Finally. I placed an order from Toys R Us for the girls’ Christmas presents this year from us. It’s been hard because they already have a lot of things, especially Veronika who inherited all of her older sister’s toys and wouldn’t understand what’s going on anyways…. BUT I want Natasha to see her little sister receiving gifts as well. So… Matthew gave me a budget and told me to “go nuts with it” and he doesn’t care what I get, just get it over with. So I did.

For Natasha:

Panda Cub

Thomas & Friends - Railway Rhythms Pop Up Songbook - English Edition

For Veronika:

Musical Inchworm

Activity Board

Teddy Bear Stacker

And for the girls to share:

Interactive Electronic Table

These are all the gifts from Matthew & I, as I am sure they’ll get a ton more stuff from the grandparents and other family.

The girls will not see the toys until Christmas morning when they wake up. The gifts will be hidden and when they go to bed on December 24th, we will place all the wrapped presents under the tree; they will get to unwrap them first thing in the morning. BUT. We’re starting a new tradition this year where each girl will receive a new set of holiday pyjamas and that is the ONLY gift they can open on Christmas Eve. Each girl will go to bed in new jammies (which I already bought)!

Picture of new pyjamas

When they’re a bit older (maybe next year), we will probably do a new set of pyjamas and a new book to take to bed. Also, starting next year, we will take the girls to the store and each will be able to pick out a new ornament for the tree. I want them to have traditions to look forward to each year. I am sure we will have more of them over time, but these are for starters.

 Hope your Halloween is SPOOKtacular!!

We have no plans for this Halloween, as we never do. We're going to buy a bag of candy incase some kids show up, but we doubt they will as we live in an apartment building. I think Matthew came up with the idea to buy candy just so that he can eat it himself.

ANYWAY.... poor Veronika has no costume... I just couldn't find anything cute for her that was in her size. Everything is awfully bulky, which makes sense if you're going trick-or-treating in the cold weather, but since we are not... well it's just not worth it for me. We'll get her a costume next year.

Natasha has a costume someone gave us.... I think it's pretty cute:

 And some Fall pics from yesterday...

Matthew was having an awful day yesterday - pretty much everything went wrong for him, including these two things:

1. First thing in the morning he managed to get stuck in our elevator. The bloody thing won't open its doors and Matthew was riding up & down from the basement to the last floor about a megazillion times... 30 minutes and lots of curse words later he managed to push the doors open. Of course this made him late for work and therefore late coming home in the evening.
   

2. Then, after the girls went to bed, we started watching season 3 finale of LOST. It was exciting... what season finale isn't?! Anyway, about half-an-hour into the episode Matthew's computer screen suddenly froze. No big deal, right? He tried all kinds of things to 'unfreeze' it and finally ended up rebooting the machine. And then what happens??? He gets a lovely black screen with all kinds of messages on it. Long story short - his hard drive died off... burned out... kaput! Poor Matthew (poor computer?) Anyhow, we don't know if he'll even be able to recover the data from the dead hard drive, but in the meantime we ordered a new Dell computer. Should be here within two weeks...
   
   That's 2 LONG WEEKS I don't get to stare at HUNKY SAWYER!

My dear beloved husband hasn't slept for two nights in a row because he was waiting for some IPOD APPLICATIONS TO BECOME AVAILABLE!!! He spent a huge part of each night getting up and checking for availability, only to find that the iTunes store website has crashed due to high demand. Awwwww!!! How sad.. awww! I mean seriously... is it THAT important to get all the new applications and gadgets the moment when they become available? Hmm, well, I guess if you're a high-end computer geek, it must be. Anyway, he got them sometime during the night today and was glowing this morning. He now has a Monkey-Ball game on his iPod Touch, and get this: he can control the iTunes on his computer through his iPod!! i.e. he uses te iPod Touch as a remote control!

*sigh* the life with a computer geek..........

xoxo

... Happy 3 year wedding anniversary to us!

Yes, it's been 3 whole years since we tied the knot. It doesn't quite seem like it, and it's even more unbelievable we have 2 beautiful daughters by our third anniversary... crazy, eh? Matthew surprised me this morning with a beautiful gift from People's Jewelry - white gold pendant shaped like a heart and covered with little diamonds on one side, attached to a necklace. Very elegant! He said it's to match my engagement ring and wedding band. Very thoughtful.

