Happy Birthday to a very special little girl!!!!!...and a bunch of other stuff from the last month....

First things first....

Today is our beautiful little girl's 3rd birthday!! Man time sure flies!

Can you tell that there is a bit of a theme going here????

She blew out all (3) of her candles on her cake....with a bit of help on the last one from Mommy.....

Sooooo what else has gone on over the last month....I must get on this more often....it is tough to remember everything!!!!

Let's see....oh ya....we spent a weekend at Mont Tremblant to celebrate Nanna and Poppa's 50th Anniversary. We stayed at a great spot, some excellent food, good wine, a little golf....yep a great weekend.

I found an excellent chef who owns a restaurant in Tremblant and was willing to come in with a server to cook and serve a fantastic meal for us right in our condo.....Patrick Bermand!

We played some golf....

Clarissa even got some wonderful early birthday gifts from Uncle Richard and Aunt Frankie

(yep that's the Leafs and the Habs on tv....yep I know...not a real hockey game.....)

We also spent some time in the village

Fall is here.....

Our thoughts and prayers are with our good buddy Brian from my hockey team who had surgery to repair some vertebrae after going head first into the boards.

Our thoughts and prayers are also with our friend Roberta who is heading for a second trip to China...our thoughts and prayers are also with Adrian who is staying here while she is gone.

Ok...downloading all these pictures has taken longer than I figured on....lots more to add, but no time right now.....I will aim for another post tomorrow.

October already????

Wow, I have been home for two months already!!!

Annnnnnnnnnd loving spending time with my beautiful little girl.

We have been having all kinds of fun...

Of course one of our favourite things to do is......make cupcakes!!!!!

Making them.....ummmmmm......leads to the very favourite part........EATING THEM!!!!

We had a great time going to find Clarissa and Nanna's names on the TransCanada Trail. Clarissa found Nanna's name....

And she found her name too.....

Well the mould is now out of our basement.....but we still have this to deal with....

A 6 inch wide gap that goes all around the perimeter of the house....very nice. After meeting with a pile of contractors (and hearing solutions of all kinds and $$$..price tags), I found the one who will fix the moisture problem. Then it is on to finding someone to reframe it all, and then someone to install spray insulation. Just loving Claridge right now (sense the sarcasm in that statement????).

Oh well it is what it is. Eventually it will all be done and we will be able to move all of the stuff that is currently filling up our living room and garage back down into the basement.

Enough of that...back to this....

and this....

We had a great time going to pick (and...errrr....eat...) apples at the apple orchard...we would have had some excellent pictures....except that I forgot to charge the camera's battery before we went....sooooooooo all we got was this one

Looking forward to a special family visit to Mont Tremblant.......more to come.

Montebello, puddles, clouds, and special times.....oh and MOULD!!!!!

Sooooooo yesterday it was exactly two years since we first met our beautiful little girl!!!

That would be a spectacular V8 moustache she has going on there!

It is amazing to think that it has been two whole years that we have been a family! We feel extremely blessed and so.....yep I will say it.....as unpopular as it is to say with some......LUCKY!!!!!! There I said it! Us....her....we are all soooooo freakin lucky!!!! We have such a fantastic life.....well I guess that I could do without the needles being poked in and out of my back twice a week to cause injury to promote healing to "help with my pain"....and well I guess that I could use to have more than 6 inches of my bed once in a while (hmmmm I wonder if those two are related....anyhow...)....and well I guess that I could do without having to pull the heavy during the battle of wills with a certain almost 3 year old:

(Adrian...I am borrowing this style of presentation of information from you because...well you are theeeee man!!!

Me: Clarissa it isn't nice to throw Mommy's tv remote across the room because you don't like the show that is on. Pick it up please.
Her: No!
Me: No???????? Yes please. Mommy and Daddy would appreciate if you would pick it up please. It is not ok to throw things in the house.
Her: No!!
Me: No?????? Ok we will sit here in front of the remote until you pick it up.
Her: WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Me to myself: Nope, not going bend.
Me: We will sit here until you pick it up.
Me to myself: Ooooooohhhhhhhh big flowing tears and boogers....very good one......this is absolutely breaking my heart!!!
Me: All you have to do is pick up the remote and we will go back to playing.
Her: Wahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! Don't want to!!!! Go away Daddy!!!!!! MOMMMMMMMMMMY!!!!
Mommy: Clarissa it is not nice to throw things. All you have to do is pick up the remote.
Her: Don't WANT TO!!!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Anyhow this went on for what felt like forever......until....
Me: Ok, I will help you pick it up. We will do it together.
Her: No!!!!!! Don't want to!!!!!
Me: If we pick it up together then we can play with your Dora puzzle and have some raspberries.
Her: Ok. We picked it up and then had raspberries.....and all was well with the world again......

Well until we discovered this:

I won't go into the details here, but I will say that it is a huge pain in the butt!!!!!! Oh well for every problem there is a solution.

Anyhow, a couple of weeks ago we went to Chateau Montebello which was spectacular. Nanna and Poppa come up for the day and then stayed for dinner before heading home and the three of us stayed overnight. During the day Poppa and I......well these will tell you.....

