In this post, I’m participating in Completing Him Challenge and Marriage Mondays.

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I lost my Grandmother in the last few weeks and stepped away from the blog for a bit. Though I wasn’t blogging, I was still participating in the marriage challenge. My Granny loved my husband and always thought he ‘had a good head on his shoulders’, which is a phrase I hold dear because only my Granny, my parents and my husband ever say it and when they do, the person they’re talking about is always special. I’ll recap the weeks I missed here, and then thoughts on the whole process.

I last posted on week #5, which was priorities in marriage, and making sure mine are kept in line with his. The conversation was very helpful, and surprising that it was actually, because we routinely talk about every item on the list, I just always had them in a different order!

Week #6 was about following your husband’s lead and his vision for your family. Depending on how this is worded, the idea is received differently. The very concept of a wife following her husband’s lead simply because he is their husband is so foreign it even seems wrong to some people. I tend to think of it more like, I picked him as my husband 10 years ago because, among other reasons, he is a good leader and is a smart, level headed guy. I would not have married him if I didn’t think I could trust his judgment. While he’s figuring stuff out, he’ll bounce ideas off me, we talk about possible plans and I’m usually part of the brainstorming process, but to me it’s not the end of the world if I’m not. Very few times have I been hesitant to do something he’s planned to do, but since his decisions keep end up being sound, I haven’t had any reason to be!

The week 6 challenge suggested we talk with our husbands about their goals for the family in 1 year, 5 years and 10 years. We love talking about this stuff so we do it often. I already knew his vision for our family, and I am totally on board. <3

Week 7 was about respecting your husband, and asking what it is you do that makes him feel disrespected. Sometimes it really is little things that we do that can have the biggest impact. Think about the little things that bug you about your husband – do you think he even knows? My husband reaffirmed a few things I already knew, like eye rolling, information overload when he gets up, bugging him to hang out, and not keeping up with the house or going horribly off budget. He also mentioned a few things I didn’t think would be on the list, and I am thankful for the heads up.

I think it’s important to be mindful of the things I do that bother my husband, if for no other reason than to have a peaceful home. How much better is everyone’s day if I’m not part of whatever happens to contribute to a rough day for him? Plus really, he’s respectful to me, so why wouldn’t I be??

Our last week was my favourite as any regular reader would know. Week 8 was about sex, mainly focused on being open to having it as much as our husbands want it. In my marriage we have the opposite issue where I bug him for it more than I probably should. As I mentioned in my post on priorities, my husband says ‘there are more important things’ – it has been suggested that he feels this way because he knows I’m always into it so it’s not something he ever has to stress about. Having said all of that I know we still fit into the ‘often’ category, so it’s not like I’m horribly neglected. The overall goal of this challenge though was to get on your husband’s wave, either way. If you happen to be in my shoes instead of the more often written about ‘SAHM is exhausted and husband wants to get it on every night’ situation, it’s just as important that we lay off our husbands as it is the tired new mommies put out. You dig?

I really liked this challenge and I’m sort of bummed that it’s over. I’m going to take everything I’ve learned and be mindful to apply it to daily life – where it really matters. I would love to get in on more group challenges like this one. Even when I’m left shaking my head and not sure exactly how I’m supposed to handle the situation, I just love him like when I was 18, so I want to do the best I can. <3

I know it’s been more than a month since Canada Day, but I don’t want to ignore the amazing themed food I made for my usual suspects that weekend – prepare to be schooled. I made a dish from each of three provinces that I have a connection to. My father’s heritage is what I love to call ‘painfully Canadian’. It’s true that both his mother and his father’s families go back to Scotland and England, respectfully, but the first few generations back are from Saskatchewan and Quebec. My father is one of four siblings, three of them born in Ontario, plus my husband and his family are from Ontario as well. One of my oldest and dearest friends is from Northern Ontario and Miss Talea is from Saskatchewan as well and actually supplied the recipe I used! My grandfather’s entire family was from Montreal and the surrounding snobby French towns, so that’s my third!

Ontario obviously is at the top of the list, being the only province I’ve ever called home, and though my husband has lived in two other provinces, he was born in here and has spent the most time here. The farmers association in Ontario is called Foodland, and there is even a chain of grocery stores (only in small towns – mind you they’re in every small town) by the same name. There are way too many different fruits and veggies to pick a real ’staple’ of Ontario foods, but we have an abundance of apples and cranberries, plus apples and cranberries are probably my favourite locally grown foods, so I went with Ontario Apple Cranberry Crumble Pie.

