Tangled

This afternoon, we took the girls to see Tangled at the movie theatre. It has been a while since we've been to the movies as a family but an outing to the movies is expensive these days. These days so many movies are released in 3D which Alia doesn't really enjoy. Most films don't need it. It is just an extra money grab.

Tangled was a cute movie and we had a good laugh. Max the horse was one of our favourite characters.

On the way home, Eric was joking with the girls that I was his Rapunzel (je t'aime aussi mon amour!) and I had once magic hair but I cut it so it was now brown and short like the princess in the movie. Kyra saw right through his joke. 'C'n'est pas vrai, papa. J'ai vu une photo de maman quand elle avait des cheveux longs et ils étaient bruns aussi!'

Sunday Afternoon in Toronto

For Sunday lunch, we took the girls to Lou Dawgs for our family’s fix of pulled pork sandwiches and BBQ! Eric had saving a coupon he purchased on the internet for this BBQ place downtown. This week, we decided to finally use it. Eric took the girls to music lessons while I stayed home and continued to ‘winter’ clean the closets and put away the laundry. After music lessons, we drove downtown and walked into this cozy pub with a live blues band! (2 man band = drummer/harmonica/vocals and electric guitar/vocals) Very cool. When we got there, we were the second customers there! The restaurant filled up half way through our meal. Most people seemed to leave with take out.

 They serve brunch on Sundays but we were looking for pulled pork! We ordered our pulled pork sandwiches, BBQ beans, and a ‘Loutine’ (poutine+pulled pork = yumm). The food was really good, the service was friendly (the girl even went to store to get a litre of milk for the girls since they were still waiting for their milk order to arrive and they usually only serve milk with coffee), and the music was good. They even sang You are my Sunshine for the girls!

I think we would definitely go back.

As we were heading home, the thought came to me that had I thought of it earlier, we would have brought our ice skates and would have stopped at Nathan Phillips Square or Harbourfront to go skating. The girls wanted to go skating so we swung by the house, grabbed our skates and headed to our local arena for 2:30 leisure skating. There were a lot of people but I was glad we were in the arena. It’s cold outside.

We skated for about an hour and then came home and put our feet up! I don’t think I am cooking supper tonight. Still full from lunch!

Back to the Routine!

January 11 - 14, 2011

Bonne Année! Shinnen aketemashite omedeto gozaimasu! Happy New Year! Time does fly!!

Everyone’s back into the regular routine. I start another course next week so I am using this week to catch up on all those small jobs that need to get done but always get pushed to one side. (btw…it has taken me 3 days to write these 3 sentences!!)

The girls are busy doing their homework. I am trying to get some writing done, helping Alia practice her dictée for the week and answering Kyra’s numerous questions! Alia often complains that Kyra’s homework is easier. It has been the same complaint since Grade 1 and Kyra was in JK. I have a fear it will be the same complaint until the end of their school days!!

Last weekend, we got a nice snowfall. At least now it looks like winter and the kids can play outside! This meant that the stores were empty Saturday morning because nobody wanted to leave their driveways!! Costco was actually relaxing (but expensive!!). Even Old Navy was pretty empty at 11:30 and having the girls try on new jeans was a breeze since there was nobody in the changing rooms. The girl who worked there seemed to be begging to helping get us other sizes as she had nothing to do.

The girls had a PA day on Monday. We bought some new skates for Kyra and went ice skating at Van Horne Park near our house. Now we know what that large shallow cement pit is: it’s an outdoor rink!! There were only two other teenage boys playing hockey so we mutually agreed to split the rink. We had a wonderful afternoon at the rink and then went to McDonalds for a hot chocolate and muffins.

La gratte a passé

The other evening, the girls became all excited when they heard the snowplow in front of the house. You would think they had never seen one before in their lives. They stayed by the window to watch it go by on the other side of the street. Come to think about it, it was the first time that our street had been plowed this winter (and we are in the second week of January)!!! Guess that's Toronto winter for you!!! ;)