Upcoming Travel Adventures!

There are a couple of upcoming trips that Aleksy and I are looking forward to! Our first vacation is June 29th of this year and the next is in February 2013. Only 2 months!!! until our first vacation to:

Dominican Republic:

We are officially booked in for the Colonial Majestic in Punta Cana for the week of June 29 - July 6!! It is your standard all inclusive resort, but its a bit fancier than the others we have gone to - the pictures make it look beautiful. It is a common wedding resort and we are going for my friend Jenny's wedding! I met Jenny in my social work program at Mac so there will be a few friends there including My Nikki and her man Jon!! So excited for a vacation with friends! On the to do list for Punta Cana: ziplining for sure!!

After our adventures in Punta Cana (then that little things about saving for and getting a mortgage) we will start saving for Chile!

Chile:

On my Birthday, I got an amazing gift from our friend Alejandra who is going to school at UWO and is from Chile. She got my a travel book for Chile and asked for Aleksy and I to come to Chile for their wedding in February 2013, then go for a 3 week backpacking adventure around the Andes mountains!! Obviously I said a big fat YES and Aleksy and I are super excited to go backpacking in South Chile with Alejandra, her to-be husband and Warren and Chelsea! We fly into Santiago Chile, will be aorund Conception for the wedding then will rent a car and go South. Alejandra's fiance knows the mountains well and will be our unofficial tour guide.

TO DO: Brush up on some basic Spanish!!

My (broken) 26th Birthday!

This year, my Birthday was made out to be a whole 3 days since April the 2 is a Monday and we celebrated on the weekend. Aleksy arranged for a surprise celebration for the evening on March 31, starting with supper for 6:30pm.

It is tricky when you live with someone to hide things like having a party back at our place. Aleksy spent most of Saturday out shopping then this was set up before we left for supper. I figured it probably would be a good guess that we were having people over after supper...

This picture actually doesn't do justice for how nice this looked - pink napkins and plates because I love pink, 3 pretty (and fragrant) Easter flowers, and a tray to ice the wine.

Aleksy did end up spilling the beans as to where we were going to supper before we left. I'm not going to lie, it may have had a little to do with me being a crazy person and telling Aleksy I didn't want to go anywhere too fancy because I don't feel pretty with my MASSIVE cast and crutches. We ended up heading to La Casa at 6:30pm, where I walked by the window and SURPRISE, there's my friends at the table! It was so great for so many people to be able to make it (and for Aleksy to arrange it!)... I have pretty great friends & boyfriend!

Our meals were very tasty too (which they better have been for the price we paid!). Aleksy had duck, which I had a bite of and surprisingly was a red meat, which I figured it would be more like chicken. I had a seafood risotto, which was good, but not as good as Aleksy's duck and garlic mashed (although mine was 20 and his was 30). What I should have got: the spinach pasta that Sam & Steph got... I had a bite and it was delic! The people at the restaurant were super nice to my birthday party and brought me a piece of cake and everyone sang happy birthday! They also offered me a free shot of vodka to "take my mind off" my foot (because I had to put elevate it).

After supper, we headed back to our place for an after celebration and mostly everyone was able to make it out (except the Browns because they had to go on vacation..pfff). We played a homemade version of the game of  things, which was a lot of fun and then had MORE birthday cake!! (There has been lots of cake eating in the past couple weeks!). I was very happy that everyone stayed in the living room since my mobility was limited.

Happy 26 to me!

Hillbilly for a Night

Since we bought tickets to the Bull Riding on March 24th, we decided to make a Country evening out of it. More so, we ended up having a Country weekend out of it! On Friday night, Aleksy and Al went to some hillbilly hockey out in Strathroy, then after hockey we headed down to Cowboys to celebrate Aleksy's brother Andrew's 21st birthday! The next day we headed over to Al and Stephs for supper before going to see some bull riding! Before leaving, Aleksy made up a new country CD for out evening endeavors!

Al & Steph made up an appropriate supper for the occasion complete with fried beans, breaded chicken, corn bread, homemade wine, and of course plaid place mats! Some yummy Southern food to get us in the spirit!

After some supper and drinks, we called a cab to head to the JLC for some PBR!

On our way into the PBR, there were people picketing outside of the event because of the cruel treatment of animals. I didn't actually know that they use tasers to make the bulls angry before letting them into the ring. It made me feel bad throughout the entertainment for the bulls. This is us pre-event - with the trucks and dirt in the background!

At the start of the show they put gas down on the ring spelling out PBR - it was pretty sweet! And they introduced all the cowboys - from several different places - All over the states, Alberta, Manitoba, Australia.

The bull riding itself lasted not long at all. The goal was to see if the professional bull riders could stay on the bull for 8 seconds. Most couldn't, but some of the bulls appeared stronger than others. I could definitely see that it would be very easy to be injured during this process!

Cowboy boots, plaid and beer!!

Perks of Broken Footedness

Now that I'm a little out of commission, guess what I have the excuse to do??

You know you always wanted to....

Once the people of Wal Mart saw my boot - they stopped the glaring...

Trying out the Slopes

Glen Eden

We went to Glen Eden in Milton for a day in February. I definitely think for the 1 hour drive that it is worthwhile given that Boler is so much smaller (I guess with the exception of the bigger hill that they opened this year, but I never went to Boler this season!). This is my new favorite day trip drive - definitely a worthwhile one for the skiing, especially at my ski level. I feel pro because I can do any of the hills! There's just one thing... they don't serve drinks (which I didn't even think was possible anymore - what ski place doesn't serve beer?). Good things Nikki & Jon's place is so close and we can have drinks there.

