As we look ahead to what’s happening in our final two months in Toronto, we exclaim how little time we’re actually spending in the city. This weekend was one of the few Toronto oases that we’ve had – and we made the most of it.
Saturday night we went to Ur and Israel’s for a pot luck dinner with Julian, Bec, Al, Pete and Royden. We each brought something so Pete brought Greek food (spanokipita and sausage), I brought a Vietnamese chicken salad, Julian brought pasta, Ur/Is made chicken schnitzel and Bec made a flourless cake.
Julian and I both thought that our recipes, which were designed for four people (or there abouts), wouldn’t cover the seven of us so we made extra. I should have learned by now not to do this. There was so much food! I was stuffed by the end of dinner and I think I only had one serving of everything.
After dinner we sat around talking before heading home sometime close to midnight. I could barely keep my eyes open.
Glen slept for ten hours, meanwhile I was wide awake at 10am with a headache and unable to get back to sleep. I got up. Eventually Glen stirred. We went to the gym and then it was time to go to Dave, Antony and Josh’s birthday party (they’re all born within a few days of each other, which is cute as they’re all one family).
We were two of about 14 people at the party. Josh, the one year old, got a whole lot of attention (which is to be expected because he’s so adorable). We ate food. We talked to people we hadn’t seen for a while, like Manny who’d flown in from Washington, DC, or Richard and Jim who came up from Hamilton. After the food had been served, we went down to the little park at the end of their street and Dave filmed all of us singing happy birthday to Josh.
When we returned, there was cake and the opening of presents, and then we watched the video Dave had made of Josh’s first year of life. He’d filmed about a second of Josh every day for 365 days and at the end included the video of us singing. It was very sweet.
The hours flew by and before we knew it, it was 5pm and Glen and I were off to see Cam and Vince who’d invited us over for a barbecue. The weather was nice enough to sit outside and eat. I think this was our first barbecue dinner in Canada (or maybe our second. Either way, there haven’t been many). We need to buy a barbecue when we return home.
We played Sushi Go, then walked down to Serrano Bakery to get some dessert, before returning to their place to play a new game called Yardmaster Express. We’d bought both games for them so it was nice to be able to play. Despite me winning two out of the three rounds of Sushi Go, Glen won the rest of everything and came out the winner overall. He’s not allowed to play anymore.
We called ‘Pumpkin’ at 9pm and caught the subway home. For some reason, I’m exhausted!
Travels with Dan 
What do you say, eh?