Party Like You're Turning 5!

My nephew, Crew, is turning five next month, but he had a friend birthday party today. He wanted a Halloween party so that's why they did it so early.

Mark and I got to stop by for a bit and the munchkins did not disappoint. Here's a pic and then two vids of the kids playing dance/freeze (dance when music's playing and freeze when it stops....duh).

Please note the excellent freeze poses by Rocky and Crew in this next video. They'd be the ninja and spiderman with one leg in the air.

Five Not So Quick Takes

Kind of a catch up blog post. Here it goes:

1. While I was reading this hilarious blog I found a link to this white noise website and found a free download for thunderstorm noise. This is awesome! It totally relaxes you and helps in falling asleep. It's also great when you have young kids. My sister in law has a white noise machine for putting her son down for his nap.

2. We went to visit the new LDS temple in Calgary. It's up in the north (we live in the south). It's really beautiful. We brought the two nephews who were really reverent the whole time we were inside. I think I heard that Rocky (2yearold) asked grandma "where's Jesus?". Too cute!

 Rocky (aka: spiderman)

 Family shot

 For some reason I thought the whole building was going to be in the picture since my mother in law said, "I'm trying to get angel Moroni (the statue on top) in the picture." I guess he didn't fit.

 These windows on the outside were so beautiful. They're images of wheat (reflective of the building being in the province of Alberta...I guess there's lots of wheat in Alberta.) It kind of reminded me of peacocks though, which are also beautiful and which remind me of home.

Crew and Rocky partaking of cookies and water in fancy schmancy chairs.

3. Canadian Thanksgiving has come and gone! What? No! "That's weird!" says all the Americans reading this. 

Canadian Thanksgiving fell on Monday 8 October this year. I think it's usually around the second Monday in October. My mother in law said it's because the fall season happens sooner here (and is over sooner too). They have all the same foods as American Thanksgiving. It's not as huge I've heard. Prob because they don't make a four to seven day weekend of it. We actually ate on Sunday instead. On Monday it was raining so we couldn't go do much. We did go see The Amazing Spiderman at the $5 theatRE*.

(*Canadian lesson: they spell some words slightly different than the states. They switch the "er" to "re" in words like centre, theatre, litre. I've also noticed they like to add "u's" in words where Americans got lazy and took them out of like colour, harbour, labour. Here's a  big old list of these differences.)

 Not the best pic of our dinner, but I had to document before everyone stuffed their faces. Missing are the sweet potatoes which were just coming out of the oven with the marshmallows getting huge on top.

I tried an autumn dessert recipe found on pinterest. It's called Pumpkin Better Than Anything Cake. I made a slight mistake. I was supposed to mix pumpkin puree and just the cake mix together, not the other stuff for the cake (eggs, oil, water), but it still came out okay. I think I would've liked a little more pumpkin flavor happening though which may come from doing the recipe the right way. There was also some helpfulness from this other blog about the recipe.

4. Since I made the above recipe there was still some pumpkin puree left over in the can so I decided to make some pumpkin cookies. This recipe comes from Barbara Terrill from Monrovia, CA. I grew up eating these cookies every year. They are delicious and pretty easy to make. You just mix everything up and throw 'em in the oven. So easy!

I got about four and half dozen out of the recipe and they were gone in a day. Soooo...they taste pretty good.

Here's the recipe:

1 cup sugar

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup shortening

1 egg

2 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 cup chocolate chips

Mix together - drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 to 375 degrees for 10 - 12 minutes.

I cooked at 350 for 10 minutes and they came out perfect!

Here's some pics to show you how perfect and yummy!

5. It was my birthday yesterday. I hate getting older, but I love my birthday. It was a bit/really hard to have a birthday where I couldn't have friends and family call me because they don't have out of country long distance (except for my mom and stepdad - my mom did call). But my in laws did get me pizza for dinner (love) and an ice cream cake (looove) and got me some presents. 

Oh, and Canada got me the first snow to stick for the season! Whaaaat? Don't like that gift Canada! Take it back! Exchange, please!

Mark Turns 30!

A little over a week ago on September 26th my husband hit a milestone birthday. The big 3-0! I am exactly two weeks younger than him so next week I, unfortunately, hit the same milestone. I hate getting older. I'm not gonna lie. I like being young and the feeling of having my whole life ahead of me. I guess it helps that I look about 5-10 years younger than I actually am (people usually guess I'm around 21 years old). 

Anyway! This is not about me. It's about Mark's birthday. Here are some pics that I've taken from around his mom's house of him when he was a youngster and, yes, I did take them with my phone's camera because we left our printer/scanner in the states with half of our other possessions that wouldn't fit in our car...so that means you get to see some high quality, classy photos of him as a funster (my mom's made up word for toddlers).

Then there are some pics from some birthday celebrations with cake and Mark blowing out not 30 candles.

 Loving the mullet on the left and Chelsea's gloves. On the right: Mark has always loved cars (notice the look on his face = I look pretty fly in this sweet ride).

"Mandy's Home!"