Ontario Apple Cranberry Crumble – from Foodland Ontario

Streusel Topping:
3/4 cup quick cooking oatmeal (not instant)
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup coarsely chopped hazelnuts (optional)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes

Filling:
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 tbsp cornstarch
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
6 medium Ontario Apples, peeled, cored and cut into 1/4-inch wedges
1 cup Ontario Cranberries

1. Preheat oven to 400° F (200° C). Thaw pie shell for 10 minutes. Set on a baking sheet to catch any drips while pie is baking. To prepare streusel, combine oatmeal, flour, brown sugar, nuts and cinnamon in a medium bowl. Add butter cut into cubes. Using fingers or a pastry cutter, cut butter into oatmeal mixture just until fine crumb consistency. Set aside.

2. In a small bowl, stir together sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon and nutmeg. Set aside. In a large bowl, combine apples and cranberries until mixed. Stir in sugar mixture and coat fruit well. Spoon into pie shell. Sprinkle streusel topping evenly over top. Bake on lower shelf in centre of oven for 10 minutes. If topping begins to brown too quickly, cover loosely with a piece of foil. Reduce oven temperature to 350° F (180° C) and continue to bake until apples are tender, filling is hot and topping is a deep golden brown, about 50 minutes. Remove from oven and let stand at least 10 minutes before cutting into wedges.

So so so good. Foodland suggests serving it with vanilla ice cream. I served it with this Ice Salad from Saskatchewan.

I can’t possibly explain why a general rule of thumb in the prairies is that anything with more than three ingredients served cold is called a salad. It’s not a rule I’ve ever heard from anywhere else and it’s certainty met with raised eyebrows, so I have confirmation that it’s not just me that thinks this is weird. Also, the prairies have a thing for Jello. They love it in an unnatural, 1950s sort of way. My Saskatchewan dish combines the two in a family recipe from Talea for Ice Salad. The recipe she gave me was for this pineapple-orange version which I loved but not everyone else loves pineapple as much as me.

Saskatchewan Ice Salad – from Miss Talea

One 14 oz can of crushed pineapple
One 3 oz package of lemon jello powder
2 Cups of vanilla ice cream
Water

Drain juice from pineapple. Add enough water to juice to make one cup. Heat to boiling and add jello powder. Add ice cream and stir until melted. Add crushed pineapple. Refrigerate.

I modified the recipe a little and made these pink ones, a strawberry-raspberry version. I followed the same basic guideline and used vanilla ice cream, but I used raspberry jello instead of lemon and because I ditched the concept of fruit bits, I didn’t have the juice, so I used strawberry fruitopia. Yum!!

When thinking about food from Quebec, the very first thing most people think of is poutine. I’m just really not big on the whole cheese curds situation. Aside from poutine, the only other thing out of Quebec would be tourtiere. It’s a meat pie, traditionally made on Christmas Eve.

Quebec Tourtiere

Make your crust (mine is 3 cups flour, 3/4 cups butter and 5 tbsp water) and line it with thin slices of marble cheese. But not cheese slices, you dig? Then sauté your onions and garlic in a bit of butter and mix in and cook your ground beef. Mix in the corn and pour into your (cheese-lined, uncooked) pie crust.

Mix the egg with a bit of water to make an egg wash and brush over the top crust of the pie. Bake it at 350 for about 45 minutes, check on it about halfway and brush with the egg wash again.

I also served Tim Horton’s coffee of course!! Next year I want to make nanaimo bars (for British Columbia), maybe some beef stew (for Alberta) and some kind of seafood (for the Maritimes).

The first time I sat down to write this post, it opened with ‘my granny died 10 days ago’, and that was three weeks ago. I’m still not sure if I want to write about her just yet, but I do know that I want to write and I also know that I wont post anything else until I write about her because I can’t just ignore that she’s gone.

She was 87. 87! That is seriously old and she didn’t squander those years either. I don’t know if I can put it to words in a way that would do justice to her life, but I don’t want to cop out before I’ve started so I’m going to try. Just know that she was a force to be reckoned with.

Even her quick bio is a little awesome to me. She was born in 1923 – think about that for a minute! The town in Saskatchewan that she grew up in had a population of 600 – she even rode a horse to school and that horse’s name was…wait for it…Maude. If I was reading this blog and I didn’t know my family I might not believe that, but it’s true. Her mother died when she was a young girl and she moved with her sisters and brother to Winnipeg where she did most of the cooking and baking for the whole family. She joined the army at 18, was stationed in Montreal and eventually met my Grandfather as a result – he was also in the army and Montreal was his hometown.

After marrying my Grandfather, they had four children. My Uncle Bob was born in a hospital in Montreal in 1947, my father was born in a hospital in Toronto in 1949, and by 1952 my grandparents had moved to the middle of nowhere, on the northern tip of Lake Superior where my Granny gave birth to my Uncle Glenn in a cabin in the woods with no running water or electricity. A few years later they had moved back to Toronto and my Granny gave birth one more time, to my Aunt Wendy, at home in their apartment – so quietly that no one else in the building knew she had a baby!

