farewell 2015

To my mind the measure of a successful year is one with more laughs than tears, so in that regard I have to call 2015 a success. I had labeled this the year of MORE and I have spent the past week pondering on how I feel about that..... short answer... I don't know. I really don't. I made a lot of really big declarations about laundry (HA! Laundry, who are we kidding?) and blogging and running. So maybe it was less in some areas, but it was definitely more in others.

I was happy to have more lazy evenings with friends. Glasses of wine, laughs, and meandering conversations. It cannot be understated what bright spots those evenings were this year. I am thankful for each and every one of you, probably more than you realize. Double date nights. Text messages. Listening ears. New friends. Deepening relationships. Hugs. Laughs. Understanding. Y'all know who you are, what you did and what it meant to us. Much love and thanks.

There was more time spent with the World's Cutest Nephew and his awesome parents. That is a gift I never tire of. More good food, good wine and laughs to go along with.

More travel for the kids. A gift for both them and us. Time with grandparents..... priceless.

Volunteering opportunities. Nights of cards. Sunday Dinners with beautiful friends. More balance. More down time. More NetFlix. More Mindy Project. Lisa Genova. Documentaries.

So farewell to 2015, you were a beautiful gift in so many ways, cheers to 2016, lets see what you shall bring.

the tale of two couches

Many of you know that the theme for the past few Christmases around here has been - Less is More and It's the Thought That Counts, well for 2015 we are adding a tag line - The Oldest Got Braces and We Had to Buy New Furniture. So this year friends and family, we invite you to peer with wonder into The Abster's sparkly smile while you cop a squat on our new furniture. We're happy to put a bow on each for you.

Mike and I have lived 19 years worth of marriage on hand me down or second hand purchased living room furniture. With no complaint, I might add. We always seemed to do pretty well in the hand me down department. In the past few months the springs in our couch, love seat and recliner have all gone the way of the dinosaur. Watching a movie or Netflix can get dicey if you're the last one to the living room.

So shopping we went. Mike actually fell in love with a set the first place we went to. I liked it, I liked what the guy had to say about it and I liked the price, but I didn't love it. Still I was willing to go with it if Mike was, indeed, that crazy about it.



Mike was ready to buy, but I said we'd be crazy not to look around another store or three to make really truly sure. So we popped into a couple of more places and I realized I didn't want to settle. After 19 years of hand me downs, if we were going to buy brand new to us furniture for the first time I didn't want it to be an "meh, it's okay" sort of situation. Which is how I felt about the first set that Mike loved. I also didn't realize that I wanted to increase our seating capacity until we went looking around a bit more. So......



This, a matching couch without the chaise and an accent chair will be coming home to our place. Actually we just put a deposit down on the pieces so we could come home and do some measuring and figure out if this would work. You know how it is, the pieces seemed much smaller in the store and Mike has a history of buying Christmas trees that scrape the ceiling because they looked small out in the field. So we spent the rest of Saturday measuring and mentally moving things around, but we came up with three configurations that would work, so it looks like we'll go ahead with it. Which, phew, because I am so in love with this stuff I can't even tell you and Mike does too, so win win. Cannot wait to park my butt on it! Also in related news I have felt sick to my stomach since Saturday afternoon.

go jays go

Just wrapping up another week of holidays here. It was the perfect combo of busy and relaxing. Due to the re-jigging of some travel plans the kids were away for a few days at the end of the week, but Mike and I occupied our selves with catching up with Shameless and hitting up a Jays game.



Oh the Jays! How I love you, even more now that you're tearing it up! Martin has been my favourite player, but I'm not going to lie, Donaldson has been worming his way into my heart.



In true Michael fashion we were at Roger's Centre hella early, but we did get to check out Greg Zaun and Jamie Campbell in action and we strolled through the Jays Store where Michael ix-nayed the purchase of this hat, even though the compound wife said I'd be crazy not to buy it.

It ended up being a great game to go too. We splurged on 100 level tickets, we're usually 500 level people. We were one section over from the guy who got himself ejected from the game. I'm sure he's a perfectly decent human being in his regular life, but dude made a big mistake and Joey Bats was not having it! Either was the rest of Roger's Centre. Being booed the entire walk up has got to be all kinds of not fun!

The ride home on the train, may have been the most interesting ride I've ever experienced on the Go. There was a lot of passenger communication. A lot of story sharing. Mike got a fist bump from some random dude. A spontaneous round of applause began for another passenger. You had to be there to truly appreciate the absurdness of it all.

We're hoping to squeeze in one more game, this time with the kiddos before everything gets crazy here with back to school and fair stuff. Maya is pretty desperate to see a game in person, now that she knows there's a scoreboard at the dome that will help her keep track of how many balls, strikes and outs there are. She's a pretty hysterical baseball fan, if you get the chance you should totally watch a game with her. She's the most encouraging armchair coach you ever did meet.

year of more update

Well we are more than half way through the Year of More! Betcha thought I forgot about it. I haven't, it's something that is still happening. Maybe not quite the way I envisioned it on January first, but I think that has been true for every year I have assigned a "theme" to.

So while I haven't been "more on top of the laundry"...... let's be honest, that one was never going to happen, as nice as it would be. There has been a lot more things that I wasn't anticipating.

More coffee dates. More Somersby. More nights that begin with... hey what are you up to tonight and end with a shared bottle of wine and laughing with friends. More wine. More water. More after dinner walks with the teenager. More Jays games. More texts about the Jays. How could there not be? The Jays are in it to win it! There's been more Netflix (was not expecting that!!) There has been more fundraising and volunteering and more fun people to do those things with. More outdoor movie nights. More dinners with friends. More skyping with the out of towners.

