when you think they know more than you think they know

Maelie : "Mom, I know what BS means"

Me: *deer in the headlights look*

Maelie: "it means Backspace"

(she was using my P-Touch label maker at work)

Rainbow castle and the ferocious beast

Back from Christmas travels

Maelie and I visited my family overnight, and Bill headed off to Winnipeg.

We had supper at my dads place. Maelie spent a bit of time teaching my grandmother and her boyfriend how to play Deal or no deal on her DS. That was rather entertaining! Maelie was wearing Lucie's glasses.



Maelie opened up more presents



Here are her Christmas Webkinz


It was quite an exhausting day and a half!! Here is Maelie most of the way home:


Once we got home though, she felt very refreshed from her nap and was ready to try all her new toys! Whereas I was ready to sleep!

Merry Christmas!

Yesterday evening, Maelie instructed us clearly that we had to get to bed VERY early. Bill was told to NOT stay up past midnight. This morning at 5 am, what did i hear? "Merry Christmas! can i go downstairs and get my stocking?"

So there was no hope of sleeping after that!

Maelie started emptying her stocking and couldn't believe how AWESOME Santa was including a purple plastic Slinky in the stocking.



She got a lot of presents! Every present got a positive excited reaction!



Bébé was also very excited chewing on the paper. He didn't miss a second of the present unwrapping!



Thank you all who participated in making Christmas so exciting!



Merry Christmas!

Alien song

My colleague Geoffrey sent us a video of "I will survive" sang by an alien. Maelie has fallen in love with that video and has been listening to it over and over and over and over... reenacting the moves. Here is her performance this morning on a Christmas Eve energy high.




If you want to see the actual video, here it is.

title: the mene slug at crismas time

This is a short story that Maelie wrote this afternoon. I am writing it letter by letter... she spells by sound right now and I included the punctuation that she included as well.

"Today was the last day of school. Evewun was ixsidid. but sumbuty wasint. it was the mene slug. He hatid Crimas. He torwd trees down. He broke presint to. He was rille mad it semd.

But wun day Santa snect up on him and askd him whiy he hates crimas? and the slug sed nobute givs me presin... oooo I see. Have you bin good to them?... Yes achalli ime not sher...

Well if evre you did triy to be nis ok ok.

The end."

Isn't that a wonderful story?

I can understand it completely... can you? Bonus Christmas present under the tree if you can! haha

exhausted

My baby is exhausted. She was up pretty early. As I was in the kitchen making supper, she layed down on her bean bag close to me. That's the last I heard of her! It's been over 2 hours. Bébé lapin is very concerned with her sleeping behaviour!!



He has been running back and forth from the living room to the kitchen. I think he was trying to figure out why I was letting her be so still!

Cat Carols

Well apparently the cats are improving with their singing! Maelie is working really hard at getting them all to sing well :)



Don't be surprised if you see these carollers on your doorstep on Christmas Eve!

Cinnamon buns

I tried making cinnamon rolls today and they turned out incredible. I told Maelie we could go deliver some to some friends on our street since we are basically all stranded because of the snow. She said "NO. we are not wasting them !" as she was licking her plate.



Apparently we are only allowed to give things that she doesn't like!

Last day of school

Yesterday was Maelie's last day of school before Christmas. I had taken the day off so I could get involved a bit and hopefully wrap our presents that are sitting somewhere in the house. (Now that Maelie can read... I can't write too many details).

So in the morning I had to drop off some chocolate at work and head off to a few stores for last minute items. I ended up getting home at 11. I had an hour to prepare the snacks and go to school.



So in recored time I made up 20 little Rudolphs and grapes and cheese on hors d'oeuvre tootjpicks. Need to get your kid to eat something? put it on a stick! They love it!! The little reindeer are simply a piece of bread and mayo with ham, add pretzel antlers and a candy nose. I just happened to have the eyes from the cake store, but ifyou don't, using raisins is just fine. I usually make this little snack with peanut butter, but we are not allowed PB at school. So i went with ham and some chicken ones in case some don't eat ham.

The kids were relatively not too hyper which surprised me because usually the last day of school is TOO exciting.

In the evening, Maelie and I set out shopping for our Christmas family that we are helping out. We got them plenty of gifts using up the money I collected at work in the past 2 weeks. I also got 2 turkeys as they were 50% off. Now I just need to pick up the rest of the food for them and go deliver all this stuff! I am hoping the family we are helping out will feel blessed for this holiday season and that the mom is at peace.

the sniffles

I think someone has the sniffles today.

Christmas concert

Yesterday Maelie had her Christmas concert at school. The gym pas completely packed with parents! I was way at the back! So this is the picture I got. Maelie is the reindeer at the back. The third from the left (wearing black)

These events always overwhelm me with both joy and sadness. I am happy that I can be there and wouldn't trade it with anything in the world. I also get this sadness in my heart when the little kids whose parents couldn't make it are wondering where their parents are. Some people cannot take time away from work, some people are not healthy enough to get out, and some just don't want to go see their kids more than they have to. Everyone has their reasons. But seeing their kids crying after the concert is so sad. I comforted a little girl in Maelie's class yesterday who is so sweet and innocent. This is why I find getting involved is so important. Your child needs and deserves to feel important enough for you to make an extra effort to go see them.

It was a cute concert. 2 more days of school before the Christmas holiday!

just another night....

Today Maelie and I went to the dentist. I had a filling that seemed to have come off a bit and before I got an infection, I figured I would get it fixed. Since it was at 3:45, I picked Maelie up and brought her along. The dental assistant was rather surprised when Maelie fell asleep in the chair watching me. I must admit, she is not overly nervous in the dentist's office. Thankfully she doesn't take after her dad for that!! I must admit that I nearly fell asleep as well as they were working on my tooth, being up at 4:15 am and all... Four hours later, my mouth just thawed out completely. So now I can whistle if I want to.

