Where in the world is Carmen?

I was lo0king for this lady with the BIG curly hair.
Has anyone seen her?

I'm looking for her. I have a message to pass on.








She's not over here.











And I don't see here over here!









There she is! See the hair makes her head twice as big!


Happy Birthday.
Enjoy your day off!

Rain rain go away

Guess who this is?
1st hint: that's her last name on the store behind.
2nd hint: she's a pastry chef.
3rd hint: she has a show on foodtv.

We were at a dragon boat regatta over in Niagara-on-the-lake region and during our break between the 1st and 2nd heats, we went into town to hit the Tim Hortons.

While walking around the Port Dalhousie downtown core, we happened to stumble here, and ran into Anna Olsen. The host of Sugar and Kitchen Equipped.

Kieran didn't care who she was, he just wanted a cookie.

One thing, never let a frenchman with a medium double-double in his hands, hold your kid.

Kieran was like the energizer bunny after that and couldn't figure out why. He was almost to the point of bouncing off the walls.







This is why he shouldn't drink coffee.
It was raining and he kept yelling the sky is falling.








Yep it was a wet regatta.
It was also not that warm. But the river water felt like bath water it was so warm, relative to the air above it.

The only good thing about the rain was that it saved Dave from taking a shower this morning, since he was going to get rained on anyways, and it also saved him from doing laundry.

Only bad thing was Dave had no where to sleep between heats.



Others, found another way to spend the time between the heats.

Only problem was, the water was not that calm today.
Choppy waters and beer don't seem to like each other.


Amber sits in front of Kelvin in the boat. So this was what happened in the 'D'-division final.

The Surf Sweepers made a really valiant effort and gave it all they had, but came up just short of getting medals.

Guess those beers made the difference.
It just wasn't the right type of carbs to take in.




And this is a picture of us in the athlete's lounge.
We spent most of the day in the car keeping warm and dry.




And this is our fearless leader.

We had left her behind at the regatta area, because the frenchman couldn't keep up with her walking pace and lost her amongst the other paddlers.

Fortunately Monica was able to find her, wandering the compound aimlessly. Obviously looking for her teammates.





The sun did eventually come out. After the regatta was over. And it did stop a little, in between heats, only to pick up again during our races.

And it only rained a little here at our house.


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There can be only one! Highlander.

Conner's christening. That's the wet head in the middle.










Nice church eh? Really roomy and echo-y inside. You can really hear all the conversations going on while the priest was speaking.









Believe it or not we were on time. Thanks to Cathy's time change. It worked!








The challenged paddler is confused. Having only seen Kieran on the web.

"Is this the real thing. I've only seen this kid on the blog. I can't tell. Looks the same."




Future family member. That's the one really smiling, on the inside.


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The Magic Paintbrush

It was Christina's big evening with a near capacity crowd filling the Palmerston auditorium to watch the show she'd written and directed. That's her at the top of the steps of the library.

The whole dragonboat team came out to see her play the Magic Paintbrush.
Kieran gave it 5 out of 5 sippie cups.

It was a real blast of a production, the actors were awesome and Kieran was paying attention for most of the show. Which means the play must have been really good for a 14 month old to watch a show for 50 minutes, without any animated cartoons or puppets or talking animals.

This was a paintbrush that Christina gave out to each and every kid in the audience, but I didn't see Dave with one.

It didn't make any apples or bananas come to life.
But it didn't stop Kieran from trying to eat it.

We went out to celebrate the play's successful production, by going and eating some Korean food.







We even had a subway musician come into the restaurant singing and begging for food.
At least he was entertaining and on key.
Kieran offered his cheese squares that fell on the ground.
yummy!
Melvin gave him some rice.


Who is this kid and how come I had to pay for his meal?

Ryan kept telling the waitresses he was with us.




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Happy Sukaboy day!

Hey I thought these presents were for me?

If there is no food in any of these packages, then I don't want it.
You can have it Papa.

Happy Birthday!
luv Kieran



So I wished for a quiet day today. And I got it. The rain drove away all the honking and screaming FIFA fans over in little Italy, down the road from where we live.