Can't wait to see what the second half brings!

summer camp at the fair

My girls were recently gifted with a week of summer camp. They were given the choice between two camps, but picking the brand new Ancaster Fair Day Camp was a no brainer for many many reasons, including Revill Family bestie, ML being the camp director. So there was zero worry about whether or not the girls would have the best week ever. In related news this summer has been chock full of the "best weeks ever" with more best weeks ever on the horizon! Yep, we are doing summer right!



So what is Ancaster Fair Camp all about? Not surprisingly they have animals! Not your average animals that most kids come in contact with, but there's a cow and goats and ducks and bunnies! Each one cuter than the last and the kids get hands on experience with them all!



Of course there are crafts. What self respecting summer camp doesn't have crafts. These crafts are special though, the kids can enter these crafts into the Ancaster Fair in September!



The girls came home with a stack of cute crafts with the entry tags already filled out! They can't wait to enter them. The kids got to spend time baking, playing, and learning camp songs all the while "earning their buttons".



By all reports my girls were game to try everything, they were friendly, respectful, they made new friends and as I mentioned, had the best week ever!



There was time spent with community heroes. Firefighters that let the kids have a try at working the fire hose. This picture just kills me. That's Maya back in the group, arms in the air cheering on one of the camp counselors. 



They had set up a pylon and the kids were trying successfully knock it over using the hose.



Looks like it was difficult business.



They wrapped a week of amazingly fun experiences with an animal parade and a trip to Ripley's Aquarium.



I am so incredibly grateful that my girls had the opportunity to attend not just a week of camp, but a week of camp put together by one of my very best friends. I have been an ear (and a hug) for her since this project was suggested. I have watched and listened to her put this whole thing together piece by piece for the past few months and it amazing. Every bit of it screams ML and trust me when I tell you, that is a good thing. I knew when she told me about this that it was going to be something great, but the reality has far outweighed my expectations. I am so proud of that chick!

more

Recently I was sitting in a meeting talking about the logistics of an event that I'm helping to plan. The talk went back in forth as to what exactly the event should entail and as the list of proposed activities got longer my friend chimed up with this....... Do fun things more often. What she was saying is we don't have to cram every fun idea we've ever had into one event and she was on point at that moment, but I'm not going to lie that one little line made a whole lot of sense to this chick, who's into her second month in the year of MORE. That really summed up to me what I want this year to be.

In that vein we've been celebrating all of those funny made up holidays like national puzzle day. Maya is totally kicking that Big Bang Theory puzzle's butt. Just last week we celebrated Homemade Soup Day, to be fair only Mike and I were celebrating that day because my kids are weirdos who wouldn't touch soup with a ten foot pole.

So I whip up this delicious mushroom soup for Michael and I. A soup I've made a million times before. A soup I don't need a recipe for. I have everything nicely in the pot and I grab the cornstarch to thicken it up a bit. You know how it goes, shake some cornstarch into a little bowl, add some water, put on the lid and give it a shake. As I'm shaking I realize I've forgotten to bring over the cream. I put the container on the counter and head to the fridge, I'm half way and POP!! I whip around scanning the kitchen wondering what in the actual heck just exploded and there is my cornstarch foaming all over the counter, the lid blown from the scene.

Foaming.

What. The. Hell.

I tell you this story just to keep it real for y'all. I'm not always Mario Batali in the kitchen, sometimes I make a complete mess of things like I did earlier this week when I tried to thicken my soup with baking powder. Baking Powder. No wonder it exploded. Thank goodness I didn't dump in right in the soup. I have absolutely no excuse for my behaviour, the containers aren't even remotely similar nor do I even keep them in the same cupboard.

I guess I need to add pay MORE attention to the list this year.

the year of

Well I have been turning 2015 over and over in my head. I liked the idea of picking one small word to describe the new year. I mean the 2013 Year of AWESOME was amazeballs! The 2014, not so much maybe, but that was more because I lost my way just a little bit. It happens to the best of us, right? Anyway, the more time I spent thinking about 2015 the more this one word kept popping up in my head...... more.

What the heck does that mean? The more time I spent thinking about the word more the clearer it became.

More moving. I'm going to attempt to accumulate 3.65 million steps this year. I'm 30,000+ steps in already this year. Go me! More yoga, the goal is 52 yoga sessions this year. More running. I miss running, so why did I stop? Well where I run has been in the news a little bit around these parts and not in a good way. Not exactly where I run, but the same trail system. On my last solo run, while 2+ kms from home I had a panic attack. It was mild, all things considered, and I was able to talk/breathe/run my way through it and get back home, but it scared the ever loving crap out of me. So the goal for this year is to figure out a new way to run that won't potentially trigger a panic attack. This will involve my running buddy as well as finding a new route. This anxiety thing is a work in progress.

More blogging! Can you believe that January marks 10 years of blogging here in Blogmotherland! Who would have thought it? I actually didn't even realize it myself until I digging back through the archives for something and I noticed the drop down menu went all the way back to 2005. So there shall be more old school blogging, who knows I may even bring some old favourites out of retirement.

There shall be more time with friends, more game nights, and more cooking (my cooking has gotten booooring). I want to get more on top of the laundry (laundry is the bane of my existence). I want to raise more money for the causes that are important to me and I want more organization at home (this will be the year of the walk in pantry I swear!!) to help us achieve all of the above.

And the biggest, more love. For you, for me, for my girls and Michael, for my family and friends. I want to sweat the small stuff a little bit less then I did this past year. More fun, more laughs... you get the idea.

So here's to all of you and to 2015, the year of MORE!