Hello Monday

This weekend, Keith flew to Edmonton to write an exam for his Alberta Electrical licence. He went with his fellow partner in crime Gerry who is also one of his foremen. They flew out on Friday afternoon. Wrote a 7 hour exam on Saturday (can you imagine?!) and then flew back to Kelowna that night. They arrived at the house pretty tired from their intense day.

Meanwhile, Max and I had a pretty low key time while they were gone. Did some cleaning. And some cooking. And some baking. Saturday afternoon Max was invited to a birthday party of a little boy in his class. It was at the gymnastics club. He had a great time...I saw him flying through the air on the trapeze (which kinda freaked me out) but he said it was fun and seemed to love it. I went out for a Starbucks coffee with another one of the mom's while the boys were at the birthday party so it was a nice little afternoon.

We were very excited to have Gerry stay with us for part of the weekend. He stayed overnight Saturday night and drove back home to North Van on Sunday. We were used to him dropping in all the time when we lived there as he only lived a few streets above us, back in the day. It was good to have him here. He likes to give the impression that he's mean and gruff and grumpy. But it's just a front - we know better!

Max discovered that we have some grapes growing in our backyard so he's been enthusiastically picking and eating them. They're a bit too sour for my taste.

This morning I had a lady come over from Benjamin Moore Paints to help me pick paint colours for the house. One weird thing (I think it's weird anyway) about this house is that all the trim and doors, etc is painted a taupe-y beige colour. What's up with that? I love white trim and doors. And to top it off, it's all in immaculate shape. No scuffs or scratches anywhere. I started counting all the doors in the house and if I were to repaint everything white I'd have 20 doors to tackle, plus closets and trim. UGH. So I'm trying to avoid that scenario. Hence, Colleen arrived nice and early this morning and was an amazing help at picking out colours. Right away she knew what colours to stay away from and we were able to pretty much get the entire house figured out in an hour. Talk about getting lots accomplished. So my next step is to pick out and buy bedding for our bedrooms because that's going to help me make my final bedroom colour selections. And then I'm going to have a painter she recommends come over to give me a quote. Because oiye....to get everything painted by me and my honey. Will take years. So hopefully this will be a better quote then the last one we had and is something we'll be able to swing. For those that don't know, right now the house is all painted white but with tints...main floor is tinted pink. Top floor is tinted peach and the bottom floor is tinted mint green. Ick. So not me. The sooner we get this done, the sooner it will seem like home to us.

I made a delicious Apple Crisp ('tis the season!) on Saturday night to be enjoyed when the guys arrived home. It received rave reviews from all and disappeared in no time flat. Here's the recipe in case you're inspired to make some for your family. (They will love you like crazy if you do!)

Apple Crisp
Source: What's Cooking at Wellesley 2002-2003
P.S. Diane...I think your nephew submitted this recipe - Matthew P. Grade 1!

5 cups sliced, peeled apples
2 to 4 tbsp sugar
1/2 cup regular rolled oats
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup margarine or butter

Place apples in a 8 x 11 1/2 inch baking dish. Stir in sugar. For topping, in a bowl mix oats, brown sugar, flour and cinnamon. Cut in butter/margarine till mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle topping over apples. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 30 - 35 minutes or till apples are tender and topping is golden. Serve warm with ice cream. Serves 6.