Bridal Shower Numero 1!

I am so so lucky and grateful to have such awesome family and friends that I was thrown 2 bridal showers! My first shower was this past weekend on June 22nd at the Lambeth lawn bowing centre. Good thing I bought about 5 white dresses to choose from for an outfit (along with about 5 white flowers for my hair...)... I was well prepared. The only thing that I couldn't quite prepare myself for is the awkwardness of being the centre of attention and opening presents in front of everyone.

All the excitement started on Saturday in preparation of the shower when me, my sis and Mom got our nails did at the nail bar on Fanshawe Pk Rd by the Home Depot. There were a few realizations from our manicures together: we all have the exact same taste in nail polish and to paint a special lacquer over our nails costs $42 at L'Mar and I'll prob go somewhere else for the wedding day. And the bachelorette...

But our nails looked pretty for the shower and are still in good repair for shower #2.

After 1.5 hours of hairspray and hair curling, my Nikki & Jon Jon arrived. My Nikki took me to my shower and Jon and Aleksy headed to the Beer & BBQ show. This is our pre-shower pic! Love my Nikki, my maid of honour so much!

We found the Lambeth lawn bowling centre easily and what helped was the sign that Aleksy's Dad Richard made with an arrow directing to Katherine's bridal shower! Balloons and all! Plus, this sign on the door. Love it.

My first shower was primarily Aleksy's side of the family and my bridal party and Mom. There are some awesome fam members that we don't see all that often, but what a great reminder how fantastic everyone is. Aleksy's aunts, cousins, great aunts were all there!

And the front table! Aleksy's Gran & his Aunt Kelly and Sophia who came all the way from Port Credit. And of course Alyssa and Nicole :)

My bridesmaids and Mom table! And our little people, Serena and Natalia, the flower girls and our newly born, Cadence (just 2 weeks old!). Love these girls!

This whole shower was put together by Aleksys Mom and Aunt! They worked so hard before and during the shower and made delicious food with a perfect setting with all of Aleksy's family members who were able to come, and to make sure that everything was cleaned up afterward.

This was the deliciousness that was served: sandwiches and salads, dips, and lots of delic desserts. With little cards that labelled the food.

Aleksys's babcia even made her delicious Babka sweet cake.

This game was fantastic with the blown up picture of Aleksys face. Everyone was blindfolded and had to try to get the moustache in the right place. Funny... because I don't think Aleksy grows hair there!

The part of the day that I was nervous about: everyone staring while I open presents. I ensured that there were other people that could be stared at right beside m too: my Nikki and sister! They made it so everything stuck together and what I received was written in the cards! I think I have this mastered for today's shower...

And my bridal party shot! With all of the ladies present... so glad I got this shot because Alyssa won't be able to make today's shower!

And I told Aleksy that he would be needed for the Grand Entrance to say thanks to the lovely hostesses, hi to the guests and steal some of the leftover food... I guessed around 3:30. But Aleksy arrived around 3:40 and everyone was gone! A bit of a late Grand entrance.. but today we have a plan that Nikki will text Aleksy to let him know when the perfect time is!

Shower #2 in 3 hours... I'm seriously the luckiest!

Our Hillbilly Deluxe Stag & Doe!

On May 31st, we kicked off the start of our wedding season with the first event: our stag & doe. It took several days of prep gathering 50 bottles of pop (we only used about 20), things for the raffle prizes, alcohol, and odds & ends like tickets, aprons, signs etc.

I also took a full week off for food prep: pulled pork, meatballs, corn bred, cookies, and brownies.

We also spent some time prepping our cowboys hats for ourselves and our wedding party! Everyone was labelled! We even invested in a hot glue gun for these for the ribbon...

We rented the hall a bit early for set up. We are super lucky to have a super helpful wedding party and everyone helped with food, came early to prep, and initiated pizza orders. We had so much help from everyone to actually make this day happen with making a profit!

This is the beginning trying to get everyone's attention to set up games, raffles etc. for the night. We found it worked better to talk to everyone over the mic!
This is clearly the best picture to post because everyone's face is full but mine...

 Group shot! The wedding party minus a couple: Andrew & Alyssa (the sibs). Plaid cowboys hats, and jean shorts (daisy dukes?)!

Al sporting the best farmers tan ever.

