supervised visits with my grandchildren which can be wonderful by arguing if being a taurus prevents one from being a good grandma or not. Why fill that time with strife and anger and posturing and demands and righteousness and counter accusations when I can be on the floor playing Candyland and angling for the chocolate swamp or coloring in Barbie coloring books or stacking Lincoln logs as high as the sky. Who cares if DIL is glaring at me when my darling grandson and I are holding our breathes to see if we can make a Pixie Stix teepee? I believe letting them go gracefully gets them back eventually, and if it doesn't, the relationship would have just caused heartache all around anyway, estranged or not.

We had German and Austrian friends who said that Hillerman’s novels, and others set in the SW, are very popular so German-speakers really like to visit. Lars, I like your recollection that OKC could seem so exotic. Of course, I also read the Little House books, and rather than visit a place, I wanted to visit that time. Still do. To soar over the virgin prairie, or journey through it, to watch life in the Big Woods, to peer in the windows of The Long Winter. Another is Pillars of the Earth. I want to time-travel as an observer of medieval Europe.