Happy Birthday Matt!

I wish I had gotten you this cake. Anyway, I love you and hope you have a wonderful birthday. Now let's party it up with some seniors! (No, literally- it's the Eldercare Christmas party tonight and we're going.)


Oh, and people, I did it! I blogged every day in November. Man am I stubborn!

Highlights from Matty's Bday

As promised!
























We had an excellent time with our excellent friends. Much pizza, ice cream cake and beverages were consumed. I was exhausted (notice my red eyes in every picture- I was the D.D.) but it was fun.

The best part? Pregnant friend! She is due one day before my birthday. I told her she has to have her baby on my birthday. Also if it's a girl, name it after me. It's just logical. *Note-Matt is not pregnant.

Make a Joyful Noise!

Being an adult when my parents divorced was tough but it has been great being old enough to see them meet and remarry new partners. Mom remarried a few years ago and Dad has been with Sharron forever but they just decided to take the plunge. It was a lovely, personal ceremony. Congratulations you two, I love you! Here are some of my favorite pictures.

Boo-humbug!

This year we copped out and didn't celebrate Halloween. Crazy, eh? Maybe we're getting old or maybe we're just lazy? Last year we went all out. This year we didn't even carve a pumpkin or buy any candy. Hmmm. Anyway, not to worry, we didn't stay in and count our wrinkles. A friend of ours was born on Halloween so we went to his birthday party instead. What do you get someone turning 30 to help soften the blow?

How about a beer tower?!
Everyone contributed and the goal was to get 30 different kinds of 'beer' (not all were the alcoholic sort). I think we ended up with closer to 45 though! Many I had never heard of- I wonder if that Pumpkin Pie Beer is any good?

*Note, our friend did not drink all of these on his birthday.

Lots of Changes!

Big news- I got a new job! It's possible that you've heard this already but I'm officially telling the world today. It wasn't an easy process either since it's with the provincial government. I actually went through a lot of the process back when I was initially applying for jobs. One of those "oh I'll apply but I doubt I'll hear from them" things. Well, I heard from them. Then I wrote the test (yeah, there was a test and that was used to determine who got an interview) and figured that was the end of it. There were tons of people writing it and I'd heard from colleagues that the fail rate is pretty high (70% or something). But they called me for an interview! So I went in and was grilled by 3 people for about an hour. Apparently things went well because they were calling my references. Then the government laid the hiring freeze smack down and that was the end of that. Or so I thought... Since they called me a few weeks ago and I had to jump through a few hoops but now I've got a shiny new job and I start on May 3rd! Only took them 10 months!

I'm excited and nervous and proud of myself. I'm worried that I won't be able to cut it since it's a tough job. I'm happy that I get a regular schedule and will be able to see Matt more and maybe take a class or something (hard to do that when you're working shifts). It's got a 12 month probation period (whoa!) and I am hoping I get my own office. Haha. Things like that make me happy. My family has been really excited for me and my Dad even got me a cake to celebrate. I'm really hopeful that this will be the break I have been looking for. I have a career! When did that happen? My degree is starting to pay off! Now Matt just has to get through law school and maybe someday we can afford to buy property and start a family. First things first though, have to survive my first day of work!

DEBT FREE!!!

I started university when I was 17 years old. Since then (and I just turned 28) I have been in debt. Luckily I was never one of those people who used credit cards or bought new cars or vacations that I couldn't afford so all of my debt was student loans. Today, almost exactly 7 years after I graduated with my BA, I received my tax return and was able to pay off my personal debt for the first time in my adult life. Everything in my bank account is mine now. It's an incredible feeling. I realize the timing of this (April 1) may be suspect, however, this is no joke. I did it! I did it myself too! I am so proud! If I didn't work tonight I would have to go somewhere and celebrate. Oh well, celebrate with me in cyber space!

Our First Christmas Tree

I have been feeling a little bit blue so I decided it was time to snap out of it and get into the Christmas spirit! I just love Christmas, probably because it makes an excellent precursor to the most important holiday of all; my birthday!

Anyway, I digress (but my birthday is coming up so I hope everyone is ready!), Matt and I went on an epic trip to purchase our tree and decorations. I am picky and this was a hard decision for me. I over-think things and took this quite seriously. I suppose I can always switch the ornaments up later on. I was firm that I wanted a big, fake (I've never had a real tree) tree with multi-colored lights already on it. We had to go to a few places but I finally found what I was looking for.

When we hauled it home Steph was waiting for us (she was studying at our apartment). We had a moment of panic because it looked like the tree was going to be TOO BIG and not fit in our place. However, it is just perfect! Yay! So now we have a tree and I like to think that all the people waiting at the bus stop across the street can see it and admire it.

Murder of a Very Fine Gentleman

For Matt's 30th birthday party we hosted a murder mystery dinner party at our apartment. Matt wrote the mystery himself and spent a really long time making up cards and games. He sent out character sketches to everyone invited and even made up a fake newspaper! We invited 10 of our nearest and dearest to participate and everyone really got into their roles. The costumes were fabulous! Steph was pretty silly- hopefully no one is offended by her "black face". It was in good fun- she put cocoa powder in her foundation and smelled delicious all night!

