Unicorns and Not-So-Little Nieces

Another year has gone by, and my little niece is SIX years old. She's not so little anymore! She's sprouting up up up, and becoming more and more of an imaginative chatterbox.

My niece has been really into unicorns for the last couple of years, so when Ashley sent me images of this unicorn cake tutorial, I filed it away in my mind as something to suggest for my niece's upcoming birthday.

Sure enough, my sister thought the cake was a great idea-- and it was a big hit at my niece's birthday party. Apparently little girls were fighting over who got an eyelash, and who got part of the rose mane.

It's always nice to know your work is appreciated!

Happy 6th Birthday, Madelynn!

Bye-bye, Condo!

As of noon today, we hand over possession of our condo to the new owner.

Selling our home is a first-time experience for Tom and I. Even when we moved out of home in our 20's, or when I moved out of Ashley's house, we weren't actually saying good-bye to any property. Our parents are still in our childhood homes, and Ashley is still living in the same house. But this is officially good-bye for our condo, and I can't help but feel sad. Through all the ups and downs, it was our home for the last 8.5 years.

Tom and I stopped by on the weekend to say a final good-bye to the place, and to let Lacey roam around in the empty rooms.

Lacey 100% did not care. She was more interested in raiding her diaper bag for Cheerios than anything else. (Aside-- look at how awesome she is at free-standing now!)

I hope the new owner is as happy in the condo as we were!

Bye-bye, condo!

A New Year, A Little Late

Christmas sailed by this year. With us moving into our new house on December 17th, our holiday was a blur of unpacking, decorating, cleaning and errands. The move went great, the new house is amazing, things could not have gone better! We didn't get a tree this year, but that didn't stop me for getting a keepsake ornament for Lacey. Love it!

We spent Christmas Day with my family, and Boxing day with Tom's family. My two favourite photos are as follows:

Lacey having a blast with her cousin Dylan.

Our family Christmas shot-- the reflection in the mirror kills me!

Lacey had a blast at her first Christmas. She got toy after toy, and loved tearing tissue paper and wrapping paper (and eating it). Before we knew it, Christmas was over and done with, and there was only a few more days to New Years.

And then... It happened.

We were infected. By a bug. A nasty, nasty bug. It started with Lacey throwing up. Then she passed it on to me, and finally, Tom was infected. All of us throwing up.  

So, New Years passed with little fanfare in our household. Lacey went to bed at 7pm, and Tom and I were in bed by 10:30pm. Our one regret was that we weren't able to have the New Years Eve meal we had planned--wine,  cheese and charcuterie. Neither of us felt like eating meat and cheese so soon after our pukefest.

But eventually we got better. Actually, we got better rather quickly. It only took 2-3 days for the illness to pass, and we were all back to normal.

This past weekend, Tom, Lacey and I made a trip to Peasant Cheese to stock up on everything we needed for our charcuterie meal. The owner of Peasant Cheese is amazing, and we basically bought all the meat and cheese  she kindly suggested to us.

Our meal turned out to look pretty amazing. It makes my mouth water all over again just looking at it!

And then we topped off the meal with some prosecco, resting precariously on the floor on"That's not my tiger", and "Bathtime for Chickies", a true representation of the class act that Tom and I are.

All the best in 2017, everyone. Good or bad, you never know what each year will bring!

My Top Ten Condo Moments

ONE WEEK UNTIL HOUSE POSSESSION!

Thought of moving into our house has left me nostalgic about leaving our condo. So I have compiled some of the most memorable moments that occurred during our 8.5 years living here.

10) The time a creature (a squirrel?!) made a giant nest in our BBQ!

9) The time we bought our first Christmas tree, and had to use the world's shittiest tree stand.

I was so excited the first time we bought a Christmas tree. I had never had a live tree (we had an artificial tree growing up), and it was the first Christmas that Tom and I celebrated together. What we didn't realize, was that we had a terrible tree stand. I don't remember where it came from, but it was meant for a tree with a thick trunk, and we had purchased a cheap (and skinny) tree. Tom ended up having to walk down to the river and bring back a bunch of stones that we piled into the water basin of the tree stand so that the trunk could not move back and forth. The adjustable pins in the stand did not adjust to a thin enough setting to keep the skinny tree trunk steady. All in all, it was an anticlimactic experience for our first Christmas tree (but memorable).

