Easter Weekend!

Colton's 1st Birthday fell on Good Friday of the Easter weekend and we celebrated on the Friday afternoon.

Steph made an awesome homemade cake with banana cake and cheerios (Colton's fav). And Colton got his own little mini cake... first time having cake. This boy seriously loves his food, so cake was the highlight of his life!

 Al & Steph's birthday decorations were so cute! With the help of Steph's sister, they did this board with 'all about Colton' on chalkboard paint! As you can see, Colton and my favourite foods are very much the same...

I would like to steal Marsha's creativity for my wedding...

And after Colton opened all his presents from everyone, his last present was from his parents. He got a Big Brother shirt, because #2 is on the way in November 2014! So exciting!

After Colton's awesome birthday party on Good Friday, we headed over to my Mom's for Easter dinner. It was such a nice day that the guys decided to go outside for road hockey. I loved the family bonding time so I captured it!

And of course drinks followed dinner and our lovely picture of the 3 of us with our banana martinis had too many photo bombs to have a regular picture. Fam time is far too fun for a boring shot.We do so love our banana martinis.

After Colton's bday celebrations and Easter dinner, on the Saturday we headed to Kitchener to celebrate Tabi's 30th! And of course it was all done up with thoughtful decorations. Tabi's neighbour and friend prepared this for her and on each of these balloons were 'reasons we love tabi' which all us guests contributed to before the party.

More thoughtful decorations/treats for Tabi. Every time we go to Tabi's for an event, the sweets and eats are the best! And we contribute with something prepackaged from the Superstore... maybe next time i'll be all homemade... maybe...

Events of March & April

I have been a slack attack blogger. I feel like many things have happened in the past 2 months, so I will encompass these things into one blog of awesomeness!

March 22nd: Nikki & Jon Jon's wedding!
We had such a good time the whole weekend of Nikki & Jon Jon's wedding preparing for the day! We went down to Burlington/Oakville on the Thursday evening and stayed in a hotel in Oakville on Thursday night. I chose the most inexpensive hotwire deal with free breakfast :) The next day, Aleksy conveniently needed to be in Toronto for work, so he took the GO train in. We went our separate ways on Friday the night before the wedding where I stayed with the bride at her house and Aleksy stayed with the groom in the hotel room.

Nikki & Jon Jon's wedding venue was gorgeous and everything was done so elegantly but fun! The day was really cold, so after taking a few pictures after the ceremony outside, we moved most of the pictures inside. Then we entered the reception (Aleksy and I prepared a little hip hop entrance, which we thought was pretty sweet) and Nikki & Jon Jon had their first dance where they did the Dirty Dacing "Time of my Life" dance.. so amazing!

Aleksy and I after eating our dinner at the beautiful venue right on the lake. The wedding was at Spencers in Burlington.

Following this was speeches, drinks & dancing!

And later in the evening... I love this group shot... just Aleksy is missing.

At 1am, we headed back to the hotel in the limo and tried to continue the partying at the bar at the waterfront hotel, but by the time we got there it was 1:30am and they wouldn't let us in.

So we decided to just bring the party to the room. And had an awesome after party. Thank goodness for Nikki & Jon Jon not liking champagne, so they gave us the bottle from the limo because no one had opened it during the day!








March Birthdays!

My Rachel is 6 years old!! I don't know how this happened. We had a celebration at my sisters place and at my Moms place for my Rachel. March and & April are so birthday cake-filled! I love cake...

And Natalia turned 3 on March 17th! We went up to Stoneycreek for birthday celebrations and Andzelika set up a cookie decorating activity. There were a few other kids at the birthday party too and they were all so cute loading up the icing and sprinkles on their cookies! You can see Natalia's cookie that she decorated in front of her...














My 28th Birthday!
I had a few birthday celebrations this year, which I love because it means that I get lots of cake!

On the day of my birthday, Chelsea and Warren surprised me and after Aleksy took me out for Swiss Chalet (my fav!), and showed up in the evening for dessert. Chelsea homemade me a cake! This cake was sooooo delicious! We ate about half it on my birthday and I finished it before my birthday party on the Friday.