I also wished for some moola in my pocket. And the rain actually saved me from watering the lawn. And I did wash the car in the rain so it rinsed my car and saved myself more money. Woo HOO!

Then I wished for the rain to go away. And it was sunny. For about 2 hours. Then the rain came back. And then it went away when we went out for dinner.
The saving money wish still kept going. Cuz all the restaurants I wanted to go to were closed. We ended up going to a place that our neighbours recommended called "Indian Rice Factory".
I'll put a restaurant review up later.

I was hungry, so I wished for food. And it came...eventually.

Then I wished to go home and that happened too.

Vive LA FRANCE! FIFA 06

Way to go France! After dominating the 2nd half of the World Cup Finals match, they blow it in the shoot out. And now we've got a mob scene down in Little Italy, which is walking distance from where we live.





They closed down St. Clair W from Lansdown to Portugal.
If it had been a Portugal v. Italy final. This part of town would have been on fire!
We could hear the honking and the cheering going on from our front door.

Through all the honking and screaming, Kieran was sleeping through most of our journey to the party central.



Everyone was italian today. Including these two entrepreneurial brothers from Ethiopia selling World Cup propaganda.
Take advantage of the situation while you can dudes.








Everyone was coming out of the woodwork.
The honking and tooting of horns was going to go on ALL night! And maybe a lot of pasquale's would be conceived tonight too? Who knows.





We did see some French fans bravely making their way to Little Italy.
We didn't wait to see if they made it out in one piece.


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SO what's the big deal with this trophy. Even if France didn't win they could have still bought a world cup trophy. This guy had a truckload.


Our corner




McD's was booming at Keele and St Clair W


Working our way to Little Italy Old Weston and St.Clair W.

Escape from Goldhawk

It had been a long time since Chris had felt the warmth of the sun on his face. The dark confines of Goldhawk had turned him an unhealthy pasty white and he needed a haircut. The smell of freedom was sweet and the free of any fried aroma.

The dark confines of the Goldhawk compound had also affected his vision and memory. He was having a tough time trying to recall any sort of memory of his son, sitting right next to him. And Chris also had trouble communicating since no one is allowed to talk at the Goldhawk compound.


Having eaten only fried foods for so long. Chris had a difficult time recognizing non-fried stuff like jams. "What are these for" he asked. And Teen demonstrated the art of eating jam with ALL the free samples.







Everything looked so good it was hard to choose just 1. Or 2, or 3, or 10...
How much for this whole display?






Chris had been at the Goldhawk compound for so long eating fried foods, out of sunlight and no communication that he had forgotten that he was vegetarian.
He's pointing the veal and eggplant special at Mustacio's at the St. Lawrence Market.





Having been forced to only eat rice, Chris had some difficulty recognizing cheese because of the similarity to rice cakes.



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MexiCasa Loma

This was only our second night out without the kid.











We left Kieran with Captain Crunch's wife so that we can get to Iris & Andy's wedding in time. I doubt if he even knew we left cuz he was out cold.

It was a warm evening, perfect for napping.



Helen was taking a page out of my stealth camera book and snapping pictures left, right and down below.







We only used the hotline a few times to see how everything was going back home.







Brenda couldn't believe we left Kieran at home. Then she was even more shocked cuz she realized she could've left Lance at home.








But there was no leaving my twin behind. We had the same colour shirt and shoes and even our untucked shirt style was the same.






Andy got the Town Crier to marry them. He was cheap, cuz he didn't have to provide a microphone or loudspeaker. Apparently he can speak chinese loud and clear over all the conversations in the varying chinese dialects going on in the room.
Plus Andy agreed to fix his washing mashine in exchange for the marriage certificate.




With 4 good looking women around, that bell wasn't the only thing clanging.





Not sure what was up with Gord, but in a whole bunch of shots he was showing his butt and posing like this. I think he's been working out, so he was showing his best side.




We normally expect the butt shots to come from that Roger dude in the middle, 3rd from the left.

But he kept the pants on this night.






Andy's smiling now. Wait til he sees the bill.







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