Happy Canada Day

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We celebrated Lea's first Canada Day by taking her to the festivities in Kanata and then after some debate on whether to wake up our sleeping beauty, we went out again for fireworks at night. I feel a bit saddened not to celebrate Canada Day downtown with Connie as per our yearly tradition, but with a newborn, I was a bit frightened with the crowds and I just wanted to go somewhere where we could go in and out with relative ease. 






We were afraid that by waking her up from her deep sleep, she wouldn't fall back asleep. Lately her wake up schedules have been 2:30AM, 4AM and 5:30AM and every 5 minutes after that until 6AM, and then finally again for her official wakeup at 7AM. Let's just say it has been frigging exhausting.

She fell asleep around 10:30PM last night and put her down when we got home from fireworks. Mike and I made a plan where he gets all the wake-ups before 5:30AM and I get everything after 5:30AM. But something magical happened. SHE SLEPT ALL THE WAY TIL 6AM. Mike woke up naturally (btw we thought waking up naturally was something that went extinct once our baby was born) and woke me up somewhat frantically not knowing what to do. Was our baby okay? Was she breathing?  Did this just happen? Did God bless us with some sleep?

The night before, we read this sleep website and apparently the #1 reason for babies waking up early (early meaning between 4AM and 6AM) was due to sun light creeping in. We bought temporary black out blinds from Ikea and hung them loosely and thought that was enough to do the trick but apparently if you can see your hand in front of your face, it wasn't dark enough. So I told Mike to seal the windows with duct tape to make sure absolutely no sun would trickle in and it seemed to do the trick. Every day is such a wildcard, but let's see what tomorrow brings. One step towards sanity.

My Holiday at a Glance

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Dec 24 - Drive home with Sana. I ended up meeting a fellow FI at StatsCan who knows all the DND FORD people. I cannot stress this enough: the finance community in Ottawa is small. 

Dec 25 - Crazy family Xmas dinner prepared by moi! It was a long night, but great time to spend with the kids. Regarding their parents though, let's say some things never change. 

Dec 26 - Drinks with the boys + gf at Coopers. I always wondered what these guys would look like in relationships, and I must say it's pretty adorable. 

Dec 27 - BBT with Candy. She's been through a lot since the last time I saw her during Thanksgiving, but it was great catching up. I've never known anyone more honest with their feelings. 

Dec 28 - Engagement day! (more on this later). Hung out with Steph, visited her condo, shopped downtown and met up with the happy couple for dinner at Kinton Ramen. Ran into Mike & friends and ended up going for drinks and Korean fried chicken afterwards with them. 

Dec 29 - Annual dim sum brunch with Thomas & friends at Emerald. Went to Lisha's party at her downtown condo. We played pervartistry and girls won, even though we were outnumbered 6-5. Fun!


The Remainder of My Holidays...
- Lunch at Panera Bread with Becky
- Coffee shop time with Denbo
- Downtown NYE's party with Charis, Seth & friends
- V time
- Hang out with Jacey & Mike downtown
- Drinks with Kevin at West 50
- Maybe Ripley's aquarium with my parents & my youngest brother's family
- Seth's bday at Etsu and karaoke at BarPlus
- Become a beggar on the street after spending too much, become obese from all the delicious food consumed, and pass out from exhaustion. 

The Resolutions

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It's nice to see that I've managed to stick with some of my older resolutions.


  • Read the bible every day
  • Go to the gym at least 3x a week
  • Take guitar lessons (have I been saying this for the past 5 years?)
  • Do not watch TV episodes more than once
  • Read more
  • Give CMA all you got
  • Be less attached to my phone
  • Accept every compliment someone gives you

Happy Bagel 2013

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Sparkling champagne, bruschetta, boardgames and Nelly Furtado's big fur hat. I couldn't have asked for a better New Year's. Okay, maybe one where I get a kiss but that time will come in time.


Memorable Moments of 2012

3 Workplaces, 3 Locations

  • Rothsay (Hamilton) - The commute was long. Their ERP system looked like MS-DoS with a black background and green text. All their files were stored in banker's boxes. The entire accounting staff was over 50. It was a short but memorable two weeks
  • IHMG (Toronto) - I miss working these weekends
  • Kraft Canada (North York) - 2 hour daily commute in the most aggravating traffic of your life on the 401. How can I complain? My dream job working for my dream company, getting free stuff and getting fat off trying new products. I learned so much in so little time. If the work environment weren't so intense, I would have stayed
  • Government (Ottawa) - If someone asks me where I work, I should only technically say, "the government" and if someone asks me what do I do, I say, "work for the government" (even if I am just a janitor). I packed up my bags and headed to Ottawa, the world's coldest capital. Safe, small, slow - three things I love in a city! 

 Hair changes.  Long orange curly hair to black to all chopped off. Why is this an item?

New car! Not technically new, but I finally got my first car and it was the one of my dreams: a Hyundai Elantra

Chicago. What an architecturally beautiful city. Korea reunion with some of my favourite teachers/travel buddies and the start of a yearly tradition

Party on a Boat 2012. Never again. I had fun, but never again

CMA Case Exam. By the grace of God, I PASSED!!!

Melo. July 5, 2012 brought this beautiful cat to the world. 

CFB Petawawa. How many times in your life can you visit an army base, wear army garb, fire a shot gun, C7 rifle, and howitzer, drive a tank and have people jumping off helicopters 10 feet from you?

Ottawa. Visits from friends, board game nights, FMI PDI, awesome co-workers, drinking with the FORD young'uns, Albion crew lunches, movie nights and "Baghuul"

Just when you think, "where did my year go?" you look back and you remember, "holy crap that was an amazing year." I love home but I love a change in environment. I am so blessed that I was able to find my own in Ottawa and meet some pretty incredible people (despite everyone being white in Ottawa). I ate my bagel. The world didn't end. So this means only good things to come.

Happy Halloween

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I'm exhausted from a very long week of work with 11-hour days and only Sunday (that, being today) off. It will be less hectic but I'm now going to be working almost full-time hours until February... so I'll hold off on getting back onto Sims 3 for a while. I'VE BEEN WAITING SOOOO LONG.


On Halloween, I took out the babies to go Trick-or-Treating by myself. Many of the houses on my street had lights on but it was dead, no kids were coming our way. The babies were scared of almost every house (the ghost figurines, the mist, the noises...) they refused to go. They were soooo shy when saying "Trick or Treat" and I'm like... you kids love to scream and make noise all the time but when I want you to be louder you won't. My goal of filling up two garbage bags was kept unfulfilled, but they still got a lot of candies and boy they were cute...... I'll post up a picture later, but Mercedes was a doctor and Marcus was a cow. SO CUTE.