On April 4th, we had a birthday celebration + stag & doe planning day at our place. We had everyone over for supper, where everyone helped by bringing a side dish and we made chicken and sausages on the bbq. Afterward we had (more) cake and talked about games & food for the stag & doe!

We also popped a bottle of champagne just before this picture and made sure we got a picture with Sam, who hasn't had a drink since her little Scarlett was born and Chelsea with her half sip and pregnant belly!

As Rachel pointed out, Scarlett, me and Rachel all had black bows in our hair, so we had to take a picture together! And I love this picture of Rachel looking all wide-eyed and Scarlett looking all 'wad up'.

















Chelsea's Baby Shower: April 13th!

We had the awesomest table at the shower. Sam & Scarlett, Steph & Colton, Andzelika, Serena & Natalia, Jasmine, Nikki & me! Awesome table with lots of Moms, but we did somehow lose the competition of dressing the teddy bear the fastest. Maybe I was the weak link?

I love how every shower that I attend, the ensemble that is chosen by the pregnant mama is the most pregnant looking one! Chelsea looked ready to have her baby yesterday at her shower! But then the next day in her jeans looked like she has 3 mre months. Can't wait for baby in early June! (Although I'm guessing an early baby... my guess is May 25th).

Me & my Colton at the shower! Love when I get to spend some quality Colton time... Cant believe he's one!

A Bachelorette Night in T.O for Nikki

On February 22, 2014 we celebrated my Nikkis bachelorette in T.O. I headed from London to Toronto in the afternoon on the Saturday and picked up Nikki from her sister-in-laws place and we got into Toronto at the Hilton Hotel for 3pm.

Nikkis MOH, Tabi did an amazing job on the invitations for the bachelorette. Everyone got a mini bottle of vodka with a veil except Nikki who got the palm bay with a veil. It was a black dress event and the Invitation says "Nikki Shannon's Fling before the ring". A night in Toronto complete with limo, bottle service, and hotel room!

Nikki and I in our Hilton hotel room before heading out to Musik night club!

Prior to getting ready and everyone putting on their "little black dress", we had supper at the little Irish pub that was right downstairs to the hotel.

Everyone's choices of beverage for the night: the Palm Bay tower is because Nikki is a big Palm Bay fan. We didn't have a lot of time for hotel room drinking in between dinner, and heading to the club so we had lots of leftovers to take home!

Tabi set up all these glasses with our names written on them for drinks fort he night! And Nikki's bridal sash.

We had a view of the CN tower from our hotel too! Here's a shot of our named glasses with some punch in them! Everyone's glass!

I brought my punch dispenser and made the go-to punch of pineapple, cran, and sprite. With champagne is my fav!

Some group shots before we headed out to Musik. Nikki and her bridal party: Melissa, Steph, Bekki, Tabi, Marisa and me. Love this group shot!

We had already got in trouble by the hotel by 8:30pm for being noisy. He asked for us to take the noise down since there was a baby in the next room. Maybe a little early for a noise complaint...

The limo came to get us at 10:30pm. We were driven around T.O. for a bit before arriving to the club. We brought palm bays for the ride! Our limo driver was so considerate and went into the club to let them know we had arrived just prior to heading to the club.

We got inside the club and were shown where our "booth" was for our bottle service. This was our table for the night.
This is a shot of all the ladies. Shots were quite popular that night even though in any other environment I refuse to take them.
The crowd at this club was a little pompous and everyone seemed to introduce themselves with their profession. There was an orthopedic surgeon at the table next to us, and we talked to someone who actually told us that he was"powerful" (the conversation ended right after he said that when me and Nik walked away).

It was a nice club and all, but I'm not sure that each of these bottles was worth $300!!
There were mixes at the table too (juices) and glasses so we could mix our own beverages (it was just really hard to see what juice you were putting in when the club was so dark).

It was quite a strange club than any that I had been to, and there was a make up bar where you would touch up your hair and make-up and there were women dancing on podiums throughout the club for entertainment. weird.

