Canada Day and recent fun :)

I may have mentioned this before, but I'll say it again: I *LOVE* Canada Day. I am so proud to be Canadian, and I love celebrating our country. There are usually a lot of fun, free, festive events going on for Canada Day and while I love partaking in them, this year we had a bit of a more low-key day. Since it didn't end up being a "long weekend" for us as Brian worked on Monday June 30 and had July 1 off, we took it easy and got some things done around the house. We are having a bit of a heat wave right now (30+ degrees and SO humid) so it has been a bit hard on the girls. Lucy particularly minds the heat and it is a bit hard to cool her off and feed her successfully, but she has been OK. They're forecasting a hurricane this weekend so that might cool things off a bit ;)

For Canada Day, friends of ours hosted a big BBQ and there were lots of fun people there, including some nice little girls for Molly to play with as well as a kitty AND a puppy and many people to hold our precious little baby too ;) Before the BBQ, Molly just played outside in her new pool all morning ($20 at Target, amazing deal) ;)

So this week I'd like to share some of my favourite Canadian "things".

First of all, here are some of my favourite Canadian bloggers:

Haley at Truth be Told
Alex at She's his Co-Pilot
Tracey at Just a Trace (she has a few amazing series on her blog)
Melissa at Making Melissa
Renee at So Fill your Heart
Laura at Mommy Miracles (a real-life friend ;))

Some of my favourite Canadian songs/musicians:

1) Cape Breton musicians (I am grouping this because I have many favourites including Natalie MacMaster, The Rankins, The Barra MacNeils, Ashley MacIsaac, Beolach, Coig, Slainte Mhath, etc etc) but here are two of my favourite songs: Clumsy Lover Set and Feel the Same way too
2) Joel Plaskett (favourite song Face of the Earth, close second Nowhere with You and best Canadian song True Patriot Love)
3) Blue Rodeo (Head over Heels)
4) The Tragically Hip (Fireworks)
5) Great Big Sea (Ordinary Day)
6) Arcade Fire (Wake Up)
7) Barenaked Ladies (Falling for the First Time)
8) Sarah McLachlan (World on Fire)
9) For Molly - Raffi (Baby Beluga)
10) The Arkells :)

Some of my recommended Canadian tourist destinations (that I've checked out before):
1) Banff National Park (less than an hour from my hometown of Calgary)
2) Calgary (particulary during Stampede which starts today!)
3) Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia
4) Niagara Falls (might be a bit obvious but SO amazing)

5) Vancouver Island (right Haley?) - SO beautiful
6) Quebec City / Old Quebec / Montreal
7)  Halifax (because I am here, of course) haha
8) St. John's - visited once for 5 days and fell in love with Newfoundland
9) PEI - a small but beautiful province
10) Interior BC - love this area around the Okanagan
and 11) Ottawa - I almost moved here before I met Brian and I love the city

Some great links I saw around the web this week for Canada Day:

1) Chris Hadfield and his brother's Canadian music video
2)  100 Great Canadian songs
3) Canada Day 2014 in Photos
4) Things you can only buy in Canada

And this video of a puppy trying to see a new baby is also hilarious :)

I'll be back soon to share some of our fun recent toddler activities - I thought about including it here but I think a full post is in order for that :)

Happy belated Canada Day, everyone!! XO

Bursting with Canadian Pride and 2-player board games

Although this Monday morning isn't off to the smoothest start (late/restless night/busy morning) we had a wonderful weekend and I am swelling with pride at our Olympic team!! So proud to be Canadian today, and so proud of our athletes and especially our hockey players (male and female!) :) Once we knew that Canada was going to be playing for gold yesterday morning, we arranged a little brunch at our house and watched the game. Molly got a bit bored (and we played with toys and read books throughout the game), but she was excited to see the medals and flag at the end!

(Via CTV)

I'm a bit sad that the Olympics are over, and I think Twitter is about to get a bit boring for a few weeks until something else interesting happens!!

We were able to see some of Brian's extended family and a lot of my extended family this weekend too, which was nice. It's not every weekend that Molly gets so much family time! The weather here was warm, especially on Saturday, so we actually barbecued for supper that night. We also watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty with Ben Stiller (it was pretty good, actually! Cute message and great music) and played some board games on Saturday night!

