Al & Steph's Wedding! July 30, 2011 :)

Al and Steph's wedding was on Saturday July 30th. The ceremony was to start at 4pm and was held outside at the back of the groom's parents' property. An absolutely gorgeous place for a wedding and some awesome pictures! It was a small wedding of about 20 people, we made the cut because we're awesome like that. So awesome that Aleksy was the best man and we sat right at the top of the table next to them (confirmation of our awesomeness...).

Here's everyone waiting before the ceremony started. It was really hot so you can see Steph's sister and Al's sister standing in the shade to keep cool. I definitely spend some good time in the shade before the wedding too so that my face didn't melt away. It was a 30 degree day that definitely felt more like 40! Another issue that we nubbed in the bum is the bugs... there were a few swarming around our heads, so where as some weddings you may spray perfume, this wedding OFF bug spray was the perfume of choice!

Aleksy aka "the best" and Emily the honorable maid, making their way down the stone lined walkway :) Dark grey was the colour scheme: very classy looking!

After a wonderfully efficient (not long!) ceremony, Here's Steph signing her life away on her marriage license... And under Aleksy is witnessing... It's official! Steph and Al are married!!!

Steph's excitement after the vows is clearly documented in this shot (and in her dance back down the aisle!). Telling everyone that drinks and snacks are served on the patio (while the wedding party takes some photos).

I quite enjoyed the fact that I found this bottle on the ground when the guys put the chairs into the van to take back to the house. Someone (Al's sisters boyfriend) brought a beer to the ceremony!! Haha!! From this moment on, every moment on un-classiness was documented! 

Finally after watching everyone come to the ceremony in linked arms with their significant others (and me alone because Aleksy was in the wedding party) and take lots of pictures before the ceremony, I snatched my man for some pictures afterward!!

Being at a wedding always makes you want to be a little extra romantic. This is our romantic shot (my fav!).

The beautifully set table. On each setting there was a card with our names on it and a chocolate heart (which I just ate and it was delicious). The cards were in lieu of the bombonieres and Steph and Al donated to make a wish foundation :) Such a GREAT idea!!

Another one of our "un-classy") photos. Steph's friend and maid of honour, Emily is a chef pastry and made the cake for the wedding. A DELICIOUS cake that was vanilla with chocolate layers with raspberries and strawberries in the chocolate. Emily suggested that she make 2 tiers and have one of the tiers cardboard. Steph informed Emily that although there were only 20 people, they would need all 3 tiers because of the people who are attending who LOVE cake (including moi). Sure enough... less than half a tier was left after the wedding! As you can see by the picture, the pieces were not your average size!

Steph and me :)

I like this picture because it goes so well with the theme of the wedding... throughout the ceremony country music was being played and the wedding took place out in the country. So naturally, they had to take a picture with their big truck!

After a while convincing Al and Steph to have a first song, someone (perhaps Steph's Mom) won them over and they had their first dance after supper. I liked it because they chose something that was meaningful to them, the country song 'ticks', which isn't your typical wedding song, but its "their" song, which was determined years ago. The song is not the slow melody of a slow dance, but it made it more fun, unique and theirs! I like that idea!

A perfect day for an outside wedding: it rained the day before, was completely clear for the day of, and rained a bit after the ceremony and supper (at around 9pm). The weather was very accomodating for them!

Dubai's Got Nothing On Us

Yesterday was a record setting day. The hottest temperature reading that I have ever seen on Aleksys jeep: at 7pm!!! Upon listening to the radio, they said that the temperatures were hotter than Dubai, anywhere in Mexico, and Cuba. And 3 months ago there was snow on the ground. We live in such a strange climate.

Days like these really make me appreciate AC, and how fortunate I am to have luxuries such as AC in the house I live in and my car. I couldn't imagine trying to sleep at night with the house temperature over 30 degrees.

Our Camping Trip in the Hot Hot Sun

This past weekend Aleksy and I decided that we wanted a weekend get away just the two of us. We booked a site at Rondeau: It was our first time going south to a campsite, but we wanted to try something new out. Rondeau is in the Chatham-Kent area, and to be honest I was not very impressed with the grounds. The site was very open, not many trees and the ones that were there were tiny. There were a couple of positives though: the occupancy tended to be a younger crowd, which made us feel better about having our music, campfire, and drinks until late and the site was super close to the beach (which smelled sooooo bad).

