Big City Living

We had a great weekend. 

It was filled with friends, food and rest! All the perfect "storm" for a great weekend. 

Friday night I'd skytrained to work since I'd been running late and needed to open up for my boss, which meant I got to skytrain home and have a good 20 minute reading break on my way. Then since it was Friday night and we were headed out at 7 for a play downtown, I decided to go with pub type food and make appies. 

I pulled together Boursin & Crackers, Honey Garlic Chicken Wings, Awesome Bites (cracker, cheese and sausage, cooked briefly) and Perogies. It was excellent.

Then we headed down town. Now by telling you this next part, I am basically saying, hey we aren't big city people, but hey, honesty right?

Because while we live in an urban setting, and fit the technical standards of young urbanites we just aren't. Yes, I work downtown and commute via bike. Very hip right now. But both are purely circumstantial - I would have worked anywhere, downtown just pays the best. And I ride my bike because it's cheap and tricks me into getting excessive  and not because it's environmentally friendly. 

So dressed up in my black boots and leather jacket, heading downtown together on the skytrain, we felt more urban than normal. Especially since we were heading downtown to see Art. So cultured right?

I am not going to lie, we were half excited and half nervous about the play we were going to go see. Our friend Dustin is in Acting School so this was a play he was in through his program. It was a small stage and small cast. Having been in theatre school for 2 years I've seen a lot of awkward plays. I've also seen some awesome ones. I had no idea which this would be!

I'm pleased to say this was one of the better small plays I've seen. I really enjoyed it! The play was Four Dogs and a Bone by John Patrick Shanley. There are four acts or scenes. The first act starts a bit slow, but it needs to to give the proper expository information. The second is a bit more dramatic, has some questionable language, but really builds the story to a place that makes you want to come back after intermission. And then the third and fourth scenes are hilarious. They resolve the story well and are very very funny. I laughed a lot. 

Dustin was playing the role of the playwright Victor. He did a great job. He came onstage looking like Dustin but acting like someone else - I was very impressed. While the other actors were all great (honestly, they were), Dustin seemed to me like the lead. He shone, truly. He will be great at Acting. I was super impressed. 

There were 11 of us there to cheer him on. At Intermission we realized Paul and John were dressed similarly. You can see them below, they even stand similarly. 

I keep both of these blurry pictures in because I love seeing Colin mid laugh in the back left corner of both pictures. It's great. 

Stef and I also showed up matching; black boots, leggings, leather jacket. We keep doing that, on Sunday we both wore brown boots, leggings, blue shirts and a black leather jacket. Weird. 

Afterwards we all decided to head further into downtown to see the Halloween revellers in costume and to grab something to eat/drink. The city was bustling since it was the weekend before Halloween. We past, among other things, a taco, dumbledora the explorer, mario and luigi and a whole bunch of women wearing not enough clothing. It was fun to see. The costumes, not the under dressed women. 

We ended up at Cafe Crepe. Though it was rainy their outside patio was dry and had an awning so we made camp there. It was perfect - cool enough that after all that walking you weren't boiling. 

Here's Jodi waiting for her order.

She is adorable.

Or adorbs as one might say.

I don't know what Sam is doing, but he has his crepes in hand.

Look! There's Jodi's crepe! We sat outside of the cooking window. it was fun to watch. 

Jodi picked the clubhouse crepe...it looked amazing.

Colin & Sam

Me, Laura and Tracy

Stef and Jodi.

Also this happened when I tried to get the shot above...

Then I said, well if you're so keen to get a photo I'll take one of you.

He was not keen, it turns out.

But John was! Plus he had a nutella milkshake. 

Genius.

Then Dustin came by to join us after finishing up at school.

He walked in to our group with much applause.

Then he sat down to join us looking ever much the star.

And we proceeded to heap praise on his acting and the play...

"aw shucks"

Since we were outside the girls were generally bundled up, but it was still totally awesome.

And then it was time to head home. 

It was such a fun night, and Paul and I had such a fun time I decided a picture was in order to capture the moment. 

I loved this picture. 

