My Birth-weekend! - July 14-15, 2007

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Happy Birthday to Meee!!!
Ah, July 14th...my birthday. It may not be my first birthday away from home, but it was certainly my first birthday to fall in mid-winter. But it was a good day - and a good weekend (since technically 2pm on July 14th in Toronto is 2am on July 15th in Perth).

Skating Exhibition
I got to spent the actual day of my birth doing what I love best - skating. We had a skating exhibition to raise money for Nationals. When I arrived my entire team seemed to be missing but I was soon called to the changeroom, which had been decorated for my special day! I wore a special crown up to the point where we got on the ice (some people wanted me to skate with it on). We had two good skates and it was in general a fun day. A highlight was when the entire arena sang 'Happy Birthday' to me! If only I'd actually heard it - no one coordinated ME and I was in the bathroom at the time...

Dinner with Danae and Kristy
After the exhibition I had plans to go out with two girls on my team, Danae (pronounced Danay) and Kristy. I was dropped off at home to have a shower and get changed, then brought over to Danae's house. We had some champagne and ate and then they presented me with a 'birthday pie'! You see I'd been talking about pumpkin pie (mmm pumpkin pie) but no one had ever heard of it! So Kristy and Danae set off on a mission to make me some pumpkin pie. In the end they found a recipe at some website called 'classic Canadian recipes' or something like that. And it was tasty!

The Shed
We finally left the house around 11pm and headed into Perth city to a club called 'The Shed'. It was an awesome place - there was a live band but they played cover songs so it was all songs you knew. When they left there was just canned music but it was a good assortment.

Little Creatures
On Sunday, I had a dinner get-together at Little Creatures, a restaurant/brewery in Fremantle. I had invited a bunch of people but only 5 showed up. However it's the quality not the quantity and it was a fun dinner.

Gloria's Parents arrive
Gloria, my housemate, was busy all weekend since her parents came in from Nigeria on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, she planned a party at our house the same night as I had planned the birthday dinner! So I left my house on Sunday amidst a huge crowd. I've never seen so many cars parked outside our house!!

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Photos

The Cockburn Ice Arena
Home sweet home

Jitterbugs opening pose
This is the Novice team - the younger team

Group in the stands
L to R: Danni, Tarsha, Kelley, Shannon, Kia, and Lara

Getting on the ice for the free
The dresses look like dead pigeons...

Spread eagles
This is about the best they ever worked...so we cut them out of the programme

Kristy and Danae clean up the changeroom
Many of those balloons are now living in my bedroom

Popping balloons
It sounded like guns being fired!