Being Young

This month I turned 29 and not long before that I saw a picture of Tavi Gevinson in Elle magazine with "what were you doing when you were 13?". Apparently Tavi writes a fashion blog, gets to sit front row at big name fashion shows, receives free merchandise from fashion companies, and it has been rumored that Galiano snubbed Jeanne Beker but embraced Tavi! Wow which brings me back to my own memory of being 13. I remember looking at older girls (15-16-17 even early 20 yr olds) thinking wow those girls must have it all, the confidence, freedom, adventure! So now that I'm 29 I have to say I'm most definitely 29 and there's no denying because now when look at 15-16-17 even early 20 yr olds I think boy are they YOUNG and precious. I was at a friend's birthday party soon after my own birthday and everyone was talking about how when they were in their early 20s 10pm was the beginning of the night and it was time to party! Now 10pm is mostly definitely bed time. And traveling in your early 20s? Backpacking no problem, now hovering around 30, we don't have the energy to deal with getting lost and such we need the comforts of a 4 star hotel thank you very much. Ha!

Recently Hubby and I were invited to attend a good friend's wedding in Stresa, Italy with a big pre-wedding party in Nigeria where the bride is from and most of her family are. Since my Laura Bush book is still in one of the boxes I got another book from Walmart not knowing what it's about because the cover looks like this

(taken from amazon.ca)

and the excerpt given on the inside cover of the book is even more brief than online and says something along the lines of two women making a life changing decision and then they meet again two years later.

So I've finished reading the book and it's a well written book that definitely caught my attention because of it's writing style. It's about a Nigerian refugee who had a bad encounter with oil gangs in her country. It's quite a coincidence that I would read a novel about Nigeria, so we looked up for warnings against travel to Nigeria on the Canadian government website and sure enough there is a high alert put out just last week against traveling to that country. Surely we don't feel it's a responsible thing to do to take our kids to Nigeria at this time. So now we've decided to go to Italy only and we're looking forward to it immensely. It will our very first time in Europe!

This Saturday we will be hosting a friend and his family at our home for the first time. The previous owner had left us a gazebo still in original packaging and I hope we'll be able to set it up for the occasion and take a picture to post on the blog here. Until then...