Home of the Brit

Monday, April 18, 2011

Happy Birthday Son !

Today is my baby boy's 12th Birthday ! Happy Birthday Zachary !

Twelve years has flown by in the space of a nano-second. I know that every parent says that and I know that it drives every non-parent crazy. But it seriously is the truth. They grow up and you just can't believe where the time has gone (like the fact that as I'm writing this particular paragraph it is now 4 days AFTER his birthday a
nd I still haven't finished this post!)

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So I wanted to just have a little display of pictures dedicated to the boy with the sweetest disposition I know. Yes he can play cops and robbers with the best of them, but on a day-to-day basis I am simply left marveling at his precious little personality. How his dimple can make me smile and wish he was a baby all over again so I could hold him so close that he could never let go. How he makes everyone in our family laugh their heads off at his funny anecdotes quick wit. And how whenever he sees the frustration on my face as a result of something he has done, he instantly hangs his head and says "I'm sorry Mummy" in a way that just melts my heart.

I love you little man.
Happy Birthday!

Friday, April 01, 2011

Spring Break...... neglectful parenting ?

So our kids always get 2 weeks Spring Break and frankly, it's a bit of a nuisance. While other parents (from what they've told us) have taken their kids to Hawaii, Mexico and down-south, we took our kids to Thrifty's for groceries, and the bank to withdraw their allowance. And that was AFTER we were done working. So yes, there were a couple of days they were left to their own devices to keep themselves busy for the day.

Both Darrell & I had to work the entire first week and a half as it is the busiest season in both jobs in March so holiday was out. But after the guilt had set in as we let other families take our kids to the movies, swimming and over for playdates, we did manage to take 2 days off this week and get them to Vancouver for a night. We stayed at the River Rock Casino and Resort which is a beautiful hotel with a great swimming pool and waterslide. I hit up Forever 21 yesterday with Brooklyn then we all hit up IKEA for a quick 45 minute visit. Thank you oh Sweden for free kids meals during Spring Break week !!

Some may say 24 hours is not enough to treat your kids to a getaway but as we laughed while watching Zachary canonball into the pool, and Brooklyn wondering what BEST SALAD tasted like at the Dinner Buffet (it was BEET!) I would beg to differ.

Family Moments. Sometimes they are long, sometimes they are short. But they're always worth catching whenever possible.

Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Hair

Ever noticed how sometimes you have the best hair days 2 days before you're scheduled to get a haircut ??? huh.....

Monday, February 28, 2011

Great Deal!

You want to know what really makes me smile?

Seeing boots in the Boxing week for $60 and thinking that was too much.
Finding out this week they were on sale for $50.
Then going to the store and seeing a pricetag of $45.
THEN seeing the big yellow sticker saying final 50% of lowest price.

Yes. Easily pleased.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Valentine's Weekend and someone's birthday.....

I'm combining a few things together in one post because I don't want to assume for even a moment that you hang on everything we do over here in Richmond-land. So this will save the pain and condense it for you ;)

First of all - last weekend - LOTS OF FREE FUN! And I mean free. Darrell's work had a conference he had to attend for one of his suppliers. It was a big all-expense paid for shindig so I decided to tag along and benefit from a free hotel in Vancouver. The kids went to the in-laws and we hit the ferry. Ferry and breakfast - paid for by the company. Upon arrival Darrell went straight to the convention at the River Rock Casino Resort (beautiful room; a suite) and I met up with a friend and caught the Skytrain to downtown. Rewind to last year's Olympics; us being skytrain rookies bought our first ever tickets from the guy on the ferry for BC transit for a day. We did not realize, however, that you have to validate your tickets and instead rode the skytrain all day long for free. Upon realizing we were illegal riders, I decided to keep those tickets for a rainy day so last week had a free skytrain ticket!

Fastforward to the Pacific Centre - somehow in 3 hours I saw nothing I wanted to buy so instead decided to treat my friend to Starbucks and call it day. This was paid for by a gift card leftover from Christmas. When I got back to the hotel the cocktail hour started, followed by a gourmet 3 course gala dinner. By the time we went to bed that night we had spent a whole day in Vancouver with shopping and beautiful food and not spent a penny! (We did, however, make up for it at the Vancouver boat show and IKEA the following day....)