Grandpa, Uncle Bob, Grandma and Daddy, 1950

She waitressesed her way through her 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, (with a brief break in her late 20s when they lived in nowhere land), and worked hard until she she retired. And even then, she was still up at dawn every single day. When my mother went back to work after I was born, she and my Grandpa not only took care of me and walked me back and forth to school but she taught me real life skills and lessons I may not otherwise know (I can make all the tricky stuff in the kitchen because of her). The very first pie she taught me to bake was Lemon Meringue, how convenient that would turn out to be one of my future husband’s favourite pies! We made a lot of bread, muffins and cakes and HEAPS and HEAPS of cookies. Man, she loved to bake cookies. To me pie represents what I think cookies must have represented to her – the ultimate domestic staple. I’ll even add bread to that catagory, if my house smells like either it just feels so right.

When my aunt and uncle bought a neighbourhood restaurant, she baked all the pies, tarts, muffins and other treats from scratch. Every inch the typical Granny in this way, she’d always go to bed by 10, when everyone else was still having fun and get up while it was still dark to do her baking before the rest of the house even woke up!

There are so many things about her that I aim to emulate, she hosted Sunday supper every weekend without fail from 1975 till the weekend before she passed (though to be fair, my aunt did all the actual work in the last few years because my Granny couldn’t). What a wonderful legacy! There are 35 years of weekly memories created because she wanted to be sure we all stayed connected to each other. It worked. We have always been, for better or worse, one of the tightest families I’ve ever met.

Grandma and Baby May, 1980

Rando facts that I find endearing:
-she loooooved Glenn Miller (so much that she and my Grandpa named one of my uncles after him) and Christmas music (year round)
-she hated wee one #3’s name when we picked it before she was born, and then she kept forgetting it after (but never forgot the names of the other two wee ones)
-from the time I was wee until I got married, we would go to Fabricland together and pick out patterns for dresses or skirts and heaps and heaps of placemats and napkins, I loved it
-she always buttered both crackers and bread before putting peanut butter on and when asked would always say ‘you can’t just put peanut butter directly onto the bread/dry cracker‘, and give a stink eye like you had 10 heads
-when I was a teenager, she’d send me to the store with way too much money and let me keep the change

I thought this would be easier but tears are trying to break through and it’s biting. I am so thankful for the time I had with her, but I am also so bummed with myself that I had even more opportunity to hang out with her that I didn’t take. It’s easy to say that I have a busy life, but it’s not right to use that as an excuse.

Grandma and 4 Year-Old May, 1984.

My eldest uncle passed this March, which I have no doubt had a serious effect on my Granny’s health, and I felt the same way after his funeral. So I’ve been proactive about it I think. I make sure I check in with my folks everyday and my aunts and uncles hear from me weekly. More importantly, I go hang out and insist they visit us as well. It’s important that I stay in touch, of course, but it’s just as important that my kids nurture the bonds they have with every member of our family. For that, naturally, we need face time. <3

This week’s marriage challenge from Women Living Well is talking about time management in your marriage.

We were to make a list of (what we feel are) the top 5 things we do and ask our husband to prioritize them according to how important he feels they are.

This was my list, ordered under the importance I thought he’d place on them. So here’s the list I thought he’d write:

1. A clean and tidy home/laundry up to date
2. A home cooked meal every night
3. Listening
4. Sex
5. Being mindful of money

I was off. This was the list he gave me:

1. Health, happiness and well-being of our family
2. Honesty and integrity
3. Being supportive and providing quality input
4. Household work (ie: cleanliness of house/yard, laundry, dishes)
5. Sticking to budgets, and saving money

Interesting list for a man to have written, yes? I really love this challenge because I love you all getting a little glimpse of my husband.

1. Health, happiness and well-being of our family
The first item on his list covers quite a bit. The health part includes healthy, well balanced meals every day, and being up to date on doctor, dentist and optometrist visits for all of us. Our family’s happiness includes things like daily outdoor play, trips to the playground and time with all of our friends. As far as well being goes, this is mainly me working on ensuring that everyone’s overall needs are met and being aware of not raising my voice at the children and ensuring things like sunscreen, hats and bicycle helmets are not forgotten.

2. Honesty and integrity
I LOVE that he put honesty and integrity on his list. In terms of honesty, aside from the obvious never lying to him and teaching the children the importance of honesty, things like always following through on promises, no matter who they are made to, fit in this category as well. To be known overall as an honest person, as that reflects back on our family. Also situations like enforcing house rules with friends (both kids and adults), to generally be on our best behavior and aim to be upstanding people.

3. Being supportive and providing quality input
My husband has big dreams, and that’s one of the things I love so much about him! He has clear ideas of how to get to where he wants to be, and while there are some stumbles along the way and occasionally a decision that forces us to take a few steps backwards, I trust him and his decisions. No one is perfect, and I respect that things are going to come up and then more than ever, I need to be supportive regardless of what choices are made. I have to work on providing quality input though – especially if it’s an area I’m unfamiliar with or an idea I’m a little resistant to. Even if I don’t necessarily agree with a decision doesn’t mean I shouldn’t help formulate a plan if he asks me.

