All About DS

Happy beginning of the week to ya!!  Hope everyone is well.  Aside from DD coming down with a doozy of a cold, all’s good on my end.  DS’s b-day was Friday…can’t believe my baby is 9!!!
The celebration lasted for 2 days and was he ever soaking the attention up.  LOL  On Friday he had 2 school friends over for a bit after school, then we took them down to see a hockey game.  One kid had never even watched hockey on TV and was SO excited.  It was a pleasure to watch him.  He told me at one point that his “spirit was on fire”.  Love it!!  Where do kids come up with these things?  It was a good game with our team winning 6-2.  I don’t have any photos from the evening because I forgot my camera.  DOH!  Saturday morning was spent doing housework and getting the rec room ready for more company as DS had 4 of his hockey teammates over to “hang out” for a few hours.  Surprisingly, there were no fights, bruises or tears!  Boys can get pretty rough, especially when they’re used to being on the ice together, so we were pleased that there were no issues.  One of the boys has a sister DD’s age so she came over, too.  Girls always have something or other to discuss, right?!  Haha!!  After the boys left we packed up and went to see Yogi Bear 3D. 
Cute movie.  It was DS’s choice and the kids really enjoyed it.  The next stop was dinner at Einstein’s Café.  Here are few photos we took while waiting for our meals:   And here are our dinners!
Bruschetta to start.  The kids stole a few pieces before I could get the camera out! They were hungry!!  My hubby had shrimp primavera which was done with rice noodles in a light sauce.  He really enjoyed it…
I went with the special; salmon with a tomato/mango salsa and a cowl of curried zucchini soup to start:
The food was outstanding!  My salmon was cooked to (my) perfection…just like butter.  Oh, my!  My hubby helped me with the soup and we both enjoyed it as, well.  The kids both had pasta; DD’s was a pesto penne and DS’s a penne Bolognese, no photos, though.  Needless to say, we were all too full for dessert!  We ended the night in our “comfy” clothes and a Shrek movie.
Sunday held exciting plans for the adult portion of our household; a trip to Lululemon and Whole Foods which is about 1 hour away.  DD was happy to go to Lulu, not so happy about Whole Foods and DS pitched a fit about the whole deal.  Luck for him, his friend called up just as we were about to leave to see if he wanted to spend the day at his house.  Crisis averted!  LOL  I was a good girl at Lulu and only walked out with 2 pairs of undies and 1 pair of shorts.  My hubby went a little crazier, but he found pretty much what he was after so all was good.  After all, we do *try* to work so we can play!  As luck would have it we reached WF at noon.  I whipped around the store finding everything I wanted before we hit the sandwich bar for food to go.  But first, the goods: Marianne blogged about the Nature’s Path cereal and seeing as she’s never steered me wrong I picked up a box.  Divine, I tell you….and for a good cause to boot!  I just love that company!  I also bought some Tortilla chips, rainbow chard, ground bison and we ground our own peanut butter.  On to our sammies.  My hubby had a ham and grilled asparagus on a ciabatta bun:  While I devoured a buffalo mozzarella/tomato/basil beauty: DD had a turkey and brie, but as usual was too busy eating it to be bothered by a photo.  We also popped into Starbucks where I got a grande NF gingerbread misto:
I finished off the weekend by making a huge pot of split pea soup for dinner which was much appreciated seeing as the temps around here are back to ridiculously freezing! Other notable eats are as follows:
DS wanted waffles for his b-day breakfast.  These had mini caramel stuffed chocolates in them!
  We had Thai after hockey one night.  Spring rolls, Pad Thai, oh my! I’m off now to read some magazines.  They’ve accumulated like bunnies lately and I promised myself 30 minutes of reading them each night this week.  As I read them I pass them on to a girl at work.  I can’t bear to throw them out so I donate them where I can!!
Have a great night…..
Bye for now!!

Easter Day & Tea

Greetings! Did everyone have a good Easter? Add the beautiful weather with seeing family and our day was a good one. The kids were awake early to see if the Easter bunny stopped by so I got up to watch them open their gifts. Along with a few individual treats I bought them the new Chipmunk movie to share so that’s what I watched at 7am :/ They loved it, though! When I finally got around to making some breakfast I was hungry so I made my bowl a bit bigger than I normally would.

• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup Quaker oats
• raisins
• thawed strawberries
• kefir

After eating we went out to the farm for a visit. There are 3 horses that are due to have babies this month and the one I saw looks pretty heavy. Maybe when we go out there next week there’ll be a surprise!

I ate a light lunch because we were doing dinner at my parents place and they always eat at 4:30.

This is one cup of Kashi U cereal with USVAB. Love this stuff! I spent the afternoon on my deck soaking up the sun and reading magazine after magazine. I’ve come to the conclusion that I have way too many subscriptions. I also squeezed some baking in in the form of Pineapple Oat Bran Muffins:

(I ate one for an afternoon snack today with coconut butter. Heaven)

I started getting munchy by 3:30 so I ate a small handful of nuts and carob chips to tie me over.

Dinner was awesome as usual. Mom made lasagna but I started off with with some salad and a bun:

Then came asparagus, sweet potatoes, grilled steak and pork Wellington:

My Uncle brought 2 pies from a local bakery; lemon and pear rhubarb. Seeing as pear bothers my belly, I went with lemon which was AMAZING!

Watched The Amazing Race (go cowboys!!!) and Undercover Boss before hitting the sack-a-roo.

It was raining when I got up at 7:30, but by 9 the sun was back. The wind was still high, though. While digging out the Nutella jar for DS I came across a box of oats that I bought in Buffalo and forgot about:

That turned into this;

• 1.25 cups of water
• 1/2 cup Mother’s rolled oats
• cinnamon
• 1/4 cup crushed pineapple
• granola

I think these are my new favourite oats! They were dense and chewy….just how I like’em.

The kids watched the Chipmunks again and then we went and got the grocery shopping out of the way. Next we hit the craft store because both the kids have projects due for school in the next few weeks. By the time that was done it was lunch time. I mixed a vanilla Chobani with strawberries and Bare Naked granola.

More running around happened after lunch. We went to Chapters were I bought the new Hungry Girl cookbook!

Then we spent over an hour at the park where we happened to meet up with one of DS’s teammates. Although I brought some reading material along, I was quite happy to have the Mom to chat with while there. Adult conversation (aside from that which occurs at work) is always welcome! When we got home there was a package waiting for me. I was happy to see it was the Celestial Tea kit that I won over at Coco’s blog.

I love all of it! HA! The bear is way cute, no?

Dinner was a grilled spinach & feta sausage with some steamed veg and hummus.

This is the hummus I used:

I’ve never tried the Summer Fresh line before. It was really good! Thick and creamy, lots of flavour. I’ll be buying it again!

I’m about to sign off for the night and go back outside for a bit. It’s suppose to rain all week so I want to get as much of the nice weather in as I can! I’ll leave you with a picture that my hubby took of DD yesterday with his phone:

Model material 100%!!!! LOL!

Bye for now!!