Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



You are here: Home / Archives for Home and Lifestyle / Family

An anniversary gift for a friend who lives across the country

by

Some friends of ours are about to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary and I’m trying to figure out what kind of gift to get them.

Unfortunately they don’t live in the same city as we do. They live on the other side of the country in Vancouver! So I’m going to have to ship a gift to them. My friend is a chocoholic like myself and I have a feeling that her husband also likes chocolate so I’m thinking of maybe sending them one of these godiva chocolate gift baskets. I’m fairly sure that they’d enjoy them, although they might be mad at me for sending them all those extra calories!

What would you get as a gift for a good friend who was celebrating a 10th wedding anniversary who lived 2000 miles away?

Yet another busy week!

by

My mother in law was here earlier this week for a three day whirlwind visit. She came to Toronto for a series of medical tests and she wanted me to accompany her to the hospital for her tests. So … needless to say, I’ve had a busy few days – starting with a major house cleaning on the weekend to prepare for her visit. LOL

My Mother in Law arrived on Monday afternoon, but it wasn’t until Tuesday and Wednesday that she had to have her medical testing done, so Monday evening was a free night for her. My husbands uncle’s health hasn’t been very good over the last two or three years so we all decided to go over to his and his aunts house for a visit. We don’t go over there to visit all that often, so Chris’ aunt decided to call two of her children over and they came (with their kids) for a visit while we were there too, so it was a full house!

I actually think there were too many people at my husbands uncles house on Monday evening because we found that we didn’t talk with his ailing uncle very much at all. We ended up talking to Chris aunt and all the cousins rather than to the main person that we’d gone to visit.

While we at my husbands uncles house my husband couldn’t help peeking at his uncles cigar humidor. My husband doesn’t smoke anymore and his uncle can’t smoke anymore either – but there’s still quite a selection of cigars in that humidor. I guess his sons had better use them!

Tuesday and Wednesday were a blur of driving back and forth to two hospitals and waiting for tests to be done. Then, my mother in law as usual wanted to shop in several health food stores – she just loves a place called The Big Carrot here in Toronto.

I also took her to the Peek Frean outlet Cookie store where she bought pretty much a grocery cart full of cookies for $17! She works in church so I think she can use her bargain find at the church. I smell the cookies being cooked at the Kraft cookie factory almost every night, but I try to stay away from the outlet store. They have amazing deals there but it’s dangerous to go in there because it’s very hard to go in and walk out without buying anything!

How was your week!

My nephew is trying out for an NHL farm team

by

My husband is out with his brother this weekend. They’re busy watching my nephew tryout for a NHL farm team. Believe me, I’ve got my fingers, toes and everything crossed in the hopes that they pick him! Wow – wouldn’t that be fantastic having a nephew in the NHL? Or at least on the way there by way of a junior team?

Anyway, at this point, my nephew is working hard on the ice this weekend and my husband and his brother are probably playing hard on the sidelines. That’s the way it always is whenever they get together. They even compete hard. Just before they all left they were compete over who had the better cellphone. We just got a Nokia N8 and we’re very happy with it, but my brother in law has a new htc incredible s bell so they were arguing over the features. LOL Crazy!

I just hope that if they’re busy partying it up that they’re safe in there hotel room. My husband is very good about not drinking and driving so I’m pretty sure he’ll make sure they’re good.

I don’t know if we’ll know by tomorrow if my nephew made it onto the farm team or not. I’ll let you know when I know, especially if it’s good news.

Husbands back to work and things are back to normal for a while

by

It’s been a busy few weeks! It sort of feels like I just got back from holidays, but in fact, it was my husband that was on holidays and disrupting my routine and my work for the last couple of weeks. Now that he’s back to work my life can get back to normal.

While my husband was on vacation we mostly stayed in town and got several things around our house. Most of the work that we did was outside, in the backyard. We painted the back stairs, and two storage units that are under our enclosed back porch. It looks fantastic. We also got a lot of garden work done. I don’t know how many calories I burned with all that outdoor work, but I doubt that I’ll need to do any searches for the best diet pills in the next while because I got a good workout. I must have been outside working in the yard anywhere from four to ten hours a day for at least one week.

We did manage to do some fun things while my husband was on holiday too. We took the dog to the beach a few times and we also attended a local Ribfest where we saw a fantastic classic rock tribute band and ate very good but very high cholesterol food. Chris also drove to his home town a couple of times to visit his parents and he did a few odd jobs around their house. I guess my husband got an even better workout than I did in the last few weeks since he did even more work than I did.

Have you used your holiday time to get work done around the house? You know, maintenance work that needs to be done anyway?

My husband will be off work again next week – he’s on temporary lay off next week. My schedule will be all messed up again I’m sure.





Keeping in touch with a family that’s spread across the country

by

My family is really spread out across the country. I have a niece that just moved to New Brunswick with her husband, and my middle brother lives in Vancouver … just those two alone cover both sides of the country! So … we’ve all been talking lately by email and we’ve decided to try either setting up Skype or Google Chat.

A couple of my brothers have already set up Skype, and one of my brothers who happens to have just treated himself to a Mac computer is really experimenting. He’s been trying out things like Nettalk on his iPod and I think another application on his Mac and iPad, plus he’s the one who got all of us thinking about trying Google Chat although it seems like most of us are more familiar or more comfortable with using Skype.

I haven’t set up Skype on my computer yet. I’ve been too busy getting my yard and garden in order after all the Fence whoha. I’ve spent the last two weeks working on my garden and yard doing all the stuff that I would have done in the last two months if I hadn’t had to delay everything for that darn no character fence. Yes I’m a tired and not so happy camper .. but hopefully I’ll get happier as my garden recovers. Oh and speaking of the neighbors who put in the fence? They’ve barely spoken to us since they put it in and their kid is making a racket again. I almost feel like they were nice to us and got their kid to be a little quieter so that we’d go along with the fence and now that it’s in they could care less that their little girl is waking me up. She’s even back to slamming doors again. Sigh … I don’t think I’ll be using the video side of Skype … I’ll scare my family with how tired I look lately.

Anyway … I will install Skype and maybe set up Google Chat soon. I keep telling my family that too. Hopefully by this weekend. I want to experiment with it. In the mean time I’m still communicating the old fashioned way with my family … ie by phone. My second oldest brother’s birthday this past Friday, the one who bought himself a Mac, so I was sure to call him on his birthday. He had a great day with his family. Picnic with his wife, dinner out with his kids and I think he said he was thinking of getting a golf buddy tour gps watch for himself … yes another treat. Oh well he deserves it.

If I do manage to set up a Skype account I’ll let you guys know … maybe I can Skype with some of my blogging friends too. Of course if I do I’ll never get any of my work done …

Meta

Search this site

Tags

blog blogs camera Canada Chris computer crohns dinner dog Family flower flowers Food friends funny garden Gardening Green Thumb Sunday Health and Fitness Health Fitness and Beauty holiday home Home and Lifestyle house husband IBD Inflammatory bowel disease Internet Music neighbors pain photo photos plants puppy Shopping sick sleep spring Toronto TV Video visit website Wordless Wednesday