4. Household work (ie: cleanliness of house/yard, laundry, dishes)
My husband is such a neat freak I thought for sure this would be at the top of his list. The overall sense of calm and order everyone gets from a clean and orderly home is one reason for this item, but he also says he wants that for his children. For all of them to know where all of their toys and books are, to be able to find whatever they happen to be looking for when they need it. It’s also a nice gift to myself to not ever have a pile of laundry or a whole sink full of dishes to do. We both love a tidy and well maintained yard, and really making sure the outside of your house doesn’t look like an eyesore is being a good neighbor.

5. Sticking to budgets, and saving money
This and cleaning were the only two out of five I got right! No matter how much money we have, there is always something else to pay for, and there is always something important to save for. Car emergencies, dental emergencies, vacations, holidays, birthday parties, and onto the serious, like a corner house with a huge driveway and a cute cottage in Wasaga. Or you know, our RRSPs and savings for the kids education and the girls’ weddings. We are tracking all of our money in jars, Till Debt Do Us Part style and that helps to keep both of us on track.

Please note that sex is not on it at all. If I had written this list for myself, sex would be on it, for sure. I know some of you are rolling your eyes and either assuming that he’s just being polite, or that I’m not being entirely honest. In the interest of full disclosure, I wish it was on his list! Of course I asked him about it! He had two thoughts on the subject, the first was that he knows I’ll never say no to it so it doesn’t need to be on the list (blush), and (yes, I swear he said this) ‘there are other more important things in life, don’t you think?’

There are two benefits to this challenge. The first, of course, is knowing exactly what your husband is hoping for, in his own words! The second is the conversation that will end up happening as a result of asking for his input. <3

Yes, this happened two weeks ago, but it was a great day and the treats were really fun to make and turned out exactly as I had hoped. There are other fun creative domestic adventures that have happened even before the last day of school, but I really wanted to share these photos first.

I plunked down with the wee ones and the laptop and they picked what they wanted to bring to their last day of school parties. Wee one #1 picked Barerella’s Oreo Truffles and Wee One #2 picked Bakerella’s Candy Apple Pops. I love that they both picked from the same site, even with all their other options!

Oreo Truffles – from Bakerella.com

1 package Oreo cookies (divided, but use the creamy filling too)
1 8oz. package softened cream cheese
white chocolate (or whatever you like)
Oreo crumbs (optional)

1. Crush about 7 cookies and keep them for topping the truffles, or use a box of Oreo crumbs.

2. Crush the rest of the cookies and mash the cookies and cream cheese together. Bakerella suggested using the back of a spoon for the mashing, and it was a great help – so use the back of a spoon!

3. Roll the mix into 1″ balls and line up on wax paper covered cookie sheets.

4. Pop them in the fridge as you melt the chocolate to make it a little easier on yourself. Coat in chocolate, sprinkle some of the crushed cookies crumbs on top and transfer back to wax paper. Sprinkle with the cookie crumbs and let them dry. Pop them back in the fridge for a few to set up – don’t eat them yet!!

The recipe used white chocolate, and the look that gives is way more visually appealing than milk chocolate. It just looks more Oreoy, you know? However, wee one #1 and his friends are not fond of white chocolate, and they were the ones eating them, so milk chocolate it was.

Once the chocolate has set up and hardened in the fridge, they are amazing. They’re amazing even before they go in the fridge, but if you wait till they’ve been in the fridge for a few hours, they have a perfect little crackle when you bite into the hardened chocolate. Mmmm.

Apparently, these went very fast at his school party and all of his friends asked him to bring them to school parties next year! A few of them even asked

Candy Apple Pops – from Bakerella.com

1 batch of cake pops
Red candy melts
Pretzel sticks
Green candies (I used green apple licorice)

My husband does all of the grocery shopping and errand running around here – which I am eternally grateful for – and this list was no exception. He knows that school treats are a big deal around here and rightly assumed that meant that last day of school treats would be a very big deal. He must have called me 10 times during that shopping trip with thoughtful questions!

Regular pretzels or pretzel sticks?
Is a pound of candy melts enough?
What kind of green candy? I’ll get green apple flavour for the apples!
Do you need packaging for them?
Can I eat one?

So first, make your cake pops. Either while the cake is baking or cooling, gather your leaves and stems. I cut up the green licorice leaves and I broke up the pretzel sticks. Set up a little assembly line to make putting them together go faster and smoother.

