Federrer vs Niemeyer

Last weekend Jr and I went to Montreal for my aunt's funeral. She passed away on Friday night of cancer. We left New York very early Saturday morning and we just came back to New York tonight.
Last night my sister, Marie-Claude, invited us to a tennis match in Montreal. It was the Rogers Cup tournament and her friend, Frederic Niemeyer was playing against Federrer. It was a good match, even though Federrer is #1, Niemeyer gave him a good challenge, or at least what it looked like one.

Vader's birthday

The night of Vader's birthday, August 6th, I was making red velvet cupcakes for one of my co-worker's baby shower at work and I made 2 little cupcakes for Yoda and Vader to celebrate Vader's birthday. Vader was really happy, look at his face and tongue! Yoda didn't mind it too much either!

Dog pictures

The pugs in their favorite places:

Yoda and Vader enjoying their new large Wal-Mart bed that they can share without pushing each other

Vader in the toy basket sleeping or eating the basket, waiting for us by the door

Yoda and Vader waiting for Jr to be done showering

BBQ in Prospect Park

A couple weekends ago we went to Prospect Park in Brooklyn to have a little bbq. I love bbq so one night that I felt like eating some, I went to Target to buy a small portable bbq and the next night we made some hamburger on the fire escape. That's New York lifestyle! So a couple weekends ago we went to Prospect Park on Saturday afternoon to have hamburger and hot dogs for lunch. It was really good. Prospect Park is the park close to where we bought our condo in Park Slope, Brooklyn. There is also a dog beach in the park, we took the pugs there and the water was really cold so I thought that Yoda would go in right away, but he was a little scared of stepping on the rocks underwater. Once they get used to it they will have lots of fun there!

Mets game

Mets game at the new CitiField. We went with Alyson when she was visiting in July. We ate ShakeShack for dinner mmmmmmm...

July 4th weekend

Wow, we're almost up to date on our blog. I will make a valid effort to try to update this as soon as possible.

For July Fourth weekend, Jr and I took a couple day off. We left New York, with the pugs, on Wednesday night June 30, for Montreal. The next day, on July 1, it was Canada day. We went to Ottawa, Canada's capital, with my friend Marie. We saw the change of guard in front of the parlement and then they had the Royal Canadian Mounted Police performed their carousel show. It was really nice, I had seen it before in Sasketchewan, but it was Jr's first time to see it. Then we listen to the little concert they had in front of the parlement.

On Friday night we picked up Alyson at the airport, she was visiting us for a week.

Jr holding the Vancouver 2010 Olympic torch

On the 4th at night I had invited a few friends over for a bbq for Independance Day in Canada! Jr and Alyson cooked everything on the bbq and I made some red velvet cupcakes. I wasn't very nice outside that night and it was quite cold so we had to eat inside but it was still fun. My friends all brought their kids so there was 7 kids!

Then there are pictures of me swimming with the pugs, they were really hot outside so I took them in the water, without Jr again!

This is Jr running around the pool with the 2 pugs and my parents' cocker spaniel, Mozart, and Marie's french bulldog, Olive, all running after him.

Dog park

Jr and the pugs at the dog park where we used to take Yoda everyday when we lived in the financial district. It's pretty sad, but it was Vader's first time at a dog park. He behaved very good, no crazyness and most of all no bites from another dog. The first time took Yoda there when he was a puppy, he got bit by a big dog and he actually had his skin pierced on the neck. I miss that dog park, it's really nice because it's pavement so it doesn't stink and it has a little dog pool so they can get wet when they are hot. Before that we had taken them to Central Park, so it was a big day for the pugs!

Caroline's high school reunion

Last May, I went to my 10 year high school reunion in Rigaud, outside Montreal. I went to high school there for 5 years, which is the full high school in Quebec. It was nice to see the school again and all the people I was friends. I was a little nervous at first that I wouldn't remember someone or forget someone's name, but I didn't do too bad. We watched a diaporama and a video of when we were at school, it was really funny.
The next day I had a few friends over at my house for brunch. I was good to be all together again.