Matthew, being that he's so difficult to shop for, will pick out his own gift. He's currently browsing the Future Shop website for potential gifts for himself... hmm... I wonder what gadget he'll get next??!!

To celebrate, we're doing absolutely NOTHING. We don't have time, and it's totally okay with us!

Um. I don't know what to call this "dish". But basically most mornings these days Matthew and I don't have time to eat breakfast together. Usually, I am feeding Natasha who wakes up like a hungry little wolf, and Matthew makes himself breakfast in the meantime in order to make it for work in time. Anyway... this is how he makes eggs for himself. It's not quite "sunny-side-up", and it's not quite "scrambled". In fact, it's a mixture of both.

Introducing... "Sun Rise"...

*sigh* Some men and some kitchens just don't mix!

So I had this entry all typed up yesterday and then just before posting it, I pressed on something that deleted the entire post. In my rage I made Matthew disable the smilies feature of this blog because I think that's what caused it to happen. Anyway...

Matthew's 27th birthday is coming up on March 30th and I've been asking him for weeks now to give me some birthday present ideas. But it just wasn't happening because his usual reply was a plain, old "nothing". Well, that wasn't working for me. I then resorted to having him come up with an Amazon wishlist, which he did, but looking at it I realized I did not want to get him yet another book or another DVD because that's all he ever asks for. I wanted something else, and he wasn't helping me! Besides, even though I know he loves his books, we don't have a lot of room left for them in our overstuffed bookcase.

I did, however, notice him mention the all-new-and-amazing 32GB iPod Touch recently. He wasn't actually saying he wanted it, but he just kept bringing it up here and there, and saying how cooler it was than his own 2-year-old 4GB iPod Nano. So I finally asked him if maybe he wanted the iPod Touch for his birthday, to which he quickly brought up the cost and the fact that his Nano was still functioning properly. But even though he kept bringing up all the cons, he still kept talking about all the pros of this little device. So I made up my mind and told him he's getting iPod Touch.

Surprisingly, it didn't take any convincing. Haha. I knew he wanted it and the rest was just talk. So yesterday afternoon we went to the Apple Store, and before having any second thoughts, we purchased the iPod Touch. Needless to say, Matthew spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening playing with his cool new "toy".

But just for fun, I had to make him a tad guilty for making this purchase.... So I pointed out how the cost of the iPod Touch could have bought us 30 whole cans of baby formula! 30 cans! It totally worked, but he knew I was just kidding... "30 cans of formula" is the name Matthew gave his new birthday present.

This post is entirely dedicated to my husband Matthew because today is his very first Father's Day. And like many normal married couples we tend to have our arguments and disagreements, but overall I have to admit that my hubby is probably the best I could ask for. And I could probably go on forever outlining the many reasons as to why I married this guy and why I love being his wife, but I am going to narrow this down a few main reasons.

1. He's extremely logical. And considering I am not always logical myself (), he balances me out quite well by pointing out the non-logic in my arguments or convictions. He's also very level-headed and has an ability to place himself outside of a situation and think about different matters from a neutral perspective which really helps in decision making.   

2. He loves budgets. Matthew is a genius with numbers (including Math & science) and has an ability to budget well (no wonder he dedicated 5 years of his life to working at BMO!). Now this contributes to our marriage very well because, like any other woman, I love spending money. Or rather, overspending. And so instead of kicking me out of my habit (which is impossible), Matthew created a budgeting system for me in which I can still spend money on clothes and other stuff I need/want, but still allow us to stay above water. Nice, eh? He's also created a budget for all our other expenditures and is very strict (but fair) about it.

3. He was great during my labour. Yes, he was excellent, in fact. I've heard too many stories of husbands being too weak or watching the events occur from the sidelines, but Matthew was nothing like this. He was there for me from start to end, and not just physically there, but mentally too. He held my hand through every painful contraction; he helped me time and record them and made the decisions when I couldn't think straight. He brought me ice chips and spent 2 long nights sleeping in a chair just so he could witness the birth of his first baby daughter.

4. He couldn't care less for cars. Okay, I know this would seem "abnormal" to most people, but Matthew has zero interest in cars. Or cell phones, for that matter. And to me the biggest turn-off in the world is a guy who knows anything and everything about cars and wouldn't shut-up about it. Matthew would rather spend the time talking about books, religion, family... cars is practically never a topic of interest for him, and boy, am I grateful! 