8) The time Tom ordered NFL jerseys for his Groomsmen, Purolator left the package in the lobby and someone stole them.

Yes. Let's leave a package clearly labelled with NFL.com logos, and leave it in a common lobby where dozens of people are passing by all day. That package definitely won't get stolen. *Eye roll* Thanks, Purolator.

7) The time we painted the walls and slept in the living room.

A few years ago, Tom and I spent the weekend painting. We had all the furniture moved into the center of every room, and everything was draped in drop sheets. It would have been a pain to get everything moved to sleep in our bed, so we set up makeshift beds on our couch (that was jammed into the center of the room with all of our bookshelves). It was silly, and a bit ridiculous, but it felt like we were kids sleeping in a makeshift fort-- it was fun! 

6) The time I cut my finger making dinner and passed out.

After this incident, I knew I never would have made it as a doctor (not that I ever wanted to be a doctor!). I cut my finger while transferring vegetables into a soup, and at the sight of my own blood, I promptly passed out, and wacked my head on the floor. 

5) The time we found out we were pregnant!

Pure excitement. Clearly! I took a photo of it!

4) The time I went to get Lacey from her crib, and she called me Mama.

Lacey has been developing quickly the last few months. She says mamama and dadada all the time. I don't think she has made any connections with the words yet, they are just sounds to her. But I'll never forget the morning I went into her room when she'd woken up for the day. I knelt down and said, "Good morning, Lacey!" And she looked at me and said, "Mama."

3) The time I killed a huge spider, and it exploded into dozens of baby spiders.

This particular afternoon is ingrained in my memory. I was sitting at the computer, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw some movement. It was a spider. A LARGE SPIDER. It was VERY large. I could not ignore it, so I grabbed a shoe, and bashed it. And from that spider, sprung dozens and dozens of baby spiders that crawled off in every direction. I have never been more horrified in my life. That afternoon I vacuumed the computer room over and over again.

Later googling has lead me to believe I killed a wolf spider that was carrying its babies with it, much like this picture below.

2) The time Calgary flooded, and water was pouring into our condo complex.

A lot of people were affected by flooding in 2013, but we spent six weeks out of our condo, and then lived through another two months of repairs and remediation. It was an experience I don't care to repeat. It was stressful and inconvenient. All in all, we were lucky that nothing was seriously damaged in our home, and that insurance covered the cost of bringing our building back to how it was before.

1) The time the guy fell off the 5th floor balcony and landed outside our bedroom window.

It was the middle of the night around 3am, and I woke up to a loud bang. I was disoriented from sleep, and initially thought someone was trying to steal our BBQ off our balcony. But minutes later we heard a panicked voice yelling someone's name, and when we looked out the window, there was the body of a young man laying just outside our bedroom window. He and a friend had been partying in a unit on the fifth floor. They were both drunk, and he had fallen off the balcony, and hit the metal awning over our ground floor balcony on the way down. He DID survive (at least, we think he did, Tom saw a guy in a neck brace in our lobby a few days later), but he was definitely injured. For over an hour, there were paramedics and police outside our bedroom yelling back and forth to each other. It was a sight that Tom and I will never forget!

Yes, we've had a lot of good memories in this condo. It has been a home to us for many years. We're looking forward to the memories we'll make in our new house too!

First We Drink the Coffee, Then We Do the Baking - V7.0

There's something very comforting about tradition, isn't there? When Mallary, Jasmine, Jill, Paige and I got together in December 2010 to decorate Christmas cookies, I don't think any of us envisioned ourselves in 2016, baking up a storm on a blustery day. These baking days are something I look forward to every year. There's nothing better than catching up with old friends, and baking tasty treats!

