44 posts tagged “holiday”

there are a lot of parties, celebrations and events being piled into our already booked weekends from now until the end of the year.

doug and i have one weekend this month where nothing is scheduled. nothing - for the whole weekend. and just that one weekend alone. chaeli will be staying at my parents' place.

and you know i'll want to head out somewhere nice for dinner. probably with friends, actually, so we can have an adult night. where, i don't know. somewhere new and interesting.

i love this season. i do. i (knock on wood) just hope that we all stay healthy enough to enjoy all these fun things we have planned. a run-down of events we've got schedule:

- ada and hoa's duo birthday party
- cathy's daughter's birthday party
- SCAW charity concert followed by dinner ath roger mooking's kultura
- stuart mclean's reading/music concert after dinner on baldwin street
- disney on ice followed by a visit to city hall and dinner
- visit from MIL for an extended weekend
- visit to a christmas tree farm

and then, of course, christmas and new year's. and ta-dah! hello 2010!

• when i went to university for the first time, mom started to give me (as a side gift) a care package for christmas. this would basically cover the 2nd part of my school year in terms of supplies - shampoo, soap, tooth paste, etc. of course, after i moved home, this all stopped. but now that i'm living in my own home with my own family, she still continues to do this. it was a bit strange at first - after all, i'm now taking care of my own family and can afford to buy my own toothpaste. but still, there's something sweet about it. i've come to look forward to my care package. it's not what's inside it that matters - but the symbolic representation it offers from a mother that still looks after her daughter. as we get closer to christmas, i remind doug that we don't have to stock up too much on things that i know we'll be getting from mom soon enough.

• i'm looking forward to fall this year. and i'm hoping that fall will stay a little while before winter hits. it's such a shame that my favourite season of the year is so short. but i do love fall. i love it's smell, the breeze and it's colours. it's also full of fun activities - hiking, apple-picking, farmer's market (during harvest time), thanksgiving and halloween. there's just so much to look forward to but unfortunately, not enough weekends to do them all.

• we're having thanksgiving at my parents' place this year. usually, my aunt and uncle always hosts both thanksgiving and christmas but we've decided that thanksgiving should be at my parents' place. they just bought a deep turkey fryer. i'm excited about that alone! mmm... deep fried turkey. for those who've tried this, you'll agree that it's not at all greasy. the skin is crisp and there's no grease clinging on the outer skin part only, but because it fries up so quickly, it seals the meaty area from getting greasy inside and locking in the juices.

• there is so much to do in the next couple of months, including a live reading-performance from one of my favourite canadian author, stuart mclean. ada got us tickets and i'm psyched to go - especially as her and i have been talking about it for the past two years.

• christmas seems far away but really, it is just around the corner. i've started christmas shopping. in fact, i'm nearly done all my stocking stuffers (except for doug's) and need to focus on just the main gifts. the only person i've finished the main gift shopping is for chaeli. and that's only because when it comes to toys, especially popular ones, there's too much of a risk for it being sold out before christmas. plus, i bought her collector item toys from transformers, revenge of the fallen. some of them are already sold out. anyway, as usual, i plan to finish my shopping by early november so i have time to mail it to my in-laws. i have a great list this year and am excited to see how my ideas are received.

• christmas activities are also really high on my list which is part of the reason why i like to get the shopping done early and out of the way. this year, i'm wondering if i want to do the nutcracker ballet again. i didn't think i would want to do it every year but i feel like it again. it is such a great treat to experience. and of course, especially as this will be ada and hoa's last year in toronto, before moving out west, i do hope to go the the 'sleeping children around the world' charity concert. it's held eary december and kick-starts our christmas holiday season.

it was by far a very good, long civic holiday weekend.

friday night, i came home and cleaned the house almost right away. i should remember to get into the habit of doing this much often because it is so much easier to get it done before my parents come home with chaeli, rather then being interrupted and then picking up where i left off at 10pm (or later) after they leave.

they stayed for three hours first to play jr. scrabble with chaeli, and then just to sit and chat with us.

i was asking them all sorts of questions about our vacation trips we took as a child - most of them being road trips.

