Recap

Whew! Time is certainly flying by and it's not because we're spending all our waking moments enjoying the summer. The weather has not been great but yet we are still busy with everything!

Here's what we've been up to:

Cara-Li finished school almost 2 weeks ago with rave reviews from her wonderful teacher, Mme. V, who mentionned to me that Cara-Li was the student that showed the greatest improved throughout the year. She started off hardly speaking any French and being very reserved and quiet to a a young girl who is no longer shy to speak French. As Mme. V put it, 'Cara-Li blossomed into a beautiful rose right before everyone's eyes.' It is soooo nice to hear this and after my 5 minute telephone conversation with Mme. V, I was certainly the proudest Mom on earth! Congratulations Cara-Li on your success in 1st grade!

For Father's Day, we went to Granby Zoo. Every year we go to a park of sorts with the girls on this day. It is a great way to spend the day. This year we packed a lunch as I didn't want to eat the usual junk available at these places. It was great fun! Granby Zoo has been totally renovated adding a waterpark which is always welcomed at the end of the day when it is really hot out. To end the day, we then had dinner at my parents' house.

These bats were NOT part of the zoo animals. They were just these wild things hanging up side down for a nap! They were HUGE!

Next... since Cara-Li finished school a week before most, we sent her to the Day Camp at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts with a neignbour of ours, S. There she discovered that a girl from her class was also attending. The day always started off with a visit to the museum, sketching what they saw and then followed by reproducing their interpretion of the art. They did some painting, sculpting, stain glass painting and watercolour. It all ended with a vernissage where we got to visit the museum and their art work. It was extremely fabulous and Cara-Li really enjoyed her week there. After the exhibit, we had 30 minutes to kill before picking up a frien, we decided to stop off at Pub Alexandre and I had a wonderful Kir Royale on the terrace just like in Paris! A great start to the weekend!

Cara-Li is now in the Mo-West Day Camp for 4 weeks and in swimming for 9 weeks. She seems to be having fun with the other 10 boys in her group. Yup... they assign 1 girl with 10 boys! Who was the planner here? I was going to ask to have her moved but apparently she likes her group and doesn't want to change. Should I start worrying yet???

A couple of weeks ago, I, along with some friends from the neighbourhood, started power walking in the evening. We do this twice a week and for one hour. We are a group of eight and although not everyone comes each time, you are always guaranteed to have someone to walk with. We meet at 8:30PM at a particular corner and whoever is there is there. It has been great and my legs are starting to feel it. This is part of my get fit and lose weight program that I am on. So I go to the gym 3 times a week and power walk for 2. I rest on weekends. Also, in two weeks I will be starting the South Beach diet. With this, I should be able to lose the extra pounds that i didn't lose in the crazy diet from a few weeks ago. I am proud to say that I have not gained any of that weight back either!

Last weekend was our first weekend at the cottage. Luckily, there were no surprises. Gord was with us which explains the lack of surprise! Gord mysteriously is never around when stuff goes wrong at the cottage ;) Well, we did have one surprise. M, who is the 7 year old granddaughter of our cottage neighbour, was up visiting. Cara-Li and M. have not seen each other in 2 years but did not miss a stride. They kept going back and forth from one house to the other the entire weekend. M. is 2 days older than Cara-Li and is also adopted but from Georgia (not USA but Russia) so they have a very special connection. Here are some pictures of the girls fishing. Too cute!

That is all for now. Will try to post more frequently instead of one huge one every 2 weeks.

Happy Father's Day!

Dear Daddy,

We wish you, our Daddy, the bestest in the world, a very Happy Daddy's Day. We will have fun today going to the zoo to see all the animals. Thank you for all the things that you do for us like kissing our booboos and brushing our hair and playing with us.

We love you lots!!!

Your daughters,

Cara-Li and Alexia

Some Thoughts

Some of you asked what were the results of that nutty diet I was on last week. I lost 5 lbs. in 1 week. I must say I felt like crap during that week but now my clothes are fitting so much better! I need to lose 5 more lbs. but the memories of last week are still too fresh to start again. I will wait a little before doing it again. Mom lost 7 lbs. and Gord lst 8 lbs. My first meal was not too tasty and I had trouble getting it in, lunch was a little better and pretty normal by dinner. Now I am trying to be careful of what I eat until I figure out some sort of plan. I also continue to exercise 3 times a week. We shall see...