This year we started our annual bake-athon with coffee, thanks to Mallary. We drank all the coffee, and immediately launched into action. After seven years, we have become a well oiled machine. We all bring our two cookie recipes and ingredients, as well as most of the utensils and equipment we need to bake them. We each have a separate little work station, and we get to work. The main problem is that we end up with a backlog of cookies waiting to go in the oven, but that just gives us more time to chat and catch up.

There were a few repeat favourites this year, including salted caramel and dark chocolate chip squares, and lemon ricotta cookies, but most recipes were new. There were:

Ginger snaps

Skor shortbread

Double chocolate peppermint

London Fog sugar cookies

Vanilla chai shortbread

Nutella cookies

Pecan dark chocolate cookies

Hot chocolate cookies

Double chocolate peppermint cookies.

Hot chocolate cookies.

Salted caramel and dark chocolate chip squares.

It's fun to think about how much has changed over the last seven years. Most notably, three of us are now moms! With four kids in the mix, the kids will soon be outnumbering the ladies! I'm looking forward to the day when Lacey is old enough to come with me and help out. But today I was happy to leave Lacey at home with dad, and spend some time on my own.

This year had sped by. It will be Christmas in no time!

Keep warm! I hear it's supposed to be a blustery week.

Flood Refugees... Again

Many of you will remember the flood of 2013. Our condo building suffered severe flooding, and Tom and I had to move out for about six weeks while the cleaning and remediation took place. It wasn't a great experience, but it was character buidling!

This past week, Tom and I became flood refugees again!

On Tuesday night, Tom and I were getting ready to make dinner, when I heard the sound of water falling. It sounded like the shower was dripping, except neither of us were anywhere near the shower! When I went to the washroom to check, water started pouring in through the ceiling vent. Tom rushed into the laundry room to grab a bucket, only to realize there was water coming in through the laundry room wall!

I grabbed our laptop and put it on the kitchen counter so we could look up the emergency contact number for the condo manager. No one answered when I called, so I grabbed Lacey (to keep her out of the water), and headed upstairs to knock on our neighbours door. When I got upstairs to the second floor, there were already several neighbours in the hall, and a lake pooling in the hallway.

The people in the unit above us turned on their washing machine, and then took their dog for a walk. The washing machine malfunctioned, and it filled with water until it overflowed. Water was flowing freely into our unit, and into the parkade below us. After the neighbours turned the water off, I headed back downstairs, only to find that there was water pouring into the kitchen, and leaking into our master bathroom. The kitchen leak started after I'd left, and unfortunately it occurred directly over the laptop-- where I had left it on the counter after looking up our emergency contact number. Tom tried to clear everything out of the way, but it still got wet.

After about a half hour after the water was turned off, the water slowed from a trickle to a drip, and finally stopped.

All in all, it was a pretty crappy night.

The next day I talked to an insurance adjuster, and he got a contractor over at our place within an hour. The contractors set up fans and dehumidifier units. Because our laundry room, master bathroom, kitchen and second bathroom were affected, there was equipment in each room, and it sounded like an airplane hangar. So we found ourselves being flood refugees once again. We've been staying with my in-laws for the last few days. We're hoping to head back home on Sunday.

Lacey is loving staying with grandpa and grandma! She has a whole new set of toys to play with, and one-on-one attention her hearts content!

We should be able to go on Sunday. The condo should be dried out, and then we'll need to wait to hear from insurance to find out when things will be repaired.

We Bought a HOUSE!

When Tom and I bought our condo 8.5 years ago, we only intended to stay there for five years. But the time kept creeping by, and suddenly, nearly 10 years had passed!

Our family of two grew to a family of three, and we managed not too badly in the condo. It has two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and with a thorough purging of stuff we made room for the baby.

But now Lacey is mobile and she's all over the place, into everything. She's a noisy little girl, and we can hear each other from every room in the condo. She needs space to roam, and we need more space!

We take possession on December 16, and we are both SO looking forward to moving in before Christmas. So now we're working on selling the condo, and keeping things clean for showings.

32 days to possession!