Janae celebrated a milestone birthday this month: 19!
She and I went shopping at Coquitlam Center, then Janae went out for dinner with Alaina, and afterwards our family had a strawberry cake at home.
But throughout the month we continued the celebration with trips to new ice cream shops every week :)
Since Janae is a big ice cream lover, I thought it would be fun to spend the month of March sampling ice cream from shops we hadn't tried before. We looked online for the best-rated places in Vancouver and then chose four.
On Janae's actual birthday, she and I tried Vashti Rose in Port Moody, and even by the end, this was one of our favorites (Janae ranked it #2 of 4). Janae got Mini Egg, with a sample of chocolate mint on top. (I had chocolate cherry with a sample of Mini Egg, in case anyone is wondering!). So good :)
One week later, our next stop was Chocolats Favoris in Gastown. This shop obviously specialized in chocolate--they filled our cones with melted chocolate, added soft serve ice cream, and then dipped it all in more melted chocolate, adding toppings as well. It was pretty messy, but very, very good! (Janae ranked this one #3 of 4.)
The third week, we had Alaina and Eric with us for spring break, and we stopped at Rain or Shine in Vancouver on our way to Flyover Canada. Janae got a sundae here, which she didn't like as much as the other ice creams, but I tasted Eric's chocolate honeycomb and definitely want to go back for a cone of my own someday. Janae gave this shop 4th place.
Yesterday, we finished our tour at Earnest Ice Cream in Vancouver. We didn't know we were saving the best for last, but Janae ranked this as #1 out of the four shops we visited. She once again tried the Mini Egg, and it did not disappoint! Alaina had strawberry (maybe the best strawberry ice cream any of us had ever tasted!), and I got carrot cake.
You might think that this was a lot of ice cream, even spread over the entire month, but when Janae had her friends over to celebrate, they also had an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen--kind of a tradition with Janae. (Janae and Alaina also snuck in a trip to a local and well-loved ice cream shop during the month, which just shows that for some people there might not be such a thing as too much ice cream!).
Anyway, Janae wanted a Hamilton quote on the cake, "I'm only 19 but my mind is older," which seemed fine until I had to give it to the DQ staff over the phone and then again when I picked up the cake :). They definitely got creative with the color scheme!
The girls went out for dinner in their prom dresses then back to our house for the cake.
Then the next day they had a party for Janae as well :)
Such a great month of celebrating Janae ... and now half of my kids are adults!
