We love our:

We love our Mexican fare - fish tacos with fruit salsa here

1st Family Date Night

With $20 + parking in our collective pocket, we headed off to the Distillery district on Saturday night to experience the TO Light Festival. Sophie and I had been one quiet weekday evening last year. This was much, much busier which was fun. 

It was cold! So in addition to a stop at SOMA - the chocolatier - we warmed up with beverages at Balzac's.

The year's biggest YUM

Our lovely friend Marc is VP of Research and Innovation at Niagara College. The college is renowned for its beer, wine and culinary programmes (and yes, cannabis). 

Every year the culinary students create a menu against which beer and wine teams pair their contributions. Some of the beers are created for the menu but it's about the pairings.

And then you vote caps or corks - for each of the 6 courses! Wine won this year.

But it wasn't just about the wine/beer - or the food - but the friends. In addition to spending the evening with Ros & Marc and some of their friends, we got to experience this with our BC foodie pals of close to 30 years!!  - Rob & Angele

Friends for the ages - and desserts!

And then to top it off, we spent the night in Niagara, the morning in Niagara on the Lake, and then did some wine tasting using R&A's very knowledgeable palettes. Here is their selection of bottles

Our trampolinist

Seems like I am slowing down with the blog posts but last weekend, our young man competed in his first provincial level trampoline competition. There were many teams and many more boys, which was great to see. He and I hustled out to Oshawa by train on the Friday afternoon and then his dad drove him for the Sunday event.

Unfortunately he stepped "into the red" on his double mini, so was penalized heavily. But he did well in the trampoline and got extra points for his "air time" (how much time he spends in the air, thus denoting the power of his bounce/thigh muscles!)

Unfortunately, the photos aren't great - black on black with a net between the camera and him but it gives you a sense! That's his main coach in the purple sweatshirt.

Video never seems to work but I have tried again...

Look at the strong torso it gives him - and that's just the upper body!

Cold outside - warm inside

Me and my gal hanging out in the warm and using my Dead Sea mud mask

Dream come true - skiing in High Park - just hoisted the skis on to my shoulder and walked the 5 minutes to the gates

Started right where the traffic ends

Skied where we usually walk the dog

The Man He Killed

This young intellectual parsing out the meanings  of Thomas Hardy's anti-war poem - The Man He Killed

Seb did a good job with the reading - 98%! But other classmates pipped him, so he is not in the school final. He interviewed me for the written assignment (i.e. how did a first time reader see the poem?); let's see how he does on that. To his credit, he has done fairly well in English so far this year.

This happened today

National nominee!!!
Of course, he lies so low that the Academy couldn't rustle up a photo of him and instead used the CBC supper hour anchor and show promo. LOL!

Home frigid home

I returned home to this last week

even wore my Dad's shearling coat to walk the dog!

The plants had missed me....

Indonesia - so fortunate to see it again

For me, so much of the pleasure of heading to Indonesia is the food!

Not this sort...

Fish paste steamed inside a banana leaf + tempeh and tofu with peanut sauce

My main colleague from Nutrition International - a fellow Canadian - with random polar bears at a shopping mall...

The group I trained from 9 countries in Asia & Africa

Over the weekend, I headed to Bogor (a $25 cab ride from my hotel in Jakarta but $1 ride back on their fantastic train network) - I was there to see a lovely UNICEF colleague who I had met on a previous trip

Ali loves coffee. So he took me to his favourite spot.

And he is so proud and knowledgeable of the many cuisines within Indonesia

Gorgeously creamy and fruity gelato

Indonesians love crackers. This was just a small selection of what shops carry! All made and packaged for the local population.

with peanuts and chives

We headed to the 200 year old botanical gardens - where Obama had a coffee

The next day I headed to the province of West Java for 2 days. Without traffic, it's about a 2 hour drive. With traffic however....

On arrival, we were taken to a museum showcasing the many regional cultures within Indonesia. Here are some of the musical instruments.

and batik from each province

We found some good coffee!

These were the snacks at our meetings with local officials

We were treated like revered visitors at one school!

Just how green the area was (and how lovely the pool)

For our final lunch, we all feasted together. Yum!

some of the dining rooms

And then off to the final, fancy hotel before an early departure

except it wasn't - being based a busy highway and flight path!

Never swam next to incoming jumbo jets before!!

Fantastic bookshop at the airport - every departure lounge needs one of these!

My currency conversion website reminds me of all the travels I have been doing recently!