Its that time of year...

This is the latest addition to our home. As soon as the warm weather hit, we knew we had to get our bbq. Unfortunately, ours looks more like the bottom photo. Someone has been procrastinating about putting it together (not that I blame him, I hate putting together bbqs!)
Since we're hosting WND next weekend, hopefully it will make it out of the box soon...

04/30 Update: Its now made it out of the box, and is "half-assembled" on my kitchen floor. Here's hoping it makes its way out onto the patio before our first "bbq" party tomorrow... Otherwise our "Bbq" will involve all of us eating while standing around our bbq. Not quite what I had in mind...

Cookies and milk...mmmm mmmm good

Cookies have been haunting me lately. Chocolate chip to be exact. I've been thinking about them a lot after I rediscovered how easy and fast it is to bake them from scratch. I can almost pull it off in 10 minutes not including bake time.

At work, someone brought in a bag and it took every ounce of will power to not eat the whole bag. In fact, I think I only ate one. Then today I notice my cousin Cat's FB post about eating 10 cookies for lunch. And so, after dinner tonight, I thought about whipping up a batch and went into my cupboard to get out the ingredients only to find a bag of Organic mini chocolate chip cookies staring me in the face. I think Mel and Norm left them on the weekend and lucky for me, it just saved me 10 minutes of prep time plus a sinkful of dishes. I poured myself a tall glass of 2% milk (which after drinking skim and 1%, tastes like cream to me,) and mastered the art of popping in a mini cookie and drinking the milk so I could mix it up in my mouth. I'm trying to stick to "one serving" as per the package (6 cookies) but they are staring me in the face and those first 6 just went down oh so fast I barely had time to enjoy them. Just one more...

Its a girl! No, its a boy! Wait a minute...

This was our experience at our 20 week ultrasound today... I have been looking forward to this day for many months now as I've been dying to know who's in there! The baby was moving around so much it was difficult for the technician to actually take all the necessary measurements. She had me turning this way and that to try to get the baby into the correct position. When it came time for the unveiling, baby would show up on the screen and then disappear a second later, but eventually we got a good glimpse of the face, limbs and heart and even saw it rubbing its face. Our squirmy baby leads me to believe I'm in for some major running around (aka "chasing") when this baby grows up. Clearly someone takes after their father. When we asked for the gender, the technician did her best to get to the "goods" but alas, Baby Lee Begonia was not so cooperative. The few quick glimpses we did get were so fuzzy and difficult to make out anything at all. The technician decided to make her "informed" decision (aka "guess") and said she believed its a girl due to the lack of extra appendages but she said not to count on it since it was so hard to actually see anything. Hmmm... so basically right where we started. Guess this baby is destined for a life of yellow and green... at least to start with anyway.

Bridesmaids Reunion!

Saturday I was fortunate enough to be able to have all 3 of my bridesmaids over for a little Korean cooking party. It was Sally's idea to make mondoo and kalbi and then I invited my other bridesmaids and best friends, Saadia and Susie to come on by for a taste (and of course, to help with all the work!) They all did a great job and we celebrated Susie's big announcement that she is also pregnant. I met Susie sometime around 4 years old and now I'm happy that our kids will be able to also grow up knowing each other since birth. She's actually due 6 weeks after me so they'll be very close in age! If only I had remembered to take a photo of us while we were cooking, its not often I can get all these girls together. Instead, here's a photo of us from my staggette. We look way more glamorous in this photo anyway...

After our cooking party Gerwyn ended up coming back from his own Iron Chef competition with a few of his friends. Christine and Mel ended up staying for some tasty Korean treats and we all snuggled in to watch Jersey Shore. Yes, its true, we've succumbed to the guilty pleasure. Its definitely trashy tv but there's just something about the characters, you just can't look away!

Sunday I spent some time at Grams and visited my niece and new nephew. After I got home we ended up having Mel and Norm over for an impromptu curry roti and yes, one more episode of Jersey Shore. Its like a drug!

Zoku Quick Pops!

Zoo-what? Its called a Zoku Quick Popsicle and it really was quick! I saw this in the Williams Sonoma store and was intrigued. Its a "popsicle maker" that makes "instant" pops. Well, you do need to freeze the base for a minimum of 24 hours first, but you basically just leave it in your freezer and then take the base out when you want a popsicle. Then pour in your juice (or in my case, Strawberry Banana Yogurt Smoothie) and leave on the counter for 7 minutes. Voila, finished popsicle! Deeleecious! It makes 3 pops at a time and up to 9 in total. So you just keep pouring and removing for up to 3 cycles and the pops still freeze instantly. After that, the base needs to go back into the freezer. Apparently it also makes creamsicles (aka filled popsicles) and multicoloured/multiflavoured pops too.