(Walter Mitty quote - Source)

Today, I wanted to share some of our favourite 2-player board games. Brian and I have a lot of "date nights" at home, even though we are fortunate enough to have about 1-2 date nights out of the house each month when Molly is with her grandparents. Often, we just watch a movie or TV series on Netflix, and we enjoy that, but it's nice to change it up every once in awhile and do something a bit more interactive. We are both pretty competitive (in a fun way! haha), so games are right up our alley. Occasionally, we will play Wii (either Wii Resort Sports, Wheel of Fortune, or Wii Jeopardy), but we also have a few fun board games that are good for 2 people. We both love strategy type games, and I personally like games that don't necessarily take all day/night (I'm not big into Risk or Monopoly etc. etc but Brian likes those). There are tons of card games for 2 players too (such as Cribbage!) - but I'm not going to get into those. Here are some of our favourite games:

• Rivals of Catan / Catan Card game -  We have the Rivals of Catan, but I think the Catan Card game is similar (just not as readily available). I bought this awhile ago because we both love the Settlers of Catan games but they require at least 3 players, so we don't get to play them very often. This is a variation of the Catan games that goes by pretty quickly, and it is easy to learn, especially if you've played the full version of Settlers. For those unfamiliar with Settlers of Catan, it involves rolling a dice in which the outcome will provide you with cards or resources to "build" settlements and expand to get victory points. The winner achieves a certain number of points.

•  Rummikub - this is a very straightforward game, and mostly has to do with luck and keen observation. The goal is to get rid of all the number tiles in your hand by laying down sequences or 3 of a kind etc.

• Carcassonne - I bought this when we first started dating because I had heard that it was also a bit similar to Settlers. It's a pretty fun game, but it's totally different if you play with more than 2 people. We played it on the weekend for the first time in ages, and we easily got through 3 games in 90ish minutes (Best 2 of 3, and I didn't win - boo! haha). It's a really easy game to learn, but there are a few key strategy points that people pick up on over time. It's another "building" type game like Settlers of Catan.

Every Carcassonne board ends up being different, which is pretty cool!

• Sequence - we haven't played this one in awhile, but it's also really easy and just uses two decks of cards - you could even make your own board for it (which I think is the one we have - Brian's mom made it for him). It gets pretty fast paced towards the end. 

• Scrabble/Yahtzee/Othello - most people have tried these games before, so I don't feel the need to elaborate too much. We went through a huge Scrabble phase a couple of years ago and played it all the time. Yahtzee is fun too, but we get sick of it because it's almost 100% luck. Othello is a pretty easy game, but the winner is often determined early on in the game and it can be hard to make a comeback. 

And some we'd like to try sometime:

Pandemic

Lost Cities

Ticket to Ride - Brian has played this with a friend, but I have yet to try it...maybe it will make an appearance at a birthday sometime this year ;)

Stratego

Any fun board game recommendations for us out there?

I also LOVE playing Scene it movie trivia on the XBox, but I can only really convince Brian to play that with me about twice a year (and the game is currently "missing" in our house - hmm, I wonder who hid it? haha). I should also mention that we have a lengthy list of fun board games that we like to play with friends and family - a whole post about that is coming someday soon!!

5 on the 4th Friday of the month :)

It's time for everyone's favourite link-up...including me!! Check out all the other 5 on Friday posts over at Darci, April, Christina or Natasha's blogs today.

This was a bit of a long week, and kind of strange too because I worked from home on Wednesday  due to SEVERE snow in the city and got a bit confused with which day it is (yesterday felt like Monday). So the fact that today is actually Friday when it feels like Tuesday is pretty great!!

{ONE}

We have an amazing store close by called Gateway Meat Market. It (obviously) sells a lot of meat at EXTREMELY good prices and locally grown, but they also have a fair amount of produce and other goodies. You can’t get everything you need there, but you can get a lot of fresh food way cheaper than Sobeys or Superstore! Their prices are unbeatable and they do “flash sales” in which something is extremely cheap for a day or two until they run out of supply. I almost always take advantage of the sales to stock up on some veggies, and this week, the sale was BANANAS 17cents/lb…which, as you know, is amazing. Bananas here are usually 79-89 cents/lb. I bought a bunch and I’m going to wait for them to ripen and then peel and freeze them for smoothies (amazing way to use up bananas!)