it's amazing how much i've forgotten. or... how little i remember. but still, it was fun listening to them tell us what we did and where we went.

saturday morning, we woke up and headed off to rattlesnake point (as seen in the photos of my previous post). what a great two hour hike! i tried to pick a trail that wasn't too difficult. not only did i want to make it easy on chaeli but i haven't gone hiking along the bruce trail for quite some time. as i recalled, there were trails that required a bit of climbing through rocky and steep areas. while this trail did have a few spots of rocky areas, for the most part, it wasn't too difficult for a five year old, so long as one of us helped her.

saturday evening started off with a beverage at my aunt's patio, while we visited with then, my doctor and my doctor's wife. then about an hour later, we headed off to diane and rick's place for a bbq with the rest of the highschool gang. di had marinated some chicken and short ribs (kalbi). yum!

after dinner, the men suspiciously wanted to go to starbucks for a coffee run. we offered to go, instead, so we could leave the kids with them and get in an evening stroll but they bypassed our offer and immediately starting taking our orders. while they were gone, us wives discussed our shared suspicions. i even had to ask diane, "there isn't a golf store by the starbucks, is there?"

after all, the men were gone for a very long time.

when they finally returned, we learned that they also went to get fudge and then... the real reason why they wanted to go instead of letting us... they all came back with cigars.

which didn't bother us. in fact, it was quite entertaining to witness their logic - they bought one $26 cigar and five $5 cigar. the expensive one was passed around. which as ada pointed out, was one of the saddest things we heard.

there they were... five grown men all with good jobs (mostly professional jobs including a project manager and a VP) passing around a cigar instead of just buying one each.

anyway - it was a fun night. and we discovered how much easier it is now that all the kids are old enough to go downstairs and play on their own.

sunday morning, i woke up just after 8am with a mad craving for dim sum. i called my aunt and uncle, asking them if they were interested. and it just so happened that my aunt was also craving for dim sum as of lately so they definitely did want to join us. which is great. because unless we find a place that pushes the carts around, i'm horrible at knowing what to order from a menu. i need the visuals so i can say, "what do you got there? oh yes - that one. two of them please." we're finding that less and less restaurants are still pushing the carts around. which is too bad because part of the appeal are the carts.

for the rest of the day, we didn't do much. chaeli took a much needed three hours nap since she only slept several hours the night before (too short for a kid who needs at least 10 hours of sleep at night). doug prepared a jamie oliver pasta dish which is sort of like a spaghetti entree with some twists, including red wine and chunks of pancetta. it was definitely good, though. probably the best spaghetti i've ever had. and it was very complete with the antipasto we had before hand and the red wine during.

monday was a day of both work and relaxation. i had arranged for chaeli to spend the morning at my aunt's house while i went to the gym for a couple of hours. i called over after lunch and my aunt asked to keep chaeli there until dinner time, in which i would join them for some home-cooked chinese food. doug was at arvie's stag (a home-based stag giving some of the people a chance to join in on the fun, whom couldn't make it to vegas). the boys had some of tai's spicy, korean kalbi and i assume, beer, and then watched a movie in the backyard where tai set up a big screen.

i have to admit that i was a bit jealous that i couldn't go - it sounded like so much fun!

anyway, for monday afternoon, i did laundry but also just chilled out in bed while watching my will & grace dvd's.

1/2 hot cross bun
5 glases of red wine
1 shot of blueberry apertif
3 slices of lamb of leg
3 small potatoes
1 carrot
1 small, dark chocolate godiva gold bunny
and a LOT of cheese!
= a day's worth of good eating.

my god was i ever looking forward for the work week to end. not that it was a horribly bad week, to be honest. at the least, it ended off on a high note - i had been given a priority-1 assignment and was able to do a turn-around just shy of two business days.

i handed in two design versions. i was a little nervous because what i had seen in my mind was very different from the layout suggestion put forth. having said that, i have an excellent manager who trusts my skills and gives me a liberally creative environment to work in.

most importantly, the man does not hover. he leaves me be and trusts that i will hand in quality work. for me, that is so important and very appreciated.

anyway, he loved my final result.