Once they’ve chilled and are ready to be coated in chocolate, melt down the red candy melts. I prefer the double boiler method, but you can just as easily use the microwave if you’d rather that or don’t have a double boiler. I always dip my cake pop stick in the melted chocolate/candy first so it sticks to the inside of the pop better. Then I use a soup spoon to coat it evenly and set it on it’s head to dry. In retrospect, I should have let them dry standing, in the contraption I fashioned to assemble them (I poked holes in a small cake board and balanced it over two tall glasses).

Poke the pretzel stem into the top of the apple pop, if you’ve let them dry first just dip the bottom of the pretzel in a little melted candy and poke it in. Same goes for the green candy leaves. They go from being a red cake pop to an apple cake pop in no time!

These were a serious hit at school, all of the kids loved them and almost all of the parents who saw them commented on them. They were very, very fun to make. My husband came into the kitchen and helped out with assembling them all and it was hilarious. He is very detail oriented and wanted to place each leaf just so.

After school, we had a little ‘Yay Summer’ picnic on the porch and this is one of the wee treats I made for them. We had so many pretzel sticks left over, and I always have about a ton of chocolate in the pantry, so I made some chocolate covered pretzel sticks. I also saved some Oreo Truffles and Candy Apple Pops for them to share with the kids on our street. I’ve got big plans for a Yay Summer party next year now!

This week’s marriage challenge from Women Living Well was to list 10 things we admire about our husbands – and to show it to them. The premise is that while we may think our husbands know we admire them, we can’t really know for sure unless we actually tell them. I say all the time I’ve been with my husband for 11 years and I still have a major crush on him, so this list will be fun.

1. He is so smart it’s creepy. Obviously, he’s brilliant in his field and it’s amazing how often this sort of knowledge comes in handy, and I’d like to add here that he is 100% self taught! Aside from that, he’s got this overall level of awareness and smarts over the most random, and thankfully very useful, subjects!

2. He is a very goal oriented hard worker. Clearly, he works his butt off for his family and we are all very appreciative of that. He has since before we were even a family, when it was just the two of us before we got married. His work ethic and drive have brought us so far! Most couples do not recover financially to the place we are in after having their first child at 19 (and two more before 30)!

3. He is a very, very moral person. He always takes the high road – always. Sometimes it’s a little amazing, especially when a friend who doesn’t know him well sees it come out. I know how lucky I am to be with someone who ‘thinks with his big head’, you know?

4. He is outrageously silly! Sometimes, if he hears me coming, he’ll hide behind the kitchen counter, or under my desk and jump out and scare me. I love it. Or when I’m taking food photos for the blog, he’ll get in there and make it silly and fun. We’ll stay up into the wee hours of the morning watching back to back episodes of the Simpsons laughing our heads off.

5. He is also such a grown up. He’s miles ahead of me, he can look at serious grown up stuff, like mortgages and taxes and health insurance and calmly formulate a plan. Or call our financial planner, which is also a pretty grown up thing to do, yes?

6. He is a serious family guy. Given the money and time and space, I’m sure he’d want some TLC-style big family. He is a sucker for babies and is the most protective father of an infant I have ever seen – even on this third time! Whenever he plans a weekend or day trip, it’s geared for the wee ones and all the major decisions are made with them in mind.

7. He’s a great husband – he’s a great husband when it really matters. When I was terrified and in labor for the first time at 19, he really stepped up. He was amazing. Even more amazing 5 years later when we did it again, and by the third time around, we could have done it ourselves in a cabin in the woods – now that’s a partner. And really, who gets a girl pregnant at 21 and actually marries her and lives happily ever after? He does! <3

8. He’s my biggest fan. The ways he supports my efforts all across my life, my friendships and my hobbies inspires me to always be supportive! He holds me to an ever-higher standard, which just pushes me to get better at all the things I do.

9. He is a genuine person. He just is who he is all the time with no excuses and I loooooove that about him. From the silly things, like a real love for bad movies to lifestyle things like how we run our family.

10. He has big dreams – and the drive to go after them. He inspires me to set new goals for myself every time I achieve something.

I hope it doesn’t sound too cheesy, but he’s a rad guy so it’s all true! Now, off to show this to him. <3

If you’re not obsessed with Lost, this post can still be useful – I made the Classic Snowball Cake, which is something I think all domestic goddesses should know how to make. I have been hooked on Lost for a couple of years, I started watching all the episodes in order after the show had already been on the air for 3 or 4 seasons. Being able to watch so much of the show at once, it was pretty easy to develop an unhealthy obsession. I owed my friend Romi a birthday fete and she’s just as crazy for Lost as I am (and arguably more die hard, as she’s been loyal since ep 1, season 1), so I ran with it and her 2*th birthday was all about Lost.

