Happy 3rd birthday Ezra!
You have an awesome personality that already shines through. You make us smile and laugh all the time and I hope you always stay as super cuddly as you are now 🙂
Have a wonderful birthday!! Love you!!
We introduced Ezra to skiing this year and it was a lot of fun! For the first few weekends, I mainly skied with him between my legs just to get him used to skis and enjoying the activity. He was so cute, he’d say “wheeee” as we’d ski down together and if I stopped on the hill for a break (because my legs were BURNING), he’d tell me to “go.”
Eventually he started to get his ski legs and could ski/glide on his own. He was great and even started to make some small turns. Try as I might, I could not get him interested in trying to stop. That’ll just have to wait until next year. He did, on our last day of skiing, insist on riding the magic carpet by himself, and although I was hesitant to let him, he ended up doing great! No falls and got on and off no problem. So rewarding to see.
I didn’t ski as much this year with Adam as he has the basics down and can really handle any green or even blue run at Blue Mountain so he often skied with his parents while I worked with Ezra. So proud of both nephews!
Since I made a video of Adam skiing last year, I thought I’d put one together of Ezra. Here he is learning to ski at age 2 1/2.
Wow!! 5 years old today! I’m so happy to have you as my nephew and you are such a big important part of the family. I love watching you grow up and being there for all the important moments. Wishing you a very happy birthday and excited to celebrate with you on Sunday!
Love you so much!!!
I had two final exams yesterday, Stats 1 and Linguistics, and am now officially done two more prerequisites. After completing my Biology course at a glacial pace, I realised it would be smart to take as many of the remainder of my prerequisite courses at a brick and mortar university. So in June I got myself organized (finally) and figured out how to take courses at university when I wasn’t actually enrolled in a program. Turns out, it’s pretty easy and I am currently a non-degree student at UTSC (which is the Scarborough campus of U of T). It feels way better completing courses in a four month time frame then the 12+ I took to do Biology. Turns out, if I can delay an exam, I will (and did) so being at school with set deadlines has really helped. I am currently left taking one last online course, a phonetics course, and am enrolled in Statistics 2 at UTSC in the winter term. Then that’ll be it for prerequisites. I may still take one or two more courses with some of the same professors I’ve had simply to be able to get better references from them and to, hopefully, increase my GPA. In addition to the courses, I’ll be volunteering and possibly studying another language over the next year with the idea to apply to Speech Language Pathology in January 2017. I definitely dragged my feet for the first year of working on my graduate application, but I think I may just have needed that year as a proper break. We’ll see how it all plays out. I still may not get in even in 2017, but it’s a good thing to work towards right now.
Today I went to a cookie/exchange brunch and it was so much fun. Marcio hosted and made the brunch and we all brought cookies, bars, bark, etc to share. The brunch and treats were both so yummy! I made chocolate caramel oatmeal bars 🙂 Here’s a picture of all the treats. So good!
I just wanted to wish a very happy birthday to my sister 🙂 I made another white chocolate raspberry cake (as requested) but tried to do something a little different with the decorations. The end result was…interesting. My artistic side needs a lot more development, but definitely unique 🙂
Ellen is the youngest in the family (save the nephews) and it’s crazy to think that she’s 30 now! I’m so happy she’s my sister and she brings a lot of joy to our family. Wishing her all good things for her next exciting decade!
Love you Ellen!
I just wanted to share a few pictures of a super delicious (and not so low calorie) dessert. This is a cake I asked my mom to make for my birthday this year and I enjoyed it so much that I decided to make it for my sister’s birthday a couple of weeks ago. I have to say it turned out perfectly and was really delicious, especially with a cream cheese icing. Here is a link to the recipe. I used white chocolate chips instead of the Baker’s white chocolate. I also followed advice from the comments that mentioned not spreading the jam all the way to the edge of the cake (so it wouldn’t drip down the side).
I highly recommend this cake!
I can’t believe this picture is from 2 years ago today! This was such an exciting day!
Ezra has been a total joy. He is super sweet, makes us laugh and since he has loved cuddling from day 1, he’s been a particularly perfect nephew!
         
He also makes for a pretty awesome younger brother to get into trouble with.
           
He is curious and adventurous.
He can be stubborn and may not always do things on demand (like smile for the camera!), but he’s sweet, loving and a whole lot of fun (and he LOVES Play-Doh!). We are all so happy that you are a part of the family and we love you so much!
Happy 2nd Birthday Ezra!
You are perfect!