Then Monday night - ELTON JOHN! Darrell and I had dinner with our friend Jeni at a Japanese restaurant before meeting Jeni's husband Aaron at the concert. AWESOME! He played for 3 hours solid, never left the stage and sung and played wicked piano for the entire time. Incredible. If you ever get a chance to see him I would highly recommend it.

Lastly, Zachary's teacher had a birthday the previous Friday so he volunteered me to make the birthday cake (surprise....). ALL he could tell me about his teacher was that he was in charge of tech at the school, he once played basketball and he owned a dog. Ok. It's not much to go on and I don't have much time to bang this out but here ya go Zachary.....

Sunday, February 06, 2011

A Cake for Every Occasion

Most of my cake updates are blogged on my Cake website, but this one deserved some special attention so I'm also writing about it here. Not special because the cake was of Duff or Buddy-calibre particularly, but because of the history behind the person the cake was for.

This client ordered a wedding cake from me a couple of years ago for a wedding at the Fireside Grill. The bride on that day, due to the busyness that is common at a wedding, didn't actually get a taste of her own wedding cake.

As a result her husband gave the most romantic gesture when a year later he commissioned me to recreate the top layer of his wife's wedding cake to present her as a surprise on their first wedding anniversary weekend away.

Well this week the bride's Mum ordered a baby shower cake as the happy couple are expecting a little bundle in the very near future. The inspiration for the cake was a Sims-like owl, and the browns, greens and blues you see on the owl are a reflection of the baby's nursery colours and the quilt the Mum made for her grandchild.

The owl itself was made out of chocolate.

Congrats you guys on the nearly-here new arrival. It's been a privilege to have been a part of so many milestone moments in your lives together.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Snowy Fun at Midnight!

Ok. Don't judge me.
I know my children are only 9 and 11 years old but the choice we made last night resulted in family memories we'll have forever.

We had quite a heavy snowfall last night. It was a Tuesday which is when our Bible study meets at our house so around 9:30pm or so once everyone had gone, the kids got in their PJ's and into their beds, and I did a bit of kitchen cleanup before heading downstairs to jump on the treadmill. By this time it was quite thick outside and someone had rung the house to say Haliburton was closed by the police because someone slipped into the highway etc.

Fastforward to 10:40pm. Darrell is playing hockey and due home within 20 minutes and I’m 5 minutes away from the end of my run so running quite hard. We get a power outage....while I’m running on the treadmill! Imagine that !! It actually could have been a little dangerous because my machine came to quite a quick stop but not quickly enough to jar me or cause any injury so for that built-in-slow-down mechanism, I'm grateful.

The kids, however, weren’t totally asleep (excitement about the possibility of finally using their new sleds the following day) and suddenly Brooklyn got a bit scared so I made my way upstairs and lit candles everywhere and told them they could come out of bed and watch the snow through the windows by candlelight with me (aahhh).

Well 20 mins. later Darrell gets home from hockey and says he’s a bit hungry. And I was feeling a bit disappointed that I couldn’t have any tea after my shower (which, incidentally, was in the dark but lit by Brooklyn holding a flashlight shining at an angle at the bathroom mirror which completely lit up the shower stall - genius!)

SOOOO – we all got into his truck and we drove to Tim Horton’s in our jammies !!!! The kids thought it was awesome; we are sitting at Timmy’s at midnight in our pj’s (except Darrell who explained that as he was paying, he was not held to the same jammies-requirement), eating donuts, drinking tea and are the only other people in there except the workers from BC Hydro!!!! Haha

Shockingly though, in town today the snow is all gone as it didn’t freeze and then started to rain in the middle of the night. So my children, who I’m sure thought there’d be no school today, will be more than zonked by the day's end.

I am just hoping that the giggles that ensued as we looked at each other in our flannels and housecoats, will far surpass one day's exhaustion :)