The Dharma labels are all courtesy of Max Pictures, who clearly also has a serious love for the show. Dharma chocolate bars were necessary, as Miss Romi loves chocolate. She’s also fond of red wine, so we needed to Dharamize that as well. We all had personalized boarding passes from Oceanic flight 815, except ours were all leaving Sydney and arriving in Toronto – don’t worry, we know the level of geeky we’ve risen to. What’s with the Dharma evaporated milk? Well, I am a baker you know, I always have to have this sort of thing on hand…

Instead of talking about the cake first, I’m going to go on about the icing, because the construction of the cake itself will likely steal the show. It’s one of those very simple, but very good (good in this instance refers to deliciousness, not good as in ‘good for you’, just to be clear) quick recipe from Kraft. It is just five horribly indulgent ingredients and takes maybe five minutes to pull together.

The cake itself is actually a plain chocolate cake, the recipe used a devil’s food cake mix but you can use your favourite chocolate cake recipe of course! For the snowball effect, the cake is made in an oven safe glass bowl.

Essentially, you whip up a chocolate cake and pour the batter into an oven safe bowl. Mix the cream cheese, egg and sugar, and put that on top of the cake batter. It’ll sink a bit as it bakes. Mine was still visible after it baked, so next time I will knock it down a bit. My concern was that knocking the bowl would make it sink too far but that doesn’t seem likely now.

The video was helpful when putting this cake together, the only thing I didn’t do the same was sprinkle coconut on top because my sister hates coconut with the burning passion of 1000 suns, and naturally she was on the guest list. The candles are sparkly and have wee stars on them, because grown ups or not, birthdays are for being a little silly. Which is also why there are mini M&Ms on top!

The texture of this cake was amazing, I used my usual chocolate cake which is already pretty fantastic, but made so much better with this cream cheesy center! It’s not overpowering and just sweet enough. It’s two years in a row that I’ve made a cake with both vanilla and chocolate in it. We call it our ‘racial harmony’ cakes.

I also made Salsa Roll Ups, another quickie from Kraft. I end up with a very long ‘must try’ list after trolling that site for too long. I also made turkey-chicken meat balls, but I’ll save that recipe (courtesy of my Dad) for another post.

Mix the cream cheese with the salsa and spread onto the tortillas, then sprinkle on shredded cheese. Roll up the tortilla tightly.

Cut the logs into whatever length works for you, you may have to use toothpicks to keep the rolls secure.

So happy 2*th birthday, Romi!! I’m already plotting next year’s cake (and theme, hmmm). <3

I’ve been participating in a challenge set out by Courtney at Women Living Well for a few weeks now, and I’ve yet to blog about it. Since I don’t tend to get too personal around here I was holding off but frankly I don’t want to deal with keeping up two blogs, and so much of the rest of my life is touched on in this blog – here we go.

Seeing as how I’ve missed a few posts on this topic already, I’m just going to touch on each week’s topic and what the participants should have written about. Essentially, Courtney created a challenge for like-minded women to put their marriages first and try to be the best they can be. I’m always down for trying to be the best me I can be, so let’s have at it. Plus it’s my blog. So there.

The first week was an intro post, talking about what the challenge is about (done above), the second post was to be about remembering when we dated our husbands and the third was Monday, about praying for our husbands.

Here’s my intro: I’m doing this challenge because I’ve always been one of those sometimes annoying self-help book loving eager beavers. When I got pregnant for the first time, I read everything I could get my hands on and plunged in with both feet. That was 10 years ago and we have 3 kids now, but I’m still reading books and going to classes and workshops on how to be an even better mother. All along the way, I’ve been doing the same with my marriage, so this challenge makes perfect sense to me.

So, part 2: We met through mutual friends and spent a lot of time together in a large group, eventually we had fallen head over heels for each other, but we didn’t want to mess with the dynamic of our group of friends. So we just didn’t say anything to anyone – including each other. This went on for at least 6 months, until one day we were sitting around listening to music and we spent a night talking and talking about talking and finally admitting to each other how we felt. I was 18 and he was 20. We got married exactly a year after that conversation and had wee one #1 shortly after that.

Part 3: Prayer is a fantastically personal thing, but it can be done a sentence at a time over the course of a whole day. It can be lighthearted and down to earth, it doesn’t always have to be something you set aside a chunk of time for. Courtney suggests we use our wedding rings as reminders to pray for our husbands throughout the day. If you know there’s an issue your husband could use some help with, you already know what to pray for. Otherwise, his health and well being are always a good start. Every time I have noticed my wedding ring in the past couple of days, I’ve had a positive thought about my husband and said a little prayer for him. Life is all about the power of positive thinking, people!

*Most people who are participating in this challenge posted photos of themselves with their husbands from their dating years. My husband is not fond of any of our early photos. I will put a recent one in the sidebar for you, but no dice on the wedding pics.

