Zip line adventure

We spent Wednesday with a group of friends at Greenview Aviaries. It's quite the place, and it's hard to believe how many animals they have at this little zoo in the middle of nowhere. The boys had a blast....well Alex did. Matthew has too many fears that prevent him from just being a kid and having fun. The highlight of Alex's day had to be the zipline! He did it about 20 times and is currently planning how to put one up in our own backyard. The video shows Alex zipping down the zipline, but if you watch carefully you will see his friend Spencer on the other side knocking down his little brother. Luckily he was not hurt, and we can look back at the video and laugh!

The weather was perfect for a day at the zoo. Hot in the sun, cool in the shade and no humidity. The boys fed the animals, splashed in the splashpad, jumped in the ball pit, played on the climbers, trampolines, and much more. It's hard to believe that not many people know about this place.

A special moment

Check out this video that was captured during the boys Preschool Graduation. Matthew has a special moment recorded of receiving his diploma. Also, look for Alex as soon as the video begins. A similar article to this was also in our local newspaper yesterday and both Alex and Matthew pictures made it into the paper!

http://photos.theobserver.ca/mycapture/enlarge.asp?image=24326737&event=784837&CategoryID=23529

A Beautiful Wedding

We now officially have a new brother-in-law, Patrick. Although we have considered him family for many years now and our boys do call him Uncle. Jesse's youngest sister AnnMarie was married on June 20th and it was a perfect day. We woke up that morning to a gray, overcast day. All week the weather had been forecasting showers all day. During our hair appointments at 9am it did heavily downpour, but cleared up before I had to leave the salon and then that was it. The sky was cloudy but there was no rain! The sun even shined. I suppose it was great conditions for the photographer. AnnMarie was absolutely stunning. WOW! She looked amazing and was meant to be a bride. The wedding party was equally beautiful. The girls were all allowed to choose their own dress - the only condition was it had to be black. One of the groomsman was from Trinidad. He was pretty neat to talk to because his accent was so nice to hear after all these years of living away from my family where I don't get to hear the nice rhythm of their language like I used to. The best part of the wedding for me was their first dance. They surprised everyone with a well rehearsed choreographed Rumba! They dance to Beyonce's song Halo and they did a fantastic job!

Beautiful day; Beautiful Wedding; Beautiful Couple. Congratulations AnnMarie and Patrick!

A weekend to remember

AnnMarie and Patricks wedding weekend has finally come and gone. AnnMarie is the youngest sibling in Jesse's family, and she sure made a stunning bride! I will do a second post about the wedding, but first onto my children and their many scraps, scratches, bumps and bruises. They both look like they have been through the shreader.

It started on Friday morning. I took the boys to play at the park. Everything was fine. I think the time when everything started to go bad was when I said "Nobody get hurt, we have a wedding to go to this weekend and the rehersal tonight". What do you think happened next?? Matthew took a swing straight to the face and cut his lip. His mouth was bleeding and he screamed so bad I had to pick him up and put him in the car to go home. That cut has turned out to be the smallest one of the weekend. Fast forward to the rehersal at the church, and four excited children running up and down a wheelchair ramp made out of concrete. Matthew fell not once but twice and cut his knees in three different spots. There is also a bruise on his calf from some other incident that I don't recall.

He was a mess. He didn't cry at all....not even for a second because he wanted to continue running but I know he was hurting. Luckily Grandma had three band-aids in her purse. Well that made it worse. He just wanted them off. Poor little guy. He just held his knees and whined about his 'boo-boos'.

We did manage to get through the wedding without a problem. Jesse and I hired a babysitter for the night so we could go to the reception alone. We were told we could bring them but how much fun would that have been for us? So we took them home after the church and put them in the hands of a 'not-so-experienced' thirtenn year-old. I changed them into the pyjamas and gave them dinner. It started to rain very heavy. Alex mentioned going outside to play with his rain boots and umbrella. Both Jesse and I quickly said (in front of the babysitter) that noone is playing outside...they were already dresses for bed anyway. We left, and the rain cleared up ad what fo you think she did....took them outside. We got a phone call in the middle of dinner from the babysitter saying Alex fell and cut his nose and knee. She said that he cried but he's okay now. Alex always cries even for the smallest bump so I figured it couldn't be too bad when the babysitter said that he was fine. I was shocked when I got home and saw this (he was asleep..this was taken in the morning)....

The part that upsets me is she told me he tripped outside but both Alex and Matthew say that he fell off his bike. I'm not impressed with her lying or taking them outside....perhaps we weren't direct enought about that. Thank goodness we have always made Alex wear his bike helmet and he says he had it on that night. I only wish that I had been there for him.

Oh yeah, appearently she also let the boys bring snails in the house and put them in the sink! That just about grosses me out. I am not a bug person...and in my house...ewwww!

The thing I have to remember is that they're boys and as the saying goes 'Boys will be Boys'! I'm just a little embarrassed to take them out in public until they start to heal.