2 x 4 jager shots! With our awesome bartender who created the "signature drink": because I had leftover grenadine in the cupboard that I wasn't going to use... used it all that night! The signature drink was a hit: vodka (or rum), sprite, and grenadine.
Warren made the 2 x 4 shot device with little circles to fit the shot glasses.

The door crew! These peeps were diligent in watching the money box at all times and also had the duties of alcohol ticket sales and the King of Hearts game. Ticket sales were mostly done in advance with our cooler of booze prize!

For a good portion of the night, we had the best pregnant bartenders of life. Perfectly fitting with the theme, we put the preggers with the alcohol. I just felt bad having them work so hard for so long when Chelsea pretty much could have had a baby right there.

Our first game of the night! The balloon stomp! For $2 a balloon, everyone tied the balloon around their ankle and tried to be the last standing balloon by popping everyone elses. The grand winner was Alyssa's boyfriend, Jon and they won dinner & a movie!

This is the best game to watch...

The second game of the night: hammer the nail into the tree stump! After neck and neck tournaments, cutting the people who finished second out, the lady on the left, Ashley killed it and took home the lcbo gift card. No surprise that the winner for the men's was Paul Brown... he basically shouldn't be allowed to participate...

And... our final game of the night was the toonie toss! We had a Texas Mickey of rum up for grabs and the toonies just kept going and going (obviously we were 100% ok with this).

My bro Mike was on a mission to get his toonie closest, and was so close until it got stolen at the end! This is Mike monitoring my Dad to make sure his toonie doesn't get hit out of the way...

At the end of the night this happened. It was a little extreme if you ask me. We had jars that people filled with money based on who they wanted to see have a pie in the face. You can clearly see in this picture who is the big fat loser of the pie in the face. I mean... this is NOT pie in the face... this is pie in the face, hair, arm, and every other place.. jerk.

This.... this is how it happened. I was actually expecting that I would be pied in the face but it was actually Aleksy that got the most money (thanks to my awesome fam and friends who protected me. After learning that Aleksy was to get a pie in the face, my lovely sister then filled the pie pan with tons and tons and tons of whipped cream. That's when my best friend, now exfriend Chelsea added $25 to my jar so I'd get pied. And that's how it happened.

But then I forgive and forget way too easily and now we're friends again (Cadence was born shortly after so I had no choice...)






At the end of it all we made enough to cover our florist, photographer, and minister (with some extra to contribute to our driveway!)... an awesome night, which was super helpful to financing our wedding.
We had tons of leftover things from the stag & doe like pop, plates, cutlery, cups, and tickets and I even sold those on kijiji to get some money off them and made an extra$75!

My Favourite Kind of Saturday Afternoon

After an awesome father's day lunch at archies buffet and watching Brooklyn's canada cord award ceremony, aleksy and I headed here:

The Thames river trail from springbank park to the university! We rode for 1.5 hours.

I think this is my very favourite activity of the summer! Along with bbqs... and campfires... and sailing (i guess i have a lot of favourites).

May Weekends :)

Maiko's 2nd birthday was celebrated on May 10th in Kitchener. Aleksy and I headed up to Kitchener & Waterloo for the day for celebrations, and pre-celebrations St. Jacob's Farmer's market. I really wanted to check St. Jacob's out because I have never been!

I was very impressed by how huge the St. Jacob's Farmer's market was: there was so much food, flowers, and other items for sale! We bought some berries at a cheaper price, some homemade honey for our friend Steph's birthday, and we discovered the Mennonite retailers have the best baked goods of life. Aleksy got some butter tarts and I got the best cinnamon raisin sticky bun with icing that I devoured in an embarrassing time.




We also had a bit of time to have a drink downtown Waterloo before heading to Tabi & Dons. Who knew downtown Waterloo was so nice?! We found this awesome little restaurant and had a beer each: they brewed their own! We ensured not to eat too much because Tabi and Don always have the best food!

And the best decorations and baking! These were paint brush cake pops, delcious dessert squares, cookies, and paint topped rice krispie squares. I had soooo much dessert that day!

Our Rachel Weekend :)

We had Rachel over for a sleepover on Saturday May 24th. We came up with a brilliant plan that we would take her on a road trip to St. Thomas to this cat adoption house that houses 100 cats!! She loved the jeep ride there, laughing hysterically at the wind blowing her hair around. And she liked the cat place, but I dont know if I would say she loved it... there was so much cool stuff to do for our weekend of fun that she was asking us when we were going to the park... our park is that good.