Easter

For Easter weekend, my sister, Genevieve, and my friend, Marie, came to visit. We had already planned to make hats for the Easter parade on Fifth Avenue. For those who are not familiar with New York's Easter parade tradition, on Easter Sunday, on Fifth Avenue, people walk around with interesting hats that they usually made themselves. It's not really a parade, but the street is closed and people walk up and down showing or looking at everybody's hat. The day before the parade, we went to a craft store, Michael's, and we bought all kinds of stuff to make our hats. Mine was like a giant nest with small birds on it. Marie's was basket with flowers, artificial AND fresh!, and birds and buterflies. Gen's was a cowboy hat with glittered rabbit ears sticking out. We had a lot of fun making them and certainly showing them off. It really weird when we walked down the street, everybody wants to take pictures, not only of your hat, but with you. You can see that Jr is not on the pictures, that's not because he didn't want us to take pictures of him, that's because he didn't want to make a hat and come with us!
On Easter morning, Gen made us all brunch, it was really good.

Cherry Blossoms in Washington D.C.

In April we went to Washington D.C. to see the cherry blossoms. It was BEAUTIFUL. I been wanting to go for many years and this year we decided to go. I had been to Washington D.C. once before about 15 years ago, but it was Jr. first time. We didn't go inside anywhere because as you can see from the pictures we brought our pugs with us; we can't go anywhere without them! We stayed in a Motel 6 about 5 minutes from the Capitol because that's one place we knew take dogs! We left on Saturday morning hoping to get there around noon but we were stuck in rediculous traffic all the way there. Instead of taking us 4 hours it took us about 6 or 7 hours. When we got there in the afternoon, we checked in a the motel and we parked near the capitol and we walked from there all the way to the end of the mall where the most of the cherry blossoms were and the Jefferson memorial was. Then we walked all the way back to the car, by then it was night already. On our way back to the motel we stopped at a Thai restaurant and got some take-out to take back to the motel. The next day, we drove and parked near the White House and we walked around the grounds there for a little bit and we had Cosi for lunch on a picnic table right outside the White House. I mention Cosi because that's when my severe addiction started! Since then I can't get enough of it, whenever I can, I get it for lunch at work. I love their turkey and brie sandwich and their signature salad, mmmmm.Anyway, after lunch we left and drove back to New York. It was a short trip and we stayed outside for most of it but it was fun and a change from the New York scenery.

Christmas season

During Christmas, Jr and I and the pugs drove down to Florida to meet my parents and sisters. On Christmas Eve, my mom prepared a Christmas Eve little meal at midnight the same way my grand -mother used to do when my mom was little. Then on Christmas day we did a gift exchange, that was my idea, we all bought a $5 gift for everyone else and when we opened the gifts we had to guess how had bought it for us. It was a lot of fun, and it would have been even better if my dad didn't send my mom to buy his gifts for him!
On my birthday we went to a hockey game, the Canadiens were playing against the Florida Panthers and of course they beat them. It was pretty fun because at least half of the arena was people from Quebec.
On New Year's Eve we went to Miami for dinner at Joes' Stone Crab and we actually waited 3 hours for a table. Not that they told us it was going to be 3 hours annd it ended up being an hour and a half, we actually waited THREE hours!! It wasn't such a big deal because we wanted to watched the fireworks that set off from the ocean on the beach so we would have had to wait for that anyway, but by the time we sat down and we finished dinner we rushed to the beach and we pretty much missed the whole thing. We still had fun afterwards, everyone was partying in the street on Ocean Drive.
Then on New Years day we went to the Orange Bowl at the Miami Dolphins stadium. I suggested that we tailgate before the game, since we, Canadians, are not big football fans and we never experienced this tailgating thing! So my parents bought a small protable grill and we brought hot dogs and all kinds of tailgating foods. We were with a few family friends and we all had a lot of fun. The game however wasn't really exciting and the stadium was barely half full.
Other than that we did the usual in Florida, beach, shop and eat out.

Tailgate party at the Orange Bowl

We always get a picture of the tree at Rockefeller Center

The beach...

Yoda and Vader in their "dog park", made by my parents, in Florida

The Canadians playing against the Florida Panthers on my birthday!

