Brunch? Dessert? no no, Supper.

There are days when I get home from work and just can't decide what I feel like eating. I think about the options but none of them are appealing. I mostly just stand there, staring at my food, hoping the decision just magically happens.

I complain to my roomy that I can't decide and she asks what my options are. Well, I could make chocolate chip pancakes. She nods. Or then I was thinking of making pancakes and putting them in a stack with nutella in between. More agreement and eyes light up. My last option was making fried rice. She quickly discards that option and convinces me to try the layered nutella pancake.

I decide to go all out and make chocolate chip pancakes and smother nutella all over them.


Um, let me just say: omg soooo good. Next time I think I'll add a scoop of vanilla ice cream/frozen yogurt. It's sensible really. Gotta get a 3rd food group in there.

My amusement for the morning

The other day we found out Jer's sister is pregnant. It's her fourth. Fourth!!! It's a lot right? Jer claims no, but he does have 3 sisters so I guess that makes sense. Anyway, after the shock of it wore off (hahaha the shock, it's not even mine), I came to realize how great this is. Jer and I had already discussed the perfect name if she ever had another kid, and this morning I emailed Jer my plan.

Part 1:
jer's sister: Car?
jen: Yeah, Car. I hear it's really hip these days to choose names based on inanima-hahahahahahahah.
jer's sister: Inanima?
jen: hahahahahahahah
jer's sister: Tilts head.
jen: Hahaha *straight face* inanimate objects.
jer's sister: Oh really?
jen: Yeah. It's all over the internet.

And now technically it is. It won't even be a lie.

Part 2:
jen: *cries*
jer's sister: Ohh what's wrong??!!
jen: My grandpa just died.
jer's sister: Ohh honey, I'm so sorry to hear that.
jen: Yeah *sniff* me too. If only I had a child to name their middle name after him. *single tear*
jer's sister: What was your grandpa's name?
jen: Go.
jen: And conveniently gender-neutral.

Finally:
I'd like to present to you... Car Go Vroom.

No joke.

I guess if this doesn't work, I can gradually convince the kid Car is a good nickname. I could probably settle for Car Vroom, but make the Vroom sound like an engine being revved.

Tires big

Monster Jam is amusing. Not what I expected, but overall entertaining. The first half of the night was an actual race. There was qualifying and then round 1, the semi-finals, and the championship race. It was two laps, each lap had two jumps. A few cars ended up damaging themselves right away and were out the rest of the night. Good work guys.

The second half was freestyle, and it seemed like this is what people waited for. It was pretty tame. They had 90 seconds to go around the track. They did jumps, but most not high or just crawled over the cars. At first I didn't get why Grave Digger was so popular, but by the end I got it. He was by far the fastest, and the funnest. He went all out with as high as jumps as possible, did donuts, got stuck for a while but once his engine started again he kept on going to please the crowds. Very cool. Anyway, here's a 'story' with some of the pictures I took.


Meow.


Woof.


Hi Hi Hi! I wanna play, can I play too?!!


Um, no. Your name is Bulldozer. You're an embarrassment to this establishment.


Hello darrrllinnggg. Let me introduce myself. I'm Grave Digger, and I'm the shit.


Check it out!!! I'm in the air. I'm awesome.


Correction: I'm awesome.



HEY what are you doing Bulldozer?? We said no. Stop it! You're distracting me.


Damnit Bulldozer! Look what you made me do. *sigh*


Hahahah hilarious!!! *ROTFL*


Look, I'm sexy from behind too.

Last Christmas Post

On to Phase 3!!!! *cue Barenaked Ladies Christmas music*

Christmas night we made it back to Toronto, took the essentials up to Jer's apartment, put the gifts we wrapped at our respective parent's houses under the tree, and enjoyed the fact we had two days of relaxing jen & jer time, or j&j time if you prefer.


I love early morning, turning on the christmas tree lights, sitting on the floor, unwrapping presents in my pjays and throwing the wrapping paper wherever. We'd take turns unwrapping and the other got to pick the order in which we opened.

