Apple picking!

We got together to pick apples in celebration of my daddy's birthday today!

What great weather we had! It was actually a bit 'too hot' for us. We opted to pick from the Honey Crisp section (which are a personal fave of mine), so most of our time was spent there!

Happy Birthday Daddy... maybe I'll bake you an apple pie! :)

The CNE!

Since Ron took Jacen to Fan Expo today, I decided to take Jaina with me to the Ex! Oh, and my brother came too.

I finally got to try the cocoa chicken, which surprisingly wasn't bad! Coke also had a booth where you could get your name on a can (for FREE), so we lined up and I was able to get them for my entire family. Gotta love the EX!!

5 years!

It only took FIVE years to finally get me one of these boxes!! :)

I also got 3 bottles of wine... does my hubby KNOW me or what?!? lol

Happy Anniversary Ron!

Funnel cake!

I love the summer because it means it's funnel cake season! Yum yum gimme some!

Celebrating Canada Day...

a day later! We took a day trip to Niagara Falls since Ron had taken a couple of days off.

I've never been to the Hershey store before, so we checked that out, the tourist strip area, oh, and the falls of course! No photos of the kids because they wouldn't cooperate, so we had some dude just take a photo of US! :)

Congratulations on your Graduation!

Jaylene and Justin graduate grade 8 today. I took the kids to watch, and it was nice to see my niece and nephew graduate! They had a slideshow presentation and it showed them when they were in kindergarten and it almost made me cry (and these aren't even my kids!).

At the end when they received their diplomas, the grads each received a rose to give to one of their parents (which I thought was a nice touch). Well... my boy took the rose from my sister and decided to give it to his mama as well.... how sweet!

Justin and Jaylene's Confirmation!

We celebrated the confirmation of Justin and Jaylene today. I was Justin's godmother and my sister Sarah was Jaylene's godmother. It made for a big fam jam celebration!

It's nice that these two cousins are the same age/grade and go to the same school!

Birthday celebrations continue...

My mom and I seem to always share a birthday celebration together every year (maybe because her birthday is right after mine). We had a BBQ at my brother's house and as always, fam jams are the best (especially when there's a lot of babysitters to keep your kids entertained!). Happy birthday to ME!

Happy Birthday to ME!

Brunch at What a Bagel, followed by cupcakes, followed by Ron taking the kids out for a while for some alone time, followed by dropping kids off with my sister so Ron and I can have a nice dinner = one HAPPY birthday!! Thanks for all the birthday wishes everyone!

Welcome home Tito & Tita!

We had a family get-together to welcome home my aunt and uncle who just got back from the Philippines. They were there for about 6 months this time so it was nice to to see them again.

Gotta love the fam jams! Manny Pacquiao was also fighting that night but we didn't end up staying for that as the kiddies were tired (and me too!).

Blue Mountain weekend!

A group of us headed out to Blue Mountain for the weekend to celebrate my good friend Alfie's 40th Birthday!

FORTY! How can I possibly have a friend that OLD?!!? (no offense to those turning that age this year) It's just hard to believe because I honestly don't feel that old. And I definitely don't think we even LOOK that old (although we should ask some younger people what they think).

My sister, her hubby and my niece came along as well - but only to babysit my kids! It was awesome... we were able to go out for dinner with the gang, and then we went to a dance club after... like the ol' days! Great weekend!

Comicon

We took my two nephews and Jacen to Comicon today while my sisters watched Jaina.

Jacen loves his cousins so he had a great time with them! We saw Iron Man, Star Wars and Lego characters. And I saw Sean Astin (from Lord of the Rings and Special Agent Oso is how Jacen would know him) and Brandon Routh (from Superman Returns).

It's nice to see Jacen (and Ron) get excited at this event. hehe

JT 20/20 tour!

What an awesome concert! I stood up the entire time - dancing, singing, and screaming!! (seriously, my throat hurt by the end of the night). I think I danced the most when he sang the cover song 'Poison' by Bel Biv Devoe (the entire crowd was cheering). I found a youtube video here from another concert so you get the idea.

The coolest part was when the stage he was on somehow transformed into this moving vessel which took him from one end of the stadium to the other! No bad seats in the house with that!! He's so considerate that JT. hehe.

My only regret was not having my good camera with me to record his awesomeness! (no professional cameras allowed).... so these are some pics from Ev (who was also at the concert - Mel too, who ended up passing a glass of wine to me through the crowd. lol). A big thanks to Rose for taking your sis-in-law!!

My date for Valentine's Day!

Guess who's going to be spending Valentine's Day with Justin Timberlake?? That's right.... MOI!! Whoohoooooo! I'm so excited. I loooooooove him.

Ron's sister won tickets to his concert and she was going to take her hubby with her, but Ron managed to somehow convince her to take ME instead!! (he offered to pay for their Valentine's dinner the following day if she takes me). What an awesome hubby!!!

So really - Ron got me the ticket to see JT for Valentine's Day!! Awww... what a hubby. Thanks babe. I love you more than JT, don't worry. :)

Listening to the 'oldies'...

The kids and I listen to music all day, mostly the radio and then I had a thought... Why not listen to my cd's instead? So I've been busting out the 'oldies' cd's, which is how the kids will describe my music in a few years, I'm sure.

Recently, we've listened to Frank Sinatra, salsa (Marc Anthony), Sade, Boys II Men and Surface (who remembers those dudes??). haha. I haven't heard a lot of the music that I have in years, so it's also making me go down memory lane, which is nice since my memory seems to be lost these days. The photo shown is just a section of many cd's that I have so let the music begin!

Stockyards Fried Chicken!

I tried making Stockyards fried chicken today. I got the recipe from Raju (it was published in the Toronto Star newspaper I believe).

It takes a while because you have to soak it for at least 12 hours (or in my case.... 24 hours because I forgot it was in the fridge).

The result? Not as good as the restaurant's, but definitely better than any fried chicken I've ever made! (and it was a bit salty so I'll need to adjust for that next time). I think I already passed on the recipe to you gals that read my blog but if there's anyone else out there that I missed.... lemme know!

Trying to be fair!

I just finished putting together Jaina's first year photo frame. I had done the same thing for Jacen, so I'm trying to be a 'fair' parent and do the same things for both kids. To be honest - I'm just trying to avoid a kid asking "why does he/she have that and I don't?" in the near future!

I also did a first year photobook and DVD for Jacen and well... I'm still working on those for Jaina.... might take me a little bit longer to finish those this time around.

Imagine if we had another kid?!? Geez!