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It has been a very busy week. I am tired!

Natasha stayed with us for a few days after New Years. We had a lot of fun with her, playing Settlers and dragging her around to different parts of the city to buy shelves, and cooking a lot of delicious vegetarian asian food.

Our New Years Eve was very low key. Natasha, Parry, and his fiancee came over. The last time I saw Parry was like 4 years ago… on New Years Eve in Toronto! Anyway it was really good to see him again, he’s pretty much the only one I still keep in contact with from Maastricht.

At about 1:00 AM Nat, Scott and I decided that doing the New Years Day Polar Bear Swim in English Bay was actually the greatest idea of all time. We got pretty pumped about that, and then went to bed. But we followed through! There were SOOOOOOO many people there. Apparently there were something like 2,300 swimmers, and probably just as many spectators. It was insanity.

I reckon I was only in the water for about 5 seconds. We had decided that you had to dunk your head to make it ‘official’ so I ran two steps in, ducked under, and then ran out. Wrapped up in our giant towels and then got dressed up in the massive amount of winter clothing we packed. It actually wasn’t that bad! The sun shining definitely helped. The only bad part was our feet… the beach was painfully cold.

After the swim we walked up and got hot chocolate and by that time we were all pretty much back to normal! If I’m here next year I would do it again. Unless it was raining.

After the long weekend Scott and I were back to work, Natasha headed off to New Zealand, and then Rosemarie came back (bearing gifts and snowboarding equipment)! Of course we squeezed in another game of Settlers.

Both Scott and I feel pretty run down after all this activity. I need a long weekend after that long weekend. :/ Which I do not get, at all, because I’m going in tomorrow to do overtime at work! The money will help though… a lot of snowboarding in our near future!!

Mount Seymour on Monday for a practice session. We are renting a car because it is actually cheaper than paying 4 one-way shuttle tickets and 2 add-fares, plus then we don’t have to leave work early. Girls are free on Monday nights too, which is awesome! Then Whistler next weekend!! We originally planned on just going for the weekend, but Scott suggested I stay Monday too with his friends, which I am now very much considering (Scott can’t stay because he actually must be at work that Monday). We shall see. I am excited!!

About time for another food post soon. I’ve had some successes lately. Mmmmm.

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Woooo only 1.5 more days of work, then a 4.5 day weekend!!

I haven’t been sleeping well lately. The kid upstairs screams for her mom for 20 minutes once per night, and I get hyper-focused on Scott’s breathing sounds, and my brain keeps going a million miles per hour… and I’m up for hours. :(

Looks like we’re going to Whistler mid-January. Two of Scott’s friends from Kansas are going and we are meeting up with them there. He says the last time he saw one of them was 2008 and the other 2004! I just hope it’s not toooo crowded (since we’ll be going on a weekend) and we get enough time on the mountain, because it sure is expensive! Hopefully we can also squeeze in a night session at one of the local hills before then too because I feel rusty and Scott is still very much a beginner!! I’ve been keeping an eye out for coupons.

Last January I made a whole bunch of stupid New Years resolutions. I don’t have the exact list anymore because it was on my ‘craptop’ which is now in the garbage. :/ I really can’t remember them except for “invent teleportation” and “eat a grilled cheese hamburger”. Anyway I did the latter on the weekend and it was glorious.

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So way back on the 17th we left for Hawaii. A car ride, two planes, two buses later, and a lot of sweating later, we arrived at our little room in Kailua. Instead of staying in Honolulu we opted to rent a spare room in a much quieter town. We had no idea what it would be like but luckily it was OK.

We spent the majority of our vacation relaxing in different places. Oahu is BEAUTIFUL with its lush green forests and huge interesting looking mountains. Plus sunshine every day and very little rain.
We also spent lots of time looking for the perfect food: cheap, tasty, different, vegetarian options.

We went to Waikiki beach a couple times, and beautiful Kailua beach right near where we were staying almost every day. It was very windy there though.

Us at Waikiki.

We snorkeled in Hanauma Bay. It was good, lots of fish, but pretty crowded.

We went to Wet N Wild Hawaii for a day and had A BLAST. So many slides and so much fun. Also Scott is an excellent person to go to a waterpark with because he carries the raft!

One day on our way back to our room we stumbled upon a farmers market with lots of produce and nice food. We bought some chipotle taro dip, and I had totally yummy ahi (seared tuna) with 8 pounds of garlic. There were also some Hawaiian music players and a bunch of local hula dancers! Neat! It was really cool because it wasn’t tourist oriented, just their normal market.

One night we ended up at a really fancy sushi restaurant. We sat at a bar and had our own sushi chef in front of us who would make us anything we wanted. It was pricey though so we didn’t get anything too crazy. I had delicious tuna rolls, and a thai shrimp one. Scott had weird vegetarian sushi with 8 million types of veg. Oh and the sushi chef let me try this cool eel sushi roll that had thinly sliced cucumber instead of rice. Yum!