A couple of bittersweet moments this week:

First, I unpacked the diaper bag and retired it for good. Great news as Alexia is out of diapers... sad news as I most probably will never use that bag again :(

Second, Cara-Li scored her first goal at soccer today in the pouring rain (what a trouper!). Sad part, Mom wasn't there to witness it (I'm not crazy to sit in the rain!).

Third, for the first time I thought to myself that 2 kids is as much as we can handle. Always thought that we might go for a third but at this point I really feel that 2 is just right for our family. A little sad...

There's the Finish Line!

It is Sunday and it is the end of my silly diet. Let me back track.

Day 5: I woke up this morning feeling almost as bad as the day before sue to my wild cold. So I stayed in bed pretty much all day. Well, actually, I got up at 2PM and was in a car at 2:15PM making my way to the Cirque du Soleil. Yah! Just what I wanted to do today... I WAS a great show and did feel better afterwards. Mostly especially because we were allowed to eat chicken. Plain roasted chicken and tomates. So that is what we did right after the Circus and within minutes my belly started to ache. Not used to eating something so solid, I guess.

Day 6: Today was going to be a great day. We could have steak and veggies. The biggest part of my day was going to Loblaws to prepare for our feast. I got a honkin' piece of filet mignon at god knows what price and a huge variety of veggies to stir-fry. Did not enjoy my trip at the grocery store as I couldn't buy anything else and I was light-headed. But that. steak. was. some. good!

Day 7: And the final one. THANK GOD! Brown rice and veggies. OK. Not bad as it is the first carb in 7 days. It actually was pretty tasty.

Tomorrow: I have been thinking for a few days what I would eat on my very first day of real eating. Breakfast is a toss up between an english muffin and peanut butter or vanilla yogurt and berries. Hell. I might just have both! Lunch is for sure gonna be pizza. I have craving pizza since day 1 and if you know me well at all, pizza is not ONE of my favorite foods. Wierd! Dinner I think is going to be fish but I haven't figured out what sides. There. That's what I'm gonna have.

Through all this Gord has been painting the main bathroom from bright orange to a more subdued straw colour. Perhaps I'll have some pics tomorrow. It is still completely upside down.

And it continues...

We are still plugging along on our diet and boy, it is really tough! But I have set my mind on this so I am getting through each day some how.

Day 3: Today was fruits & vegetables all day all the time. Not too bad but we were looking for something hot to eat. So for dinner, I made a delicious vegetable stir-fry that both Gord and I wolfed up. Along with the usual soup and things were not too bad.

Day 4: Today was bananas and milk. Yup, that's it, bananas and milk all day. So it was a smoothie for breakfast and well, bananas and milk for lunch and dinner. I, however, contracted whatever virus the girls had and went home at 3PM to lie down. Besides the terrible cough that I have had for a couple of days, I was hit with the worst cold of the year. So my meals were the least of my worries as i was trying not to die from my cold.

Let's see what tomorrow brings....

Day 1 & Day 2

OK. So I started a 7-day cleansing diet yesterday. Yup. My mother, Gord and I are doing it. Let's just say, it has not been easy!

Day 1: All we were allowed to eat was vegetable soup (all you can eat) and fruit and nothing else. Basically, throughout the 7 days, you can eat all the soup you want or can (or can stand!). Eating fruit all day is not that easy. At one point you just want to eat something salty but you can't. So I showed up at work with a Banker's box full of fruits and soup. Everyone thought I was a little bit cooky. Gord called me mid-day stating that he was going to have a steak and a beer cause he just couldn't take it anymore (but he didn't). Anyway, by the end of the day, we were all pretty nasty so it was off to bed early with no Food Network viewing.

Day 2: Today was vegetable only day. Really was not easy! I like my veggies with dip or butter or sour cream or something. But I stuck it out and ate my soup and cold veggies. Yuck! By 4PM, I will literally starving and very light headed. But I munched on a carrot stick and it passed. For dinner, we were allowed to eat a baked potato with butter. I added some steamed asparagus and it was a dinner fit for a king! Topped it all off with some tomatoes, avocados and cucumber. Not bad however I still had huge hunger pains throughout my meal. It is now 9PM and I am going staight to bed with hopes of falling asleep quickly so as not to think about food too much!

Oops... I gotta go. Alexia needs to pipi and it sounds fairly urgent....

