Today Simon turned 49.

To start the celebrations he opened his cards and gifts over breakfast before moving on to the annual tradition of ride the same number of kms as there are candles on your cake. This year he did it inside on rollers because he had to be done, showered, and ready for a workshop at 10.

The middle part of the day was work (or school for some). I beetled home after work in order to assemble his cake. The actual cake part was baked on Sunday. Today I made the orange-flavoured buttercream and put it all together. After work, we went for supper at Mitillini’s. 3 of us had pizza and I had the steak. When we came home we had cake then (re)watched the first episode of Loki.

Happy birthday Simon. We hope you had a great day! 💚❤️

For the first time since early 2020, all four of us are at school / at the office.

It seems like a momentous occasion. Figures that there was an Amazon delivery this morning. Hope it doesn’t get swiped from the doorstep before someone gets home.

Updated

Oh, and I saw some baby honk-honks on my way to work today. 🥰

If you recall, for his 6th birthday, Murphy got a tent to play in outside. The weather was nice enough this weekend that he got two chances. First was Saturday afternoon in the sunshine:

The second was at dinner tonight. Tammy, Ian and I had dinner on the deck and then played some Uno afterwards, while Murphy got to watch the birds and listen to the dog bark over the back fence.

Exciting times! Miranda has signed up for her first year’s courses at the University of Calgary.

On one hand, it’s nice to see that the registration technology is so much more advanced than when Tammy and I did it at UVic: a paper course catalog and using a touch-tone phone to find out that the course you want is waitlisted wasn’t fun.

On the other, some things don’t change… like finding the course you want is waitlisted or otherwise won’t work in your schedule. Funny, I seem to recall Tammy telling Miranda to have alternates for her courses lined up. 🙄

In other news, I am missing skin on my hands this morning from taking off the tires on my Roubaix, replacing the sealant and putting them back on again. What a painful, thankless job that was.

And thanks to her Mother’s Day card, Tammy now has a nice set of Murphy cutouts on her monitor.

It started as a joke: I made her a card with the Cricut, and the resulting cutout was so nice that I stuck it to her monitor. The subsequent cards have joined the first…

Today was a pretty low-key day. It started off with a breakfast burrito made by Ian and a lovely card from Simon (from the Mr. Murphy collection). Ian started prepping last night by making the pico de gallo. This morning he grated and rinsed the potatoes until no starch remained to make the hashed browns. Then he scrambled the eggs and nearly burned the bacon. Sadly there was a mishap with bacon grease and the floor, but Simon can talk about that. 🤣 The final product was very delicious (and spicy – the jalapeños were a real eye-opener!).
After breakfast we did a little grocery shopping which included some libations for today: a Growler of Neapolitan Stout, a box of chocolate beer, and some moscato. Can you believe Baby Duck was out everywhere?! We also got some hors d’oeuvres for lunch which we ate while we all played Minecraft. Miranda got a cake from Abbey’s last night and she did the writing on it. We had some of that with lunch. It was mild and nutty and spice-cookie flavoured – very delicious. The Chocolate disk on top was also delicious.
After lunch, we continued with Minecraft until I had to take Miranda to work. Supper was leftovers and popcorn with fruit with the moscato and a tequila seltzer while we watched The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard. There was also some laundry thrown in throughout the day. It is Sunday – laundry day – and laundry day waits for no holiday. 😜
Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there. Thank you to my loving family for everything today. 💜❤️💚💙

Had a fun day today. Started out with some lovely flowers and cards

Yes that’s a glass full of alcohol on the lady’s face

And a flower that changes colour when floating on water

Then things got interesting when we pulled out the card game ”That’s What She Said”. If any of you have seen The Office, yes it’s just as dirty and funny!

Yesterday, I attended the YODA (Youth of Distinction Award) ceremony with mom at the Calgary Zoo. The event was organized by Youth Central, a Calgary-based organization that works to empower youth. Of the 9 categories, I was nominated by one of my Earth Guardians group members for the environmental award and was one of the three finalists. The ceremony was fancier than I expected with quality coffee and food at the brunch provided. I didn’t win but it was still a lot of fun (I also got a goodie bag with a gift card to my workplace amongst other things). After the event was over, we were able to walk around the zoo before we had to leave to get me to work. We had a good time seeing all the animals and wandering around before we left.

Penguin video

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Here’s a video introducing the nominees.

Today is our Mr. Murphy’s 6th birthday.

In honour of it, I made homemade pork gyoza with nori-wrapped rice balls and a salad with homemade sesame dressing. Of course, Murphy had some of his birthday cat meat. I also made a Mississippi mud cake.

He has been enjoying his present for a couple of weeks… at least the boxed version of it. 😄 We got him a tent with a removable tunnel. (His friend, “Orange Puddy”, across the back fence has one and Murphy said he’d like one too. We have to wait until the weather is consistently fair, but I think it’ll be very exciting to be on deck or in the back yard.

Happy Birthday Murphy! We hope your day was fun and relaxing. We love you! 🧡💚