When I refer to myself as nerdy, I’m not sure I can possibly convey to you just what kind of nerdy I qualify as, and exactly how nerdy I am capable of being. Everything I know about computers I learned from my husband, actually I knew how to use the PINE email program at the university, but that was it when we met. Our childhood experiences with technology were not at all similar, by the time I met him he was building his own computers and restoring discarded laptops, and maybe borrowing some internet from neighbours and writing irc bots all night. I? Was not. So over the years all I’ve ever known is the nerdiest of nerdy – I know my husband feels responsible for creating a monster, I’ve been so hilariously sheltered from how normal people use their computers. I only discovered a few years ago that people actually just plug their computer directly into the internet! What?! No firewall? No router? Nothing? Or that there are people without an email address.

After going from knowing nothing about technology to referring to my BlackBerry as a appendage, when my husband announced he was installing a computer in the car I was not only not at all surprised, I was so very excited! Immediately, I started calling it The Carputer. Because right?! He was very lucky in that he came across one of those treasures of Craigslist, a man who didn’t know the worth of what he had. We had to drive out to Ajax to get it, (of course it was Ajax, the TO burb I make fun of the most), it turns out the guy we bought it from was using it with a DVD player and thought it was clunky. O. M. G. We got the monitor, skinny keyboard, power supply and actual computer (all Xenarc) for $500. That’s probably about 1/3 of what it’s worth. Hooray for others not doing their homework.

The monitor is a touch screen, it also has a remote with it to move the cursor, but the touch screen works so well I’ve never used the remote. The monitor needs to be mounted, so to check it out before we installed it, we set it up on my tripod.

The next few steps are a little sketchy to me. I know he needed to add this port, and I know there was a lot of soldering going on in the garage. That night, he and Andrew installed the actual button on the dash to turn on the system in the trunk.

  

  

One they had that working, they just had to make it neater and hide all the cords under the carpet and door trims. Success! The first is the trunk view of the system, behind the backseat. It pops down into the car for easy access!

  

Then came the really fun part. No, we didn’t make out in the garage – well, maybe a little. The really fun part was mounting the monitor to the dash! We had spent over a week trying to figure out how to mount this sucker so the passenger could easily use it, but not take up any leg space. In the end he picked up a metal rod and a pivoting tripod head, and a few u-rings and bolts and he just bolted it to the side of the dash.

  

He had to drill both into the side of the dash and into the front (behind the stereo) so he could get his hand through to hold the u-ring in place to secure it.

  

  

 

So, halfway to Sudbury the following weekend, we tried it out for the first time on the road. I hit Twitter and chatted with Kit through Parry Sound and was impressed at the speed! The keyboard is really, really slim and tucks just between the passenger seat and the center console. Under the top of the mat by my feet is a USB hub and plugged into the cigarette lighter is the husband’s iPhone – we used internet tethering from it! We have a rocket stick now though, so next time we’ll be using that which will be much faster, though even the tethering worked fine!

It’s such a silly indulgence because really, I could have my netbook on my lap in the car, with either internet tethering off the iPhone or with the rocket stick, but the mounted monitor is a dream and the keyboard is so much lighter than the netbook. From start to finish this took about two weeks to pull together, and a lot of that was time spent on other projects. I think this qualifies as uber-nerdy.

In the spirit of new blog friends, and good friends starting new blogs, I’m posting a rando ‘50 Things’ list of stuff about me that isn’t too obvious. Consider it the intro I never wrote. I’d love to read your 50 things!

1. I got married when I was 19 and my husband was 21, and we just celebrated 10 years of marriage!

2. Our first child took us by surprise, it took four years of trying to have our second, and we patiently waited for our third (who arrived 3 years later).

3. I am a very good long distance friend. So many dear friends have left our amazing city for adventures in other countries and then settled there. I’ve also made some wonderful friends online over the years that are scattered all over the place.

4. My husband is a hard core computer geek and he works from home 100% of the time. I shudder to admit how many computers we have in the house – all actually doing something I swear.

5. I go to a big Sunday dinner at my 87 year old Grandmother’s house every Sunday where I get to see my parents, my sister, my aunt and my uncle.

6. Every weekend I host a knitting/board game night with my girlfriends and my sister, there are 5 ‘regulars’ and another 10 or so that are in and out from one week to the next.

7. I was born on University Avenue and am an unapologetic Toronto snob.

8. I am still very close with the two first friends I ever made in kindergarten.

9. I am firmly planted in 1996. Soundgarden is still my favourite band, Party of Five never gets old and I still say ‘duh’ and ‘rad’ like they never went out. However, I do not wear plaid flannel shirts or babydoll dresses with no stockings and mary janes like I did in 1996 – there are limits.

10. When I was 24, I was freaked out about turning 30. Now, I’m 29 and totally fine with it.

11. I am way more religious than I ever let on. Partly because it’s really none of your business and partly because I can’t help but feel people will look at me differently, even though I’m still just me.