The next day, we went across the street to Tim Horton's in the morning to get some necessary coffee & breakfast (where I was judged by may for my xlg coffee) then we checked out and headed back home!

(Extended) Family Day Weekend!

Our Family Day weekend was filled with activity times with our closest friends with a day trip to Toronto to the Ripleys Aquarium and a day outing to the sugar bush in London.

We headed to Toronto in the afternoon on Sunday of the Fam day weekend. Aleksy and I had a busy weekend and stayed in Kitchener the night before for our friend Don's birthday/house warming so got home Sunday morning, got ready and left promptly! We carpooled with Chels and Warren and got pulled over in Burlington on the way there... no ticket though!

We got this shot of everyone at our Aquarium day in T.O.!

This was a tunnel in the aquarium that you could crawl through with the sharks and fish swimming above you! This is the adults crawling thorugh: Chel, me and Paul. Our little Serena and Natalia went first! The other little girls in front of us thought this was terrifying and refused to go in!

There was a part of the aquarium where you are moved along on the conveyor belt and there is water on both sides and above you and when you look up this is what is swimming above!! So cool!

The aquarium was seriously cool, the only problem was there were 20,000 other people also wanted to look at the same shark: 20 of which were coughing with colds and 5 babies crying. It was so packed! And we brought a "picnic lunch" in a effort to save some money with sandwiches, veggies, fruit and cupcakes, which we ate in a small corner of the packed aquarium... not the best place for a picnic!

It was a fun day in Toronto though... ended with a parking ticket and some beer and deep fried mac & cheese and pizza sticks at Wild Wings.

On Monday (Fam day!), we had another extended family adventure this time with Al, Steph & Colton. We went to the sugar bush, which was free for family day! We did a tour around the sugar bush, learning bout making maple syrup and at this stand, there was also bird feeders to be made!




And after making bird feeders and getting a group shot with the bear, we headed to the station where we could roast marshmallows (frozen marshmallows are very hard to roast).

After adventures to the stations around the sugar bush, and Chels drilling into a tree to extract the maple we went inside for pancakes and syrup!! My fav!! Plus, a little hot cocoa....It was by donation on fam day.
There was a situation that happened where we sat at a table with a hot cocoa already on the table, which I may have drank... a little on the barfy side...

After our sugar bush adventure we had everyone over to our place for supper with a little bit of board games... always a sign of a good night :)

Our Winter Weekend Getaway

Last weekend, we had a winter getaway at a bed and breakfast that was just outside of Wiarton. Aleksy and I decided that instead of spending our Christmas money on something for the house or something ourselves, that we would pool it together and spend a weekend away instead. We were looking for something that was north of London, but not too far north that we were driving more than 3 hours This was a perfect distance from our place and took about hours driving time. I was searching online for different winter activities that we could do like skiing or dog sledding, but those ended up being really expensive (over $600 for Blue Mountain!). So I ended up finding this B &B on the Ontario website and the weekend winter getaway came complete with 2 nights, a snowshoe and horsedrawn sleigh ride, plus all meals included for $200 per person.

We arrived on Friday night pretty late, around 9pm. Both of us worked that Friday and Aleksy worked a bit late and after the stops at lcbo and tim hortons, it ended up being a bit that we arruved than intended. Upon our arrival, the hosts at the B & B greeted us, and gave us white wine and apple crumble pie! We toured the place, stayed up for a bit having another glass of wine in the lounge area (which we used a lot, but the other couple didn't sit in at all) then headed to bed around 11 since we had to be up for 8:30am breakfast the next day.

One of the huge perks to this weekend getaway was that all meals were included! This is Sat mornings breakfast of pancakes and fruit along with coffee (always needed) and some OJ. Each breakfast, the hosts would sit with us and talk about the plan for the day. For Saturday, our horseshoe adventure was to start at 10:30am, but I realized I needed to buy some better suited winter boots, so we made a quick stop into Wiarton before our snowshoeing to pick up boots for me.

Aleksy and I were all ready to go snow shoeing for 10:30am, and realized that the people who were guiding our snowshoeing weren't ready yet... so we decided to have some 10:30am red wine.... just like vacation!

