A glorious day in history!

9 years ago, Gordie and I becme parents to a beautiful one year old baby girl, Qin Li Cui from Hepu, Guangxi.  What a fantastic day it was!

Party Time!

Part of the excitement of celebrating a birthday around our house is actually figuring out what kind of party we will have.  This year, no great thoughts came to mind so pajama party it was.  In fact, it was a great idea!  Cara-Li enjoyed it tremndously!  10 girls for her 10th birthday!

Home made birthday banner in the party colours.



Potted veggies and dip.

Girls decorated their our fluffy slippers with foam flowers.

I needn't cook as they made their own pizzas!

Cake pops for the dessert bar.

Dessert bar = fruit skewers, cake pops and 'smores cookies.

The birthday girl with the birthday cake.

Opening present is always fun!

They're staying!

6 girls left behind to sleep.  It was not quiet!

Fruit platter for the morning after.

The Big Ten

Someone I know turned 10 years old today.  That someone is my baby, Cara-Li!  Hope that this landmark birthday lives up to her every expectations.  Love you, Cara-Li!  Enjoy your day.

And the celebrations begin...

Tonight we celebrated a couple of birthdays.  SQ who turned 9 on the 21st and Cara-Li who turns 10 on the 26th.  The cool part of their relationship is that they are from the same orphanage and were both adopted one year apart by 2 Montreal families.  So we always make a point to be part of each others lives and frankly, we've done a great job!  We see each other all the time and are always there for each other's important landmarks (and other stuff too!).  This happened to be an impromptu dinner at the cottage and a grand time was had by all!

A tribute

It has taken me until now to muster up the energy to come back to this blog.  You see, one week ago, we celebrated the life of my dear brother-in-law who was taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age on Sunday, March 11th. Since then, we have been going through the motions of what we call normal life, but man, this has proven to be extremely tough.  I am fragile, emotionally fragile.  But it is not about me.  It is about a wife, 2 sons, parents and 4 siblings he has left behind.  How do they go on without Gary in their lives?  Without ever seeing his smile, hearing his laughter, seeing him react to things in his usual nonchalant way.  Gary has left a huge hole in our lives and in our hearts which will take an extremely long time to heal.  Thankfully we have many, many wonderful memories of this gentle and kind man that was put on this earth to enrich all of our lives.  For this, I am thankful.  I am thankful that he was part of my life.  My sweet Gary, may you rest in peace... until we meet again.  I love you with all my heart!

February blahs...

I just noticed that we are already into the month of March and that the February blues are still upon me.  The weather has been great considering we are still winter.  But I don't know what it is.  It happens every year so this year I tried to keep busy during February, at least during the weekends with lots of skiing and lots of friends visiting at the cottage.  But no... that hasn't really worked.  I have no physical energy to do anything yet I have piles of ideas and tons of little things to do.  Hell, I have boxes still to unpack and we've been in our new house now for 7 months!  What hasn't helped is that my dear brother in law is going through some hard times, medically that is, and I cannot help but worry about him constantly.  And Gord hasn't been very present due to this.  So, yeah, I guess that's why I'm feeling that I am just getting through day by day... often forgeting what needs to be done on certain days and mixing things up.  It's a wonder my kids are being fed and bathed  :)  You know what they say:  This too shall pass...

The end of an era...

It's 1987. I was in my second year of Hotel and Restaurant Management at Lasalle College and I was 19 years old. I was working on a year long project with 4 other girls and we were building a (pretend) hotel from the ground up. We were at the point where we were working on the restaurants, most specifically the kitchens. I was the purchasing manager thus in charge of collecting any information on all the kitchen equipment. Since my family is in the espresso machine business, we always did the yearly Hotel and Restaurant Suppliers Association (HRSA) show and so since I would be there anyway working the booth, it was a no brainer for me to get all this information. While at the show, I looked around to see where I would grab some catalogues and lo and behold, in the booth just next to ours was this very good looking guy selling all sorts of kitchen equipment. So I meander over and strike up conversation with him and manage to get all I needed to complete my project. After several days at the show, this same fellow asked me out for drink which I graciously declined since I was already involved with someone else.

Fast forward five years and it's 1992. Same show, same guy, same girl. Except this time when the guy asked the girl out again, the girl said yes. Happened to be that she was now single. Of course, the rest is history. Gord and I were married two years later and we certainly were the talk of the show. And it seemed very fitting that we would get the call from China for Cara-Li during the 2003 show. Once again, we caused quite the stir around us.

We met, we married, we had our first child at this show. It is now exactly 20 years since our first date. And this is the first year that the show has been cancelled. What a shame! We were supposed to have our first grandchild there...