We walked around the grounds at Chateau Montebello

We also got together with some of the families that we travelled to China with to celebrate the 2 year anniversary. (thanks sooooo much to Manon, Richard, Marie-Eve, and Emilie for hosting a fantastic day) It is so great to see the girls growing up.

Clarissa took some great pictures of the sky the other night....

Oh almost forgot that we had a great time playing in the puddles when it rain the other day

One week in....and all is grand!!!!

Oh and let me start by saying that for some reason I am unable to post comments on my own site....so I am not ignoring you A, R, and D's...I just can't comment...maybe I blocked myself....maybe Carolyn blocked me...."HONEY I need to talk to you!!!!!!"

Yep, my first week of being a stay at home Dad is complete and a fantastic week it was!!! We both survived it with no major injuries. On good days I even got a nap in the afternoon!!!!!

Sooooo what did we do????? Hmmmm let's see...

We played with Sunny the bird....


Oh and we made cupcakes....from scratch...a first for both of us....Clarissa iced and decorated them all by herself.

I did learn something though...dancing and jumping in front of the oven to celebrate how good they look through the window, as fun as it is, is not a great idea that results in some kind of flat cupcakes. As flat and rather bizarrely iced and decorated they were though....they still tasted great. Next comes the white cupcakes!!!! (we did chocolate to make Mommy happy)

Clarissa had snacks each day...


We hung out with lots of friends...


Bring on week number 2!!!!

Let me introduce you to Mr. Mom!!!

Yep, tomorrow is my first day of being a stay at home Dad!


Now I figure there is one of two possibilities in play here. 1) Carolyn thinks that I am a great Dad and she is fully confident that all will be fine here upon her return to work tomorrow....or.....2) She is actually scared to death of the mayhem that may ensue and is just highly medicated enough to allow her to leave the house in the morning (err......assuming that she does actually leave the house in the morning). Let's take a poll.....Vote number 1, Vote number 1!!!!!!!!

Well either way, I am very much looking forward to spending my days with my beautiful little girl.


What will we do????? What will we do???? I think that we will start with making some cupcakes...ya cupcakes...white cake with light chocolate icing...or wait...how about light chocolate cake with brown sugar icing....ya light chocolate cake with brown sugar icing...that sounds really, really good. Now, I want to make them from scratch...no box cake mix. Have I ever made cupcakes from scratch??? NOOOOOOO of course not, but I am sure that I can...I mean "we can"....Clarissa will help me......oh....wait, I seem to remember something about us being booked in for playgroup tomorrow...hmmmm I guess it won't be cupcakes tomorrow. Maybe Wednesday...ya Wednesday!!! We are so making cupcakes on Wednesday!!!! Ummmm unless I find out tomorrow night that we are booked for something else on Wednesday....but I will have you know that there will be cupcakes! Yes...there will be cupcakes!



Clarissa has taken a big liking to corn on the cob!!!




Mmmmmmmm bbq'd peaches!!!!!!



I did have a couple of more serious topics to talk about, but I got sidetracked by cuteness and the whole all about me thing.....I will get to the serious stuff soon though.....

In the meantime....Clarissa had the bunnies out...

Ok now where was I???? Oh ya.....

Took a while to charge my battery huh????


We have had lots going on around here and Clarissa is becoming a bigger girl each day! The big news...........she is now diaper-free!!!!!! (well except during the night, and even then she wakes up and tells us that she has to go....most of the time) This all happened in one day.....I don't remember the name of it, but there is this book that Carolyn came across somewhere (hey...give me a break...I'm a Dad....I can't remember this stuff.....), anyhow whatever this book says it resulted in no more diapers all in one day. Magic!!!!

Oh the other thing is that our backyard deck is now compete....


and we are loving it. It has made a huge difference back there. The pitcher of sangria that I made us tasted different somehow...



Clarissa is real impressed by it also....



We had a couple of visitors in the backyard the other day...




We took Clarissa to see the Changing of the Guard on Parliament Hill

Father's Day, a couple of stinky visitors, and "Houston we have no diapers!!!"

First things first.....


Soooooo what's been goin' on???? Well, we had our 5th annual charity golf tourmanent a couple of weeks ago which is partly why I haven't posted in a while. The last couple of weeks leading up to the tournament is always pretty crazy for me. The good news is that we had another great tournament with 140 players, and we raised $19,000. Then I headed to Toronto for a conference and to do some work. This all resulted in me spending my second Father's Day sitting in on presentations about planning disaster and business continuity exercises. Then dinner alone and the evening alone watching tv in a hotel room missing my girls.

Huh???? You are not at all interesting in hearing about me??? You want to hear about Clarissa??? You want pictures of Clarissa??? Oh....ok...well she had her first hamburger. Errrr....ok, technically it was a hamburger bun toasted on the bbq with a slice of tomato on it, but that is just details isn't it???


Clarissa has been taking some pictures of her toys with Daddy's camera



She has new favourite Princess pjs.


We had a couple of visitors in the backyard.....darn....my camera battery went dead...can't download anymore...I'll be back.