Here’s the 24 bananas I got yesterday for $1.50 (major WIN! – PS: My husband rolls his eyes every time I come home with items like this, haha – he loves sales but thinks this is too many bananas ;))

{TWO}

I get to see my sweet sister tonight as she is in Halifax for residency interviews. Molly loooooves her auntie so much and we have been lucky to see her a few times lately (we usually only see her 1-2 times a year since she lives in Ontario). The next time I see her after tonight, we will have a new baby and she will be a doctor!! Hard to believe!!

{THREE}

As I’ve mentioned before, I am keeping a 5-year journal similar to this one on Amazon but following prompts from this site and writing it myself. Today’s prompt is “What are you looking for from life?”, which is a bit of a loaded question (haha), but it has really gotten me thinking about where I’m headed in the future career-wise (that’s a whole other post) and what things are important to me. I think reflecting on questions like this every once in awhile a good way to keep on track goal-wise is and a good way to remind myself that “the world is my oyster”. J So far, I love the simplicity of the journal prompts – only a sentence or two each day but it will be great to look back on!

(Via)

{FOUR}

I’m starting to get really excited for the Olympics! I can’t wait to see, in particular, how the men’s hockey team does (I am a huge Sidney Crosby fan but I think all of the players were good choices!) and I also love the figure skating/ice dance component. It'll be hard to watch it all because of the time difference, but hopefully we can catch a lot of the highlights and some events live on TV. Brian and I met right after the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, so when we were first talking, we were both really into the Olympics as a current event/ice-breaking topic...so I told him I'm so happy we've made it to the next Olympics! Here's to many more! ;)

{FIVE} 

I love U2 and we had the opportunity to see them live a few years ago in Moncton when I was super-pregnant with Molly (her first concert and it was a good one!!). They are releasing a new song for download during the Superbowl next weekend, but I can't stop listening to this other new one from the Mandela movie soundtrack. So let's #backthatazzup this Friday with the queen of yoga pants :)

 


Happy Friday, everyone!!!

Happy CANADA Day!!

I have always loved to celebrate Canada Day. I love our country, and I am so proud to be a Canadian!! Here are a few little "Heather loves Canada" stories for you:

1) When I was 9, I dressed up as a Canadian flag for Halloween. I also wore this costume when I was 10 because I loved it so much.



(Please note that in Canada, we require hats & mitts to go trick or treating!)

2) In grade 5, all of my classmates and I wrote letters to our prime minister (at the time - Jean Chretien) asking him to please not allow Quebec to separate from the country. I was adamant at the time that without Quebec, we would not be unified at all. He actually wrote me back and no one else in my class got a letter back from him! I shared it with the class for the year and I still have it. It boggled my 10-year old mind and I burst with pride at hearing back from him. haha

3) I had a Canadian flag retainer for 5 years after braces.

4) I have been to every province, and hope to visit at least one of the territories sometime in my life. We have traveled from Calgary across to Nova Scotia as a family 4 times (driving), so I have seen a lot of Canadian sites.

5) I used to develop a Canadian trivia quiz and e-mail it to all of my friends on Canada Day in high school (can you say nerd?)

This year, I celebrated with my family, and did not partake in too many official events, but I am hoping to attend more next year when Molly will be old enough to enjoy the celebrations more. Here's our official 2013 Canada Day photo:





And my little angel on Canada Day all dolled up!



And the three of us last year! Look how much my baby has grown up!!

Happy Canada Day everyone, and check these links out for some great Canada Day fun!!!

By the way, today I'm linking up with Melissa, Shannon and Lesley for Canada Day!!

Here's a favourite Canadian song of mine by Joel Plaskett: True Patriot Love :)

Q - What's your favourite way to celebrate Canada Day?!? Fireworks? Camping? A red t-shirt? A Canadian beer?