We left for our snowshoeing just shortly after. The B & B provided the snowshoe rentals. We snowshoed through a path that was part of the owned property of the B & B (we may have extended a bit farther with our trek). On our snowshoe adventure, we hiked up to a campsite (at a quick speed because I wanted to lead the way and get a bit of a workout), and we made a fire (which they emphasized with NO matches or lighter), and grilled up some wraps on the fire we made.

The scenery was so beautiful and we chose such a nice weekend to go where the snow was falling and freshly on the tree braches. We also got to snowshoe with the host of the B & B's doggie, "Zee". He was a trooper moving through the 3 feet deep snow!

After our snowshoeing and lunch at the fire, we got back to the B & B around 1:30pm, and had some time before our 5pm sleigh ride.

After having a mid afternoon siesta, and playing a little scrabble with some wine, we headed to our sleigh ride, which was about a 10 min drive up the road.It was a really cute little date, but a little weird because there was an older man who was with us and talking to us the whole time (and we couldn't really hear what he was saying). The horses were really beautiful, and the scenery was beautiful, but it was also a little strange that the trees we were viewing for their beauty had markings because they were being cut down for logging. Again, it was a beautiful experience, but... a little weird.

We got back from our sleigh ride about 6:30pm, and we had our pizza dinner. There was another couple that was staying in the b & b at the same time who had a "romantic package" with a candlelit supper, and they finished up there supper by the time we got back, so we got their candle light too. It would have been romantic, but the host did sit with us for about 45 minutes talking. They were really nice, and they sure loved to talk.

After supper, we spend the night playing boggle (which Aleksy is about 3 times better than me at), and having snacks and drinks. The next morning it was breakfast at 9am, then heading home!

On Sunday, before heading back to London after our eggs and peameal bacon breakfast, we decided to make a pitstop at Sauble Beach, which was about 15 minutes away to see the frozen beach! We had actually brought our skates because there was an image on the B & B website where there was a skate rink, but we learned it was not a public rink, and was in Tobermory. So we improvised, and I'm glad we did because seeing Sauble was so cool in the winter. The waves were so high and completely frozen blocks of ice. There were people snowshoeing and cross country skiing along the beach. And this Sauble beach sign that cars drive under in the summer had so much snow collected underneath that standing under it, you could touch it!

This is the picture prof of how high the snow was. The stop sign was at my knees and street sign at my shoulders! Also, really weird to see the town completely boarded up for the season!
It was our first time seeing a completely snowed in, frozen beach and it was really something to see.

After this we headed back to London! There are few times that I actually take the time to enjoy winter, and this weekend was one of them :)

Our Annual Food & Wine Show Adventure!

The food and wine show was the weekend of January 17-19th this year. We have our plans worked out perfectly so that we never have to wait in a line outside in the cold and never get turned down at the door. We go on the Saturday (Friday is ladies night, which is busy) and we go in the afternoon around 2pm. We prepare well in advance to ensure that we have a DD because the glasses add up quickly, and head out just before the huge crowds force you to wait in lines for wine!

One of the first stops that we made after grabbing our glasses was to the stand with the little ice cream cone cream shots! It was tequila rose this year... add a little whipped cream and sprinkles and perfect.

As we were meandering about, we saw someone with this vibrant green drink and asked where she got it from. We did some thorough searching for the tiki hut and managed to find them. Pineapple juice with blue caracao was all I remember (maybe coconut rum?), but these were way too good.

Also, landing a seat at the food and wine show is a success in itself. We ate out food while walking. What we found at the food and wine show is that each year, there seems to be less selection in terms of the food. We are always happy with the selection of drink. The first year, we had delic Indian food from the Raja, last year we had some stuffed tomatoes from the dancing greek, and this year we walked around forever and ended up getting tacos from mucho burrito. They were good and all, but I have already been to mucho burrito so it wasn't that exciting. We searched for a long time for food too. My Mom got an empanada since the tacos weren't gluten free (which reminded me of the delic empanadas in Chile & Argentina!)