Another home reno

Once again we tackled another room in our house to make it the way we had envisioned when we moved in four years ago. We had done some of the kitchen a year ago, but it was never complete. From the kitchen that we moved into back in January 2005 there is absolutely nothing remaining the same. Every detail has been changed from the previous owners. Last year we had a new counter top, back splash and sink put in; about two years ago we resurfaced the cabinets from the dark oak to white and new hardware; and now this past month we put in new flooring, baseboards and a new paint colour! I am so happy with the final result. I have been wanting new flooring since we moved in. The linoleum was old, stained and there was glue all along the baseboards. Jesse put in the tile himself, although he is a little disappointed with the grout colour. I did the painting and I'm so happy with the two different colours I chose! I honestly was looking around the kitchen and I can't find anything that we hadn't changed - we should be on that show where the previous owners come back and see all the changes made!!

Daddy's little helpers! Any time Jesse does home improvement these two drag out all their tools and get completely involved. They love it and are so happy to 'help'. This is after the old floor was ripped out, and we spent a week walking on sub flooring.

The new floor! Tile! and new higher baseboards!

This is an old shot for comparison. Notice the Oak cabinets, bad linoleum and crummy baseboards....what a difference!

A view of the new kitchen to show the two paint colours. The dark brown was also put on the back wall behind the kitchen table. I missed taking that picture (oops)

And the old paint colour.....

This is the final shot I can find that will show the old back splash, countertops, and dark wood. Great job Jesse! He poured a lot of work (blood, sweat & tears) to almost every detail of this kitchen. He did every single reno except the countertop installation and painting - I am the painter in this family!!

Now that the kitchen is done, it's time to move onto the downstairs bathroom! Yay!

Old Kids still got it

What a great concert!

My friend Laurie and I went to the New Kids on the Block concert last night, and all I can say is it was awesome! I went to see them in Detroit five months ago and this concert was almost identical but it was just better.

First of all, we went out to dinner beforehand in London at a bar across from the JLC. It was completely crowded with all females (and about 3 guys who probably had no clue what was going on). The crowd was electric...you could just feel it. Anyway, after dinner we walked around. There was a large crowd of girls waiting anxiously outside the tour buses, and long line-ups to get inside. We came across a door that had no line-up so we scooted inside. Well much to our surprise when they scanned our tickets (which were in the nosebleeds) their scanner beeped. She told us we had to go get new tickets over at the main entrance. We took our time checking out the (expensive) merchandise....$50 for a regular T-shirt...ouch! Then went to the 'relocate' table. All of a sudden we realized they were moving us to better seats. We had our choice of floor or level 100 seats. We chose level 100 because the floor seats were back a bit too far. Well, what can I say but that we had the best seats I've ever had at all five NKOTB concerts I've been to. We were so close to the stage that we didn't even have to look at the jumbotron....we could actually see their eyes. Donnie Wahlberg singled out a man in the audience who was sitting 6 seats to our right (in the row in front of us). If he could see him, he could definitely see us. LOL!

Here is a picture not zoomed in of how close we were...it may look far in the picture but in reality it wasn't, especially when they came over to the side platform.

It was a great time. Last time Jesse came with me and we had horrible seats. And of course Jesse had no interest in them, but this time with Laurie we danced and sang to every song!

My personal favourite Joe....I saw on facebook someone who had very good floor seats who was sitting right behind his wife and son!

This was a segment they did after the song Click Click Click. It is a song about taking pictures and they quickly get into a 'fancy' pose at the end of the song which gets shot and put on the big screen. The picture was pretty funny and they were critiquing it and making fun of themselves. One of the funnier moments of the night.

No matter how much times goes by I will always have a soft spot for the New Kids. It has honestly been 20 years since I first started my teenage infatuation with them and it is still a thrill for me to go to a concert. It is evident most New Kids fans feel the same since the thousands of screaming 30+ year old ladies were acting like 13 years olds last night. If they come back to this area again I will be there! Although this one will hold good memories for me because I did win these tickets and the seats were awesome!

Some more pictures to enjoy....Donnie W

Joe and Jon saying good-bye to the crowd

And two (slightly crazy) fans in matching T-shirts from a 1990 concert that we were both at (but we didn't know each other at the time).

Bride for a day

I got the honour of being a model at a local bridal show on Friday night. When I was asked to be part of the Bridal show.....which was the largest of all bridal shows I have ever been to, I was a little apprenhensive but I'm so glad I did it! I was nervous the night before at the rehearsal but at the moment when it was my turn to walk along the stage I was completely fine. Each one of us had to come out one at a time and be introduced. The audience gave us a big round of applause.
Ignore the freaky red eyes! These pictures were taken from a distance while I was walking the runway!!

The morning of the show I received a phone call from the bridal shop telling me they have changed their mind on which dress I would wear. Instead of a Wedding dress they would make me a bridesmaid. I was a little disappointed, but it turned out that I got to wear both! I have to admit I think my two dresses were the nicest of the entire show. I can't take credit - they just gave them to me to put on!

This is the beautiful bridesmaid dress. I loved it. All the other girls were wearing bright colours like peach, yellow, pink, etc. I'm not sure I would choose black as a colour for my bridesmaid, but as a dress colour it's usually my first pick. After the runway show, they had us walk through the crowd in our dresses so people could see it close up...smart thinking on their part!

The bonus of the day was hair and make-up. We were all treated to the works. The make-up was on the heavy side but it was because of the show. If I didn't have my Mary Kay eye make-up remover I may have been in trouble later that night taking it all off!!

Jesse brought the boys out to watch. It was so awesome to be standing up there and hear Alex's voice yelling 'Hi Mommy'!! It was a great experience and I would do it again in a heartbeat.