I had a sleepover at Poppa & Grandmas this weekend. And we had a dance-a-thon at school on Friday!

He said

This week marked the last week of the Wellness Challenge I was part of at work. And while our team didn’t end up winning the total challenge, we did manage all of us to lose some weight—two of us on the team even lost into the high teens of pounds over the four-week challenge. And second, only 5 points back from the winner ain’t all bad either! My total loss was 15.6 lbs and it feels pretty great despite a good 5-7 pounds of that being from Christmas alone. But, still that number though!

This week started with me coming down with the same sort of nasty intestinal bug that had been making its way around most of my coworkers, and I spent the day home in bed. After being up from 2:00am to almost 5:00am Sunday evening, I spent pretty much all Monday in bed, sleeping. It was the better part of late afternoon before I was feeling myself again.

The rest of the week, eating more healthy definitely helped me bounce back a lot more quickly than I normally do, and the week went by in in a blur that wrapped up with my last shift on Thursday and culminated in a big, three-day weekend off!

Friday, I had off because I had organized a house concert for my good friend Jim Bryson at our other friend Tim’s house. We love Jim’s music and have been planning for some time to get him here in London under the intimate setting of a show in someone’s house filled with a bunch of great friends who appreciate great music.

Originally we were planning to have the show in our house as a follow-up to the concert our friend Jenn Grant put on about a year and a half ago. But, in the last year, Tim had some really challenging times and I decided that a house concert would be the perfect kind of positive glow cast back in that house of his. And it was… so was!

After the show, Jim, Danielle and I convened back at our house. Danielle went to bed, while Jim and I stayed up entirely too late listening to records and talking mostly how he doesn’t approve of my all-analog fuddy-duddy turntable-only Marantz audio rig.

The next day after a rather lazy and slow start we got Jim on the road to his next house show and us on our way down to Toronto for the second reason for our weekend off: we were again headed to the legendary Massey Hall to see Dan Mangan with Hayden play a show there. Both are bands Danielle and I adore and when the show was announced we didn’t take a second thought to pick up tickets.

But the best part of the show was that it was a grownup evening out for us. We got to putter about the city and then meet friends before the show for dinner at one of our old favourite haunts Salad King for some amazing (and spicy) thai cuisine. And after the show we went out for a couple libations at the Irish Embassy Pub where the entertainment there was the steady train of well-lubricated over forty folks who didn’t know their limit and were trying to navigate the stairs to the basement bathrooms, more-than-nebriated .

We got to bed entirely too late, spending the night cat & apartment sitting for Aunt Charlie & Uncle Todd while they tough it out in sunny and warm Florida. This morning it was up too early and back on the road to London to get Emelia from Mom & Dad’s and her to her beloved gymnastics class.

The rest of the day was a blur of all the regular weekend errands compressed into an afternoon, alongside having to run laundry at Mom & Dad’s because our pipes in the basement have done their usual once-a-winter freeze. It did give us lots more time to visit with Mom & Dad before and after or usual Sunday dinner gathering with them. And I can’t think of a better way to end a perfectly great week that had a lot of the things I love all compressed into it—even if it did end with a whole heck of a lot of errands.

That’s all I got, off to help fold laundry.

She said

What a wonderful weekend. The month of February with John’s schedule we have had very little just us time, for the entire month we only had 2 days off together. This weekend was exactly what we needed.

As much as I adore how close Emelia and I are, how much time we spend together, and how much she and I get mommy and Emelia time, having each and every weekend finding things to fill our days though out the week with the kids and on each weekend while John worked I was more than ready for a break. I was more than a bit excited to have a true kid free weekend.

We were so lucky that Poppa and Grandma were more than happy to have Emelia over for a two night visit. After a bit of tears that she was going to miss Mommy and Daddy sooooooo much and that we shouldn’t go away she settled in quickly and had a weekend filled with her American Girls, crafts, movies and lots and lots of grandparent time. Needless to say she had a great time.

Once we made it through the week of extreme cold temperatures, stir crazy toddlers and a bit of illness around the house John and I were ready to burst out of the house as soon as the last child left for the day.

After the kids were gone I packed Emelia up while John waited at the house for Jim at our place. We then made it out for dinner with friends and then moved over to Tim’s house for a night of music and friendship. Jim was amazing and before we knew it it was well past midnight and we were finally making our way home. I was the first to turn in after 2 and then Jim and John followed a while after.

The morning came too soon but after a later breakfast John and I packed our bag, said our good-byes to Jim and made our trek down the road to Toronto.

One of the promises me made to Emelia that if she was a super good girl we would make a stop at American Girl and get her a small treat for her beloved dolls. In the late afternoon we arrived in Toronto at Yorkdale and fought our way through the crowds and found something on Emelia’s wish list.

After a quick bite we touched based with Dawn and made plans to meet up before the show. John and I got downtown early enough to just a bit of window shopping before meeting up with Dawn and Jon at one of our favourite places. Happily we found out that Salad King has a good gluten free menu so I could have a few amazing choices. We just love the food there and the prices are just incredible.

Once we were done dinner we had some time to kill before heading to Massey Hall. The hall is simply stunning and what I love more than anything about seeing artists there is seeing them there their first time. We saw Jill Barber in November and now seeing Hayden and Dan Mangan at their first show there was just amazing. I love seeing the pure joy smile on their faces when they fulfil their dream to play on this legendary stage.

Once again Dan was amazing and Hayden was memorizing. The night was filled with music, laughs and friendship. Basically perfect!

After a few drinks we were at my sister’s place crashing for the night. We were literally at my sisters place from 2:30 until we left at 9:00 the next morning and it felt like we barely got our heads on the pillows before the alarms were going off the next day.

I had to set the alarm even earlier than we would want since we were kid free and not getting up with Emelia but I needed to log in at the crack of crazy o’clock so we could book our second week of camping. We had hoped to book back at Sandbanks again this year but with a reservation system that was overloaded with everyone trying to book their civic long weekend camping. So after dealing with a very slow server we were not able secure a site. After making a quick switch of plans we booked the last site available at Bon Echo. We cannot wait, now we just have to make the weather warm up and fast forward to spring.

Today has been a busy one, we made a fast trip back from Toronto to bring Emelia to gymnastics, get the weekly groceries, get the lenses replaced in Emelia’s glasses, and 3+ weeks with of laundry caught up at Helen and Doug’s due to frozen pipes.

And basically that was the week that was, next week should prove to be as busy as this week.