All the "quebequers" cellebrating after the Montreal Canadians won the hockey game

The Orange Bowl at the Miami Dolphins Stadium

Orange Bowl

Thanksgiving Day Parade

Our last Thanksgiving was different than probably any of you had it before, we were part of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Working at Macy's I can participate in any of the positions available in the parade, baloon handler, clown, float escort, costumer... and marshall, which is what I was doing. I was a marshall for the parade and Jr was my recruit, so in other words my assistant! We were responsible to make sure the parade went smoothly between our 10 blocks of responsibility. If the parade was slowing down we had to tell people to speed up, if it was going to fast we had to tell them to slow down, if somebody got injured we had to help them and many more very important tasks!!! It was a lot of fun and luckyly nothing big happened in our section.
Alyson and Helen watched the parade from the Grandstands and Ron was hanging out with the pugs back at our apartment.
After the parade we cooked a traditional Thanksgiving day meal, which actually made me sick, I threw up during the night and I didn't want to call in sick the Friday after Thanksgiving because I though that it would look too fake so I went to work, but my manager could tell I was sick just looking at me, so I went back home!
On the Saturday we went to the outlet mall at Woodburry Common and went a little too crazy, it was hard to resist all those "black Saturday" specials.
Overall we had a great weekend and we hope it can be repeated this year.

Me in my Marshall outfit!

Forum Retreat

FYI, the last 2 posts should have been inverted in order!

In November I had my YAF (Young Adult Forum) retreat with people I meet with every month to talk about our personal, family and business lives. Once a year we are supposed to go on a retreat for a few days. I've been in my forum for about 3 years, but that was the first one we did. We went to a house we rented for one night in Pennsylvania. We had a lot of fun even though it was short and we didn't get to go to exotic places like our parents' forum retreats! We haven't decided where we're going to go this year, but we are thinking of maybe going at some point around January or February. Here are some pictures of our night.

One Year later...

Well it has been almost a year since we last updated this thing so I think that it is time to do so. We have pictures that will show things that we have been up to since then. Other than that it is basically the same Jr and I go to work and then take care of the dogs when we get home. I am still working at Macy's as an associate planner in womens coats and Jr is working at Wal-mart as a boy's designer for the brand Faded Glory. Life is good in our careers right now. I guess the big news is that Jr and I are in the process of buying a condo in Brooklyn, NY (its not as scary as it sounds and no, it's not the Bronx) We are just waiting for the building to finish construction before we can close on the condo and move in. We are really excited and can't wait to have a place that is all ours. Other than that life is good and things are going really well for us. So since last year, after we went to Philly, here's what we've been up to...our first set of photos is from last fall in september when Alyson came to visit and we took the dogs up to the Adirondaks to go hiking and pick some apples.

Jr's Birthday and our anniversary

In October we flew to SLC for a week to celebrate our aniversary and Jr's 30th birthday. For our anniversary we went to eat at La Caille which was really nice and a beautiful night for a special occasion. Helen, Alyson, Jr, and myself then drove down to Bryce Canyon and Zions and drove through those parks and see all that there is to see there. We also had a chance Alyson, Jr, and myself to go horse back riding through the canyons at Bryce. We then picked up Ron at St George airport and continued our travel on to Las Vegas to celebrate Jr's birthday. We all stayed at the Luxor and enjoyed the sites and sounds of Vegas. We all went to dinner for Jr's birthday at a really nice Mexican resturant and then Jr's and I went to see the Chriss Angel show Believe at the Luxor. Jr is a big Chriss Angel fan and was really excited to go. It was a good show although he had seen a lot of the illusions that he did before, but the story was really neat and the Cirque Du Soleil performance and costumes were amazing. So overall it was a really fun 30th Birthday week for him and myself.

Philly

Over the weekend Caroline and I decided to take a day trip to Philly to just see the city and go to Independence Hall and Liberty Bell National Park.

It is a 2 hour drive so we were able to go there in the morning and come back at night, the drive is not bad the long part is getting off this crazy island called Manhattan.

Once we got there we got in line to see the liberty bell, it was really neat to see it up close and the fact that it was not encased made it even cooler.

We both were hungry so we could not go to Philly without having a famous Philly Cheese stake. We went to a place that I had seen on Throw down with Bobby Flay. The place was Tony Luke's, and the cheese steaks were great. Really big and tasty, Caroline could not finish hers and I was not going to attempt to finish it off for here there were just too big.

We headed back to Independence Hall, they give you a reserved ticket time to go through the site so that there are not too many people going through. We took the tour of the complex of buildings that are there and learned about the history and the significance of these buildings. It was a really neat thing to finally see some of the history that I had learned about all of my life. Normally as Americans we don't realize our own history because our history is not very old, but it was so cool to see the birth place of the United States of America and to really get a sense of how amazing that history is. I am a big history buff so this was very exciting for me and so much fun to be where the Declaration of Independence was signed and to actually see a "copy" of it from 1776.

