All Things British....

In honour of this special day in Britain's history where they are celebrating William and Kate's royal nuptials, I thought I would give you a 'boo' at some of our British haul from Heath's recent trip to the UK.  Normally, she doesn't buy too many souven-iry souvenirs but she went all out this time and I thought she did a great job at picking up some very practical items that won't just gather dust on a shelf or fridge somewhere ; - )



Union Jack coasters



Union Jack shopping bag

We also have a lovely Union Jack mug but Dave is drinking his morning tea from it right now and likely won't appreciate me trying to take a pic of it!!

A productive...and beautiful day!

Today it was a gorgeous 'summer-like' day in the Maritimes.  The temp got up past 16 degrees celsius and it was way too nice to stay inside.

I spent the afternoon trying to bring the backyard to some kind of rights.  Lots of raking and pruning needed to be done because I had left three piles of leaves out there last fall and got caught by the snow before I put them into bags.  Sam supervised from the screen door in the living room. 

The 'fruits' of my labour



Why can't I come outside??

Hope SPRINGS eternal....

Ahhhh....spring!!  Spring means the end of a long winter and the hope of a warm and beautiful summer.  No more boots, hats, mittens, scarves to layer on before venturing outside.  Of course, before we get too complacent, April opened with a good dose of snow!!

We made a quick trip down to Sackville to see Selina play in a basketball tournament.  She is a head taller than most of her teammates...and a pretty good little ball player to boot (I know...I'm not exactly impartial).

There is only just a bit of snow remaining from the huge pile that was outside our patio door.  It was so heavy that it has actually caused the deck to slope.

I get lots of chuckles out of watching Sam stalking all of the returning birds...from inside the house!  He will slink along the floor and slither up onto the window ledge and then start chattering like a crazed squirrel when he spots his prey.

Stalker!!



Prey (if you look carefully you can spot the bluebird)!

Mad Science classes are starting to wind down and soon I will have more free time to do some spring cleaning and other projects.  I ♥ spring!!

Celebration!

April 10th, we celebrated Heath's 41st birthday!!  Mom and Dad had arrived home from Florida on the 4th and Heath flew in from London on the 9th...just in time for her birthday.  It was the first time all of us (including Dave) were together since just after Christmas.

Mom hosted a birthday dinner for the gal pals...and let Dave and Dad get in on the action.  I didn't have too much convincing to do to get the wives to leave their husbands and kids on their own for Sunday dinner.  Everyone was game to be served for a change!

We have this term we use in our family..."pulling a Mom".  Our dear mother often comes home from the store with something that looks like what she wanted but misses the mark completely.  For example, one time she was wanting canned pears and arrived home with canned potatoes??  She picked up a balloon for Heather and only realized when she got home that it said "Happy Birthday MOM!!!" on it.  It was a definite touch...unique to our Mom : - )

Sharon, Becca and Gi

 

Liz and Rebecca arrive and are greeted by Miki & Zoe

 

Lynnette and Laura enjoy a chat

And no Swan-related birthday would be complete without Mom's stupendous lemon layer cake...sluuurrp!

The 40's are to be embraced and celebrated!!

We pause for a moment to bring you this message from....

Meal preparation has changed a lot with Dave’s new Specific Carbohydrate Diet.  At the beginning, I was mourning all of the delicious meals that I would likely never make again because they included sugar, or soy sauce, or flour, or…..the list goes on.  A funny thing happened over the course of the past eight months of eating the SCD way…I am finding that the meals we are eating taste even better than what we were eating before!  It is amazing how delicious fresh ingredients can be and how sweet honey can taste, instead of sugar.

For example, on Thursday I made Bombay Chicken, Roasted Butternut Squash with curry, honey, nuts and raisins and steamed a bunch of fresh yellow beans.  I cannot begin to tell you how delicious it was.  My mouth is watering just typing that sentence!!  Three-quarters of my plate was filled with vegetables and I could have gone back for seconds, if there had been any left.  I am trying new recipes each week and those that meet my extremely stringent criteria (easy to prepare, incredibly tasty…well, I guess my criteria is not all that stringent) are being added to the daily recipe binder.

I want Dave to enjoy eating and not feel it is a burden for him to eat or me to make.  He says he is never tempted to cheat because he feels so incredibly good that it wouldn’t make sense to suffer the consequences of one little ‘treat’ for a moment of pleasure and several hours of ‘pain’.  Our friends and family have been incredibly accommodating and still invite us over for meals : - )  They usually call to run the menu by Dave first and are so kind to put in a little extra work so we can enjoy a meal with them.  There are a few people at the Hall who have gone on the program so when we have functions there, quite often there are some options that Dave can eat where most times he can’t eat anything on the buffet table.  He doesn’t seem to feel too bad about it.  We just take something with us that we know he can eat or he eats a salad with no dressing unless he can confirm that it has no sugar or ‘illegal’ ingredients.

It definitely takes some planning and coordination when traveling but the results are well worth it!  Not only has he lost a good chuck of weight, we both have lots more energy and are both sleeping way better than we have in a long time.  What’s not to like about that???