We spent the whole morning cooking. We decided to take a very organized approach and chop and measure everything out and label it before it was time to cook. Sort of like a birthday cooking show. This worked out pretty well since it's tricky to have everything ready at the same time. Here's the menu:

Beverages:
Lassi
Chai Tea

Victuals:
Naan
Nariyal Chawal
Garden Salad

Butter Chicken
Aloo Gobi
Sambaar
Palak Kofta
Palak Paneer

It all turned out great (except the sambaar) and everything was made from scratch except the naan and the palak paneer. Oh, we also didn't make the butter chicken sauce from scratch, but we did pretty good!

The story goes, Mr. Pagels was an extremely wealthy man, but loathed by many. He came into his money through marrying his poor Indian wife (me). I have to take care of his blind sister (Alisse) and my only friend is the maid (Laurie). I am tied to the kitchen- this was not fun. Also invited were the Madame (Bryn) from the local brothel, Mr. Pagels' war hero brother (Sev), a Nun (Leah) from an orphanage Pagels plans to bulldoze to make into a bar, a gangster interested in becoming a bar partner (Steph), an unwed mother (Kasia) who claims the child is Pagels, a fortune teller (Tia), a gambler (Dylan) and a doctor (Steve). It was so much fun!

After the dinner party we met up with some more friends at a local pub and helped Matt forget he's turned 30. He decided to stay in costume and ended up looking like a Hutterite! Haha. We stumbled over to Steve's to play Rock Band and have some birthday pie and then it was time to call it a night. If you want to see all the pictures (in a non-slide show format) click here.

Meet Lydia!!

Matt hit a milestone birthday this year (3-0) and so we celebrated by spending a ridiculous amount of money. We have a new laptop! Not just that, but a new printer, fan thingy (apparently all new laptops need this because they overheat? WHAT THE HECK!) and the Spore game he wanted forever (he tracked the creation of it). Look how excited he is. Of course, this is a present for me too and I even named our laptop Lydia. Isn't she lovely?

While I have been enjoying her I have to say she has contributed to the lack of blogging since I have had to set up all my bookmarks, links and programs and this takes FOREVER. I am enjoying how quickly she uploads pictures and that I can remove red eye.

Now that we have a new computer an interesting thing has happened. We used to bicker about who got to use our old laptop, Mr. Roboto, and so we foolishly believed that getting a 2nd one would solve this problem. Now we just bicker about who gets to use Lydia. Sigh. Poor Mr. Roboto.

Halloween Night!

It might be a cop out but I did another slide show. There are just so many pictures though and this makes it easier to show them all. I couldn't find a nice background for it so even though the candle doesn't really have much to do with Halloween, it will have to do.

Happy Halloween!!!

We are doing some epic Halloween type things- stay tuned to see all the ghoulish stuff we created. My costume is almost finished and it's time for our Halloween party!! What are your plans for Halloween?

Celebration Dinner!

On Saturday night we went out for dinner with Mom, Tom and Steph. We'd already planned on going out earlier in the week but since we'd just found out the good news about Matt's LSAT score, it was more like a celebration dinner. Being the classy, sophisticated lawyer-to-be he is, Matt ordered a cheese burger and a huge beer. The ladies shared a really fabulous bottle of shiraz and a good time was had by all! We also shared a massive dessert at the end of the meal which was yummy but terribly difficult to eat. Somehow we managed. We're just that determined.

CONGRATULATIONS MATT!!!

I just wanted to quickly shout out to the world how brilliant my honey is! He received his LSAT score back this weekend and scored in the 95th percentile! He worked so hard and there is no one who deserves it more! I knew he could do it! Now let's just cross our fingers that it's enough to get him into the U of A so we don't have to move. Mainly we need to hope that they will consider this score instead of the first score (which wasn't terrible but wasn't this good). Most places take the highest score, however, the U of A averages them. Grrr! Anyway, raise your glass and join me in a toast to Matt!

Thanksgiving...

This is really late and I have been slacking in the blog department. I am not sure what my problem is but it's possible I have been fighting off a cold. This has resulted in me feeling extremely run down and unmotivated.

Thanksgiving weekend was fantastic. We went to my Dad's on Saturday and had a massive ham dinner and played a lot of Balderdash. Leah finally got to meet my family (I mean, I've only been with Matt a decade so it was about time). On Sunday we went to the local fire station for a pancake breakfast. It was probably the nicest pancake breakfast I've ever been to since it included eggs, hash browns, bacon and sausage, a fruit and cheese platter, numerous kinds of juices and Tim Horton's coffee. I think Leah was charmed by the small town atmosphere.

After the pancake breakfast we headed over to my Mom's house. She did the turkey meal this year with all of the Ukrainian food favorites. To clarify, we actually aren't Ukrainian, we just like the food and there are a lot of Ukrainian people in our area. As usual, the crowning glory was the pumpkin pie! I'm drooling a little thinking about it.