Philly was so much fun, it is a beautiful city and had a really fun vibe about it, we will definitely have to go back again and spent some more time there. It was a good day trip to learn about history and eat some good. It is so nice to get out of Manhattan with all of the running around that goes on here and to slow it down a bit. Hopefully we can go to many of the other great cities on the east coast.

The pictures are of Independence Hall, the room where the Declaration was signed. the senate and house chambers. and the Liberty Bell.

PUG

Since it has been awhile since I put pictures of our dogs up here I though that I would now. As you can see Vader has got a lot bigger than before, he is now taller than Yoda, but not quite as big as Yoda. They both are crazy and have way too much fun chasing and annoying each other.

Met's Game

OK so it has been awhile since the last time that we updated this blog.

Here are some pictures of Caroline and I at a Met's game we were able to go down on the field because it was a special thing that Macy's was doing with the heart association. The game itself was a bit uneventful, but it was fun to be there and we had a good time.

Quebec City

For Valentines day Caroline and I went to Quebec City for the Winter Carnival that is held there every year. It was extra special this year because Quebec is celebrating its 400th B-day. We left on Valentines day, so we actually celebrated it the next day. We drove to Montreal and stayed with Caroline's parents for the night and dropped the dogs off with them. The dogs didnt mind because they have the freedom to run like crazy in Caroline's house. Early the next morning we drove to Quebec city which is a little over 2 hours away. We got there and checked into our awesome hotel. For anyone who has seen pictures of Quebec City than you probably have see the hotel that we stayed in Le Chateau Frontenac. It is abeautiful hotel that is over a hundred years old and designed like an old Chateau from France. Our room was in the tall tower on the top floor so it was really nice and had such an amazing view of Old Quebec. We bundled up the temp. was around 20 degrees on that day, and headed out to see the sites and the Carnival. We went to the Ice Castle that is the home for the mascott of the Carnival a giant snowman called "Bonhomme". We got our picture taken with him and we were able to go around and look at all of the ice and snow sculptures that are made by different students and countries for the Carnival. It was really pretty and fun. There was not a lot of activities that were planned for that day, but there were many for tomorrow. We were out for about 4 hours walking around and by that time we were done we were so cold we went back to our hotel room and sat in the jacuzzi hot tub for awhile so we could get warm again. That night we had our Valentines day a romantic dinner in the 5 star French resturant Le Champlain. The atmosphere was so nice, it was like in a big living room with a large fire place and a view overlooking the river. The food was fantastic and so good and the desserts were amazing. It was a really nice time and a very romantic Valentines dinner.

The next day it was cold and I mean really cold, the high temprature for the day was to get to only 5 degrees and to feel a lot colder because of the wind. We went to all of the different venues that had things to do like ice skating, tubing, sleding, and other various activities that you could watch or participate. At one place they had an Ice Bath where people could take a bath in the snow with just their bathing suits on, absolutly crazy in that temprature. We watched some horse and sleigh races which was fun, but again it was so cold that I could hardly believe that the horses were having any fun. We had a traditional Quebec meal for lunch a split pea soup and a beef stew like meal. It was good because it was able to warm you up from the inside. Again it was so cold that we went back to our room and sat in the jacuzzi to warm up because we were going to go out at night and watch the night parade. We left to go see the night parade at 6 and at that time it was about -20 degrees F and with the wind about -30. We had camped out at the end of the parade route which was probably a mistake because we waited for about 3 and a half hours before the parade got there. There were a lot of people there so that helped the temprature go up a degree or two. The only way to keep warm was to dance around and keep moving. The parade was fun by the time it got there and it was really fun to see all of the floats and all of the fun stuff that they had. And of course Bonhomme was there in the last float to say goodbye and thanks for comming and he would see everyone next year. We then tried to walk back to the hotel, it was hard because we were so cold and could hardly move. And again we cooked in the jacuzzi and ordered hot coco and desserts. And that was all of our awesome Valentines Day weekend. We got up the next morning and said goodbye to Quebec City and drove back to Montreal picked up the dogs and drove back here to NYC. All in all it was a great weekend.