TDIH December 29

Going waaaaaaay back for this "This Day In History" all the way back to December 2004.
Here is the original post 
But if you fish through the pics in the post you will find this one:

Hard to believe that little boy turned into this:


Take care
Ewan

Merry Christmas 2010

Merry Christmas from my family to yours, I hope you are having a wonderful day.

Ewan

Gingerbread Cookies!

I am officially on holidays now(woot-woot) and yesterday the kids and I made Gingerbread cookies to start off the Xmas holidays.
For anybody who wants to follow along the recipe is here the cookies turned out very good and tasty.
We mixed everything up the night before and let it chill in the fridge, then you are able to roll the dough out better.

Once the dough is rolled out it is time to get the cutting shapes out, here is Isla showing you all the cutters we have:

There were lots of shapes and sizes to make but the main ones to use were the Gingerbread-men...Gingerbread-people if we are being PC :-)...



Once we got all the shapes cut out it was in to the oven to bake:

Out of the oven with Isla "inspecting" them:

And of course now we needed to decorate the cookies, the fun and sticky part!

Here is a close up of Isla at work!

And here is what the cookie looked like after she was done with it, I think there was literally an inch of icing on it!

The final products with a _little_ less icing:



The cookies will be left out for Santa , whom I am sure will enjoy them :-)

That is all for now
Take care
Ewan

Happy Birthday Jenny

This past saturday was Jenny's birthday, I won't say which one :-)
On friday night my mom and dad came over to watch the kids, so we could go out for a movie. We went to see the new Harry Potter movie... it was scary!
The next morning we let the birthday girl sleep in, as much young kids will let you.
And being a birthday girl that means you get birthday cake! So the kids and I set out to make that cake. The kids couldn't decide if what kind of cake: Isla wanted chocolate  and Keir wanted vanilla.... so we decided on both.
The 2nd and 4th teir are vanilla and the 1st and 3rd are chocolate

We went with a vanilla butter cream icing

We also went with some Cookies and Cream chocolate bar crumbled up on the top (white and chocolate get it?)

Yum!
We  had a nice family supper and then it was cake time!
Blowing out the candles:

The birthday crown (leftover from Keir's Bday)

The Cake and Ice cream

And just in case you were wondering what a three year old wears to such an occasion, the answer is simple... a ballet leotard of course. Or at least that is what Isla wore:-)



That is all for now
Take care
Ewan

Go to the Google

This could be classified under "kids say the darndest things" 

Keir and I where in the kitchen and he said to me: "Dad do I have a popular name?"

I said: "Not really, you have a very unique name, which means not many people have the same name as you"

To which Keir replied: "Can we go to the computer and the google and search for any more Keirs?"

I really couldn't stop laughing for 5mins....

But in honor of Keir I went to the Google and did a little searching

a straight "Keir Hardie" google search comes back with the obvious

pic here

Keir Hardie was the founder of the Labour party in Britain

The next search for just Keir shows up an actor named Keir Dullea, who played  the the astronaut David Bowmen in 2001: A Space Odyssey 

So there you go Keir, there are a couple of other people named Keir

Ewan

Workout of the Week Nov 29th

OK so this isn't truly a workout (I did do a workout, 60min  with a main set of 2*10min at a HARD pace) but Isla  decided to join me for part of that workout:

we set her tricycle up with a couple of blocks of wood under the forks so she could  spin in place with me.
Smiling but working hard:

Hard at work:

Drinking water...just like daddy


Isla lasted about 20mins all together, about 15mins at the start then she took a break and went upstairs and came back down for 5more minutes right near the end of my workout.
And yes the family room is a mess or more appropriately a construction zone! We have made (and are still making) some changes since the plumbing/sewer work we had done back in October. We are getting close to being finished and there will be a post with all the details!
That is all for now
Take care
Ewan

Some Photos

The kids went out to shovel the driveway ( I didn't even ask them too, Keir seems to really like doing it) and i took some photos
Keir

Isla

Together

Cute kids!
Ewan

Sunday Supper... err Saturday Supper

Normally this would be a Sunday Supper post but for other reasons this Sunday Supper took place on Saturday. Saturday was kinda a yucky weather day with freeezing rain, snow and cold temperature. So what better than a nice warm yummy Curry to warm us up.
Started off with some green chilies  (I only used three of the four)

and then the spices (mustard seeds, fenugreek) and ginger, chilies get cooked together

Then next up some oinions are added to that, once that has cooked together we add more spices! (Curry powder, turmeric, chili  powder)

add some fresh tomatoes to that and you get:

next is the coconut milk

cook some chicken in a separate pan, and add it to the curry, then we let everything simmer for a while

ready to be eaten:

nothing left:

It was a great supper on a cold night!

