Worst product ever

My husband bought the Blue Ant S4 hands-free car speaker phone a few months ago. I have hated it since the beginning because this product simply DOESN'T work! Here are the reasons why: 
1. I have an older iPhone (the 3G) and I am not able to make outbound calls with this device. I guess that's more my problem and not theirs but it's annoying nonetheless. 
2. You have to manually turn it off and back on every time you get into the car or else it won't detect your phone. If you don't do that, then you won't be able to receive incoming calls via bluetooth and you are stuck with the archaic, very unsafe, and now illegal-in-Ontario method of manually answering your cellphone while you are driving. 
3. If you forget to turn it off before you leave your car, it will drain the battery very quickly. Seems like whenever I remember to turn the thing on again, the annoying Blueant voice will tell me that its batteries are very low. 
4. The car charger cord that it comes with is so short that it basically doesn't work. We have to take the unit out of the car and into the house to charge it. The result is that most of the time, it just runs out of battery.
For something that costs over a hundred bucks, you think it would work like it's supposed to.

Mare-night

The other night, my daughter suddenly started crying in her sleep.  My son said, "She must be having a mare-night."  He means nightmare.  :)

Canada's Wonderland... here we come!

I had always wanted to get either a Toronto Zoo membership or the Canada's Wonderland seasons pass but we have never purchased passes to anything.  The main reason is because my husband always had to work 7 days a week for most of the summer so it wouldn't have been worth it.  This summer will be different.  We'll be spending a lot of time together as a family so we decided on Canada's Wonderland passes.  Buying the passes was very surreal and it almost made me giddy.  I can't believe we're actually going to be able to do stuff that we could never do before.  I don't even like rides but it doesn't matter. I'm going to have a great time with my family, doing whatever it is that normal families do during the summer.

Potty training failures and successes

At 3 years and 7 months old, my son is finally making some progress in the potty training department.  He's been pretty good about peeing in the potty as long as we remind him to go.  Even his overnight diapers have been dry.  He had an accident today after swimming because he didn't want to pee at the pool change room and I forgot to take him to pee when we got home.  So he had an accident in the kitchen.  argh.

Yesterday he had a poo accident because he didn't wait long enough for the poo to come out but today, we told him that he would get a popsicle treat if he waited for the poo to come out and he did it!  I'm so proud of him.

I can finally stop buying diapers for him.  What will I do with all the money that I'll save?

Cheap date

Wow... tomorrow, couples in Toronto can go for a really cheap night out with these offers:

Milestones: Free Date Night, Order Any Meal and Your Date’s Meal is Free (April 27 Only)

Baskin Robbins: $0.31 Scoop Night on April 27th From 5PM to 10PM

Asian Pasta Salad with Grilled Chicken

This Asian Pasta Salad is good for large parties because you can make it a day ahead and it's served cold. This recipe uses a whole bag of pasta (900g) and it makes enough to serve 20+ people.

Ingredients:
Spaghetti - 1 bag (900g)
Red bell peppers, sliced into strips - 2
Sugar snap peas, trimmed - 3 cups
Chicken breasts - 4
Vegetable oil - 4 tbsp
Sugar - 4 tbsp
Soy sauce - 2 tbsp
Fish sauce - 2 tbsp
Oyster sauce - 2 tbsp
Hoisin sauce - 2 tbsp
Rice vinegar - 2 tbsp
Sesame oil - 2 tbsp

1. Grill the chicken breasts and let cool for 10 minutes, then slice.
2. Blanch the sugar snap peas for 1 minute in boiling water and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking.
3. Boil the pasta for 10 min (or until al dente) and drain.
4. Mix the remaining ingredients together and toss into the pasta. Do a taste test and adjust the seasoning as needed.
5. Chill in the fridge overnight or at least for 4 hours.
6. Do another taste test and adjust the seasoning as needed before serving.

Great customer service from Best Limo and TeamBuy.ca!

I recently bought a Best Limo voucher to go to the airport through TeamBuy.ca.  The day before I needed to use the voucher, I called them at 3pm on Sunday afternoon for a 3am Monday morning pick-up.  However, they said they couldn't do it because they need 24-hour advance notice via their website.  In my over 10 years of taking airport limos on both business and personal trips, I have never had to order a limo 24-hours in advance.  Furthermore, the Teambuy voucher didn't specify this in the fine print.  It just had the phone number and address for Best Limo.  So I flipped out at the Best Limo guy on the phone and I immediately emailed TeamBuy.ca to get a refund for the 2 vouchers that I bought.

I then called another limo company to order a car for 3am the next morning with no problems.  Then, I get a call from Best Limo and the guy said they could arrange for a stretch limo to come pick us up.  At that point, I was unsure if I should trust him as I was travelling with another family who also had a voucher and would also need a pick-up.  That's when he said he could arrange for a stretch limo (which fits 10) to come pick us both up for 2 vouchers.  I called my friend and decided to take a risk.  Best Limo said they would even arrange to send a stretch limo SUV to pick us both up for no extra charge.  So I cancelled my other limo booking and we decided on a back-up plan just in case the Best Limo didn't show up the next morning.

To make it even more complicated, I get an email from Jess at Teambuy.ca confirming that they would refund the vouchers, no questions asked.  I was very impressed that someone was even working on a Sunday afternoon but I had to email them back to cancel the refund.  After a few back and forth emails and phone calls, Jess was able to cancel the refund.  phew!

I'm happy to report that the SUV stretch limo showed up the next morning at 2:45am and both families were able to get to the airport right on schedule.

Nice ride!