The Angry Post

I have to say I am pretty upset about a couple of things this evening. It all started with last Thursday evening at Cara-Li's soccer game. All the parents were sitting in the stands watching their kids practice. Our team, the green team, was shorta player so the other team, the purple team, passed us a player. The mom of the said player started huffing in the stands stating that she wasn't sure that she wanted her daughter to switch team. Puhlease! They are 7 years old. But wait. It goes on. Besides the fact that she wouldn't shut up about this and that, she still managed to find time to make comments about how the green team really could not manage without her daughter. So every time her daughter came to her for water, mom begged her to return to the game quickly as her team really, really needed her. Double puhlease! She even made a comment about green player #5 (my Cara-Li) which I did not catch. Lucky for her as I was ready to deck her! Soccer Mom rage! But no. I kept my cool as I did not want to be confrontational with her. She was just not worth it!

Another hot topic this evening was the following. Our dear friends who live two blocks away on our street are moving away. Well, in fact, they are only moving two streets over. There was talk some months ago about throwing them a going away party. Great! I thought. Something to look forward to and plan. Well, guess what? The party has been planned and scheduled without our consultation at all. And it is going to be on a dayt hat we are not even going to be in town! Not only was I not asked to help plan it but it was planned on a day that we can not even attend the said party. And the party planners know that we are very close to this family. I mean really close! The 9 year old daughter of one party planner mentionned the date to me this afternoon and when I said that it would be impossible for us to be there, you know what she said?? Well, we'll just have to have a seperate party for them!! OK. I am really pissed off about it this and the more I think about it, the more upset I am getting. Ughhhh!

However, someone good things happened this weekend. Alexia is pretty much potty-trained. She's had no accidents during the day the entire week (we only started last week!), has been dry during her afternoon naps and was dry last night! Yeah Alexia! Gord and I finished up the few things in our bathroom that was renovated last year. And I did some paint touch ups around the house. We also went to a garage sale at Mortimer's Mom's house. They were raising money for Breast Cancer. The girls had fun with each other as usual. And finally, tonight, as we were going to bed, Cara-Li and I had a really nice talk about China. Just as a reminder, Mortimer's Mom's daughter Dumpling comes from the same orphanage as Cara-Li and they were together there for 5 months. Cara-Li always picks a different stuffy to sleep with every night and tonight it was Prescott's turn. Prescott is a fox that came to China with us when we went for Cara-Li. Cara-Li wanted to know what other stuffy had come along for the trip and that other lucky fellow was Canada Bear. But what she didn't know was that we had brought along 4 Canada Bears, 3 of which we put in a care package (along with other donations) to give to the orphanage the day we went to visit. We were not allowed to visit so we left our packages at the gate with a note stating that these goodies were for the babies and the nannies. Cara-Li then states that perhaps Dumpling had played with one of the Canada Bears that we had brought since she was a tiny baby in that orphanage at that time. Yup, perhaps she did. In fact, I hope she did. Anyway, it sure brought a smile to Cara-Li's face to think that our bear might have been in Dumpling's little hands before we actually even met her. So now I will go to bed with this thought instead of all the other nastiness that goes on in this world. Good night!

Weekend Wrap up

Well, this past weekend didn't quite go as I had planned. There are so many things I want to do around the house before we start heading to the cottage in 3 three weeks (that's if the warm weather ever comes!). But for some reason, the weekends just slip by with no real accomplishments done. Cara-Li played soccer in the rain followed by a movie with her dad and her friend Dumpling and BB. The big plan this weekend was to visit with a family (Bonjour MJ!) that travelled with us to China for Alexia. They have an older daughter, MK, who is Cara-Li's age and travelled with them as well. So it was a little reunion for them too. They have recently moved to the Montreal area and we have been meaning to get together with them. It was great to see them again of course and their little one NL. For their visit, I made Ricardo's Vietnamese spring rolls which were fun to make and delicious. They consisted of rice noodles (not pictured), shrimp, chop suey, mango, cucumber, carrot, green onion and mint served with a peanut sauce. Yummy!

On Sunday, Cara-Li and Gord went to the cottage for a few hours so Alexia and I were alone for the better part of the day. So I decided that we would begin our toilet training session that I have been dreading for months. So off came the PJ bottoms and on went the training pants. Slippers were replaced my Crocs (in case of an accident) and a bowl was filled with candy. It was a tough go and after 2 accidenst and a nap, Alexia finally went to the potty. Finally!! I was justa bout to give up. She was very proud of herself and she loved getting a candy that she had been eyeing all day. Yummy!

Cara-Li finally came home and while potty training and making supper, we started making Zebra Cake. She has to do an English oral on her favorite dessert along with a description on how to make it. So out came the camera for a step by step instruction. We will be putting together a poster board and Cara-Li will explain it all. Here is the fianl product which we finally got to taste. PS: It is also my favorite!