Home for the Holidays

This morning we celebrated my sister's 21st birthday with some mimosas (its was her champagne birthday after all, 21st on the 21st!) and some of my family's favorite cinnamon rolls.

What a perfect way to start off a morning on my vacation. However, the champagne went to my head and I've been feeling sleepy all day, which in all honesty was probably more likely from getting up in the middle of the night to see the lunar eclispe.

I've been officially on vacation since last Friday, but its been a whirl wind few days, full of family, friends, baking and shopping.

The only break that I took was to read in bed for a little while....but even then I wasn't alone. The dogs had to surround me. (As you can see, I'm in full vacation mode...comfy sweatpants, check. holey socks, check. old hoodie from university, check!)

Since I've been back home I've been in cars for almost 6 hours, driving through snow covered towns that makes the snow we have in Toronto right now just look like a light dusting of icing sugar.

But what makes road trips more bearable? Tim Horton's of course ;)

....And hanging out with cuties like this. Yes, that is chocolate around his mouth, and, Yes, that is a candy cane shaped rice krispie treat stuck to his t-shirt.

I had better get back to a mountain of wrapping to do, sugar cookies probably burning in the oven, and a stack of Christmas DVDs with my name on in. Ho ho ho!

The Armadillo Cake

I may have mentioned this before, by one of my all-time favorite chick flicks is Steel Magnolias. I don't know what it is, but I just love it. Even typing this up, I get the urge to go pop it in tonight. And this fact is not wasted on my sister, who last year went above and beyond what I expected for my birthday cake.

You see, she was home from university for the Summer and going a little stir crazy waiting for her job to start up, so she started getting into cake decorating for fun. I would literally come home to find a three tiered wedding cake in the middle of the table, complete with gum paste daisies.

My thighs have still not forgiven her for that one.

But then she did the unimaginable for my birthday...

She made me an armadillo cake like the groom's cake from Steel Magnolias.

I nearly died on the spot I was so happy and I may have strained my face from smiling so much.

Happy Birthday to me!

(P.S. - I did not turn 8...that was just how many candles we had.)

And what was the best part?

When you cut into it, the inside was red velvet cake!

...which is actually kind of disturbing when you think about it. Especially considering a vegetarian made it for me. But that didn't stop me from eating TONS of it over the weekend. The buttercream icing was to die for. How cute is the grass, little blue flowers and crumbled upper Oreo cookie "dirt"?

Speaking of birthday celebrations and eating copious amounts of cake, I'm turning 25 on Monday, so I'm heading up to the cottage tonight for the big long weekend birthday bash....or as I like to call it "Eat Your Weight In Buttercream, Burgers and Pasta Salad" weekend. Hoping that the good weather holds out!

Student Life Revisited

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to end up working a weekend in the city I went to university in, which also happens to be where my sister is going to school right now. I took advantage of the chance to see her and extended my visit to stay at her place on Sunday night and watch the Oscars.

I forgot that Sunday night at a university house doesn't necessarily mean its a weeknight, so when I showed up my sister (right) and her housemate, Katie (left), were gearing up for Century Club. For those of you who are maybe not familiar with this game, basically you do a shot of beer every minute for 100 minutes. I decided that at my old age of 24 I'd sit this one out and watch the Oscars instead.

Their other housemate Carly is an absolute doll. She and I watched the Oscars together until I fell asleep...and missed both Sandra Bullock and Kathryn Bigelow getting their Oscars. I think thats considered blasphemy here in the film industry.

They were only on their third cup and already the jokes were coming out

Katie has a young beagle puppy named Valentine that I all but fell in love with while I was there. How can something so cute be so destructive? I honestly believe that God made puppies and kids cute so that we don't kill them.

I didn't see this lick coming. Ewww...

Whiskey would have killed me if I brought this monster home.

The girls started complaining about their "raw toast"...or what the rest of us call it....bread.

I think it looks a little moldy actually. My sister is such a keener that you even numbered the cups!

Gillian and Valentine watching the Oscars. Go Hurt Locker Go!

Uh oh, Katie started doing "model poses"

I think is the turning point where my sis starts beating Katie...

...yep, right about now we realized that Katie might not make it to 100...

...maybe not even 30.

Valentine looks a little concerned...

And before we knew it the night is OVER. Sam finished 100 shots of beer in 100 minutes. To say I was proud is an understatement.