And so we got home and went to the park! Rachel hit up the swings, slide, and everything in between. And asked to go again the next morning... but we stuck to soccer in the backyard instead.

This is the massive hill in our backyard that Rachel lives for. When she first saw it, its all she asked about... can we climb the hill. She did end up climbing it the week before because my sister has friends that lives nearby, so we climbed the hill with her twice! I ran to the bottom to get a shot of Rachel and Aleksy!

And after a long day of jeep riding, cat visiting, going to the park, soccer, climbing hills, and grilled cheese, we called it an indoor evening with making peanut butter chocolate chip cookies (with peanut butter that Rachel made herself at the Picards peanut place!) and watching a movie. We suggested something new, but Rachel insisted that we watch Despicable Me like last time she had a sleepover. Rachel passed out whilst eating her cookie and chubby drink and we put her to bed in "her room" with the sleeping bags that she requested!

May 2-4: Summer Starts!

This May 2-4 was super busy! We planned a weekend at the trailer with Al, Steph and Colton, but also made sure that we got back in time for birthday celebrations for Kenny!

On Friday the 16th, we headed up to meet Al and Steph at their trailer up by Ipperwash beach :)

This year, May 24 was freeeeezing!! AND i forgot my coat at home. Good thing I brought 3 blankets, 2 sweaters, and boots! The first thing we saw when we got to the awesome site was Colton walking!! It was our first time seeing him taking so many steps! This pic is from Fri evening, greeting Moose and sitting around the fire trying to keep warm.

We had an easy supper on Friday night since Aleksy and I couldn't get to the campsite until about 7pm. Mmmm hot dogs and macaroni and cheese salad. The best hot dogs are cooked over the fire... Colton doesn't eat hot dogs, but he does like macaroni...

After staying up late drinking whisky by the fire, Aleksy was not feeling up for the 7am wake up from Colton! Probably doesn't help that our bed at the trailer isn't made for 6 ft 3 large people.... But Al was a keener making eggs and bacon all made before the 8 o clock hour. Good thing I stuck to one somersby and some h2o. We had our breakfast, packed some lunches and headed to the pinery for the day for some hiking and a beach visit!

I got a quick shot of the awesome camp site before heading out. Al & Steph are parked in the campground for the summer so they have planted a little garden and this adorable little stream is right beside the site.

 We made a mandatory stop at Timmies in Forest before heading into the Pinery: We're not used to babies waking us up at 6:30am so you can see that mine and Aleksy's are a little larger (That's my story... even though I never get anything smaller than a medium!). We made things real simple for the Tim's people by ordering one of every size and a different order in each.

After our pinery hike, we stopped for a picnic lunch: some sandwiches, salad and animal crackers (Colton and my fav!).

Then we headed to the beach where Moose made lots of new doggie friends by stealing their branches from the water and Colton worked on writing his name in the sand.
Colton is showing how cold it is with his winter hat and coat.

After leaving the pinery, we had some dessert: ice cream! The cold weather didn't scare us away from ice cream... They don't have the London Ice Cream Company anymore, but they do still have delicious ice cream! I had some birthday cake and a peanut butter variety of sorts...

Aleksy and I brought supper for Saturday: chicken breasts, salad and beans. But you can see that Aleksy is not cooking chicken here. This is because while this little grill was cooking our chicken, Aleksy and I sat together on one side of the picnic table causing it to tilt and all the chicken to fall on the ground. And so the chicken went into the fire and we had hot dogs instead...

And later night endeavors around the campfire where I consumed no less than 4 smores and some beverages were had. While I called it a night at about 1130, Al and Aleksy stayed up quite a bit later... And Aleksy drank my Somersby (I did not forget).

The next morning, we got up early (with our little Colton!) and headed back home for some birthday celebrations.

Sunday the 18th: Kenny's Bday!

On the Sunday, we after having a delicious Nova Era sandwich picnic, we met Steph, Kenny, Brandon & Rachel at the mini golf course on Windermere, which I haven't been to in so long! Rachel was the golf boss...

Birthday golf! After our mini golfing game that briefly had some rain, we headed back to Kenny and Steph's for some sliders and Caesar salad and for dessert, Aleksy and I decided to go a little nontraditional away from cake and at Nova Era we got some canolies and Portuguese custard tarts... sooo tasty! We figured Kenny would enjoy those more!