One of the nice things about when Mark and I got married is that I inherited some new nieces and nephews. Most of my nieces and nephews from my older siblings are teenagers now and I've missed having younger kids around in the family. In moving to Calgary we get to live near Mark's sister, Chelsea. A couple Mondays ago she asked if I'd watch her boys, Crew and Rocky, while she went to work. It was a pretty great day...also a bit tiring, but really fun!

 Rocky is two and he l-o-v-e-s wearing his spiderman costume. That's what he wanted to wear to the park so I let him. It's cute. He actually has a new costume now that has a mask and he's always wearing it and "webbing" people. One time when I went over to their house Rocky yelled downstairs to Crew "Mandy's home!" He's so cute!

Crew is four, almost five. He can already ride a two wheel bike! He had one lesson with his dad and a couple weeks later he got on and just rode it. While Rocky took a nap Crew and I played with play doh for almost two hours. We had some good laughs!

Goodbye Summer :(

Okay, so it's only been like three or four weeks ago (no biggie, right?), but our ward from church had a bbq one Saturday at Sundance Lake. It was a beautiful, hot day and I was loooooving it! I knew there wouldn't be many days like this left in Calgary. 

(My sis-in-law, Mercedez is out on a paddle board on the left.)

It's crazy to think that when winter hits you can ice skate on this lake! I know because I did it two winters ago when Mark and I were engaged and I was up visiting.

So sad to see summer go :(

Labour Day

I know, I know. Two blog posts in one day. Too much! Oh well.

To finish off the weekend on Monday was Labour Day (yes, they have labour day in Canada and they put a "U" in it) and we got together with Mark's mom, Dave, Tanessa, and Mercedez who were watching our nephews, Crew and Rocky, while Chelsea and Steve were out of town.

We went to Peter's Drive In. It's near downtown Calgary and they have burgers, hot dogs, fries, onion rings, and (what I think they're best known for) milk shakes. You can get a shake in probably almost any flavor you could want. Oreo, please.

Then we went down to where this old mall is. It's not too huge and a little ghetto. We were mostly walking through until we saw a cool little store and stopped to check it out. Crew and Rocky didn't think it was as cool as the escalator, which they rode up and down until everyone looking in the store was ready to go.

Then we went to this nice park that was outside the mall and walked around. There was a river by it that the boys loved throwing rocks into. It kind of felt like a mini Central Park because we could see all the big buildings from downtown right next to the park.

Left: Rocky saying "cheeeeese" / Right: Crew going down

Mark isn't throwing Rocky over the side. He's showing him the ducks.

Okay, now I have to stop wasting time and go work on permanent residency stuff.

Sicamous (sick-ah-moose)

After our DAYS of moving up to Calgary we had Sunday to unpack, rest, and repack a suitcase and then we were off on Monday morning to go meet up with Mark's mom, stepdad, Dave, and two younger sisters, Tanessa and Mercedez in Sicamous, British Columbia. It's about a 6 hour-ish drive. Sorry for the picture overload. These were all from my camera phone, so sorry about that too. It's just easier to carry in your pocket and take a quick pic.

They have fences along the side of the highway to keep the animals from trying to cross and getting hit by traffic, so they had to build these animal crossings so they could get to the other side.

Once you get up past Banff, around Lake Louise area, the river water on the side of the road starts getting light blue/turquoise colored. It's so pretty!

Our first night we drove the boat out to this floating restaurant called the Shark Shack. Good food!

Mercedez, Tanessa, and Val at the restaurant.

After eating we went over to another floating dock across from the restaurant to fill up with gas...

...and check out the convenience store...

...nice one, Tanessa.

Tanessa and Mercedez on the tube.

Mark skiing.

Mercedez getting a boat driving lesson from Uncle Greg.

Stud at the wheel.

Mercedez taught me how to make these bracelets...Mark + Mandy = BFF

Blue, the boat doggy!

Margaret Falls = beautiful!

On the right: Dave and Tanessa in front of the waterfall.

 Blue just walked right into the freezing water...she was thirsty!

On our way back to Sicamous we saw a market by the side of the road. We stopped to get some produce and they had a little farm that we got to check out.

We stopped by Dutchmen Dairy which makes their own freakin' ice cream! It.was.amazing.

 Thank you, little cows, for such delicious ice cream...well actually, thank you to the mommy cows.

On Saturday we got together with Val's brother, Greg, and four of his five kids and some of there kids (a mini fam reunion). Greg and his son both had boats too, so we had three boats and went to this little beach they knew of. They had this old banana boat they call Jaws and everyone had fun getting pulled around by that. The falling off part...wellllll...yeah, it was fun that one time I fell off and got water up my nose...and that other time I fell off face first into the water....and that other time my head hit someone else's body as everyone fell in the water. After all that I just chilled on the sand with my friend, Harry Potter.

The rest are just random shots from around the lake.

After a week of living in a little trailer with six people and a dog and bumping around on a boat almost everyday I was ready to come back to a regular sized house and not swaying while standing on land (I really did sway while standing after being on the boat all day. It was a weird feeling).

I had a lot of fun and it was so beautiful. My first trip to BC was a treat! It has some really amazing places to see.

Great vaca!