What's Up Wednesday: October 2025

Baseball, dance, and visiting the optometrist -- those three words sum up my October! What a month it's been!!! Plus, I checked off an absolute bucket list item. Read on to see what's been up with us in October.

Answering these questions monthly helps me reflect on the past month and I really appreciate having a record of what we've been up to. The questions come from Shay at Mix and Match Mama and Sheaffer at Sheaffer Told Me Too.

image from here

 

What we're eating this week... Rachel had a big dance event last weekend and went to another city for it. That city has a Panera Bread so she brought home some cinnamon-crunch bagels. I've absolutely loved having bagels for breakfast for the past few days. Yum!!!

 

What I'm reminiscing about... Like most of Canada I'm reminiscing about last time the Jays were in the World Series back in 1993. I was in my last year of university and watched every game with a crowd of students in the lounge. It was so much fun and we were all hoping for a repeat World Series win (which we got)!

 

I'm also reminiscing about when we met a couple of Blue Jays World Series heroes in the span of a few minutes during Blue Jays Winterfest in 2019. First we ran into Joe Carter in a hotel lobby, while we were hoping to get Starbucks and, when we turned around, we met Vladdy Guerrero Jr too!

Left: a picture of the kids with Vladdy; right: Joe Carter, behind Dave, in the hotel lobby, before we all went up and introduced ourselves to him!

 

What I'm loving... We didn't get family photos taken last year and so I really wanted to get them done this year. Thankfully, schedules lined up and Tessa took some photos for us. I am loving these photos!

 

What we've been up to... October has been full of so much goodness!

It started with a street party organized by one of our neighbours. Dave played a few songs on their porch as part of the entertainment.

 

Between the kids wanting to get contacts, Rachel needing new glasses, and me needing some contact lens adjustment, I have spent a lot of time going to the optometrist lately. I seriously think I've been there seven or eight times since mid-September. 

After one of Sam's appointments, he and I checked out the new ice cream flavours at our favourite shop. I tried the roasted plum and it was delicious!

We celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving with Tessa, her partner, and Janice's mom. Rachel baked a pumpkin pie and we had a delicious supper. We enjoyed an evening of catching up!

I've been enjoying fall flowers and my Blue Jays mug is getting a lot of use this month!

 

We decided to take in the action at the first ALCS playoff game. We loved the atmosphere and the stadium showed Rachel and I dancing on the Jumbotron, which was really exciting! George Springer hit a home run in the first inning and it was thrilling. Things went downhill from there though, and the Jays ended up losing that game.

It was still very exciting to be at that game though!

Left: fans can submit photos of themselves before the game and they also get shown on the Jumbotron. Do you see Rachel and I in the upper right corner???

I am revamping the former lily bed as it gets a lot of shade. I moved my lily bulbs to a sunny spot by the garage and stuck these two hydrangea in here.

The Blue Jays beat the Mariners to make it to the World Series for the first time in over thirty years!!!

There was a lot of parent viewing at dance, parent volunteering for the dance show, and some driving with Sam.

And in a complete bucket list moment, Dave, Sam, and I went to a World Series game while Rachel was at her dance weekend away!!! Aaaaaahhhh!!! I still can't believe this happened and we went to Game 1, which as of Tuesday night, was the best game of this series so far!!!

 

The atmosphere was amazing, the game was incredible, and I will remember this game for a very long time! I couldn't talk on Saturday from yelling so loud!

The pageantry was also very neat to experience.

In less exciting news (for me at least), my fall laundry hanging season has come to an end :( This was me this past Sunday, getting one last load on the line for the season.

What I'm dreading... As the weather gets colder, I'm already starting to dread winter. I really don't love it and wish it was spring already. That's my favourite time of year!

What I'm working on... If you're a regular blog reader you will know that I've been working on posting about our Europe trip. I have one most post to write about our summer vacation and then I will move on. But it's been so fun to reminisce about the trip as I've been blogging.

What I'm excited about... Ummmm, the Blue Jays being in the World Series!!! And the fact that we went to a World Series game!!! And the fact that the game was incredibly amazing (if you were cheering for the Jays!)!!!! That's what I'm excited about!!! And the fact that, as of today, the Jays are TWO WINS AWAY from winning the World Series!!!!!!!

 

What I'm watching/reading... See above. I'm watching all the baseball games (except the one which lasted until 3am our time -- yawn). As for reading, I've been reading all the articles on MLB. Next month I promise I will be reading actual books again :)

 

What I'm listening to... Because baseball is taking up all of my thoughts and energy, I decided I needed to see if I could find a "baseball mix" on Spotify. And I did. So, when it's not game day, I've been listening to a million different versions of "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" and other songs related to baseball. It's been awesome!

 

What I'm wearing... All my Blue Jays gear! My "Take October" post season shirt from a few years ago has been getting a lot of wear this month, as you can see in practically every picture of me in this post! Hahaha!!! I've even been wearing Blue Jays gear to work :) And I'm not the only one!

