Anne's Blog for Mississauga Kids…

According to Wikipedia:

In most of Canada, Family Day is a statutory holiday  occurring on the third Monday in February. This corresponds with Presidents Day in the United States. In the provinces of Manitoba and Prince Edward Island, the statutory holiday on this date is instead termed Louis Riel Day and Islander Day, respectively.

And…

After Dalton McGuinty’s appointment as premier was supported by the election, McGuinty advised the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario   David Onley  to establish Family Day on 11 October 2007, with the first being observed on 18 February 2008. Its creation raised Ontario’s number of public holidays to nine per year, Unionized workers whose collective agreements do not yet include this holiday will continue to work on Family Day.

My Husband, ever the cynic, loves to joke about this holiday.  “They should call it:  Please Oh Please Vote For Me and I’ll Give You a Day Off in February Just Like the American’s Have Day.” Which refers of course to the above paragraph.

My 16 year old son does not care how it came about.  He does not care why it came about.  He does not care what it is suppose to celebrate.  He is however delighted that he can sleep in and does not have to go to school.

I however find this newly generated holiday quite interesting. It is interesting to me that the holiday also arrives close to Valentine’s Day.  When I was young and in love Valentine’s Day was all about doing romantic stuff with your boyfriend and dinner out and roses and candy.  I’m older now, and still in love, but once you have kids past the age of 2 it becomes more about them.  You find yourself hanging heart shaped cling-ons on the big glass patio door.   You make heart shaped pancakes for breakfast.  You help them fill out the little Valentine’s Day Cards for their class.  Rolling Family Day and Valentine’s Day up into one long weekend Family Love Fest is certainly an appropriate way to go.

The first year it was held it seemed no one knew quite what to do with themselves.  That is slowly changing as families and businesses start to  form new traditions.  The City of Mississauga has really stepped up to fill a void.  Many of the usual fun places to go will be closed that day, but it is the perfect day to set aside to get out and get active with your kids.  If you check our website you will find an article with some great ideas on Family Day Activities in Mississauga.

As we explore this new holiday families will begin developing traditions of their own.  Our family went up to the cottage  for the last 2 Family Days.  It is more like luxury camping in the winter.  There is no running water.  We bucket water up from a hole my husband drills in the lake so we can flush the toilet.  We do have electric heat, the refrigerator, stove and the tiny TV that is not hooked up to cable all work.  We read books, play board games, and force our son to watch old black and white movies.  (Because of this he knows that:  “Badges?  We don’t need no stinking badges!” is not an original Cheech and Chong line, but actually comes from the 1948 movie “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” with Humphry Bogart.)

This year however we will be staying in Mississauga.  My son is taking his WSI (Water Safety Instructors) course with the city and needs to be in town Sunday afternoon.  And that’s okay!  The Olympics are going to be starting that week and we are going to love watching those on our high def TV in the city.  So I think I’ll cook up something yummy for dinner (TBD) and I’ll take some time to make a home made chocolate cake with white icing in my heart shaped cake tins.  It’s going to be a cozy relaxed Olympic Family Valentine at our house!

What does Family Day mean to you?  What will you be doing?  If you leave us a comment about Family Day below AND fill out our contest form you’ll be entered to win a Playdium family prize pack of 4 X 160 credit Playcards valid anytime!  For rules and additional details check our Mississauga Kids Contest Page!

If you’ve been following me on twitter you know I was recently sent a Tassimo maker by @TassimoCanada as part of a contest they were running giving out these nifty gadgets to people who tweet and blog so we could try them out and let you all know what we think. Being new to getting booty from blogging I was pretty excited. How cool is it to receive free stuff so you can let people know what you think? Do people even really care what I think? Hmmm. Actually I guess some do… let’s hope this revelation doesn’t go to my head.

Anyway, it arrived a few days before my father and his friend Lucy arrived for a visit. So I set it aside to wait for them to come to help set it up and try it out. That way I could get feed back from 3 generations for this review! I did open the box and it arrived with a variety of coffees, expresso, latte, chia tea latte, and some twinning teas. I was a bit bummed there was no hot chocolate. So I did pick some up at the grocery store. (Tis the season right?)

We all gathered around to open the thing up and get it running, The one I received was a silver one and it had a special filter in it to help purify the water. I filter my city water at the kitchen sink as well. So I guess processing the water twice should provide us with amazing results? Now I think my first mistake was leaving this to the men of the house to set up. Men love to read and follow directions right? Yeah… you get the idea. Three men, three generations, and all of them sure they know what to do. It was comical. In the end I had to take over and insist they read the directions. It took about 45 minutes to get the thing running. Those of us who were of legal age had had a glass of wine… or two… so it might have gone a bit smoother if we weren’t all so, um jolly?