5. He's absolutely great with house-work. I think he's even better than me with it. Matthew is really bothered by mess and clutter and disorder generally irritates him. So he takes the time to ensure the house is organized, which I know many men don't worry about. But Matthew does. He washes dishes several times a week, he cooks me delicious (mostly Indian) meals now and then, he dusts the entire house every week, takes out garbage, does shopping, and sweeps the floors. Now, how many men do that?

And on top of all that, he's gentle and is a great great father to Natasha. There are many more reasons I could list, but I wanted to list a few main ones.
Happy Father's Day, Matthew!

Well, we're back from Montreal!

Honestly speaking I have a lot of stuff to either marvel or moan about but it would turn this post into a long essay-like-post and we don't want that, do we now?  So to keep it short and to the point, all I can say is that the time away was a great break to recharge and relax, as well as have some "us" quality time. Which we did. We visited many interesting places, such as the Bio Dome, Olympic Tower, Notre Dame Basilica, and more. We also went to several different restaurants, including a French restaurant called Le Saint-Sulpice which was absolutely horrible (both food and service wise), the Keg Steakhouse and Baton Rouge which were both fantastic, and a few others. Of course we also visited the Old City, downtown Montreal, the huge underground mall, and scanned the area near our Hotel du Fort.

Oh, and we saw 2 incredibly disturbing movies:
Knocked Up - a very disturbing yet hysterically funny comedy about a girl who had a one-night-stand with a weird guy and ended up pregnant. And,
Severance - an even more disturbing horror-comedy about a group of colleagues stranded in the middle of some forest and get killed one by one (lotsa blood, very gory).

Besides that, Natasha did very well at my parents. They kept her on the same schedule we do at home and so this helped her get through the time without too much drama. She seemed happy and content every time I called my mom to check up on her (3 times a day!). However, yesterday she suddenly developed an extreme case of baby heat-rash and now her tummy, neck, and shoulders are covered in red splashes. Grr. And to top that of, she's teething with a 3rd tooth. Fun, isn't it? So that's an update on us!

Yesterday Matthew and I had a pretty exciting and eventful day.

In the morning we dropped Natasha off at my parents' place and headed downtown. First we visited the bus terminal and bought two return tickets to Montreal, Quebec; we're going to take the Coach Canada bus because it travels to Montreal about an hour faster than the Greyhound bus. We'll most likely be leaving Toronto at 9:30am and arriving in Montreal at 4:05pm, just in time for our hotel's check-in time of 4:00pm. We still haven't made a plan of what we're going to visit - which tourist locations and restaurants, so I am going to try and plan that out this week.

After we had the tickets, we took the subway to King St. because Matthew was craving Indian food. (What else is new, right?) King St. is full of really nice restaurants, and Kama is one of them. It's a really nice, quiet restaurant with a fantastic service and a great $11.99 lunch buffet. They had a lot of food choices so naturally we stuffed ourselves 'till we couldn't breathe. I also had a Mango Lassi drink which, needless to say, was delicious!

Next, we headed to the Princess of Wales theatre because we had tickets to see the Phantom of the Opera play. The play ran for 2 1/2 hours and was really interesting. I cannot say it was spectacular or the best play I've ever seen, but the costumes and the music, of course, were great. The actors did a superb job and it was just a nice way to relax and see something different for a change.

Anyway, by the time we were ready to pick-up Natasha from my parents', it was raining cats and dogs outside. One minute the weather was nice and warm, and the next this sudden wind appeared followed by little rain drops, and then all blown pouring. It was horrible. And to make it worse, the bus from the subway to my parents' place was late and we had to wait close to 30 minutes in this pathetic weather. Oh, and did I mention we only had t-shirts on?? Oh... and did I also mention we left the plastic rain-cover for the stroller at home??

So by the time we reached my parents' place it was 7pm and we were soaked. Totally. The next step was to figure out how to get Natasha home without getting her wet and cranky. Initially we thought to wait the rain out but the news forecast predicted rain for the remainder of the evening and through the night, so we had to think of plan B. And that was for my father to make the 10 minute drive to our apartment building, get the car seat, and bring it back. And so Matthew and my father ended up doing that, so finally we were able to get driven home. Poor Natasha was exhausted by the time we reached our apartment and 2 jars of squash later was deep asleep!

So that's how we spent our Sunday.