We had a budget since we had already spent some money on the aforementioned tree, so it meant we planned and used resources we had. I used my best buy reward points towards a dvd, and Jer got me a free (stock car racing!!!) book through a 'Buy 3 get 1 free' deal.

We both ended up making each other something as well. I made Jer some fridge magnets with magnetic paper I had. One of my favourite ones was an LOL cat: U is my favrite flavur, with one cat licking the other. And Jer wrote me a story, combining two of my favourite genres: nascar and vampires. I couldn't believe it, how incredibly sweet/thoughtful/great/etc.

Jer also got me some baking/cooking stuff, socks of course, and an awesome purple SIGG water bottle. I got him new gym shorts & socks, and an orange stapler.


Afterward, we made blueberry pancakes, cheesy scrambled eggs, and malt bread and watched the Anchorman dvd I got Jer. It was perfect.

There's nothing wrong with orange and purple

So. Christmas.

Bleah.

It's so much work. Trying to figure out when to visit everyone and how you're going to get there. It's stressful and tiring and I have to use good vacation days for this??

Nowadays I go home, to an already decorated house, with 90% of the gifts under the tree for other people and it doesn't feel like Christmas. This year I decided I wanted to change this.

First step: Tree!!

Jer and I decided in December we'd go out and buy an artificial tree, and decorate it with purple and orange decorations - our favourite colours. Does orange and purple not sound Christmasy to you? no? Well, apparently stores in general agree with you. We had one idea to make orange and purple presents as ornaments, so all we needed was purple and orange wrapping paper and some ribbon. Even that seemed impossible.

With some luck, we found a few orange and purple ball ornaments, but couldn't find any wrapping paper. There's orange bristol board, but of course no purple bristol board. Then, something in my head clicked, and I knew what we could use: file folders. Work had purple ones! So we 'borrowed' purple file folders, bought orange bristolboard and then found ribbon at a craft store.

Cutting, folding, and assembling a dozen little boxes each? Words can't describe the frustration, boredom, and despair that ensued. With some pep talk (and whining) we managed to fight through it get it done. Afterward we were pooped. We saved putting the ribbon on for another day.

So we had gathered enough ornaments to decorate our tree, but was it really going to look good? We're talking fluorescent orange bristol board here, with a metallic orange. The purples clashed just as much. I was hopeful, but prepared to love a tacky/ugly tree. It came together rather quickly, we flipped on the lights, and wow. It worked! It looks like a real tree! *happiness*

Later this week I'll conclude with Christmas Phase 3. Ha, I bet you weren't expecting five Christmas posts. Oh snap.

And then there was four

Phase 3 was by far the best so I'll leave that to the end.

Our last stop was Courtice to visit my dad. We get there to learn that for supper we are having a turkey dinner and my grandma, aunt and uncle, and deb's parents are all coming over for it. This was unexpected, but in the end probably better than going to Peterborough and meeting them there. Jer got to experience the Italian way of pushing food continually on you. Eugh. But other than that it was a typical dinner with family. AND it meant bread. A whole loaf of grandma's delicious bread. I even managed to convince my dad to slice it up before putting it in the freezer. Score.

The rest of the visit we spent it as I always spend my time at my dad's. We played sequence, cribbage (jer's first time!!), ping pong, went on a shopping trip, and ate lots of yummy food including waffles, french toast, and steak. We also made crispellas, an italian donut. Mmm so good. There was a bit of guitar hero but I am out of practice and I sucked. Well, I played on hard, but still, sucked!!

Overall playing ping pong was the highlight. It was energetic and everyone was really into it. We'd play 'doubles' with the kids, or against dad and deb, or take turns playing each other. My dad and jer were pretty closely matched. It made for a few exciting games with Jer leaving as the champ. At this point my dad had made plans to go buy new paddles (since he had cheap ones and we had brought our good ones haha) for the rematch next visit.

And to end the trip, my dad had to go to Whitby to go to futureshop, so we follow him out of the city to the 401, where we eventually pass him, wave bye, and carry on back to Toronto.

Literally Christmas

On Christmas Eve we take off and head to Innisfil.

