I MADE THE PRE ELITES GYMNASTICS TEAM!!!

He said

So as I sit typing this week’s goings-on, I am on Danielle’s MacBook Air, sitting at the back patio set while Emelia plays in the yard, there are birds chomping away at the bird feeder and there is a wonderfully-made-by-yours-truly Monte Cristo sandwich and cold bottle of cranberry honey mead sitting in front of me. To say this is a blissful Sunday afternoon, would be the understatement of the year! And as far as weeks go this was another great one for the books.

The start of this week saw me down at our store in Sherway Gardens to allow their management team some planning time together. It was a trip down memory lane for me as three years ago last week I began my journey with Apple, with my brother at that store. What was even better was there were still some of the fantastic folks I met back then, at the store, so we got to reconnect and share our journeys since then. And it is always great to get to another store to be reminded what great people we hire and to get a chance to meet them.

While I was working on Tuesday, the haptic feedback on my Apple Watch started tapping away on my wrist frenetically. It seemed Danielle had some very exciting news to share with me and wanted me to call her the second I got a chance. When I had that opportunity, I heard the news: the email we had been waiting for about her tryouts was in—Emelia had made the Pre Elites gymanstics team!

I think Danielle was as excited as Emelia was going to be. Because I was in a hotel that evening in Toronto, we decided to hold off on sharing the news with Emelia until we could all be ‘together’ on that evening’s FaceTime call when I was done work and Emelia was starting the bedtime routine. As expected, Emelia was over the moon about the news and I was extra happy to be able to see the entire reaction as I sat in the parking lot of the Bier Markt (where I was having dinner at) with the girls on FaceTime.

The other exciting news is this week was it became officially, official at our store that I will be moving into the role of People Leader. I’ve just come up on a year as the joint Family Room Leader and I feel pretty comfortable in that role, so it is the perfect time to change roles and gain some new perspective and learn some new skills. I am basically like the HR manager for the team, supporting and coaching the store team in their development. A lot of what I have learned about this role, is really going to allow me to use the skills I did as a creative, and the parts of the job I adored most: fostering people’s development and growth.

Each one of the Leaders in our store has moved into new roles so we all get the opportunity to put on some fresh eyes and learn some new aspects about ourselves. It will mark the first time I am out of the Family Room since opening the store and joining Apple three years ago. I am beyond excited to take on this exciting new challenge and add new tools to my belt. My hope is that one day I will have experience and insight from doing all the different Leader roles we have in store.

Yesterday at work while connecting with our Store Leader, we figured out I still had some vacation days I needed to use up (that’s one of the many reasons I love her) so Danielle and I quickly landed on the notion that we could book another weekend outing in Wolfie! So, in addition to the first week in July and August that we will be at the beautiful Bon Echo Provincial Park, we’re taking another weekend at Lakeport State Park in Michigan smack dab in the middle of those two weeks.

So, in addition to the weekend we have already been out in her, plus those three trips in a short month, as well as, the one we’re taking to Sandbanks in September for the Sandbanks New Waves Music Festival we will be officially out one more time in Wolfie over last year—something we were pretty proud of then. But, I think we still might be able to squeeze one more weekend in her in October before she goes away for the winter.

So as weeks go this was a pretty dandy one if I do say so myself. It had all the right mix of exciting news for all of us, sprinkled with all sorts of great time together with the two girls that matter most to me. And I even managed to finish my part early, outside in the sun while Emelia plays away with her neighbourhood friends. That will leave even more time for Danielle and I to surf the couch tonight!

She said

This week was a pretty exciting one for our little girl. Emelia has shown us that she is a natural athlete. In an incredibly short period of time she has gone from an introduction recreation program in gymnastics and now 9 months later she has been accepted on the pre-competative team. We are so incredibly proud of her. And thanks even more again to Poppa who’s going to be a big part of us being able to let Emelia fulfil her dream and drive Emelia to training on the Wednesdays that John is not able to. So once again we cannot thank Poppa for all his help.

With that news out of the way we puttered along in our week. Emelia had her hip-hop classes and I managed to squeeze in a couple workouts around John’s crazy work schedule this week. By the time Friday rolled around my work week was wrapping up and we were just waiting for John to wrap up his work day. I started working on supper, and once again with great frustration I was trying to work with our crappy so called non-stick pans that were everything but that. About 6 years ago we invested in what we thought was a great set (they certainly were not cheap), we had researched the safest cookware available that had a non-stick coating. Well some has held up well but the two pans that are used the most are down right frustrating.

Over the last 4 years with all the problems I had with food I took a stronger interest in cooking and preparing healthy whole foods. So after months of frustration with my current set I had it. I went to my foodie friends asking what was the best option to replace my crappy set. I was willing to invest in quality but lets be honest the budget was not limitless. I had a number of suggestions and went to researching the choices. I had always longed for a LeCreuset cookware set since working with our friend Judyth’s set over 10 years ago.

These are heirloom sets, quality is unmatched. But that also means that the price matches the quality. I had lucked out last year at a flea market to get a single pot to start my collection and I wanted more. But to get the set in the pieces through finds at estate sales, flea markets and other second hand options could take years. So I took a chance and peeked at Kijiji to see if anyone was selling. And to my amazement there was someone selling their entire set, all 13 pieces. Now the price, the retail value for everything is up and around $5000 so what he was asking for it was more than reasonable but still out of budget. So I took a leap and asked if he was negotiable on the price, he was. So I got the entire set for a small fraction of the price of the set new.

And I could not be happier – we picked them up today and they are incredible. The person selling them is a very successful chef in London who was now sponsored by another high end cookware line so could no longer use his much loved set—win for us for sure! And not to mention this cookware has been on TV with him! So, instead of being years to collect what we have we are not the more than happy owners of a stunning set of cookware.

The other weekend activities for us other than Emelia’s weekly swim classes, she also had some play dates with her friends from down the street. But one activity had Emelia pretty excited, it was the decision this week that she finally wanted to chop a ton of her hair off. I love Emelia’s hair but it does NOT stay looking put together very long. She has thick hair that being as active as she is is constantly a mess and a nightmare to convince her to brush in the morning.

So thanks to her new friends who she met at camping the weekend before and the heat that was bothering her she finally agreed to take about 5 inches off. So thanks so much to Allie and Reese for having the short cute bob haircuts because now we have a super cute, super easy hairstyle for Emelia.

And that was basically the week that was, this coming week will be a busy one. We have to get Wolfie out to have some repair work assessed, Emelia has not one but two school field trips, we have dance class, swim class, gymnastics and add into that we have the school’s annual May Fair which is always an amazing night with all the children from her school.

I am tired just reading that! Until next week!