How Not to be a Monster-in-Law

As I mentioned in a previous post, my son recently got engaged.  I wanted to start the relationship with my future daughter-in-law off on the right foot, so on Saturday I drove to Waterloo to have lunch with Christie.  

 

We talked about:

• how I hope to never be a monster-in-law
• how I would like to be encouraging and supportive of them
• what she should call us
• what we both would like from the wedding
• if she would mind if I blogged about wedding details (and she doesn't mind - phew!)

We had a lovely lunch and I have to say I'm one lucky future mother-in-law. 


I took a few photos in Waterloo for my bloggy friends - and no I didn't take any of us eating.

I took a photo of this building because I loved the colour of the shutters with the brick.
 

And a photo of this lovely red caboose in front of the Perimeter Institute (that's the dark building behind it) because I knew you would want to say hi to the physists.  The Perimeter Institute is a centre for research and education in theoretical physics and where Stephen Hawkings is the distinguished research chair - yep, big brains hang out here. 

And finally, I took a photo of this lovely twisty chimney down the street from Christie's house - just because it is so lovely, and twisty. 

And then I went home.

Linked to Home and Family Friday at Home is Where my Story Begins.

Corn Bread and Ballet

Karen Kain dans Le Lac des cygnes (1980)

   

I haven't made corn bread (or Johnny Cake as we sometimes call it) for ages, but Sarah's recent post, at All Our Fingers in the Pie, reminded me about it.  

Corn bread and ballet are linked in my mind.   The recipe I use was from a newspaper article, probably from the 1980s, about a fundraising cookbook for the Hospital for Sick Children.  The article had Karen Kain's Johnny Cake recipe and I've kept it and used it all these years.   Karen Kain is probably Canada's most famous Prima Ballerina, dancing from 1969-1997 with the National Ballet.  She is much loved in Canada and has continued with the National Ballet as artistic director.   When I was a teenager, I saw Karen both on-stage dancing and occasionally across the church at Christmas Eve services as her family attended the same church we did.

KAREN KAIN'S JOHNNY CAKE

INGREDIENTS
1 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup butter or margarine, at room temperature
1 egg
1 cup milk
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt

METHOD
1.  In large bowl cream sugar and butter.
2.  Add egg and milk and mix.
3.  In a small bowl, combine cornmeal, flour, baking powder, and salt.
4.  Stir into butter mixture and beat vigorously.
5.  Pour into a greased 8-inch square baking pan.
6.  Bake in 350 oven for 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean.

Thank you Karen, for your lovely recipe that I have enjoyed all these years.

Linked to Just Something I Whipped Up at The Girl Creative

Friday Photos - Hepatica and Other Spring Flowers

 My parents, my husband and I went for a hike in a nearby woods last weekend.  There are still a lot of dried brown leaves around, but we did manage to find some early flowers, a couple of butterflies, and a chorus of croaking frogs.
 
Nothing says early spring like the first hepatica flowers in the woods.

( photo above taken by my mother)

The hepatica flowers ranged in colour from white to lilac to mauve to periwinkle.

 

(photo above taken by my husband)

There were also bloodroot flowers (terrible name, I know).

and Dutchman's Breeches.

and a few Mourning Cloak butterflies (thank you for holding still Mr. Butterfly while I took your photo).

Linked to Shutter Love Tuesday at Trendy Treehouse

The Burgess Shale Hike

We are a rock-loving and fossil-loving family.  So when we were planning our trip out west in 2007, hubby requested that we visit the location of the world-famous Burgess Shale quarry.

The only way to gain access to the quarry is to go on a guided tour because it is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Through tilting and folding of the rocks, over the past 500 million years, the fossils have ended up near the top of Mount Burgess in Yoho National Park, British Columbia.  So if we wanted to see them we needed to sign up for the guided hike.  The hike is rated as moderately difficult and is 20-km (12 miles) with an elevation gain of 760 metres (2888 feet) - yikes!

So sign up we did (and start excercising - which isn't easy to do when you live in relatively flat Southern Ontario).

See there I am - I made it to the Burgess Shale Fossil Quarry and lived to tell about it.

The lake way down below is Emerald Lake (see the pick axe at my feet that was used in the quarry and left there).

The day after our hike we went to Emerald Lake so we could look back to where we had hiked.  I marked up the next photo so you could see the approximate last part of the route we took and the location of the fossil beds.

This same view of Mount Burgess was used on our old 10-dollar bills.

It was definitely the farthest we have travelled to see fossils, but well worth it!

Rocks in my House

There are rocks in our house.  A lot of rocks.  

We have rocks on our front porch.

 We have rocks in our front hall.

 We have rocks in our living room.

 We have rocks in our family room.

 We have rocks in our bedrooms.

We have rocks in our bathroom.

Let me explain.

When one of your favourite places to go looks like this,

 you end up with this -

   Rocks on the front porch window sill!

The ones on the left are quartz from the Haliburton cottage and the one on the right is granite from the Georgian Bay cottage.

When one of your favouite souvenirs is rocks,

  you end up with rocks to welcome you as you step inside the front door.  These fantastically smooth rocks were collected at a beach at Torbay, Newfoundland. The kids were small when we went there and they wailed when it was time to leave.  The "brain" rock is from another beach in Newfoundland.

I know, I know, you can't take your eyes off the Gerber daisies and the orchid, but just for a minute take a peak at the family room window sill.  More rocks!  These ones are from Georgian Bay and Nova Scotia.

When you have a husband who loves to collect fossils, you end up with this.
 

Fossils on the window sill and a display case on the coffee table.

A close-up of the fossils in the display case.  Hubby collects them (and buys a few).
 

And a close-up of the living room window sill.

And this is the right side of the living room window sill.  

You can see all the Burgess Shale memorabilia here.  We don't have any Burgess Shale fossils as that would be distinctly illegal since it is a UNESCO World Heritage site, but we are crazy enough about fossils (well some of us are and others like a good expedition) that we went on a 20 km 10-hour guided hike up a mountain in British Columbia to the location of the Burgess Shale excavation.  We were so pumped when we got down that we bought every sticker, fridge magnet, and shirt available in the gift shop, some of which you can see here.  I'll show you a couple of photos tomorrow for Friday Photo.

And when you can't resist pretty rocks, you end up with this -

Rocks in the bathoom, including pink quartz from South Dakota and amethyst from near Thunder Bay, Ontario.

I'll leave you with one last photo of an amazing 450 million year-old trilobite from Newfoundland.

Did the rock fairy leave rocks around your house?