Leaving the relaxed atmosphere, we enter the chaotic yet fun-filled Phase 2: Jer's parents place. With five kids running around there was always something happening so my memory is a little blurred.

Christmas Eve I remember spending a bunch of time wrapping presents for the aforementioned kids. We wrapped in the office by the kitchen so it was off limits, which of course meant there were frequent attempts of entry by the little ones, one of which ended up in a quasi-peek-a-boo session. I'd open the door and point at the youngin, he'd burst out laughing, I'd close the door and repeat.

In the evening it was opening presents time. The kids went first and it was a bit overwhelming. Lots of paper everywhere, so many toys, and so much noise! It was entertaining though. The most amusing part was when the peek-a-boo kid from above got two (toy) guns that lit up in multi-colours. He was incredibly amused by them and would shoot everyone and laugh hysterically when they twitched/played dead. He didn't quite understand how to actually shoot somebody though, the gun was pointed up at the ceiling i believe. Ohhh kids are stupid. haha? Anyway, once the kids went to bed the grown-ups ate dinner, then opened gifts in a more structured fashion.

Christmas morning everyone went to church, after which my comment was: thirdly is not a word. (Neither is firstly or secondly, etc). I remember being happy when he said finally. I thought yes, he's not going to say Ohhh noes, he went with 'Finally' pause, 'and Fourthly'. Anyway, leaving church was entertaining because Jeremy was a hot commodity. It felt like we were bombarded with people who haven't seen him in a while, excited to say hi.

There were appetizer type snacks for lunch, and dutch cake for Jer's dad's birthday at some point. Later we got to open stockings which again was chaotic but fun. We all played dominos which was amusing. I had never played dominos before and ended up doing horribly (3-4 doubles in your hand is badness), but I liked it. At one point I curled up on the couch and watched barbie a christmas story with a couple of the kids. I'm not sure why, but at some point one of the kids decided she wanted to sit with me and she happily lied there for a while. Worked for me, now I was being lazy while technically being helpful.

There was turkey dinner and dessert, and the inevitable cleaning up. Slowly it calmed down as the kids went to bed. A bit later we packed up our stuff and headed off for Phase 3.

Christmas Phase 1

Christmas was quite busy this year so I've broke it down into 4 parts.

The couple months before Christmas were crazy busy at work, and I was just itching for my almost two weeks off with Jer. Our Christmas was divided into 4 phases, all of which involved Barenaked Ladies Christmas music.

First up was good ole Kincardine. I warned Jer it was going to be pretty low key, but we were looking forward to a relaxing time. The only thing Jer was worried about was the fact the highways close frequently and the threat of being stuck in Kincardine was a real possibility. We managed to get there fine, with surprisingly good driving conditions. We drove down on a calm day between two big storms.

Jer got the proper Kincardine experience. Our first night we went to the Eerie Bell, one of the town's long-standing restaurants, one I remember very well as a little kid. We got fish and chips and ceaser salad and it was yummy. Next we went to the 24h Sobey's to grab a few things, and because you can't go anywhere without running into somebody you know, we ran into our work friend's parents. He also got a glimpse of the typical winter weather. Every time we'd go out somewhere it would look fine out, then it would start snowing and turn gray, and very gloom and doom looking. One of those snowy days the highways were even closed. Thankfully not the day we were leaving though. We drove around a bit but it's so dreary looking, no hint of how nice it looks in the summer. Oh well.

Some other Christmas/Kincardine things Jer got to experience:

• Skipbo - the card game me and my mom always play (he even managed to win the championship game which I'm still pouting about)
  
• My favourite dessert ever which I make my mom make on any special occasion - strawberry trifle
• Decorating gingerbread cookies - wheee
  
• Went to Chinatown!! ie. the one asian store in Kincardine that appeared a few years ago.
  

We also made dinner for my mom and George the one night, watched Love actually, and spent the rest of our time there mostly reading, and playing with the kitty. And of course the whole exchanging presents thing.

Christmas Eve we pack up, have breakfast at Jean's with my mom and George, then we follow them along highway 9, since they are off to Peterborough to visit my grandma, until they turn off to go to an LCBO.