That is all for now
Take care
Ewan

Happy Birthday Keir!

Tuesday was Keir's 7th birthday, wow 7 sounds so old!
The whole birthday celebration started last friday when we had 6 of Keir's friends come to a party for Keir. We booked a place called A Gym Tale, they do kids parties. How to describe this place.... I told someone today that my ears have almost stopped ringing from all that moise. It is kinda like releasing 6 tasmanian devils into a somewhat larger gage with another 30 or so tasmanian devils! The kids had fun, so that is what is important. But Jen said that next year will be "smaller", she also said that last year :-)
After friday came Keir's birthday on tuesday, we let him open is gift from us (Lego!) and had a birthday doughnut. Wednesday we had both  sets  of grandparents over for cake and more presents! That is a lot of birthday celebration/celebrating!
What is funny is as soon as everyone had left on wednesday night, Keir was already talking about Xmas presents he wanted...

and yes that is Isla of to the side wearing her _bathing suit_ in November. That was one of about 6 wardrobe changes of the night. She is a little fashionista!
That is all for now
take care
Ewan

TDIH November 16th 2004

This was an easy This Day in History to find, after all it is Keir's birthday! A seperate post on Keir's bday is coming. But here is what he looked like November 16th 2004

That is all for now

Take Care

Ewan

Facebook

I have resisted the almighty Facebook for a while now, but I am going to give it a try....
I am not really sure what to expect from it, I will go in with an open mind and see if anything good and productive comes out of it.

Friend me if you dare :-)

Ewan

"Daddy" by Isla

The other day Isla was in the middle of a huge drawing session, where she produce a ton of drawings. In the middle of the session I asked her to draw a picture of daddy.
Here are the results

Striking resemblance, don't you think :-)

Ewan

Remembrance Day 2010

Remembrance Day was thursday, and here in Manotick there is a Cenotaph where there is a ceremony every year. The Cenotaph is within walking distance from Keir's school.  I am always surprised at how many people show up to the ceremony, it is very impressive to see all the people gathering to Remember. There is a Legion in Manotick, so that must have a strong influence on the ceremony
Here is the actual Cenotaph:

Not sure how many people where there but there was a lot:


This year there was even two WWII era planes that flew over (a Spitfire and a Mustang):

Keir was part of the ceremony, as he is in Beaver's this year (part of Scouts) and the whole Scouting organization presents a wreath, you can sort of see Keir standing in front of the Cenotaph in his Blue and brown Beavers hat:

He took the whole ceremony very serious and we were very proud of him.
Thank you to all the veterans, military personel, and the fallen soldiers who let us live the lives we enjoy so much.
That is all for now.
Take care
Ewan

Workout of the Week Nov 14th

Back in September I posted one of my runs that I went on and that planted the idea to have a Workout of the Week post every week. This will be the first installement in the Workout of the Week. I am going to run in the Winterman Marathon on Feb 20th (hint hint: this day may or may not be my birthday) and doing a 12 week build meant that todays run was the first week of the build and the workout of the week will be the first long run of the build. The goal of todays run was 90mins broken into 5 sections: 30min @ an comfortable/easy pace, 12.5min @ marathon race pace (4:15-4:20), a 5min @ a comfortable/easy pace, another 12.5min @ marathon race pace (4:15-4:20), then another 30min  @ an comfortable/easy pace.
Here is what that looks like in reality:

You can see that I missed the 4:15-4:20 range for the first race pace set. In my defense there was a  strong head wind for about half of the set. Although I really only missed it by a 2sec per km. Anyways that graph is a little boring.

Here is the graph of actual pace vs Heart Rate, can you guess where the stiff head wind was in the the first race pace set?

Here is where I went, just a touch under 20kms

All in all it was a decent run, this was my first long run since my september, and a good building block for another 11 more long runs ( will not do a long run the weekend before the race). I will progressively add  more and more time to the each of the sets as the weeks go on.
Here is a link to all the details:

After the run was done, here was my reward:
Insetrt picture here!!!!

A yummy cappuccino and banana and butterscotch chip muffin! I had to replenish some of those 1500cals I burned  ;-)


Ewan

Here is the