'Tis the Season

Christmas. How I love this time of year. It makes me miss when I was a little girl and things were so exciting and easy.  Christmas Eve at Grandma & Grandpas with our massive family. Aromas of every kind of delicious food being made. Sounds of my sister and I singing Christmas carols on the way to the grandparents. Waking up Christmas morning to see that Santa had filled half the family room with presents overnight! That was the best! Dreaming of the day that I had a family of my very own to share these Christmas traditions.

Christmas means something different to everybody.Some don't celebrate it.  For some its a very religious holiday. But for me, it was always about spending time with family.

Since I've moved up here, new traditions began with the holidays. We did try to make it back to Indiana as much as we could for things, but a lot of the time we stayed here and that was great too because I had had a second family with Matt's family. We had tried to start a tradition of having his parents up Christmas morning for breakfast. It was always fun and they would laugh at us and say we were still like kids on Christmas morning with our wrapping paper strewn across the room, goodies everywhere, and new stuff for us the play with. They couldn't wait to see what it would be like when we had kids of our own. I was so happy to have another family in his family. I looked to his mom as a second mother of mine.  She taught me so much.  Heck, she was the one who taught me how to stuff a turkey and make it taste amazing all the while with a glass of wine in her hand. Boy do I miss her.

Sigh. How things have changed. Between my husband and I, both our families have sort of fallen apart over the past year or two. To summarize, my parents went through an extremely difficult divorce and Matt's mom passed away unexpectedly. There's a lot more to it, but lets just leave it at that. Its been an extremely tough few years for us. We spent last Christmas just the two of us at home, all alone and it was very sad and depressing. Not to mention a few days before Christmas our furnace took a turn for the worse. It filled the house with smoke in the middle of the night and broke. Scary stuff to wake up to at 5am.  So we were living off of space heaters until we could get a new furnace in, which wasn't until after the holidays. So Christmas morning after opening up our presents, we looked at each other and said, "Do you want to hit the road?" We just couldn't take it anymore. The house was empty. No family (and no heat). We had tried to spoil each other to make up for the loneliness, but deep down we knew it just didn't work. So we did just that. We hit the road Christmas afternoon. We had planned to spend New Years in Florida anyway, so off we went. We spent Christmas on the road.

So this year, we vowed to make it change. We want happy memories this Christmas.  We invited my mom, my sister, and her fiance (its so weird call him that) up here for Christmas.  Also Matt's sister, whom I absolutely adore, decided to move back here from Calgary.  It will be so nice to have her here. She will be here right before Christmas. Matt and I were so excited we could hardly wait to put up Christmas lights; which on a side note, our house was fully decorated by mid November. Our house is the brightest lit up house on the street! We are the Griswolds of our neighborhood. I already have the bedrooms all made up and ready for family to get here. Maybe I will even put chocolate on their pillows like a good hostess. My Christmas shopping is done, wrapped and under the tree. So already this year is looking much better. I am actually looking forward to this Christmas.

So we will see how things turn out. We have plans to bake goodies and go to Niagara Falls to look at the Christmas lights. So I already know that this Christmas will be better than last.  I can't wait!

Love: All the Christmas goodies. Especially the chocolate.


Honesty: I probably should not eat them, but I most definitely will.

My Canadian Adventures Part 1

As most of you already know, I moved to Canada about 6 years ago from the states. It was hands down the best thing I've ever done in my life.  It was exciting, life-changing, and even educational at times. Ignorant to my American ways, I had no real idea what was so different about Canada. I just thought it was probably a cold place to live.  I remember school kids joking how Canada was a "generic USA." Or on one more memorable occasion of bringing my husband home to Indiana, we met a friend of one of my family members who shook our hands and said "Canada, its not even a real country."  Now not to insult all of my American friends, as I know this person had the IQ of a sandwich and isn't a good representation of all Americans, but nevertheless, I was fully aware of how many Americans viewed Canada, which was with no real education on countries outside their very own.

Here we go.

Moving to another country was no simple feat. To gain permanent residency I needed the proper paperwork, fingerprints, background checks from both the RCMP and the FBI, a medical evaluation with blood work and urine samples, financial information, etc. It was pretty intimidating stuff. After all, it is a completely different country its not like moving to another state.

Now onto the weather aspect. I'm only bringing this up because whenever I tell people from the states that we live in Canada I ALWAYS hear,"isn't it cold up there?" or something along those lines. Now, when you cross the Canadian border it doesn't magically turn into the Arctic where we all live in igloos and ride dogsleds. Where I live in particular is not much different weather than where I grew up. Its close to the same latitude as Chicago. The summers aren't as miserably hot as they were in Indiana (which I don't miss by the way,) but it does get quite hot up here during the summer. We have a pool in our backyard to put things into perspective, you know, right behind our igloo.  I live in the Niagara Region of Ontario about 20 minutes or so from Niagara Falls.  We are close to Lake Ontario which I find keeps our winters a bit more mild in comparison to the Indiana winters we had. When I lived in Indiana, I remember it getting way below 0 F and that's pretty darn cold. Heck, I remember putting antifreeze stuff into my gas tank to keep the gas from freezing on really cold weeks in Indiana.  To get that cold here is a rare thing and to get below that is even rarer, but it can happen. Obviously the more north you get the colder it will get, but where I live its pretty nice.