What I'm doing this weekend... I'm hoping to have a World Series watch party with Tim & Janice, I'm going to enjoy being surrounded by flowers on Sunday morning (!!!), and I'm also looking forward to sleeping in on Saturday. I'm tired.

What I'm looking forward to next month... Catching up on sleep. These World Series games run late. I'm giddy but also exhausted :)

 

So that's what's up with us this last Wednesday in October -- did I mention it's been all about the baseball, dance, and optometrist?!? But mostly baseball, and I wouldn't change a thing!!!

Exploring Southampton's Titanic Past And London's Football Frenzy

When the cruise ended, we disembarked in Southampton, England. We didn't want to get train tickets to London for too early in the day so we had some time to explore. We ended up getting tickets to the Sea City Museum, which features an astounding amount of information about The Titanic. This was also cool to experience because, when my dad's dad sailed from Europe to Canada, he sailed from Southampton. It was such a neat family connection to be there too.

This is a Lego model of the Titanic. It is over 9,000 pieces and the second biggest Lego set ever produced. 

 Over 75% of the crew was living in Southampton in the days before Titanic sailed.

 

This was an artistic display of the ship with some things it was carrying. I found it fascinating to read. Here are some of the things that were on board Titanic: 1,750 quarts of ice cream; 411 cases of shelled walnuts; 3,364 bags of mail; 25,000 towels; 300 celery glasses (I don't know what those are?!?!?); 8 cases of raw feathers; 50 boxes of grapefruit; 1 case of rabbit hair; and 4 cases of straw hats. Did I mention I found this whole display fascinating?!?!?!?

This is a breakfast menu from first class and a re-creation of a second class stateroom.

Rachel was trying to shovel coal to keep the Titanic going and I tried to communicate with Morse code. The coal shovelling was very difficult to keep the correct pace. I can't imagine how incredibly hard that job was.

One room had a map of Southampton on the floor. Where there's a red dot is the address of someone who died. The floor was absolutely covered in red dots. It was very sobering. I didn't expect to be so engaged but this museum was well worth the visit. My mom spent a lot of time in the room where you could hear a recording of the inquiry playing after the whole sinking happened. It was a very well done museum.

 

Some of us ate at the Titanic museum but I was really excited about a Tesco cheese & onion sandwich! Hahaha! And I sat with my dad on the train to London and we laughed a lot. Mom & Dad had never been to London so we were excited to show them around!

 

As you may recall, Sam was the main planner of this trip and he loves soccer. So he was super excited when we found a hotel which was basically at the Chelsea Stadium. We had to go through stadium security to get to our hotel every time! (It was very low key security, but still...) 

  

After walking from the ship to the museum, from the museum to the train station, from the train station to the tube, and from the tube to our hotel, my dad couldn't walk anymore. Thankfully there was an excellent pub across from our hotel. So we headed over there and enjoyed pub meals. I split the fish and chips with Rachel but the Pimms was all mine!!! 

 

 The next morning we had a tour of Stamford Bridge stadium. It was so fun to see behind the scenes. We got down to the pitch...

... we got to sit in the press room and be at the desk where the coach and players are interviewed after a match...

...and we got to check out the guest dressing rooms where they had football jerseys of famous players who had played for opposing teams at Stamford Bridge. They even had a jersey from Richmond FC, which I had said was my favourite team! Hahaha!!! (Richmond FC is the club from Ted Lasso and doesn't actually exist. But they filmed some of the show at Stamford Bridge so the show gave the stadium a jersey!)

We got to see Chelsea's dressing room, which was much nicer than the visitor's one.

 

The physio room and the Club World Cup, an important trophy Chelsea has won.

We got to run up the stairs the players use to enter the pitch and get a photo at the side. This was such a interesting tour and I'm so glad we did it. This was a complete Sam experience but I loved it!

 

One thing I found really interesting (and sad) was that tickets to Chelsea games are incredibly hard to get so even employees of Stamford Bridge can't go to games. Given how often we go to Blue Jays' games, I thought it was sad that it seems like regular people can't attend Chelsea games. 

After our Stamford Bridge stadium tour, we made our way to our tea time. It was a science based afternoon tea so we had to mix some of our own drinks and the desserts were science themed too.

It was really good but I liked our tea time at Kensington Palace better. Sadly their pavilion was closed for renovations this time around so we couldn't go back there.

After our tea time, Dave, who wasn't feeling great, and Sam, who needed down time, headed back to the hotel. Mom, Dad, Rachel, and I jumped on the "hop on, hop off" bus and toured London. Opa and Rachel giggled, cackled, and laughed pretty much the whole time and Mom and I admired all the amazing flowers! And the sights!

We only hopped off at one spot to see if we could find a London sweatshirt for Rachel but we were unsuccessful. However, we did get a picture of her with a red phone booth :) That evening we headed back to "our pub" for supper.

 

This was such a fun day introducing my mom and dad to London. I'm not a big city person but it's one of my two favourite cities and I am always so happy to be there!