My 16 year old son says I should make sure I tell you all that if you are going to give one of these machines to a grandparent you should set it up for him. I pointed out that that was ageism. He replied “Call it what you want but unless the giver wants to find it sitting in the garage under a layer of dust next time they visit they should help set it up.” He has always been a pragmatic lad.

Once it was up and running we all enjoyed a variety of teas and coffees and even hot chocolate. I’m not really a coffee drinker but my Dad and husband really did enjoy all of the coffees. Lucy, my father’s friend, can only drink decaf and she was quite impressed with the quality of the Maxwell House decaf that came with my samples. Lucy is a self declared Luddite but even she learned to run the Tassimo once it was up and going.

Once it is up and running it is pretty easy. Select the flavor and put it in the machine and press a button. Some products like the chia tea and the lattes have 2 disks. So you do one and then the other. It is easy to refill the machine, it has a hole in the top so you don’t even have to lift the big lid up.

The machine is fun. It is very nice to be able to brew one cup and the quality of the coffee is very good. I liked the chia tea, but the hot chocolate was kind of watery. I think it is better when you make it yourself with hot water and can add extra mix. (Of course it is MUCH better if you make it from scratch with milk!) They offer only Twinnings brand tea, both Earl Grey black tea and a green tea. I thought they were fine, but I prefer Tazo teas and they don’t have a partnership with Tassimo Canada yet. Tazo is working with them in the US so I will remain ever hopeful!

I also like to have a large variety of tea flavours to choose from depending on my mood. If I wanted a mint tea, or a chamomile I had to return to the traditional method. It seems to me a lack of variety might be a concern for this brand of single cup brew machine. A friend of mine, Belinda, has a Keurig machine that she swears she couldn’t live without. I checked it out online and they do seem to have a larger selection of flavors. Hopefully Tassimo will catch up.

Another concern is the disks. To be honest I have not calculated the difference in cost but I am fairly sure it is bound to be more. The impact on the environment is something to consider as well. It is fun to have all these different flavors to choose from but I’m having trouble storing them! If I’m having trouble storing them I am forced to consider how much space they take up… both now and after I need to get rid of them. They are most certainly not compostable as tea bags and coffee grounds are.

Since I have one I expect I’ll enjoy it for a while, or at least until I get frustrated with all the boxes of disks cluttering up my kitchen!

OH! The great folks at @TassimoCanada did send me three $20 off mail in rebate coupons! If you live in Canada and you know you are going to buy either a Tassimo Model T45 or a T65 leave me a comment and I’ll email you back to get a snail mail address so I can mail you a coupon! Sorry this offer is expired.

Christmas Traditions in Mississauga and around the world.

Our family has always celebrated Christmas. When I was a little girl we would go to a Christmas tree farm and bring home a tree and decorate it. My father would, under my mothers careful direction, make sure the tree stood straight in the stand. He would string the lights on the tree and my mother would fuss over the bulbs unscrewing them and rearranging them to ensure that there were not to many flashing bulbs in one area and that the colored bulbs were distributed in an esthetically pleasing way.

We would go to see go to sit on Santa’s lap much like Mississauga Kids go to sit on Santa’s Lap now. We would bring our carefully written out notes for him. We would promise to leave milk and cookies for him and carrots for his eight beautiful reindeer. He would carefully promise to do his best to bring us something we would like.

Christmas Eve we hung our stockings by the chimney with care and went to bed and tried to sleep. Do you remember how hard it was to fall asleep on Christmas Eve when you were little? Do you remember wondering if that bump or creak on the roof was Santa’s sleigh? When we finally fell asleep Santa and his elves would work their Christmas Magic.

Christmas morning there were presents from Santa under the tree and the stocking were filled with fun little treats and funny little prizes. The cookie plate was empty and the milk was drunk. The carrots were missing as well. Sometimes we’d find a few bits of carrot left over in the snow.

Here’s hoping Santa can make sure every child gets a little something special this year.

If you think you’d like to help him please click here! – Peel Region Police Toy Drive

Do you have holiday memories to share? Christmas , Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or others we’d love to have you post them below!

Had a lovely cup of tea with Natalie from PowerCheer this morning! Power Cheer is one of Mississauga Great Cheerleading Clubs. Girls and BOYS from Mississauga can learn to tumble and flip and cheer their hearts out either their recreational or competitive classes. They are going to be starting some awesome sounding Mom and Tots programs this fall as well!

On my way to the meeting riding in my car I heard a news story that was music to this Mississauga Mom’s ears.