Thanks Cat, for my new toy and a great housewarming gift. At first I thought it was going to be good for future toddler, but now I think we'll be enjoying this just as much ourselves. It was incredibly easy and so fast!

Walking around town...

Finally a break in Gerwyn's schedule! Today he was able to spend a full day away from his laptop so we took advantage of the great weather and decided to walk around the Distillery district and visit our wedding location. We also took the opportunity to use our generous gift from my friend Trish and her husband and purchased a Bodum Cast Iron teapot from a store called Bergo Designs. There were so many items to choose from it was hard to find something we both agreed on. Thanks again Trish!

After the Distillery, we drove up to visit Gerwyn's mom and also made a pit stop at the Korean supermarket for some rice and seaweed. While there we noticed a great sale on strawberries so we bought four boxes and decided to go home and JUICE 'EM UP! The fresh strawberry juice was deeleecious and even better after we added some pears, a mango and a kiwi. But after four and a half glasses my belly felt like it was going to explode. (See photo below.)

Although I'm only at week 19, I think this photo looks more along the 6 or 7 month stage.

Happy Easter!

 

Today we celebrated our family Easter with a lunch at my uncle's house. As usual, there was a TON of food, not only did they do the usual catering, but they also bbq'd ribs, fish and baked an entire ham. I didn't think I'd seen so much food. Carol baked my favourite Chocolate Wow cookies and her famous WS vanilla bundt cake. I think we had lunch at 1:00pm, its 9:33 pm now and I'm still full. Everyone enjoyed the great weather (we all ate outside!) and Evelyn was kind enough to lend us Kahlua for the day so that Hoseok could meet her and get used to being around animals. My uncle also had two other dogs there, Kobe was locked up in his cage most of the time due to his size and excitability but Kahlua had fun chasing their old shih-tzu around the house.

The kids also enjoyed playing on my uncle's trampoline (why they have a trampoline with 3 grown kids is beyond me...) and their swing set. Justin spent a good 15 minutes trying to coax Charlotte down the slide (see photo) but she wasn't able to make it until he would hold her hand down the slide. My cousin Hanna also busted out the stethoscope and I got to hear the baby's heartbeat along with a ton of other gurgling stomach sounds (it was just after I had eaten.)

As per our usual family parties, we ended the afternoon with communal naps in every room of their house and then Carol handed out adorably wrapped Easter treats for everyone. Hope everyone has as great (and filling) Easter as I did!

Caught Red Handed!

Prior to the start of our brunch, someone decided to "sample" the merchandise and didn't realize I had my camera on me to catch her in the act! Her face says it all, guilty as charged!!

Happy Good Friday Brunch

Today we took the opportunity to spend some quality time with family from out of town (Cat, Hoseok and my sister,) and celebrated Good Friday with an afternoon brunch. Carol helped me (ok she did all the work) make a "Spring Garden Fritatta" from Williams Sonoma and also brought our fav dessert, mini chocolate pavlovas. Gerwyn finally got to meet my cousin Catherine and her son Hoseok and they both got to finally see our house. Hoseok also took the time to autograph our copies of his book and even gave a live reading to Charlotte and Gerwyn. He also gave us our very first "Happy Good Friday" card. It talked about Jesus' sacrifices and how happy Hoseok was to be at our house. What a thoughtful guest! 

After a filling and deeleecious brunch, the kids went downstairs to watch some TreeHouse and when I went down to check on them I found them both cuddled up in their own blankets watching tv. They sure know how to get cozy! I'm glad I got a chance to be hostess to my cousin Cat while she was visiting and hopefully we will be able to do it again soon either at her house in Frederick or next time they are in Toronto.

Loblaws Reunion!

Thursday night I met up with a few old Loblaws co-workers for some drinks and Thai food. My friend Janet had just returned from a whirlwind tour of the United States in an RV with her husband and Connie had just moved into her first condo with her boyfriend. Needless to say there's was lots to catch up on. Of course, we relived a few good LBL memories too and I got to spend some quality time with Ken's 3 month old Camilla who was as adorable as ever. Good food, good friends, and tons of free make up samples from Janet (who helped to launch the Joe Fresh make up line currently at Loblaws), what more could you ask for?