Lest we forget...

Be sure to take a few minutes today to think about our troops, past and present, and all they have done for our freedom. Their families are also heros...think of them, thank them.

I'm from the "other side of the coin" - my grandparents did not fight, they were saved. Saved from the horrible conditions of their work camp (in many ways similar to the concentration camps) in Germany. They were freed and free...to fall in love, get married and even have two little girls in the post-war work camp. One of those little girls was my mom.

I owe the soldiers so much more than my freedom, I owe them my life...

And today I'm sending a special shout-out to Rachel today...
If all goes well, she will be off to Germany in January for a few months to take care of our injured troops from Afghanistan. And I think that's pretty amazing...

Lest we forget...

It's all about Taking Chances...

On Friday night I had a hot date with a great friend...

Our Celine journey began about a year and a half ago. We discovered we both loved Celine and decided to plan a trip to Vegas to see her in concert.

We bought our tickets to the show and when it came time to book, the timing wasn't right for Lesley and Eric so they sold their tickets to our friends Shawn and Lindsey.

Fast forward to Vegas. Less than 24 hours before the show D and I jump in a cab after seeing the most AMAZING Cirque du Soleil show "O" and find out from the cab driver that Celine has cancelled due to illness. I seriously thought he was joking. He wasn't...

I lasted until we pulled up in front of the hotel and then the tears started flowing...I was so upset. Devastated. I've loved her music for years and it was my total dream to see her in Vegas.

Denis was a true prince and immediately got on the phone trying to find tickets for Saturday's performance. He was willing to pay crazy amounts of money just for me to see her. Me alone because one ticket would have cost us much more than all four of our tickets combined.

But no luck. She cancelled all of her performances that weekend.We saw so many people who were equally upset about it.

I did get over it. I was just sad.

And then we managed to get tickets to see her in Montreal. What an amazing night and an amazing performance.

Not long after that show an announcement was made that she would be coming to Ottawa. Lesley asked if I was interested - a perfect opportunity to "make up" for our lack of Celine in Vegas. I have to be honest. I knew I wanted to go but hesitated because of the cost. In the end I went for it and I am SO GLAD I DID!

I picked up Lesley from work and we had a nice long drive in crazy traffic to get caught up.

Our plan was to go to Moxies for supper and when we got there the line was insane so we tried a few other places. Everyone had between an hour and a two-hour wait so we decided to just eat at the canteen...

Can I just say I felt like I was back in Europe trying to get in. Apparently the locals have lost all concept of how to stand in a line. There were people trying to get through with walkers and wheelchairs and everyone just pushed pass them. This was over an hour before the opening act...it's not like we didn't have time!!!!

We waited in line for 45 MINUTES for our food. It was insane...It was like it was their first time serving an event. We were about 7 or 8th in line and it took that long!

Our seats were FANTASTIC. Section 100 row 4. It was even better than being on the floor because we were slightly higher so the view was better.

Great story - or we thought so...

There was a young couple sitting in front of us and the guy left for a few minutes. The girl turned around and started talking to us. She was asking about what happens at a concert because it was her FIRST CONCERT EVER and Celine is her favourite.

The plot thickens...she also mentioned that she was on a date, a first date! She was a bit concerned about the fact that her date had disappeared but it was no big deal. She explained that they met online and had only gone for coffee. When they were talking on the phone about a week ago, he could hear she was playing Celine in the background and asked if she had tickets. When she said no, he offered to take her. Lesley told her that I had met my husband online and it had turned out to be a wonderful love story...

The girl was so sweet and excited. Her date returned...he had gone to buy her a REALLY NICE program. How sweet. Lesley and I were like proud parents watching over the two of them.

The opening act was ok but Veronique Dicaire was MUCH better in Montreal. I was impatient, I just wanted to see Celine already!!!

She FINALLY came onstage and she was OUTSTANDING. She got very emotional talking about how she hates having to cancel/postpone shows (she has had to postpone a few shows this past week due to illness). She was near tears and it was clearly very genuine. Lesley and I were under the impession that she was saying she had to end the show after only two songs.

But she did just the opposite. She gave it her ALL throughout the entire night and sang her heart out. At times we could see the pain in her eyes but everytime she successfully hit a note it was like it gave her more energy to keep going.

Lesley and I had a blast dancing and after the first 2 minutes I knew I made the right decision to attend the show.