Throughout the day, they have several cheese presentations that you can attend. But, you have to sign up in advance (like an hour and a half), and arrive 10 min before it starts. This was a lot of commitment to make, but we were determined because in previous years, we lose track of time and don't make any presentations. In this presentation, we were able to try 6 different kinds of local cheeses, and they talked about recommended pairings.

Just before heading our for the day, we passed by the booth where you pick out your props and have your photo taken. There was no line up so we figured why not. We got this gem of a photo out of it, really showing that this was an end of the day photo. They took a few of these shots and posted them to the western fair webpage and I got them from there!

Happy 2014!

I am a fan of any celebration that allows for a party so I was really looking forward to New Years! We had our friends Nikki and Jon Jon, and Chelsea and Warren, and my sister and brother in law, Steph and Kenny over. It was a smaller number than invitees, but a good number for some good wholesome board games.

Aleksy and I started the night before everyone arrived with a rockstar vodka: A little energy boost to promote late staying up.

That day I spent preparing a couple of things: a veggie tray and crock pot homemade mac & cheese (which was scrumptious and buttery/cheesy). The friends brought shrimp, poppers, pigs in a blanket, and pizza. We finished everything but the veggies...

Once everyone arrived we brought out our new (For Christmas!) Apples to Apples game, and also brought out some shots because New Years wouldn't be complete without. However, we limited it to the mild Malibu and out pregnant friend Chelsea stuck to shooting the H20.

The men are a little more intense and had some whiskey.

My Rachel was very happy to see Kate. Everytime Rachel comes over she reminds me tat Kate missed her and I d up with about 5 new pictures of Rachel and the kitty. Rachel is so cute. While we played Apples to Apples and Truth or Dare Jenga, Rachel had her very own Jenga set to play with.

Once we switched the game from Apples to Apples (which I lost miserably at) to Truth or Dare Jenga, I selected the piece that dared me to touch noses with any person in the room. I decided to choose the most awkward person, which clearly was Warren.

Group shot! This group shot was taken after we downloaded a countdown app to my phone (because we do't have cable and therefore couldn't watch it on tv, and out computer is upstairs), popped our champagne, distributed the serpentines, and realized we definitely had to have a group photo!
Photo credit: camera timer.

Becuase we're still proving to ourselves that we're not old, we stayed up until 3am, with the exception of my sister who called it quits around 2am because she had to work the next day.

The next day, we had a ski day!! Aleksy and Jon Jon had a Board day... we all headed to Boler mountain, where we skiied the new hill which is much bigger than the small hills Boler exclusively had before. We got Costco passes for 28.99, which saved us almost $10 on admission. Plus, its 15 min from home. We always seem to travel hours to ski destinations so it was nice to have a short ride home. We'll have to get more Boler skiing in this year since its not as small and decently priced!

The men at the top of the hill. It was a very freezing cold day (-10 degrees) and the lift and the top of the hill were the worst. Jon Jon took a fall on one of the first few runs so once we took our inside thawing break around 4pm, Nikki and Jon Jon headed back to Mississauga (after we consumed some delicious poutine, chicken fingers and beer!).

Aleksy and I then did a few more runs by ourselves before calling it a day.

2014 Exciting Happenings:

OUR WEDDING! And everything leading up to it like the Stag & Doe, shower, bachelor/bachelorette, and the actual wedding day. So excited!

Our Honeymoon: So excited to explore the UK!

2014 Resolutions:

I am quite consistent with my resolutions that I wouldn't consider them resolutions anymore but "lifestyle habits" to continue participating in.

1) Eating healthy, fresh foods. Not eating out often. If eating out, eating at independently owned restaurants, rather than chains.

2) Continuing with our gym regime. I have been very consistent with gym attendance for the past year and a half. In November, I attended the gym every day except 3 days (which were due to Nikki's shower, and black Friday shopping!). I hope to have more of these monthly challenges in 2014.

3) Spending more time with family and friends.

4) Paying more attention to work boundaries, doing everything I can not to take work home when its possible and attending work early to catch up instead of staying late.

Happy New Year! :)