J&M got Maui'd!

On the twins' birthday, Alan and I took them out to Canoe for dinner. I had inquired at the beginning of the meal about a tour and our waiter told us that it was unlikely that they would like to have people walking through during the dinner service. Our meal did last a long time (our desserts taking some time to arrive) which coincidentally (or perhaps deliberately) matched with the end of the dinner service. So we ended up getting a tour of the kitchen and the rest of the restaurant after our meal while the staff were cleaning up. Oh, I also wanted to mention that our waiter looked very much like Russell Peters, with his own jokes and all. The meal was very good although the food was not as impressive as Auburge du Pommier, but the service was definitely top notch. On Valentine's day I took the afternoon off to take part in the Ontario Health Study before grabbing half a dozen roses and surprising Maggie at her new workplace. Her coworkers were complaining that I was setti

I had a bit of a conundrum: What to do for Maggie's 30th birthday? Initially, I had planned on a huge surprise party with all of her friends and family. Now this gets a little difficult because Barb has the same birthdate, and she also probably would want something special for her 30th. So I checked with Alan. He didn't have too many ideas either. Initially, we had thought of going on some sort of romantic trip to Quebec City, where we would stay for a few days and enjoy some winter festivals. I thought of staying in one of the ice hotels. But because Barb's schedule is so limiting, we could not go for long, and flights were not cheap, and trains were not cheap, and driving would take a long time. We did continue to work on this plan for months. We actually tried planning out our trip to include lunch/dinner at a nice restaurant in the eastern Ontario as well. I did like the idea of surprising them with friends and family, but Quebec City was far. I set my sights to