The beach at Rondeau was absolutely the grossest beach I have ever been to. Aside from the stinky smell, there was algae and seaweed that was brushed up to shore, which made it disgusting to try to enter the already stinky water. I went in for about 30 seconds, but I didn't want it to get past my knees. So the next day, although we had plans to go to the beach beside our campground, we made the drive out to Port Stanley to lay on the beach. It was really full at Port Stanley that day. We tried the Wharf restaurant for the first time, which was delicious. We also made an attempt at buying fresh fish from the market, but because we went at the end of the day, there was no fresh fish left (we bought some at Loblaws instead... maybe next time).

To go back to the positives, I found the ice cream of my life on this trip to Rondeau. I couldn't make up my mind between ice cream flavours at the store so the lady suggested I do a half scoop of 2 flavours (so smart). So I went with the white chocolate and raspberry and happy birthday (made by the London ice cream company). Happy Birthday is now my favorite. Tastes like icing and sprinkles with vanilla. Yum.

Our site had absolutely no shade. And it happened to be a super hot weekend of about 30 degree weather. The only shade that we had was the shade from the jeep. So we moved our chairs in front of the jeep.

 SMORES here I come!

 We forgot to bring the big cooler for our beverages, just the small cooler which was occupied by our condiments, hotdogs, and food so Aleksy had a brilliant idea of putting the beverages in bags and putting ice in them. Although the ice melted within 3 hours, it still kept the drinks cold for the evenings events :) Its all about the improvising when camping.

Since it was our couples weekend away, naturally we had to go see the sunset. On our way over to the water, we took our beverages and threw them out just in time to watch the OPP drive by. After that close call,we found a really nice sunset over the water. A perfect spot, just a little stinky.

Although it looks all great and romantic in pictures, it was pretty but about 2 meters from us there was a family fishing (they were a bit whiny), and beside us there was algae that was smelly. But, it was definitely pretty across the water.

Movie Excursions

Drive In
I definitely wanted to make it out at least once this summer to the drive in. I'm reminded to go to the drive in often on my drive to/from work (along highway 2) when I pass the oxford drive in. So we headed out to the Mustang on a Friday evening last weekend (July 8th) and although we thought we were seeing "Bad Teacher" followed by "Bridesmaids", in actuality we were looking at an outdated show list and we saw "Zookeeper", followed by "Bad Teacher". We weren't thrilled that Zookeeper was the first movie to be shown (but it was actually some good clean humour!), but we decided to go anyways because we wanted to see the "Bad Teacher" movie.

Maybe it was because it was a Friday and it was rainy earlier in the week, but the drive in was PACKED. I have never seen it so busy before. Also, because we are an SUV, we are forced to park at the back so we are not blocking others. But in front of us, our view was blocked by open windows, radio's placed on top of trucks, and tons of vehicles in general. Because we were literally in the very last row, we were really close to the bushes and shrubbery, which means MOSQUITOS. And it just so happens that the Jeep is wide open. Pesky mosquitos gave me a few bites on my feet and legs. And, they don't sell bug spray at the refreshment stand. Next time, bug spray will be a must. But, they did go away as the night progressed and we got through most of Bad Teacher without falling asleep, but it gets harder to stay awake until 130am these days!

Harry Potter

So I jumped on the Harry Potter bandwagon WAY late. My very first time seeing Harry Potter was on Friday July 15th. Well my first time watching a WHOLE movie anyways. Aleksy took me and my nephew Brandon to the Westmount theatre where he purchased tickets to Harry Potter in advance (on the internet). When we arrived for our 6:50pm show, there was a line up that wrapped around to the mall part of the building. We were certain that we weren't going to be sitting together, or we would get the crappiest seats available. But, as we entered the movie theatre (no wait because we bought our tickets in advance), there were quite a lot of seats. We actually arrived 10 minutes before the movie started and got seats in the very back and were not directly beside anyone. It appears all the line-ups and sold out shows were for 3D. Regular suited me just fine.

So... about the Harry Potter. It was good. It probably would have been better if I had watched the previous 6 movies and understood more of what was going on and why. However, now that I've watched the last movie, I know what happens. As much as I can say I liked the movie, I don't think I am one to join in all the fuss. I am not too into fantasy and magical things. I'm quite a realist and often things like that cause me to roll my eyes. But, it was a good, decent movie.