I posted it on FB as my profile picture...it got many likes and comments. 

I was surprised. I mean I knew I liked it, but I'm in it. I didn't expect other people to like it.

I won't lie, it made me happy.

Totally made me smile. 

Not only the compliments, but also the idea that I'm posing in my profile picture with a knife.

I have awesome friends. 

Saturday we slept in, and then laid in bed talking and reading until noon. IT WAS AWESOME. Then I made the world’s best sandwich. I found the recipe online and oh man. I’ll post the details of that and the recipe tomorrow.

After being sufficiently lazy we decided to be semi productive and worked on tidying the house. I organized my shoe collection and unpacked more clothing that I’d packed before I left. All my dresses are back in my closet and man, when we move in January we’ll need a bigger closet. Yikes.

Then we were heading over to Jenna’s for dinner and a hang out before the Harvest Party. Every year our church hosts the Harvest Party – and this year I had offered to look after Jenna’s kids so she could go. The Harvest Party is awesome – it has a dance party in the garage, lots of people to talk with, tons of food and this year there was a dress up component, cowboy. Even Paul will dress up like a cowboy! So before we left for the Maxwell’s Paul got on his cowboy best. Now since he doesn’t own a boot or a hat, he had to make do with his knife, plaid and belt buckle. He also wore a Camo Hat, because he knows many a redneck man that wears a camo hat. So he is pretty close to country. 

Also Paul hates smiling in photos. 

Sometimes he will for me, but only sometimes.

After the Maxwell’s and Paul left for the party I got to cuddle with my nephews until they went to sleep. Oh it warms my heart so much. Then I did a few things on my to do list with itunes. I wanted to get that over with quickly so I could get to the real task at hand – making a sisters necklace (while watching Downton Abbey). See when I was in Texas we visited Hobby Lobby. Now Hobby Lobby is amazing, but you could go through there and feel so covetous and I just didn’t want to do that. So what I did was decide I’d buy towards only a certain project. This was important since we still had to drive everything home and really only had a little bit of space. So I bought things to make matching long silver necklaces for my sister and I. I am in love with what I came up with. And so is Jenna, win!

On top of that I’d gotten a free mini bottle of wine at work, so that made an appearance that evening as well.  

After a night of dancing for Paul and jeweler making for me, we had a quick snack while watching an SNL repeat and then headed to bed.

Sunday was another great sleep in day followed by more good food. I needed to use up the veggies in my fridge so I made a tasty Quiche with Sour Cream and Guacamole on top. It rocked. I’ll post the recipe tomorrow. We invited Katie and Joel over to join us, they had just finished making breakfast so they just brought theirs over and we all watched football and ate. It was a lovely way to start the day.

Then I headed off to Costco and No Frills to do the grocery shopping for the next two weeks. I was stealth, in and out of Costco $200 and 30 minutes later. What up! I spent an hour processing and organizing food and it was off to church!

We looked good.  

Church was awesome. I mean really awesome. It was reception Sunday so we had a party downstairs first that the philipino’s hosted – so it was a real party. Then we headed upstairs for church, worship was awesome and one of the philipino lifegroups did a skip and the message and they did a wonderful job. Again, as per usual, it just felt like family and friends. Church has been so great lately.

Our dear friend Sarah Gotell, who moved away to Nelson in September, was back for a bit so we proceeded to have a girls night over at Leah’s house.  There were just a few of us there so we could actually have time with Sarah and it was lovely. I love Sarah and I love her friends. We had appies and sushi and it was all soo good. I tried new types of sushi and loved them! 

Also Jenna was there and at one point she got up to get something and it looked like she had a tail.

A sweater got attached to the button on her jacket. It made me laugh. 

Oh and I realized how ridiculously different those pictures I posted of Paul were:

I love how versatile my husband is! 

Oh and speaking of my husband, I headed home early from the girls night to be with him because this past Monday he started his first practicum at a High School in North Vancouver.  I'm so excited to see how he does in the actual classroom! He has a great first day yesterday!

Alright I'm off to translate some documents from Portuguese into English....I only speak English, thank goodness for Google Translator!