After supper, I decided that I wanted to try to make spritz cookies. They are always so cute in the pictures. Well I couldn't get the old cookie press to work (or I couldn't bother reading the instructions). So I simply made my own shapes with the dough.



They turned out cute anyway!



Then.... something amazing happened. I tried making Sucre a la creme for the first time in my life using a very SIMPLE recipe given to me by my friend Danie. I usually don't make candy-ish stuff because I fear the candy thermometer. Yes I admit to it... any recipe requiring the use of the thermometer sits there forever. Her recipe however required putting everything together and watching it cook for 5 minutes. I can handle that!



Well I must say, i was AMAZED. More like OH.MY.GAWD. amazed with the turnout! They tasted delicious and RICH.

I begged Maelie to taste a little crumb. She was really holding back because she doesn't like my baking that much. She is pretty particular in her tastes. I forced her to try a crumb smaller than a dime. She gave in and tried it and she immediately became hyper begging me for more! hahahaha Of course bedtime is not the time to start feeding your kid Sucre a la creme so I told her she could eat some tomorrow.

I am going to bring some to work for taste testing tomorrow. Pretty soon my colleagues will think I am trying to fatten them up for Christmas dinner. LOL No worries... we only eat lean meat.

candy store

Here is the Candy Store. I completed it this evening in hopes of raffling it off at work as a fundraiser for the less fortunate family we adopted. Last week we were able to raise $120, so let's hope this week we can get more!



Is this enough chocolate for ya?

a 6th tooth!

Maelie lost her 6th tooth today! I wouldn't so much say "lost" it as "pulled the darned thing out with extreme force".

When she is determined.... she is determined.

She went ahead and made a little bed for her tooth to make sure the Tooth Fairy sees it.

Weekend Christmas projects

This weekend I decided to make a few things for the Christmas season. Here are peanut butter balls and chocolate covered pretzels.

Then I figured I would try a somewhat more healthy treat. Here are the rice pudding balls.



They are really really good!

Canada Post party at Midway

Today we were treated to an afternoon of fun at the Midway in Ottawa. Canada Post invited their staff and kids to play for free!

Maelie enjoyed the rock climbing.



The bumper cars



The games





The make-up, the golf, the play structure and the snacks!!





They were very generous to offer us this whole day of fun!

conversation with her older cousin

Maelie : Lucas, guess what, I went to the chiroprator today.

Lucas: the what?

Maelie : the chiropractor

Lucas: the what?

Maelie : the chi-ro-prac-tor

Lucas: whats that

Maelie: well he's the chiropractor. And he looked at my spine.

Lucas: your what?

Maelie: my spine

Lucas: your what?

Maelie: my SPINE

Lucas: what's that?

LOL

Just relaxin'

Here are the two buddies relaxing watching tv.

Bebe lapin is very very obsessed with Maelie these days. He needs to be within a few inches of her at all times. It's so bad that sometimes Maelie gets upset with him and asks him to go away. Now that's what I call sibling rivalry!

oh Christmas tree

Ta-da.... Surely not as nice as the picture on the box! but cute nonetheless.

I found that it didn't work well stacking the stars one on top of the other, so I used baby gingerbread people between each star! haha!

Traditions

I guess that after 2 years of baking and decorating gingerbread people you can call it a tradition!



Maelie especially enjoys decorating them with LOTS of sprinkles. She doesn't like to eat too many sweets, so the ones she makes for herself, she usually doesn't overdecorate. The ones she makes for daddy though are overflowing with sprinkles!



She insisted on making sure her mouth is full of icing and sprinkles for dramatic effect!

Chewy Molasses-Spice cookies

Here's a new cookie recipe I tried for the first time tonight. It comes from the Martha Stewart website.

Wonder what I did today?

Today was our annual chocolate making day (for my friend Jacinthe). She makes her list for presents she wishes to give and we go ahead and set up shop in my kitchen. I had my hands full for 3 hours doing that so I didn't have my camera handy. Her kids helped out and made a LOT of chocolate.

As I was up at 4:30 this morning, I had a chance to get a head start with my baking. After she left I continued. So here is the fruit of my labor today:



Please note that some sampling had been done already.... and so a lot of them were missing!

Santa breakfast

Today was the Santa breakfast at Maelie's school. I wasn't sure how it was going to go because Maelie had fever yesterday and this morning. She was so happy to dress up in her fancy Christmas dress and her Christmas shoes that I think she is cured!

She got to make crafts with her 2 friends.



These 2 boys get along very well. Maelie loves Tristan, and had a love-hate relationship with Donovan. It's actually pretty funny. Donovan adores Maelie and will do anything for her. He is pretty heartbroken that it is not reciprocal!



We had a yummy breakfast prepared by the parent committee (I didn't participate in the food this year, I was in charge of crafts).



The lady doing the make-up was awesome! and she said this was her first time....



Here are Maelie and Donovan. Isn't he so adorable?

Finished projects

Here are a few projects I managed to put together with the pieces posted recently.

First off we have Santa, a tree and a bunch of caramel filled presents.



Next we have the gigantic sleigh filled with a ton of Christmas themed chocolates.



Finally we have Rudolph and a big hollow Christmas tree, with a bunch of small chocolates surrounding them. I just realized now that I could have had Rudolph face the tree instead of looking the other way!




These have now all been wrapped in cellophane and are awaiting the ribbon. That's for another day! I find the chocolate so adorable! This is why I keep making some!

My goal with these projects is to find a way to raise money with them to adopt a family for Christmas. Perhaps I will set up a raffle at work or something, we'll see. Stay tuned!