Steph's Bachelorette!! July 9-10 2011!

We celebrated Steph's gettin hitched this weekend in Grand Bend! We left Saturday morning for Grand Bend and we had previously booked a night at Aux Sables Inn. It was difficult to score this room and I'm pretty sure it was the very last place that we could have stayed in Grand Bend on Saturday night that did not have a requirement of 2 nights. The Inn was about a 20 minute walk to the beach, the bars and the strip. We spent both days at the beach and we had super HOT weather!

Marsha, Steph, myself, Genevieve, and Sabrina on the beach. This is the first day on the beach: Saturday.

Homemade party balloons... you know there's a party when there's balloons.

We were Steph's bitches for the weekend! Because there were only 4 of us, it was more exciting to make up random numbers. I was Steph's bitch #17. Steph was head bitch. It becomes official when its written on our glasses!

During our shopping adventure on the strip the first day, we were in Archies and had the fantastic idea of buying friendship bracelets! They were 2 for $5 and had cute little turtles on them.

This is the Aux Sables Inn where we stayed (with a Steph in front). It was a decent place, but good god I never would have guessed $200/night. We have stayed at Days Inn hotels for less than half that price which also include breakfast. But I do suppose the convenience is what we paid for: we could park here (parking always sucks in Grand Bend), walk back from our drunken night at the bars, and stay super close to the beach.

Our exciting bachelorette night out included some beverages in our hotel room, champagne included, dressing up with out "Party Posse" hats, and we spent most of our night at Gables. At about 1:30am, we decided to head down to the beach where we met several groups of people. Because of the time and the general intoxication levels of people, it was an adventure. And Marsha managed to score this hat from some guy on the beach (who likely forgot all about his wearing a hat).

I like this picture! It's basically the entire night in a nutshell. We took this in our room before leaving for the bars and after dressing up in all our party gear. I like how you can see Steph's "bride to be" sash, garter belt and all our hats, and party wear.

My Intent on Getting Fit!

I just joined the gym!

It has been my intention to join the gym for some time, and I have been observing different deals that I receive from the daily Groupon deals, but nothing has come up in the past month and a half. Back before I moved to Hamilton, I worked out at Goodlife and committed to usually 3 days a week. This time I hope for 2 days a week (because i'm also doing Pilates with some work people on Tuesdays and Thursdays) and since Aleksy is a member at the same club, we can work out together. I chose Athletic Club because Aleksy has a membership there, its only $40/month and there are 2 locations that are either right on my way home from work or close to where I live. And they have classes that I can take too, I'm a large class fan!

goals:

-slight weight loss (5 lbs or so). 

-tone my muscles

-motivation for healthy eating/healthy lifestyle

-feel awesome & have more energy!

Current weight: 132 lbs 

we'll see where this goes!

Canada Day Weekend!

For the long weekend, we called it close but did end up scoring a camp site at Sauble Falls. Because we couldn't book 3 weeks in advance because somehow all the campsites in Ontario Parks were full (darn long weekends!), we planned on showing up and trying to score one of the sites that you cant reserve in advance, but it ended up working out because we found a free spot 3 days before the Thursday night we arrived!! And we got Sauble falls, which is beautiful!!

We drove up on the Thursday night and got there rather late, Aleksy and Warren pitched the tents and we had some Smores. Man. I love smores (I also might have just made one in the microwave because I'm addicted).

 The next morning, we started our fire as usual, and cooked up some breakfast: Hotdogs, and eggs. How wholesome. There were A LOT of hotdogs consumed during this camping weekend!

 See that little red thing in the middle of those normal camping chairs? That would be Warren's camping chair. It seems everything that Warren has for camping is compact. For portaging: that's our next step! 

 Here's Breakfast! Sometimes when camping you must improvise... we had no plates so we just put our eggs right on our hotdogs.. what a masterpiece! So darn good we had it twice!!! Should I be more embarrassed my our lack of classiness?

On the next morning after arriving, we drove about an hour from Sauble Falls to Tobermory to do a hike through the Bruce Peninsula. I wasn't expecting too much from the hike, afterall it was only a month ago I was hiking the Blue Mountains in Australia, but Tobermory absolutely WOWed me!! This picture shows the clear blue water and the rock beach beautifully.... absolutely amazing!!