so, thursday night, i came home on a bit of an adrenaline rush, as i always get whenever i'm happy with my work. and especially, when there's team effort involved where we just feel like we're on the right track together. i can't express how great that feels - to be part of working and effective team.

but i digress... getting to friday's events... i was looking forward to the weekend mainly because we had a lot of plans to look forward to.

it started off with coffee and just breakfast for chaeli as i rather workout on an empty stomach (a little hunger always drives me a solid and intense workout). i dropped chaeli off at my aunt's place. then doug and i headed to the gym for an hour and a half workout. i was happy with my blood pressure results because it's been a long time sinve i've monitored myself. after a five minute cool down of stretches, i took my blood pressure and it registered at 121 over 79. that's the best i've been since before pregnancy.

we went for a japanese place for lunch which was very quick serve but man did they ever take forever to give us the bill. and then, i realized that people around us had ordered food not from the lunch menu that we were given. i marched over to the hostess podium and found a fuller menu which had exactly what doug and i had hoped for. i wasn't impressed. i'm usually a generous tipper but for the first time in a very long time, i short-tipped them by probably half the tip that should have been the norm.

it's unfortunate - the food was good but hte service fell just so flat. not just in speed and attention but friendliness as well.

after a quick nap for chaeli (and doug), we went to the subway station and headed downtown to the museum.

i took chaeli on my own last year and she's been bugging us to go again, but this time, with daddy (she was very proud of taking daddy to see the dinosaurs).

it was a good idea to go - we had a great time. they've done so much good work on the museum and while they still have a couple of areas to complete, it's just changed for the better - drastically better! for one thing, there are two large areas for kids to get hands-on experience. chaeli's favourite is the dinosaur dig with realistic replica's of dinosaur bones hidden in the sand. each child gets goggles and a brush. volunteers there guide them through how to gently brush the sand away, just like they are on an expidetion dig. while the bones are being uncovered, they cue the kids to try and figure out which part of the dinosaur the bone is from. there's a large picture of the whole dinosaur skeleton on the wall for them to help them out on. it was fun watching chaeli engage in conversation with the volunteer (who was fabulous with the kids).

chaeli's second favourite area is the bat cave - something she never would have wanted go in a year before but asked to go in repeatedly.

pinning down my favourite sections is a tougie. i always go to the buddha section as the sculptures of both buddha and the bodhisattva always puts me at peace. there is also a part of egype where you sit in these semi-closed off booths with speakers on both sides of your ears. while you listen to the story of queen hatshepsut (1503 - 1482 BC, you follow the narrative as you gaze upon life-size wall sculptures depicting the voyage to punt. after the queen's death, her cousin, who was extremely jealous of her status, tried to erase all evidence of her existence. you can see hte silouette of her left but her name an image has been scratched out.

finally, my new favourite section is the gem and precious rock section - mainy the very back end that displays some of the gems set in priceless jewellery.

i can't help it. i'm a girl, after all. :)

we stayed in the museum four nearly four and a half hours, leaving just 10 minutes before closing time.

except for twilight, here are all the dvds i watched over the holiday:

some tidbits left out from our past holiday hussle-bussle...

• a birthday cake that doug and chaeli baked for me - chaeli did the decorating:

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• new year's eve party at my aunt's and uncle's, since my mother's lunar calender birthday also fell on nye. it was generally a very quiet night. the only non-family members with us was my doctor and his wife - he's pretty close to family, though. we ate a lot and then went down to watch the ball drop in time square, nyc. i also tested out his macro lens on my camera:

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• this past weekend, we also celebrated my friends' 3 year old's birthday. good times... especially since the kids did craft and played in the gym at the community centre they rented out, while us adults sat back with some coffee and snacks, talking and laughing for a good portion of the party.

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• our good friends from connecticut came into town to visit with family. a bunch of us met up with them for a late lunch at O&B. i had their spiced squash soup and their broccoli, leek and goat cheese quiche with a side, green salad. yum. at the end of the meal, chaeli and brayden played while the adults squeezed in the last bit of catching up. good times!

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that's about it. all in all, it was a great week and a half.

i only got some reading done but definitely squeezed in as many movies as i could.

christmas day panned out to be excellent. chaeli came into our room to get us before heading down to see if santa had visited.