Mississauga and the rest of Ontario and Canada about to experience a grocery price war!

Seems Loblaw’s is about to start a grocery store price war! They have already cut prices from 10 to 25 per cent on around 3,000 products in their Atlantic Canada Stores. Reports suggest this could start a grocery prices war the likes of which have been unseen in Canada for almost 2 decades!

This will surely come as welcome news to families in Mississauga and around Ontario. I know as the mom of one almost 16 year old male child I am DELIGHTED! How about you?

Please leave us a comment about what you think about grocery prices in Mississauga. Let us know if you have found any signs of this price war in your local market! And PLEASE do tell us if you know of any good buys we should all be aware of!

Anne was born into a family of readers and has a degree in Elementary Education for the State University of New York at New Paltz. She lives with her husband and son in Ontario and publishes Mississauga Kids an online resource for families featuring Mississauga Private Schools, Tutors, After School Activities and great articles for parents from anywhere!

I just got a call from the Giuseppe Agrippa the Landscaper working on my Mississauga project. He was having trouble sourcing a particular plant. It seems that Jodi Liptrott who designed the layout and chose the plants for my landscaping project chose a plant called Japanese Spurge to place under my new ivory silk lilac tree. She told me it would look great and spread nicely. I never bothered to look it up , trusting her to know what was best.

I’ve looked it up.

Never did I imagine that Japanese Spurge was what I grew up calling Pachysandra.

Never did I imagine the flood of memories about my family, especially the women, that would come flooding back to me with this discovery.

Through out my life I have been surrounded by this plant! Now we are using it in my Mississauga Landscaping project!

I grew up in an old farm house in the Town of Montgomery, New York. It was a big run down house that my parents bought as their second home moving us out of the City of Newburgh and into the country where we would have space to run and play without getting into too much trouble. We had about 2 acres to run wild in. There was a farm house in front, a large garage with an attic that we would use as a club house, and a dangerous dilapidated barn that would later be torn down and rebuilt as a barn like structure for my maternal grandparents to live in.

Run wild we did and we got into trouble too, but not too much! I remember my brother and I pulling my sister up after her leg fell through the floor of the second floor of the barn once. We were forbidden to be up there of course. My brother actually fell out of the second story loft and onto a cement slab once when he was exploring on his own. He did not even tell me, his big sister, about that till months later. He said he was peering over the edge and fell, woke up we guess moments, minutes, or more later, and did not tell anyone because he did not want to get into trouble. That of course explains a lot about my brother! ;-p

But I digress… I started talking about the Japanese Spurge that is to be planted in my new front yard landscaping project. Why all these memories are coming back is that every house I ever lived in had Pachysandra on site. The house in Montgomery had it all round the base of the house on most sides, around many of the trees, along the path from the house to the barn that was later my grandparent’s home. There were jars of it rooting on the kitchen window sill from my earliest memories. Where ever nothing else would grow in went this plant.

When I married ,(21 years ago this week!) my reception was held in the back yard of the old farm house. My mother, father, sister, grandmother and I began working on sprucing up the landscaping that Spring. My brother dodged the chore, he way away serving in the U.S. Navy on a nuclear submarine. He always managed to avoid the fun family landscaping projects! We began the process if pulling out the pachysandra from the areas it had overtaken and using those to root in old milk jugs to fill in areas we thought needed filling in. There were jam jars of pachysandra on the kitchen window, jugs of pachysandra on the screen porch. There was pachysandra growing in a vase in my grandmother’s house in her bathroom! It was taking over! I remember asking my mom and grandmother “Why don’t we just buy a few flats and move on!” They scolded me, “Are you kidding me! Do you know how much that would cost!”

Later as newly weds the home we owned had a very small shady back yard. Guess what we did? We broke out the old milk jugs and went over to my parents house and took clippings from here and there and lived with milk jugs full of rooting Pachysandra all winter long till we could plant it in the Spring. After our son was born when my husband changed jobs and we moved to Vermont there was pachysandra already planted there under the evergreens by the woods.

And so this week I find myself buying pachysandra. I know I’ll never walk by that greenery without thinking of my Mom and my Grandma and of all the houses and memories. I’m laughing through the tears imaging what Mom and Grandma would say about me buying Pachysandra. (Or should I say Japanese Spurge.)

Jodi M. Liptrot of JML Landscape Design helped us with the design. http://www.jml-landscapedesigner.ca/

Giuseppe Agrippa from Vaughan Landscaping is our contractor. http://www.vaughanlandscaping.ca/

UPDATE:  We were NOT happy with the quality of the work performed by Vaughan Landscaping.  Check our comment below for details.