About a half hour in I noticed something very strange...the man on the "date" in front of us was wearing what seemed to be a wedding band on his WEDDING FINGER. And he was playing with it - it's not even like he was trying to hide it. We felt so disappointed for the poor girl. No clue what that was all about...

I have to say people in Ottawa SUCK when it comes to concerts. I was so disappointed to see that so many people sat through most of the show. Get up people and DANCE. The first 4 or 5 rows of floor seats stayed seated. What's up with that? Poor Celine looks out and sees people sitting.

There were a few different songs from her concert in Montreal - definitely more English songs.

We had an absolutely amazing time and Celine was wonderful.

It took us FOREVER to get out of the parking lot but it gave us lots of time to discuss the concert and try and figure out what was up with that guy's wedding ring!!!

So there you have my night with Lesley and Celine. I can't believe it's over already.

We have been VERY successful with Chrsitmas decorations today but I'm ready for them to be done. We have all trees up and two left to decorate. After those are decorated we have a few odds and ends. Hopefully I'll get some more stuff done tomorrow night after work.

That's all for tonight.

'night lovelies

It's a happy P I N K world indeed...

Afternoon lovelies...

I'm popping in for a VERY QUICK post in between decorating trees...

I have the biggest tree all done and I'm just waiting for D to come home from work to help me with a few other jobs.

He's at Sears picking up a few little odds and ends including this...

We did check out the pink ones at Michaels yesterday and I wasn't a fan. It size I wanted was like $55 - a little extravagent for what it was...

I did manage to find ornaments for my feather boa tree - D is just picking up some lights for it too.

In searching to see if the feather tree could take lights I found this...MY ULTIMATE PINK FANTASTY...

Happy Pink World

It is a happy pink world indeed...

Ok, I must love you and leave you and get back to work!

'til later lovelies...

Stolen from Dorrie's blog...

I'm lying in bed, listening to my man snore, desperately wanting to wake him up so I can tell him all about my amazing night with Lesley seeing Celine again.

I will write about it here. But I really want to share it with him first.

Nothing worse than listening to love songs for a few hours only to come home to a sleeping husband...and he's sleeping in this morning too! I want to shake him awake like a kid on Christmas morning but then I'll be forced to put up with Mr. Grouchypants today.

So instead, I'll leave this with you. I stumbled upon it on Dorrie's blog this morning...

She is one cool and crazy chick...and her friend has some great things to say about life...

Twelve Rules for a Happy Life

1. Make up your mind to be happy. Learn to find pleasure in the simple things.

2. Make the best of your circumstances. No one has everything and everyone has something of sorrow intermingled with gladness of life. The trick is to make the laughter outweigh the tears.

3. Don't take yourself too seriously. Don't think that somehow you should be protected from misfortune that befalls other people.

4. You can't please everybody. Don't let criticism worry you.

5. Don't let your neighbour set your standards. Be Yourself.

6. Do the things you enjoy doing but stay out of debt.

7. Never borrow trouble. Imaginary things are harder to bear than the real ones.

8. Since hate poisons the soul, do not cherish jealousy. Avoid people that make you unhappy.

9. Have many interests. If you can't travel, read about new places.

10. Don't hold postmortems. Don't spend your time broading over sorrows or mistakes. Don't be the one who never gets over things.

11. Do what you can for those less fortunate than yourself.

12. Keep busy at something. A busy person never has time to be unhappy.

Have a great Saturday everyone...

I'm not sure what's on our agenda exactly on this rainy day but I know we will definitely be:

1) glued to the tv watching the Bombers in a playoff game

2) headed to Michaels to perhaps purchase yet another Christmas tree. It's pink, pre-lit and all sparkly... I mean come on - this will make it lucky tree number 7 - makes perfect sense to me...
oh, gotta go. my big brown bear just rolled over, I think it's story time...

have a great Saturday lovelies....

just a quickie...

post...you sickos!!!

D will be arriving home in the new little while from 4 days in the forest. I sooo can't wait to see him. It's weird not having him around.

I've cleaned up the house and I'm working on laundry so when he gets home we can just chill and catch up on our week.

I still haven't been working on my Design Your Life class - maybe this weekend. With D away I haven't been sleeping well - I miss having him beside me - so my evenings have been a bit of a write off.

This weekend it time to get the old butt in gear. The next month or so is going to be TOTALLY CRAZY and I'm very excited about many of the things I've got on the horizon...including a girls' weekend with Chris and Cawi in Toronto...SO CAN'T WAIT!