It was not only the scenery that impressed me: the hike itself was much more strenuous then I expected. I though a good ol northern Ontario hike: walking over roots, maybe a few rocks... but no.... I was climbing rocks like these!!! Even worked a bit of a sweat up... an awesome hike indeed... so awesome that we got to a point that we couldn't go any further because we had to pass the dog to one another (yup Piper hiked too).

This is the mini cliff that defeated us. We got up to the point where Aleksy is (passing the dog up of course) but from there, we couldn't get any further! It was probably about 12 feet up and the only way up was by a tree that hung alongside the mini cliff. Nope... this is where we turned back...

The next day, Saturday our Browns arrived (Paul and Andzelika Brown!). Played a little 'never have i ever'/'i have and i hope you have to' and had some drinks and a campfire (did i mention I love smores??).

Piper's a pro camper... he gets all comfy...

The next day the Browns and us headed over to check out the falls (which were right beside our campsite!). Paul and Warren had to climb down some rocks to get this goody in the middle of the falls!

The last time Aleksy and I went to Sauble Falls (about 4 years ago), the water level was a lot lower than it was this year. Here's picture number 2 of us with the falls (the other is from 2007 and is actually a better picture because no one was around and it was greener!).

After visiting the falls, we headed over to the beach. It was cloudy and looked like it was about to rain when we left for the beach, but as we arrived it cleared up (just for us...). The beach was super busy on this Saturday!!! I guess long weekends are always like that, but man!! SO many people! Our spot was so close to our neighbours that it was like we were tanning with them!

Its so nice to finally have long weekends and get to enjoy them! My weekend jobs have always prevented me from going away on long weekends like this, so it was really nice for a change! Well, I did work at the group home on this weekend, but it was just a little 4 to 12 on the Sunday...

The events of the June 25/26 Weekend!

I love summer weekends! They are always filled with BBQs, drinks, going out for ice cream, beach days, and several things to do including events in Vic park! It seems weekends book up really fast with everything going on, and there really should be more weekends of the summer. And the weather has been beautiful!!

Because we have a wedding to go to this year, we have a few weekends of wedding fun. The last weekend of June we had Steph's surprise bridal shower. This is the end result of the good ol' bow bra! My thought these days is that I don't want to buy things for people that are not useful, they don't like or already have so I went with the trusty gift card. At least that way they get what they like. However, somewhere along the lines, I have  this idea ingrained that gift cards are impersonal, so I had to get a small gift along with the gift card, which I chose a picture frame and printed some pictures of them to put inside. Thanks to facebook profile pictures for those goodies!! With the shower done, next is bachelorette!! Wooo hooo!

Steph and I at her shower with her bridal veil/hat and bow bra!! 

Following Steph's shower, we spent the evening with Al and Steph and headed to the International Food Festival in Victoria Park. There we had Carribean food, Mexican food, some delicious ribs, and some deep fried dessert, which I was hoping tasted like elephant ears, but was not nearly as delicious :( There was also a band playing at the park that you could watch play as you were eating. Victoria park festivals are fantastic! Although, they all seem to sell the same things? I saw bed sheets at the International Food Festival, and the Sound of Music in Burlington a couple weeks ago. At this food fest, there was also a guy with a kiosk who was selling paintings of haunted buildings, houses etc. There's some interesting things!

 Deliciousness that was our Mexican tacos!!

 Mmmmmmm Bbq sauce drizzling ribs, flame grilled and all! And to the left is our chicken, rice, and curry dish that was from the Carribean kiosk... yummo!!

I don't remember what these were called, but definitely no match for the elephant ear (I love me some elephant ears!)

And to finish our weekend with a bang we headed over to the beach at Ipperwash on Sunday - the best beach to be because its not busy or monitored by the police, so you can bring your cooler and have a few drinks!! It was my second time to the beach and Aleksys first this year. Many more to follow!! Ipperwash also has a drive on, but its a little more monitored so we opted out... plus we had Aleksys brothers Eclipse... cool... but not as cool as the jeep! ha!

 Our spot in the sand :)

So cute, who doesn't love a an old couple walking along the beach romantically!?