Horseshoe Valley

We got a bargain on Dealfind - 2 people for $56, so we snabbed that deal & went out in early March. The Dealfind deal ended up being a bit of a scam since we had to still pay the taxes which were about $10 extra. A bit ridiculous since Aleksy and I drove almost 3 hours to get there... and I swear the hills shrunk since the last time I was there. They were so small... I think even smaller than Horseshoe (or perhaps the same). At least they did have beer! That helped with making the trip worthwhile! Although we managed to have a pitstop at Vaughan Mills for some shopping on the way home, it was still way too long of a drive for skiing - might as well go to Blue! This season was also kind of poopy for skiing and the snow was particularly heavy and wet on this day.

Blue Mountain

We went up a couple of times to Blue - on New Years Day and for a weekend in January. New Years day was a really bad day for ski weather - it was raining. The hills at Blue are still way nicer than the other places we skiied this year: better groomed, the crowds are more dispersed and they take more than 10 seconds to get down! The downfall is Saturdays are super busy and sometimes the line for the chair lift is ridiculous. But its nice to have full access to the village if you are tired halfway through the day for a break. The scenery at Blue is far superior to any other hills. I like that Blue is a challenge, given my ski level, whereas the other hills don't challenge my skill. We'll definitely have to make it up to Blue more next year - we'll likely have more of a ski season since this season was all of 2 months!

On Happy Valentines Day

For this Valentines Day, we didn't have much of a choice but to go out in order to have some alone, romantic time (although we do enjoy Warren & Chelsea's company, not so much on Valentines Day!). So it was my advice to Aleksy that this year we keep it simple, going out for supper at a smaller family restaurant that would be cheaper than the $200 suppers with the set Valentines Day menus in fine dining restaurants (which in the past we have done Valentines suppers at Blue Ginger, Tru, Copperfields, and Garlics and they were good... but not $200 good!). And in terms of presents, I suggested we do something small for each other, because Valentines Day isn't about showering each other in expensive presents but an opportunity to go out for supper spending time together, and exchange cards & small gifts to show you care. Because, in real life, we don't do that all the time.

Even my work celebrates Valentines Day! At work, I was delivered a surprise Valentines Candy gram to my desk (a candy kabob!) plus, we had a Valentine cake & coffee break in our cafeteria in the afternoon (and the cake was delicious!).

This is the gift exchange between Aleksy and me, simple, but thoughtful! Aleksy did the supper planning, and prepared me a sweet card and a container filled with various candies (which I am still working on!). Since I wasn't in charge of the supper bill, I did a little extra in Aleksy's gift and I got him a card, a bag of cherry cordial kisses and a bottle of bourboun.

Aleksy had our supper planned in advance in January. He didn't tell me where he had made the reservations, but we knew that we wanted to look outside of London, in an effort to save some money from the fine dining restaurants that catered to London. Aleksy had called around and made it a surprise. I did guess that it was in St. Mary's though! Woolfy's had some delicious food - we started with some baguette & hummus, had some antipasto, soup, then our main dish was chicken. It was very delicious tasting, but not so generous in portion (which is usually the case for fine dining). For dessert we had some raspberry chocolate mousse. Although our intention was to try to keep it at around $100 (which the lady said was going to be the case when Aleksy called), we ended up paying about $200 for everything ($58 each or our 4 course meal, plus a bottle of $40 wine). It was tasty, but a little more than we wanted to pay!

For next year, hopefully we will be in our own place and can make a fancy 4 course meal with a bottle of wine for under $50!

Getting in the Yoga Spirit!

This year has been a good one for yoga! For the month of January, Steph and I learned early on that people who work for non-profit agencies/organizations got FREE yoga for the full month. Steph & I took full advantage of that luxury and went on average 3-4 times per week for the full month. I never knew how good (healthy & fit) yoga makes you feel until I started doing it that often. Steph & I got many people out with us, friends, Steph's husband Al & Aleksy!! And everyone loves it. Now I know if at anytime I have one month to get fit, all I need is unlimited yoga and go 3-4 times a week and i will have success! 

So much time together doing yoga that we even dress the same!

We have been doing all our yoga at Moksha PLUS they just opened a new studio at Wonderland & Southdale and had a free week of yoga for their first week being open! We went three times in the first week, but it was ridiculously busy with all the advertising that the studio did so my mat was about 2 inches from the person beside me. I like to have more space than that so it was a bit frustrating! We went on the opening day on the 11th (which was the best yoga class that I ever did - they had 2 instructors in the room, one instructing and the other adjusting!) and they had snacks, starbucks iced tea, we entered a draw to win a Mini for a weekend (I dont think we won...), and we got 2 for 1 Yoyos ice cream (which we took advantage of that night when we went skating in Vic park with Al & Steph). Pretty sweet deal!

Now that I have Aleksy going, we are definitely going to incorporate yoga into our weekly workout routine at least once per week (it is a little expensive to do it more than that at $12-18 per class depending on whether you buy a 10 pass or not) and for the month of March, Steph and I are going to do the unlimited month at $40 (although we have been going for a while, we havent bought the beginners one month unlimited and we were informed we still can!). It's going to be a good year for yoga & fitness!