We played more games at Mom's house and watched some TV. Basically we just relaxed a lot. The next morning she made this amazing cinnamon cake thing and had a bunch of fresh fruit for breakfast. So delicious! How did everyone else spend their Thanksgiving?

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Up here in Canada it is Thanksgiving weekend. I was browsing through my massive list of channels (having TV is so weird sometimes) and I found this little gem. I know they have them (with just the fireplace) around Christmas but I didn't realize they did it for other holidays too. Isn't that turkey dangerously close to the fireplace?!

Anyway, I have taken a couple days off work (which means I have 4 days off in total with my regular days off) and I am headed to see my family for the weekend. I hope that everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving! Take the time to reflect on all the fabulous things in your life. Oh, and eat a lot of pie!

Now and Then: 10 Years of Us

I could make this really mushy but that's not really my style. It was our ten year anniversary this weekend and we had a nice day. Nothing really monumental happened but I suppose you should be recognizing the important relationships in your life every day, right?

We went out and saw the Time Traveler's Wife (you can read Matt's review of it over here) and then bought ourselves a present.

I've always wanted to have nice things. That may sound really materialistic but let's face it, we need stuff to run a household and I am sick of owning a bunch of crap that is falling apart. We spent a ridiculous amount of money on new pots and pans and they are just gorgeous! Now that I'm staying in one place I want to make my living space as comfortable as I can. My parents have already helped me in the right direction with the fabulous living room furniture and TV and so now my goal is to keep that up and invest in quality things that I will love for a long time. You can see what we were cooking with before and our beautiful new cookware in the second picture. What do you think?

I think the next thing we need to save for and invest in will be a new table and chairs. What are you saving for? Have you made any big purchases lately?

Anyway, to get back on topic- Happy Anniversary Matt! And thank you to everyone that recognized our special day!

A Weekend Filled with Celebration

I was able to get Friday off of work so I could go to my Dad's house and celebrate his 56th birthday with him. It was a fabulous meal (as always) of BBQ chicken, pork chops, salad, roasted potatoes and fresh buns. We also had the traditional DQ ice cream cake which Sharron added even more Reese Peanut Butter Cups to. Like it wasn't fattening enough already. It was delicious and we all stuffed ourselves. After supper we played Balderdash (which we call Bangladesh after Sharron slipped up and called it that years ago) and it was really hilarious. Some highlights included Foumart (An unsuccessful chain of grocery stores run by Mr. T) and Fingers (A movie about a gang of fingerless pirates who are unable to cut open their lemons and ultimately die of scurvy). Jules won for the first time too so that was nice for him. In case you're not familiar with the rules of Balderdash, they give you a word, movie title, name, etc and you have to make up a fake definition and then hope people choose yours as the correct definition. If you look closely at the picture you will see that we are all idiots and accidentally played from finish to start. Oops!

The next morning we had a fabulous breakfast and spent some more time visiting before heading off to see my Mom. Her birthday is on the 15th and so we wanted to see her and enjoy her fantastic cooking. She made ham, scalloped potatoes, fresh garden beets and carrots with rhubarb pie and ice cream for dessert. Basically that was the end of eating for the day. Haha!

We returned back to Edmonton and Matt and I spent the rest of the weekend together. Why? Well, it was our anniversary. September is busy! I will blog a bit more about our anniversary soon. I can't believe it's been ten years! Oh and if you want to see all the pictures from Dad's birthday you can go over here.

Look Who's Here!!

It's Leah!!! She arrived on Tuesday night all safe and sound! She drove to Edmonton from Vancouver all by herself! Brave! So now our apartment is complete! She's been a busy girl- she's already got a job, a bed and a date! Haha! Anyway, I am sure you'll be seeing and hearing more about her soon. Isn't she cute? Matt's family has good genes.

New Couch and Chair!

We got our new couch and chair this week. Sharron and Dad bought it for us as a present. I'm so excited because it's lovely, perfect and new. I don't think I've ever had a piece of quality furniture that wasn't a) left behind by a previous tenant, b) found next to a dumpster, or c) given to me as a hand-me-down. Matt struggled a bit with the unwrapping but now things are all set up and look amazing! Thanks guys! Now I just have to work on getting new stuff for my kitchen and bedroom. Baby steps though!

The Barbecue after the Wedding

I made a slide slow for this one. It was a lovely day and there was a lot of fabulous food. It was surreal visiting Cindy's Dad's farm since it has had a major face lift since the last time I was there. I kept wandering from room to room and marveling at all the changes and all my memories of being in that house. I spent almost as much time there as I did at my own house. It was cool seeing all the adorable babies even if it's a bit strange that it's our little sisters who have them (well, Cindy and Amy's anyway). I also got to see Lexi, one of Venus' puppies from the recent litter. She is getting so big already! It was nice to touch base with lots of people and just relax once the wedding was over and a success. Fun day! Here's a link to all the pictures.