12. I am still totally head over heels for my husband, and we are so into each other life is still spicy! Yes really.

13. I got hooked on fitness and nutrition after my third wee one was born. I work out 6 days a week and allow myself one cheater meal a week (but not on my off day lol).

14. I am the opposite of a helicopter parent. I really think it’s important for kids to do kid things like playing in the dirt and sneezing on each other and making messes and splashing in the tub (with the curtain or shower doors closed!)

15. I have 9 tattoos (both shoulders, back of my neck, side of my neck, right breast (scandal), right leg, left big toe and both wrists). Somehow, I don’t look like a biker.

16. I am a 50s housewife to the bone. I own a closet full of cute dresses and only 2 pairs of pants. I cook almost all meals from scratch, handle the kids on my own, keep the house impossibly tidy and fetch my husband coffee. Sometimes with pearls on!

17. Ever since I got pregnant with my first wee one, I’ve been reading books on parenting and I have learned so much. I also read heaps of classic fiction and my friend Romi has got me into new fiction – which I also love.

18. I learned to knit 6 years ago and I loooove it. I feel like I hardly knit anymore, but I still do. My preferred thing to knit is socks and small creatures. I taught a bunch of my girlfriends how to knit a few years ago and now one of them knits way more than I do.

19. I’ve been off and on with blogging a lot, but lately I’m so in love with it I can’t picture stepping away again. I think I just needed to find my groove.

20. I got hit with awful postpartum anxiety and it lasted a year. I am terrified of it happening again, so no more wee ones. Otherwise? I’d have two (hundred) more. I recently feel like I’m coming to be ok with this and really, if I had a fourth would I have a fifth? Where is the line? I live in a major city!

21. I call my Dad at least once a day, sometimes more. He gives good advice, has great recipe ideas and is really good at listening. I refuse to believe that one day he wont be there, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

22. I am more addicted to my BlackBerry than I care to admit. But it tends to keep me off my actual computer during the day.

23. I aspire to be an amazing gardener, but I’m not very good and mostly just resent my flower beds for allowing weeds to sprout. I’ve also been known to say ‘I wish my lawn was emo so it would cut itself’ (yes, I stole that from a tshirt).

24. I won a beauty pageant when I was 8. My mother was terrified of pageant moms and didn’t encourage me to go to to the next level – which I am so thankful for!

25. I quit smoking over 2 years ago!

26. I have dyed my hair every colour possible in the last 14 years. Currently, it is black with blonde chunks. Yes, I am ‘that’ girl. I even sometimes rock the guido poof!

27. When people say ‘and Becky was all like, OMG, I know!’, they’re talking about me.

28. I have broken my right ankle 5 times, all my fingers and toes at least once, and my left arm once.

29. I took pre-law in university and honestly thought I’d be able to put my kids in child care and go off to law school and be a lawyer. Maybe when they’re all grown.

30. I’ve given birth three times. First and third were natural, second time I had an epi and later wished I hadn’t.

31. My husband and I have a monthly date night, even though we hang out every night.

32. My three favourite magazines are Martha Stewart Living, Cosmo and Today’s Parent. Which is actually a pretty good layout of my life.

33. I caught chicken pox from my sister when I was 14. It sucked.

34. I love really, really bad television. Like Bromance and Paris Hilton’s new BFF. I know it’s awful but I can’t help it.

35. I could play Mario Kart everyday and I played an 8 hour game of Mario Party last year.

36. My husband and I are huge on movies and watch at least a few every week.

37. I have a serious crush on Anderson Cooper.

38. I once dropped a butcher knife in the top of my right foot and I had to *pull it out*. Yuck.

39. I used to hate cars and never wanted to learn to drive or buy one. Then my husband got his license and a car last year and now we go on road trips all the time and I loooove having a car.

40. It is eerie how quickly and easily I adapt to new situations and circumstances.

41. Our favourite date night activity is going to the drive in <3

42. I wear makeup every day, even if I stay home all day.

43. I used to drink 3 + cans of pop a day. This year, I quit!

44. I have alarmingly ugly 70s tile in my kitchen and I embrace it. My dear friend Brigitte made me an apron from matching fabric. Bless!

45. I keep a 'quote book' file on my BlackBerry to record all the hilarity that goes on with my girlfriends, my husband and our kids. The funniest quote is too graphic to even put here!

46. My bestie, aka my girl soul mate, aka Talea moved 5 hours away almost 5 months ago and we both feel like we lost a limb. We text and Facebook message each other like we’re 17.

47. I really love red wine. I didn’t at all until a few years ago when the above-mentioned Talea got me hooked. Now, it’s all I drink, aside from theme drinks for parties, of course. Thanks for turning me into a wino!

48. I’m awesome at Monopoly and suck serious ass at charades.

49. I have drank my coffee black since I was 14.

50. Technically, I was a teen mom. My oldest was 3 months old when I turned 20.