supper central

this has got to be the coolest concept ever. we hosted a party tonight at supper central, and it was a huge success! hooray. for michael and I this has been a huge way to relieve some stress and pressure in our lives and stay on budget and have more free time. which is awesome! working full time is way harder than being a student if you ask me. we both get home and don't feel like cooking or doing any house chores. anyway, here's some pictures to enjoy!

This is the gang getting our instructions from the staff and what to do.

Here we are working hard.

SM Volunteer Appreciation Event

This is my second time, and Siloam's second time doing the Volunteer Appreciation Event at the Hitch 'n Post Ranch. What a fabulous venue. Kyle makes the whole task so easy to coordinate & plan!

Here's some pictures of the venue before the people arrived.

We set up a photo booth at the jail.

Our fine MC's: Rodeo Riley & Buckaroo Brendan:

It was a great event, with outdoor games and great prizes to give away.

And there was some dancing (we had an awesome live band):

And last, but not least, the VS Department who put the night together (with a lot of help from our Resource Development Department):

Yeehaw!

three ingredient cookies

A coworker of mine was telling me about these cookies, and I was so curious I went straight home to try it. (apparently it came from the side of the peanut butter jar).

1 cup sugar + 1 egg + 1 cup peanut butter =

peanut butter cookies (gluten free no less)

Pretty awesome, if a little sweet.

I got my game back!

This weekend has been total bliss. Yesterday I went grocery shopping (that part was not bliss, there is nothing blissful about going to StupidStore on a Saturday afternoon). When I got home, I set straight to washing lettuce and chopping veggies to make my salad. We had friends come over for dinner (at the last minute, and I didn't even have a meltdown). Today I baked buns.

They look awesome, don't they. The recipe is Shirley's Awesome Multigrain Buns. I actually made them for her, since I know she's out and has been pretty tired lately.

The best part, the part that is bliss, is that I feel good, I'm not tired, I don't feel like crashing or numbing out in front of the TV. I just feel good. About two years ago I started became depressed (about the time I graduated from university). At the time I didn't know it. Last summer things clicked and I realized what was going on. Over the last 8 months I've been working on making changes in my life to improve things. (From diet and exercise, vitamin supplements, to getting better at doing less, and Michael and I pursuing new hobbies).

Today I feel like celebrating because things really have turned around. I feel good. I could say that again. I feel good.

Hanging out in Toronto

Part of our time in Ontario was spent in Toronto. We started with a mini Friesen family gathering, where we enjoyed some borscht and fresh baked bread for an Easter Monday dinner.

The traditional 'tisch bild'

I stuck around for an extra couple of days to get in some girl time with my cousin Debbie. One of the things we did was bake paska. An Easter tradition, that I didn't have time for before we left for Ontario. It was good fun!

Debbie also humored me and we did some shopping. I looked up some yarn stores and fabric stores. I was on a quest to find fabric to use in my green room for a little filing cabinet cover project that i wanted to do (mission accomplished, completed project to follow). yarn shops were for no particular reason other than it's fun to touch beautiful yarn. We stopped for lunch in this great little crepe place. It was delicious!

Then since we had some time to kill, we went for pedicures around the corner. This was also very nice! I ended up choosing blackcherry again. I think pick that color almost every time I go.

And in true sleepover fashion, we through nutrition to the wind and ate 'gotta have it' sized coldstone creamery dishes for supper. awesome! (hopefully it kinda balanced out with eating at fresh the day before?)

that's about all. i really enjoyed the chance to hang out with debbie. we haven't done that in a long time!

Niagara Falls

So much of the time, our travelling is about seeing family, at the expense of seeing or doing anything that normal visitors would do. This time we decided to carve out at least enough time to see Niagara Falls. It was awesome!

Here we are at the falls. It was amazing. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

The observation deck where the previous picture was taken. It wasn't quite as exciting to be 'behind the falls' as I thought it would be.

Easter in Ontario

Michael and I scored some cheap tickets through westjet, so we headed to Ontario for Easter and spent a week there. Michael's family lives in Aylmer & surrounding area, so we spent most of our time there.

We were at the Harms gathering:

complete with a tischbild:

And there was a Peters gathering:

Michael and I also hung out with his cousin Barry and Rebekka & their kids:

Brian had a hockey game, so we went and watched:

I don't have pictures of this one, but we also hung out with Michael's Uncle Abe & Aunt Betty and their kids. We dyed easter eggs together (thanks! that is a ritual that I very much enjoy), and stayed up way too late talking!

Overall, it was a good time. I did feel a little sick at one point (missed out on the Peters gathering egg hunt) and as usual was over tired, but we had a good time!

knives

It may be the case that I kinda 'forced' Michael into buying this lovely set of knives. Since I played on his difficulty of passing up a good deal (50% off!) and made him feel guilty about not letting me get them. But, I think things have worked out ok. Having new knives has inspired my work in the kitchen again...

What's not to love about that knife? Doesn't it look lovely? I went on a major salad kick, just so I would have a reason to enjoy chopping veggies! I cannot believe how much fun it is when your knife is so sharp it just melts through things! Michael even made the comment, and I quote, 'If I had known how much you would love the knives and want to use them and work in the kitchen, I would've bought them the day we got married!'

a field trip!

That is me cuddling with a sheep!

My knitting friend, Allison, and I planned a little day trip to a sheep farm near Inwood. It's called Sheeples. They raise their own sheep, and then turn it into yarn right there on the farm. It's kinda cool to see and touch wool on a sheep, that you might possible buy and knit with some day.

Amazing! Don't they look cool?

later that same day...

March 4. Funny, I didn't realize the beautiful hoar frost happened on the same day as this disaster until now when I went to blog about it. This is what we came home to after work on the same day we saw the beautiful trees:

Yup, that is our front door smashed in. Sigh. Our tenant was actually the first one home, so he called Michael at work, who then called me. We both got home as quickly as we could to determine what was missing and file a police report.

Thankfully, our alarm system did it's job. The people who broke in didn't stay long and didn't have time to make a big mess. This is what it looked like, and our bedroom is the only room they touched. It was a strange feeling and I was a little creeped out by the fact that some stranger had been in my house. The police even came to try and take finger prints, but didn't find any.

The only thing they found was some cash on the dresser. It also just so happened that Michael's laptop was sitting on the floor in the green room next to the bedroom. They saw that and grabbed it. That is all they took.

The crazy part is that they walked back out the front door with the loot. We live across the street from a private school and they broke in at 1:30pm on a Thursday afternoon. This whole thing really shocked us, I mean we've always felt safe because our street has so much going on on it during the day and you can see it from the major road that we live just off of. Two people actually witnessed it happening and called in to the police to report it.

So, in order to be able to leave the house, Michael got creative and screwed the door shut.

Thankfully, because the laptop was unreliable, we don't keep anything saved on it, so we didn't lose anything important. Insurance was good to us, replacing the door and the cash and the laptop. Everything worked out.

What I learned was that it's important not to keep valuables out in the open where they are visible. The things they stole were the laptop and the cash, which were both out in the open, there were other things that they could've taken but didn't see. We could've lost our camera, which had been laying on the floor, but Michael just randomly decided to take it to work that day. It's also not a good idea to keep valuables in your bedroom, it's the first place a thief looks apparently.