Sunday, May 24, 2015

Our Gender Reveal Party!

We had out gender reveal party of Friday May 22nd! I have really been planning this party since even before we knew we were pregnant, so it was pretty nice to start preparing all the pinterest pins that I have had saved for months! We invited our immediate family and close friends to share (and learn) the news with.

We had our gender ultrasound over a week before the party on May 14th. The ultrasound tech doesn't tell you the same day what the gender of the baby is, but I filled out a form so they would email me the results. I received them in my email the next day! The email sat, so easily accessed on my phone for a week. I was dying to open it but knew I had too much invested in planning the party to spoil it!

Part of the party prep was a pink and blue candy bar. We went to the bulk barn and picked out the blue and pink tootsie rolls, salt water taffy, and mini eggs.

And those pink and blue bags were some left over from the prepared bags I made of pink and blue rose petals. The plan was to have Warren open the email with the gender, grab the bags stuffed with the correct colours and give to all our family and friends to throw.
Andrew came by early before the party and helped with prepping our decorations... well the balloons anyways.

I was all over the pink and blue.
We set up a station where our friends and family could put their guess of what gender our baby is on the board. I cut out little hearts for the girls guesses and little blue bow-ties for the boy guesses.

We printed out our 12 week and 19 week ultrasound pictures and put them on display.

I have been taking pictures of my bump every other week since week 10, holding a chalkboard where I wrote what week it was and what fruit our baby was a size of. We printed these pictures and hung them by the board too! Because lots of people say they can tell the gender of the baby by the way I am carrying or ultrasound, I thought these may help with the guesses! Although lots of people have already been firm on their guesses for months!
Our spread of food! I prepared a veggie tray, mexi dip, cheese, kielbasa, and crackers, meatballs, and I made shortbread squares with pink & blue sprinkles!

It was all pink and blue plates, cups, cutlery and we even bought some pink and blue platters!

Aleksy's Mom made the most delicious desserts: a lemon blueberry crumble bundt cake, and brownies topped with a peanut butter sauce... so glad there's leftovers and we'll have dessert all week (or a couple days...)!
The banner that Aleksy made! The plan was to have this is the backdrop of our picture with everyone throwing rose petals, but I think we overestimated the size of our living room with everyone in it, so you couldn't really see it in the official picture (but it looked great!).
Everything went exactly as planned! Warren opened the email and grabbed the bags for everyone and everyone threw the rose petals at us at once! Warren and Paul were the photographers.

And it's a boy!! We are so excited!

Blue rose petals! The rose petals were cleaned up in record time by everyone who took some home and my Rachel who took home a ton!

I have a lot of little bags of unopened pink rose petals in my basement!






The votes were almost split down the middle but there were a few more who guessed boy. My guess was boy and Aleksy's was girl (those are on the board too!)

This is the email attachment that the London XRay place sent to me! Our baby boy is predestined to love football (and I know Aleksy will be a firm encourager)!


It's a boy! Time to start shopping and baby room decorating/furniture buying!

Monday, May 18, 2015

May 2-4 Long Weekend Kinds of Things

We have had a super duper busy, and most fun long weekend! This May 2-4, we continued our tradition of trailer camping with Al and Steph. We have gone long weekend camping together to kick off summer in 2012, 2013, 2014 and again this year! It gets a little different every year as we both add to our families. Luckily, my 19 week bump doesn't take up much extra space at this point, but this year we did have an extra 6 month baby! On Friday evening, we headed up to Wildwood conservation centre in St. Marys for a 2 night adventure with our Osborne friends!

We got to the trailer on Friday around 6:30-7pm. Our pulled pork supper was all ready to be eaten when we arrived, and afterward Aleksy and I pulled out our birthday surprises for Steph! Her bday was Tuesday, so I made her a chocolate on chocolate bday cake and we brought her bday present too (a baked good cookbook wrapped in some new tea towels). Colton was very excited to be eating cake for a week straight with Mothers Day and his mommys bday celebrations! It only took the 5 of us (Colton incl.) 2 days to finish that off!
After supper, we went on a brief walk to the park for Colton's enjoyment (and also to exploe the campground). I also like swings. But I was probably a bit more pumped to get the fire started and pull out my fav thing about camping: smores! Several were had. That night I had a later night and went to bed around 1am... but Aleksy and Al were even later ad said they stayed up until 3... we wouldn't know because Aleksy and Al were tent sleepers. The trailer is getting a bit tight these days with the 2 babies plus us, so Aleksy and Al "real camped".
The next morning, we were awaken around 8am by our little people (not so bad for 2 babies!). It was cloudy and a wee bit chilly, but after a healthy breakfast of egg sandwiches (better than a sausage egg mcmuffin!) we headed into the town of St. Mary's for the morning.

We started at the park by the river in St. Marys where there was a little park for Colton to play on then headed up to the main strip. Chase slept a good majority of the time in his stroller.
And we walked all the way up to the waterfall and got this shot for old times sake: we have one from our 6 year anniversary about 4 years ago, which I blogged about then:

http://kat-todaysanewday.blogspot.ca/
2011/09/our-6-year-anniversary.html

St. Mary's is so pretty!