Sarah and I took Adam for the second year in a row to Canada’s Wonderland yesterday. I didn’t think he was tall enough to go on any rides other than in the kid’s area, but as we passed Thunder Run (one of the smaller coasters) we saw young kids lining up which led us to check his height. Surprising to all of us, he was tall enough. Thunder Run is a coaster that is in the dark for 90% of the time and has a dragon animatronic that the coaster goes around. I didn’t think this should be his first coaster since Adam can be a bit cautious and does not love scary things. Sarah’s focus though was that the line was short so she rushed all of us in. I tried to prepare Adam a little for what the ride would be like and he was okay to go on it, but as soon as we entered the tunnel, he covered his eyes and buried his head in my side for the entire ride (it loops through the tunnel/mountain twice). I wanted to make sure we hadn’t traumatized him so I asked him about it as we got off. He definitely didn’t like it, but he also took it in stride and was okay about everything. We did a lot of the smaller rides after that which he loved before we took him on the Ghoster Coaster. This one was at least outside, but he would be introduced to the, in my opinion, best part of roller coasters, the drop after the hill climb. As the coaster pulled away from the platform and headed for the hill it goes pretty slowly, this is when Adam turns to Sarah and tells her “I like this speed.” Sarah trying to prepare him, says “but it’s okay if it goes a little faster, right?” I was sitting in front of them and turned to watch Adam’s face as the coaster took the drop – it was the face of someone who was experiencing their first stomach drop sensation and didn’t know to expect it. He didn’t like this coaster either, but again was not traumatized by it – which was my main concern.
After that we did a few more rides in the kid’s section and then he played in a playground for a while. As we were leaving he kept seeing cool/interesting things like animal balloons (expensive!), popcorn, cotton candy, food, juice vending machines, etc. The first time we passed a vending machine, he was excited and asked to have something from there. I told him it only dispensed water which we already had. A little while later we passed a second vending machine and he was so excited, he really wanted to get something from it. I knew I wanted him to be able to get something as a treat/souvenir from Wonderland so I told him that he could have one thing. I asked him what he would like and he answered that all he wanted was a drink from the vending machine. So we went ahead and bought him a lemonade (as far as souvenirs go, it was a bargain at $4.25). His face lit up! The lemonade made his so happy, it was adorable. He didn’t want to open it because he wanted to show it to mommy and daddy. He carried it the whole way out of the park and it gave him the biggest smile. I don’t want him to ever change! I love that a lemonade gave him this much excitement!
I filmed Adam’s reaction to the two coasters and to his lemonade. I’m not sure we have the biggest thrill seeker in our midst, but that’s most likely a very good thing anyway 🙂
I have to say I love these guys! I celebrated my birthday last weekend and my nephews came up to join in the celebration.
I was a big Star Trek: The Next Generation fan and if you look closely you can see that Adam is holding a small model of the Enterprise 🙂 He’s a fan too!
Ezra and Daisy, the two fair-haired members of the family.
It was a gorgeous day, which makes it even more fun to play in the remaining areas of snow.
It was warm, sunny and just really felt like the perfect spring day. I decided to lie down on the deck for a nap, but Ezra kept checking in on me 🙂
Between celebrating with the nephews (and their parents and mine) at the farm last Saturday and a birthday game night with friends the Friday before, I had an awesome birthday.
Also, here is the impressive cake Ellen made for me. Loved it!
Hope everyone is having a wonderful spring and enjoying warmer weather!
And it’s April already! I have to say March flew by, but it was busy too. I finally wrote my first biology midterm (much needed progress made!) and then I had a really bad cold or flu that knocked me out just at the end of the month. Happily I’m feeling better and am making progress towards my second midterm in biology. This past weekend was Easter and my sister and I picked up our nephews for a weekend up at the farm. I decided it would be fun to try and make an Easter bunny cake from a really simple idea of cutting a round cake into ears and a bowtie. It was really easy and I think turned out quite cute. I made a lemonade cake and it was a nice change from my regular go to of chocolate cake. Perfect for a spring dessert. I didn’t plan ahead about how to decorate it, just used what I had on hand and kept it pretty natural (even used the juice from crushed strawberries to turn some of the icing pink for the ears and bowtie). If I had planned ahead a little more, I probably would have covered the bowtie in blueberries instead of just leaving it pink…maybe next year 🙂
I helped collect some sap this weekend and hopefully dad will be able to do some boiling this week. Maple syrup season is always such a nice time of year, possibly because it coincides with some of the first warmer weather of spring which is always a nice feeling of warmth and new beginnings.
And then there was this cuteness this weekend!
Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!
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