As for Katie....well, she made it to 50, I think...

After all that Century Club and Oscars excitement, Valentine and I were a bit tuckered out.

I have about a million pictures of this pup (which is a miracle considering how active she is). I'm sure you'll see more of her soon.

True Patriot Love

You may be wondering why I am posting this at 3:00 in the morning! Well, that's because I am heading off for a week in Florida. Looking forward to some fun and sun! But, don't worry I still have lots of posts lined up while I'm away and I can't wait to tell you about about the trip when I get back.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share some photos from the other night when my brother, sister and I got into the Olympic spirit and laced up our skates for some fun on the rink. We are lucky to have grown up with a river running behind our backyard, which makes for the best skating rinks. After shoveling off 6 inches of heavy snow (phew!) we finally got to have some fun.

First of all I'd like to apologize for the hideous snowpants. I couldn't find my awesome ones (is that even possible?) and I had to jump in an old pair of my dad's last minute. They made that horrible swish-swish noise when I moved, and all the fabric and the giant elastic band made me look 15 pounds heavier.

The faceoff!

Sis wanted to show off all the skills that she was picking up watching figure skating all day while she was supposed to be studying for midterms. Looks like its paying off though ;)

 

 Even Whiskey came down for a little bit of fun on the rink.

 

But his excitement was shortlived. I think he'd rather be on the couch, with the fire going and the Olympics on :)

Birds of a Feather

As my vacation comes to an end, I know that I'm going to start going into withdrawl...for turkey sandwiches, sleeping in, watching movies, eating way too much junk food and using all my mushy brain power to kick butt in Scattegories. The thought of actually having to attend work meetings and maintain intellectual conversations is just too far beyond my mental capacity right now.

But as things start to wind down, I realize that what I'm going to miss the most is hanging out with my little brother and sister. Between work, school and university we are all over the place, so its rare that everyone is home together.

We're all four years apart so just as one of us left for kindergarten the next one was born, leading us all to believe that we were only children. And this meant that we all became independent thinkers, which of course leads to a lot of conflict, but at the root of it we all love each other and have a great time together. No one can make you laugh (or cry for that matter) like your siblings can. Someone once told me that the people you know the longest in your life are your siblings. And when you think about it, its true. They have known you since you were just a wee little thing, long before friends and significant others came around and they'll be there even after your parents have passed away. So even as we are having a heated argument about who should take the garbage out or fighting over the last piece cherry cheesecake, I know that we're really lucky to have each other.

(Ask me that question again when I go in the kitchen and find out that they DID eat the last piece of the cherry cheesecake...)

Sista-sista!

Today at 10:10am my sister celebrated 20 years since she barged into my perfect world as an only child. Happy Birthday Sis!

This morning she had a bit of a sad moment when she realized she wasn't a teenager anymore, but then I reminded her that she still has to wait a year until she can legally drink in the United States and that seemed to brighten her day thinking that there are still some limitations to overcome.

I love these pictures of her from when we were in Cortona, Italy a couple of summer's ago (Its where they filmed Under the Tuscan Sun!). She was wearing this adorable linen mini dress with yellow, brown and turquoise accents and then suddenly we came upon a beautiful field of sunflowers. We pulled over to take photos and her dress matched perfectly. You couldn't have even planned it for them to match so well.

Despite the bitter cold weather here (especially compared to Cortona!) and the impending stress of Christmas, I hope that she has a great birthday. The story in our family is always that she came home from the hospital on Christmas morning and she's the best Christmas gift I ever got, which is true. I love her in a way that only sisters can love each other (remind me of this next time she ruins one of my sweaters). We finish each other's sentences, laugh together at mundane things in movies, go shopping and point out the same stuff, we even have been known to draw the same picture in the game Pictionary with our eyes closed - I can't picture not having that someone in your life who just sees things so similar, and yet different at the same time.

And because she teased me for putting up the 80s photo of my Dad on his birthday, I present you with my favorite picture of her - an image that sums up the little lady that we all love:

Sam's addiction to chocolate began at an early age. Here she is caught trying to eat Quik chocolate milk powder right out of the tin. Her mouth, hands, shirt and pants are covered, as is the floor. To this day you can't be sure if there are chocolate chips in the cupboard for making cookies because she may have gotten into them.