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just as we all suspected, the ginger bread cookies she helped doug bake from scratch had been eaten, the cup of milk was empty and a crumpled up tissue paper had been tossed onto the empty plate which had only a quarter of a cookie left. she was semi-concerned of why santa did not finish all two of the cookies we offered for him - we explained to her that he had a LOT of cookies to eat last night while visiting everyone's house all over the world.

she then went into series of questions like, "how can he fit all those presents in that one bag of his?" and, "can santa hear what i'm thinking al the time?" as well as my favourite, "who has more power? santa or god?"

the questions stopped when she suddenly realized all the gifts that santa had left, not just under the tree, but in our stockings as well as three additional new stockings, also filled to the brim, left on our couch...

i think she was about to burst with excitement right before diving into the stocking stuffers (as traditional each year, we start off with those first, ending with the gifts from friends and then family).

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i noticed this year around, it didn't take nearly as long for her to unwrap all the gifts. i guess, being older, she's more efficient at whipping and tearing through the wrapping paper. and she was pretty good at not stopping too long to play with each toy she unwrapped.

well, other then her and doug trying to figure out how to turn optimus prime into a truck...

it was just after 11am after we finished unwrapping all the gifts (except from my parents and my aunt/uncle, which we did when we saw them for the later half of the day). doug and i went into the kitchen and started to prepare breakfast. with starbuck's christmas blend coffee in the pot, we made some cheesy scrambles on top of buttered tatty-scons, as well as a side of sliced blood pudding. yum! it was a semi-scottish brunch (semi because we had cheesy scrambles rather then poached eggs).

after brunch, we sat around in the living room, allowing ourselves to take a closer look at our presents. doug read his new harry potter book while i did my favourite thing - organize everyone's presents into piles under the tree. i have this insane need to get some of the more worn-out christmas gift bags and putting each person's loot into their own gift bag. it's just easier - when it's time to clean up, all the little things are already in a bag, ready to be taken away.

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chaeli went for a 3pm nap and was down for an hour (which was a good thing if she wanted to stay up late). my parents arrived about half an hour later which gave us plenty of times to exchange presents before heading over to my aunt's/uncle's place for dinner.

at around 6pm, we went across the underground parking lot and was greeted with a 21lb turkey that just came fresh out of the oven. it was unbelievably huge. but what was even more unbelievable was that we actually ate half of that damn turky. HALF! crazy! and i had three servings of turkey myself. i had all the side dishes, too, but didn't go back for 2nds/3rds other then to have more of that yummy, juicy, white-meat.

my aunt's christmas decorations is always so beautiful. she's got a very classy taste and her tree is usually coloured with either a light, warm pink and gold or bright red and gold. this year, she chose the latter.

after dinner, we did our last and final round of gift exchanges. i was pleased that everyone liked what i picked out for them, since i make it a goal to get at least one thing that would make each person very happy.

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cheali posed infront of the tree in her preppy outfit i picked out for her for dinner time. we chatted throughout the night until close to 11:30pm before saying heading off.

another year, another christmas.

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about a month ago, some one sent me one of those emails in which you answer all the questions and forward it to friends with your answers and they forward to their friends cc-ing you with their answers, etc.

one of the questions asked me what i wanted most for christmas.

my honest answer? peace and happiness.

however, lets face it... you can't put peace and happiness in a box. so when it comes to family, they need something more... physical. something one can hold in one's hands. something... that can be wrapped and handed over to you.

well, i certainly got a lot of amazing gifts.

here are my faves:

• sims 2 expansiona back - ikea home stuff
• a calender filled with canadian artists (featuring group of seven and emily carr paintings)
• will and grace season 6
• coffee table reference book on the group of seven
• a brand new pair of warm moccasins
• jewellery beads and magazines
• one-a-day sudoku desktop calendar
  
• a traditional, british style tea strainer
• key-hung tea - loose leaf (my fave black tea, at the moment)
• sterling silver, hooped earrings
• dvd - "must love dogs"
• a reference book for Nikon D60 DSLR
  
• lcd hdtv flat screen (from my parents to both doug and myself)

Diana Krall Christmas Songs

Diana Krall