I finally did a chin-up, pullover on the bars at gymnastics!!

He said

Where last weekend was a good, old-fashioned, family, fun-time, this weekend was particularly work-centric for me. I was in every day this week, up to and including this weekend—today closing out a seven-day stretch.  And while that may sound a tad complainy, it is anything but. We did have last weekend off and this upcoming weekend I am off again for Shawn and Matthew’s wedding. And tomorrow and Thursday are days off too. It certainly makes the approaching Christmas speed closer on the horizon. Its hard to believe here we are at Black Friday and Matthew and Shawn’s wedding effectively on the doorstep of one month from the fat man doing festive B&E’s the world over. But here we are!

This week, the one thing we had to squeeze in where we could was making sure Danielle, Emelia and I all had figured out the finery we were going to wear to the wedding. I did pick up a suit last year for a fancy dinner we had after Christmas with my work colleagues, but as much as I love the suit and it was in a colour I like, I realize it was far too lightweight, and in colour for a winter wedding. So with that in mind it meant we needed to sort out a suit for me and pronto! Thankfully Greg and Testza were in the same predicament searching for suits for Vaughan and Greg and had discovered that Sears Warehouse had a 30% Off sale on their suits.

We set aside Wednesday evening after Emelia’s gymnastics to get that sorted out. I was skeptical I might find something there as I haven’t had much luck in the past, but it was definitely worth a try given the prices are already at warehouse level, saving an extra 30% was icing on the cake. And magically enough in about thirty minutes I had found and tried on a suit that I was very happy with. In fact the longest part of the time there was spent finding the right suit shirt and tie. After we had that sorted we walked out with a two-piece suit, a dress shirt and two tie options (one came with the shirt) for $200 with taxes. The pants are off getting hemmed and will be ready early this week, so I am happy to say that I am all set. Danielle and Emelia, I am sure Danielle will tell you below, managed to get all their fancy duds sorted out over the course of the weekend.
The other exciting thing to happen this past weekend into this week is I sent my old iPad off for reuse and recycling to get money for it, to put towards the new iPad Pro I am going to order on Tuesday when the gift card should arrive. I am really excited to get it and the Apple Pencil along with it and use this device as a beautiful sketch pad to doodle and create are, that also will be able to do so much more. Before the iPad Pro was announced, I was certain I was going to get the new MacBook, but the moment the iPad Pro became reality and I recognized it could do everything the MacBook could, plus it had that amazing Pencil and the ability to get email and web anywhere I have a cell signal, I was sold! And the best part about it is we can now do online orders and pick them up in the store. Gone are the days of ordering and waiting for–what feels-like–ever for it! Fingers cross, next week’s post recapping Matthew and Shawn’s wedding and our week will be recapped from the beautiful new iPad Pro in our household.

With the schedule this week, I was done work early enough on Wednesday to jet home, scarf down dinner, pick up Danielle and take in some of her gymnastics. I have actually caught a few of her sessions lately and quite regularly am blown away at far she has come in such a short period of time. And the muscle tone she is getting is crazy too. But there was a point where both Danielle and I were gobsmacked proud parents as we watched her master a chin-up, pullover on the uneven bars—something that she has been unsuccessfully working at for weeks getting a little closer each week. Well… this was the week she crossed that one off the list! And in true Emelia fashion, she then proceeded to repeatedly do them over and over until her arms – tired – decided she was done, well before her mind thought she was. As we stood there beaming like proud (and equally biased) parents, I leaned over to Danielle and asked her if she wondered Emelia would look any better at the Elite Tryouts this spring when they come up again. We both laughed at the thought of how far she has come and how in her element she is there.

As I said up there, this weekend coming up is the wedding, so there is just a lot of getting ready this week and seeing if Matthew and Shawn need any last minute help getting things ready. We all have appointments to get our hair cut this week, and aside from that it’s really just waiting for the big day, slash weekend to arrive. Well… there is that Bahamas concert on Tuesday night that we have tickets for! That will be a nice, musical grownup night out for Danielle and I, as well as a night for Emelia to spend with her favourite sitter, Poppa! There will be some many great things to talk about next week, that for now I am just going to sit here and enjoy the approach.

She said

The week back after an amazing weekend in Toronto was one of pure chaos. We got home so late Sunday that Monday night was grocery night. Well, that was after doing 10 loads of laundry around the daycare day. Why 10 loads? Since we were staying in a B&B my OCD nature makes me wash each and everything that came in contact with the apartment to assure we came home germ free but what doubled the work was the text from one of my daycare moms Sunday afternoon. One of my daycare girls had Hand, Foot, Mouth disease, this virus is crazy contagious and I instantly went into de-germ mode Sunday into Monday all day. I had to wash everything to control the spread of the germs. Every piece of bedding/soft toy had to be run through the washer and dryer, every surface in the house had to be disinfected – the task seemed never ending.

Well, one thing I can tell you about HFM is that it is horribly contagious, and is so long before you even know your child is sick. So thankfully Emelia was unscathed as we have lived in daycare land for 8 years and her immune system is well honed with childhood viruses, but the rest of the kids were not as lucky. In the end 4 of the 5 daycare kids got hit with the virus and at every diagnosis I would go back into insane cleaning mode to control the level of the virus. In the end we all survived the week and it looks like I will have all my kids back tomorrow.

The other focus this week was to get everything in order for next weekend’s wedding. On Wednesday we got things taken care of for John and found a great suit at a great price and that laid the ground work with what the rest of us would be wearing. Emelia we originally had a dress bought months ago, well the colour was a shocking pink and seeing it against everything else and talking to Emelia she said she didn’t love it as much as she thought. So back went the dress and we were on a mission to find something else. On Friday I had donations to go to Talize so we thought we would head in there to see what they had. We have had amazing luck with formal dresses there for Emelia and this time was no different. She found the most beautiful formal gown that she simply adores. And the best thing, the dress was $6! We went though her collection of jewelry and her dress shoes and finished the outfit off. Today we went to Claire’s and found the perfect little headband for the outfit to be the perfect addition to her girly girl hairdo we are getting done the day of the wedding. She just adores it and feels like a grown-up princess.

The last person to be finalized is me, I had borrowed a beautiful dress from my sister but in comparison to the formal wear my family is wearing it felt too casual so I have borrowed a dress from Testza and think it will be perfect for the wedding. Now I adore the dress my sister leant me so I will have to squeeze in a dinner out sometime soon so I can have an excuse to wear it before I have to return it to her.

All in all we are hopefully going to clean up nice and we are officially on the countdown to the big day. We are just about ready, I just have to finalize details around the boys wedding present and we are good to go!

6 more days and the big day is here!