I actually managed to catch up with Jodi on the phone last night. It was amazing. We used to spend hours every week on the phone now it's more like a call every month or two but it's so cool how we slip into our groove so quickly. Jodi rocks!!!

Ok, must switch laundry and shower so I'm not all stinky for my "manly man."

'night lovelies

It's beginning to look a lot like...

Yes...you read that right. It's NOVEMBER and November means it's NEARLY CHRISTMAS!!!

time to decorate.

First things first. we had a wonderful last day of October aka HALLOWEEN. Denis did such a great job decorating as he does every year. It was so cool to have so many kids AND parents saying "your house looks great." Yes yes, I know, you want pictures. So do I. They are on D's camera unfortunately and that generally means I'll be seeing them sometime around Valentine's day!!!

I'm not sure who had more fun, D and I or the kids! We had a seriously great time. The "beverages" in the Frankenstein cups may have had something to do with that! We had fun hanging out with our neighbour Darren too. He's seriously hilarious. It was rather amusing watching him calling his 14 year old daughter every 10 or so minutes to remind her of her curfew! ha. It's pretty hard to get into trouble with dad calling so often.

My only regret is that we didn't have enough bags made up for all of the kids we got. I had to resort to plain old chocolate bars and apologized to all of the kids while handing them out explaining that I was not cheap, just nearly out of candy!

Saturday was a busy day doing a few errands and getting stuff done around the house. D pulled out the big Christmas tree for me to get started on!!! So exciting. As I watched the Bombers play a seriously amazing game of football I seperated all of the branches on our 9 foot tree. I LOVE THAT TREE.

I plan on working on more decorating over the new few days while D is out hunting. I think we may need to find a new white tree though. The lights don't seem to be working - that's what you get for buying a Martha Stewart Christmas tree. Oh well. Live and learn.

D did pick up new LED lights for outside and put them up yesterday before it gets too cold.

Today was spent getting ready for the annual "hunt." I did a bit of cleaning and made D a hearty breakfast and some great coffee to get his batteries charged. He had lots of errands to do while I worked around here and baked more of those Heidi Swapp cookies to send along as a "thank you" for Moe and Connie for letting him stay at their place during the hunt. Connie always spoils the boys with her multi-course lavish meals. I figured some cookies and a bottle of wine was the least we could do.

So there you have it. One busy weekend passing from one season to another.

D packed up his Jeep this evening and he's off for the next few days. I know he loves hunting and I'm excited for him to have some time with his friends. And this year he's extra excited because he has all new hunting gear so he'll actually stay warm and not have to wear a large, heavy battery on his back.

Yes, that's right. A few years ago he was tired of being cold so he ran a bunch of wires through a vest and plugged the wires into a large battery (think like a car battery - I think that's what it was). So in the bush he's hook it up and that's how he'd stay warm. Very resourceful but all that weight is a bit hard on the back! Now he's got a much easier and more practical solution - warm waterproof clothing...go figure!

Oh...I need your help with something. I've decided that the funky green ornaments that Janet got me last year for Christmas are going on our Turpin tree and I'm going to decorate the pink feather boa tree from Lynn with pink and black ornaments and put it in my studio. So here's where you come in...

If you see any funky pink or black ornaments PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let me know ok? I want it to be very oh la la tres chic ok?

'night lovelies!

(i'm having spacing issues with my blog tonight fyi...hopefully this all gets worked out)

a few minutes of sweetness...

A few months ago I stumbled upon a blog called c jane enjoy it. She is telling the story of her sister and brother-in-law's recovery from a devastating plane crash.

Her brother-in-law had burns to about 35% of his body and her sister nearly 85% of her body. They have four or five kids and her sisters are helping to take care of them while the couple recovers.

They have the most amazing love story and I can't wait to see the rest of their happily ever after...

This past weekend there was a benefit concert to raise money for their medical expenses. The couple's two oldest girls sang.

I just saw the video of the song. Don't even try to watch without the kleenex nearby.

I was struck by how the girls hung onto eachother's hands so tightly. Those poor little souls are going through much more than they need to at their young ages of 5 and 7.

It's such a beautiful video and an inspiring story...

http://www.eastvalleyproductions.com/player.cfm?media=/movies/Nie/Glendhill

enjoy and hug the ones you love extra tight tonight.