After a morning of walking all over St. Mary's, we wanted to finish off our adventure with an ice cream. The place that Aleksy and I had gone a couple years back was closed down so we tried the chocolate factory, which was on the main strip. They didn't sell ice cream (but we did get some chocolate), and they recommended Hearns for ice cream just down the street. It was a cute little ice cream place and by that time it had gotten warm so business was def picking up for the ice cream place. I had a blueberry cheesecake flurry which I was sure I couldn't finish until I did.
We got back to the trailer just after lunch time and although we were pretty full after the ice cream, we whipped up some lunch anyways. We had some sausages, salad and potato salad. We hung out for a bit lounging outside of the trailer and enjoyed the super nice 25 C weather, where Colton targeted and attacked me with his watergun until I was soaked! We then decided to do one of the trails of the conservation area. We left around 3:30 for the trail.
And this is us on the trail! It took us over an our to complete the trail and we were pretty tired at the end after walking out in the sun all day. Colton was especially feeling tired toward the end and we could tell by the increase of his tripping over roots. He was very cute though gathering "gifts" for me all day: flowers (dandelions), rocks, and sticks.

It was a nice trail, and we were impressed by the size of the campground and how much there is to do and see (we didn't even have time to visit the lake that the campground was built around!).

That night we had some supper, smores and went to sleep a little earlier around 12am. We left the next morning after breakfast so we could shower (because 3 days without a shower was kinda dirty) and get ready for birthday celebrations for my sister and Kenny's birthdays!
On Sunday afternoon, Kenny had set up a surprise birthday party for my sisters 33rd birthday! She was out with my Mom shopping for the afternoon and my Mom was to bring her home for 4pm and we all were hanging out in the back yard... Steph only knew Aleksy and I would be there because we had made supper plans. Kenny had planned everything out from having extra tables, decorations and food!

When Steph got home, we had some awesome bbq and hung out in the backyard... me with my special non alcoholic drinks and everyone else enjoying their cold beverages (I'm finding it isn't so bad.... yet!).
Kenny had bought fireworks for the night too! Before it got dark, Kenny set them off in the park across from their house! This is the kids loving their lives watching the fireworks going off. Rachel is all dressed up in her batman outfit and she was jumping up and down in excitement! Birthday fireworks!

It was a bit of a tiring weekend with all our camping adventures so Aleksy and I called it a night early around 10:30 on Sunday. We did have an extended birthday celebration today: the holiday Monday at my dads!

And today was a good day to recuperate with a good sleep in (until 9!), catch up on laundry and get some "me" time in at the gym! We headed over to my Dads around 5pm for some pizza, cake and (extended) birthday celebrations.

We had the best weather all weekend, feeling like summer! The best kinda May 2-4!

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Weekend Awesomeness

Aleksy and I are really good a filling up our weekends with plans... most of which make for some pretty sweet weekends. Aleksy likes more down time than I do, so sometimes it works out well when I make plans separate from him. On Saturday April 25th, I bought tickets for me and my little to go to the Superdogs show, which was at the Western fair.

I didn't know what to expect when I bought tickets. I saw an advertisement on my newsfeed on Facebook and suggested it to Brooklyn. And it was so good! There were a ton of little kids there and Brooklyn and I were not the majority in the crowd, but I though it was such a good show for anyone.

The doggies were so cute, I couldn't stop smiling! This picture here is 2 fluffy dogs: they called them the twins, Waffles and Syrup. They did most of the show together... with one in the front and the other practically nudging the other form behind.

The show was filled with doggies races, some dancing by the dogs, and general entertainment with the dogs as entertainers. It was a great afternoon and nice to have something new to do with Brooklyn!
And just this past weekend (May 2-3), we had the nicest weather and spent both days in the 22-25 degree weather. On Saturday, we decided to do a little something about our dead grass and top soiled and seeded our grass. It was the day to do gardening.. everyone was doing yard work. Raking sucks... I got a blister. But I was very excited to get a little sun on my shoulders.

An Sunday, we headed up to Stoney Creek to visit the Browns. We had some bbqed hamburgers for lunch before heading to the Hamilton hiking trails to see the waterfalls.

This is Aleksy, Paul and the girls on the hiking trail... such a pretty trail. This was our 2nd time doing this trail and it is definitely worth a re-visit.
After about 2 hours and a bit, we made it to the big pretty waterfall toward the end of the trail. Here's Aleksy and I by the Sherman falls (with my 17 week bump you can see in this picture!).

After our hike, I made a strong case for wanting to go out for ice cream (because the marble slab I had the night before wasn't enough!). Andzelika suggested a place on the Burlington Lakefront, so we headed there after the hike.

It was a gelato place... the best gelato I've had!! I got half peanut butter chocolate (of course) and half wildberry and it was just the best time in a cup. I wish we could have that gelato in London...

And after the best gelato ever, we headed back home to finish the weekend off with yet another bbqed supper! Love nice weather bbqs! Sunday was a good day!