Five for Friday

Note: today's post is quite lengthy but I hope you'll indulge me because....

1. It's my birthday!


2.  I told the kids in July when we went to see Ant-Man and saw the trailer
for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation that I had found what I wanted to do for my birthday.
With Austin being scheduled to work tonight, though, we decided to go
see the late show on Tuesday, after taekwondo.
It was very good!

Crazy bad selfie, I know, but it was really late when the movie got out

and I just wanted to go home! 

Gee, I must be getting older..... ;)

3.  Last Wednesday, the kids and I flew to Montreal to visit my brother & his family.

It was the first time flying for Sage & Jonah. 

(Austin flew to Halifax with my mom and me when he was three,

but he doesn't remember it.)

(Another fun, but not so great selfie on the plane!)

We had such a wonderful trip!

Some highlights include...

Going to La Ronde with my nephew, Noah on Thursday.

We took the bus & metro (subway) there and had a really fun day!

On Friday, we went to Old Montreal, where we walked around,

did a maze called the Labyrinth & grabbed lunch.

My brother gave me my birthday gift -- the opportunity to zip line off of the tall

red/purple/blue tower in the background, over the water!

It was so fun!

(That's me, zip-lining with Austin, in the bottom right photo -- I'm the one on the left!)

Trevor and Noah are at the top.

We also went to the Science Museum to check out the Game On video game exhibit,

which the kids enjoyed.

They also really liked exploring the Science 26 exhibit -- a whole hands-on science experience.

On Saturday, we went to the Jean Talon Marché, 

to look at the soccer stadium that Trevor is the lead architect for (it was amazing!), 

to Mile End where they had the nicest paper shops,

and to Mont Royal.

We had such a fabulous visit -- and would go back in a heartbeat!

4. Another very cool highlight from our trip was getting to meet

the amazingly talented & oh, so wonderful Elena Roussakis.

We've been online friends for about four years now and when

I booked our flights to Montreal, I contacted her about meeting in real life.

Sage & I met Elena and her lovely family for coffee on Sunday morning 

and then we attended their church service with them,

which was wonderful!

And Sage & Elena's oldest daughter, Sofia, totally hit it off!

I'm so glad it worked out for us to get together!

My only regret is that we couldn't have spent more time together....

5. And lastly, I have a winner to announce for the give-away 

that I mentioned on Tuesday.

I had 26 people leave comments on my blog post,

so I asked Cameron to pick a number between 1 & 26 and he picked 16.

Which means, the winner of the Reverse Confetti Love and Ice Cream stamp set is...

Michele from I Card Everyone!

Congratulations, Michele! 

Thanks for looking!