Most of our trip we took the public buses around everywhere. They were pretty unreliable, but we were on holiday so it wasn’t the hugest deal. We rented a car for the last two days though and that was really fun. We drove all the way around the island each day, up to the North Shore via Giovanni’s shrimp truck and a bakery for chocolate haupia pie, checking out new beaches and LOST filming locations. We went to Waimea Bay expecting huge waves and surfing, but apparently in the summer it is flat as. Like as flat as a lake. It was crazy.

Super flat North Shore.

One beach we stopped at had heaps of giant turtles close to shore, munching on the stuff growing on the rocks. We could see them really clearly and it was really special.

We also stopped at THE WORLDS LARGEST MAZE… in 2008. I was pretty excited about this, since I did this big project on mazes back in grade 12 and still hadn’t actually been in one. We had a card and were supposed to go around and find 8 different stations. Scott and I went our separate ways… wandered for about 10 minutes and bumped into each other. Neither of us had found any! We separated again. I wasn’t really having fun any more. I found two, mostly because of loud children with parents who had maps, and then bumped into Scott again. He had a couple as well, but neither of us were having that much fun at all so we left, haha.


Scott’s impression of the maze.


Delicious delicious shave ice with ice cream and beans.


Awesome Hawaiian sunset.

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We kept the festivities fairly minimal on Wednesday since a lot of people had to work the next day, and saved the partying for Saturday.

Saturday was a big big day.

We checked into our hotel in the morning (thanks Rhiannon!) and then headed out to Boronia for the family party. There was about 30 of Scott’s family there, mostly cousins and aunts and uncles. We ate party food and cakeS (so many). It was the first time that I’d met some of these people.

Favourite quote from the party: “When are we singing Happy Birthday??” -Noah (Scott’s nephew)

After the family party we took the train back into the city for our other party. We’d booked the upstairs area of a bar in Richmond for all our friends. I was a bit worried since we didn’t really plan much for this party besides the super cool cake that one of our friends made for us, but it turned out fun. A LOT of people showed up! I think there was about 60 at one point, in a pretty small area! It was really good having all our friends and workmates all there for us!

I don’t have many pictures from this night yet, but I think lots were taken so I’ll try to track these down. Along with the video Brett took of the actual ceremony! I’m on it!

Sunday was very relaxed. We didn’t do anything actually. I played Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 for a LONG LONG time. It is addictive.

Today has been quite productive though. Our visa paperwork is quite close to finished now, which is good. We can pick up the official marriage certificate this week and I want to send off the package right then.

We’ve got curling tonight. I’m extra excited because they finally got enough rocks for us all to play a proper game (we were only doing 4 rock ends before). It’s going to seem so crowded, I know it. But should be very fun.

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Wow what an amazing week. Everything went so smoothly and I’m so relieved and happy.

Now for everyone not there…

The Big Day. Wednesday the 14th.

Scott had to go in to work a little bit that morning so I spent the morning relaxing and getting ready on my own. I went out to get my make up done and pick up the cake and Scott came home and cleaned everything up and got it all ready for everyone coming over later. I got home, we got dressed and then headed into the city (by tram of course!) for the ceremony.

We had only booked the small room at the registry office for the wedding, but since there was no one else there they moved us into the big room! This was good since we had a few last minute extra guests (the nephews). The ceremony went smoothly (except for the lady saying ‘Perkins’ instead of ‘Perkin’ even though we’d just gone over it in the other room!!!) It was really great that my family got to listen in on speakerphone! It was a last minute suggestion by Kate but I’m so glad it worked out! They stayed up until 1:00 AM and had a little celebration at home in Ottawa!

This is what Rosemarie had to say about it:
“listening to the ceremony was nice. it was kind of peanuts teacher style but we could understand what was going on and tell who was talking. and we could hear the vows and things. it was really nice being able to listen to it though. after we ate fondue and had champagne. kate got really into everything. she even wore a dress!”

I was only kind of nervous the whole time and I didn’t get teary until right after the vows when dad told me (over the phone) that they could hear everything and there were some tears there and they would have a toast for us. So great.

After the ceremony Rhiannon took a bunch more pictures for us around the city, and then we took the tram back to the house for some drinks and cake. There was 14 of us that day (Scott’s parents, both Scott’s sisters and a boyfriend, Scott’s brother and his wife and two children, Rhiannon, and my friends Chris and Trang). We drank lots of beer and champagne, and WAMPAGNE (when Jessie accidentally topped up my wine with champagne) and devoured our delicious delicious hazelnut cake from Ganache (my favourite chocolate place everrrrr), looked at the pictures, and then headed down the street to Fiesta for a Mexican feast.

The meal was nice and so were the enormous margaritas. I had prawn fajitas and Scott had the veggie combo plate, like usual.


(NEW SISTERS!)

We all ate too much and headed home after the meal. And to bed early since a lot of people had to work the next morning!!

On to part 2….