One thing you MUST try when you venture to Canada is Tim Horton's. It's a Canadian pastime. Its a vastly popular drive-thru coffee place that carries cheap coffee, donuts, soup, and sandwiches.  It's the best.  Once you cross that American border I guarantee a Tim Horton's, or as we say "Timmies," will not be far.  They are on nearly every street corner and will be lined up first thing in the morning right down the street. Canadians certainly love there Timmies. This time of the year with the holidays right around the corner is my favorite at Tim Horton's. Candycane hot chocolates and Christmas donuts. YUM. Here is a picture of our holiday donuts from the other day. My favorites are the chocolate donuts sprinkled with candycane. Oh my goodness. Don't they look delicious?

Something I absolutely love about the area that I live in is all the FRESH FRUIT. This particular area is quite the fruit farming area with strawberries, cherries, peaches, apples, pears, grapes, etc. There are fruit stands and markets EVERYWHERE.  In the summertime, I just love driving by a stand on the way home and grabbing fresh peaches or whatever might be in season. I never ever had that back home in Indiana, where all we grew was corn (which don't get me wrong I certainly loved that too.) It was rare to see stands on the side of the road selling fresh produce and here I can think of several that are just down the road. Not to mention how gorgeous it is in the springtime with all the fruit trees in blossom.  My family is fortunate in that my husband grew up on a grape farm/vineyard and I got to see it all firsthand when I moved here. Picking grapes right off the vine.. that mouth watering burst of fresh fruit.. heaven.

Also, where there are grapes, there are wineries.  This area is a HUGE wine region. I can practically drive around the block and hit 6 or 7 wineries. Which, admittedly, I might have done. Maybe not all at once, but who could stand up straight after the first few. Anyways, my point is that this area is just lovely and beautiful with wineries, fruit stands, and more. Here are a few pictures from my in-laws vineyard.

Another big change for me was the metric system.  I about died one of the first times I crossed the border and saw the speed limit was 100. It took me a second to realize that it was in kilometers (which converts to about 60 mph.) Oh and the weather is all in Celsius. Yes, Celsius. Who uses Celsius? Well, as it turns out just about everyone but the good ol' USA. This one took me a little longer to get used to, but I've got the hang of it now.  0 C is 32 F, 10 C is 50 F, and 20 C is about 70 F. I remember my first summer up here and my now hubby had on the weather channel and the weather was in the 30's. I thought oh my goodness this is going to be a cold week in the summer, but what did I know really about Canadian summers. I mean, as far as I knew "isn't it cold up here?" He explained it to me and now I don't even think twice when I see the weather in Celsius, but it certainly did take some getting used to.

I've learned a lot living up here and will try to post several more blogs about my Canadian adventures. So until next time.

xoxo

My Very First Post

Oh boy here we go! Off to write my very first blog post! This adventure was inspired by my baby sister who writes a blog of her own from time to time that I quite enjoy reading so I thought why not?

First off,  a fair warning, you will have to bear with me as writing is not one of my stronger qualities (we will get to those in a second,) so please forgive me in advance for any grammar error or confusion you may have. I do apologize.

Now onto the blog.

I decided to title my blog "Love and Honesty" because they are my two strongest traits. Sometimes its a blessing and other times its a curse. For those of you who know me really well, you probably already know what I mean.

Love
If I love something, I love it a lot. Whether its my husband, family, chocolate, or a favorite beauty product. I just love it and will tell the world. I can already hear my loved ones echoing "Oh yes, yes she certainly does." I remember when I first moved to Canada and I was taking classes at a local college and the instructor made us all right down our qualities or anything interesting as sort of a break-the-ice type of assignment to read aloud in front of our classmates. I'm pretty sure I wrote down that my interesting quality is that I moved to Canada from the states because I honestly could not think of anything better. Interesting enough right? My instructor said "Krista, you are a PASSIONATE young woman that you moved countries for love. That is your quality." That is when I had that Aha moment that boy he was right.  Passionate describes me in nearly every aspect. This is a quality that I am quite proud to have because not everyone really knows how to love and care about others, so I am glad that its one of my better qualities.
Now the downfall is that I am protective over everyone that I care about. Which doesn't sound so bad right? Believe me it has gotten me into trouble a time or two.  And with the way things in my/my family's life has been these past couple years everyone has seen "Protective Krista" in full gear and I know its not always seen in the best light. I have this strong sense to look out for the ones I love and my sister Holli knows this first hand.  She calls me another mother figure in her life, but I like to think of myself as a very protective big sister. With everything she's been through the past few years, someone needed to look out for her when no one else did. I did the best I could from where I was and I don't regret any of it.

Honesty

This one is quite obvious. If you are a close friend of mine you know, oh boy do you know, that you will always know what I am thinking. I can't hide it as much as I might try believe it or not. I am absolutely THAT friend that will tell you those pants don't flatter you, do not buy them. Even if I don't say things out loud(you know trying to be nice,) my face always says it.  I get that crazy look in my eyes, start chewing my my bottom lip and you can see my head just spinning. My mind is working overtime. But on the other hand, being so honest can be a really good thing too because you never have to worry about me lying to you.
So if you are looking for a friend to bullsh*t with, oh dear I am just not that person.


I think that is it for my very first blog post! Hope you enjoyed it and maybe have a better understanding of who I am.

xoxo