Eight!!

My biggest guy had his eighth birthday today. Sweet little bug!

He woke up for the day excited... ready to go... and ready to have cake for breakfast! What could be better?! He wanted cheesecake, but I didn't have time to do two cakes... since not everyone in the family can eat dairy we went with a chocolate mousse tofu cheesecake. It was actually phenomenal. I am not a tofu cheesecake fan, but we would all happily gobble this anytime. Bonus, we discovered that the batter makes for the best dairy free pudding ever! T received the 7th Harry Potter book from us. It was the last of the series and he has been waiting for it for months, rereading all of the others multiple time while patiently awaiting the final book. He was pretty excited and started plowing through it right away.

We had a tricky time trying to find something special to do for the day. We had the idea to go to a local island for a day trip and beautiful hike. When we looked online at the ferry cost, it would have cost over 80 bucks just for the transportation. Poo... we scrapped that idea ( It cost us 200 bucks to get off this island to the mainland... we have been off once in 8 years! ) Then we researched a local small caving tour. It had a price tag of almost 70 bucks for a 25 min tour. Eeep! Harry Potter movie for the family? Another thumbs down on that idea. Ok. We are super duper frugal. My hubby has been layed off for over 2 months now and employment insurance pays 1400 a month which doesn't even cover essentials truly. We do a ton of fun stuff all of the time.... we just happen to enjoy things that are free! We are so out of the loop of what things even cost these days! I was a bit bummed to say the least. We just couldn't spend a weeks worth of groceries for a couple of hours of entertainment. We finally found the perfect thing. About a 45 min drive away there is a wildlife reserve that does local wildlife rescue. They have a nature museum, education center, lots of permanent resident animals plus a ton of rescue animals. It was soooooo perfect .... and under 20 dollars to boot ( I would gladly donate the 90 bucks it would have cost for the ferry trip to an organisation like this one!) We will definitely go back there. We did a little trip after to the next town over and what luck.... T s favourite musician( ok... he was really into him for a couple of years , but now it is all about K'Naan... but still this was a cool coincidence) was busking outside! http://www.shanephilip.com/ So it ended up being an awesome day. Happy birthday monkey!