Happy Mother's Day!... in the tulips :)

What I truly wanted for Mother's Day this year is for Maelie to come to the tulip festival with me and not complain as I took a ton of pictures! :) She wasn't the smiliest but she did participate!

It was a gorgeous sunny day and there were 8 tourist busses at Dow's Lake!!  Below, on the second pic, I asked her to smell a tulip. Instead she looked right into the tulip and started complaining about something in there. On the 4th picture, she is taking a pic of herself and she is smiling more at her camera that at mine!

We had a nice time! I love spending time with my baby girl!

Happy Mother's Day to all mothers and mother figures out there!

Saturday :)

On Saturday, Naomie's school was having a fundraiser yard sale at school. I went to help Sonia sell all day. Maelie came as well and she was quite the seller! She managed to sell a bunch of things that we would probably have not sold otherwise. It turns out that when we went to the rock climbing fundraiser, she won a Tupperware package! They just hadn't been able to reach us. Well, to top it off, at the raffle at the yard sale, she also won the Tupperware package! So here is her loot for both raffles!! over 200$ worth of Tupperware!

Naomie came over Saturday after the yard sale to play. The girls set up the sprinkler under the swings and got quite wet! It was really hot out. Their fun was short lived when Naomie slipped and got three huge scratches near her armpit.



For supper, I made some zucchini muffins!! They were delicious!! very healthy too....!

Here is the inside view once removed from the cupcake paper.

I also made a Cream of broccoli soup. It was PERFECT!! The only thing is, somehow I must have mixed up the measurements, because it gave me about 10 servings instead of 4! LOL

After supper, the girls spent a LONG time dressing up for a play. They performed the little red riding hood. It was so cute! Of course, it DID take a long time to take all that black make up off the adorable wolf!! Their imaginations are quite wild when they are together!! Naomie slept over and they played some more in the morning!

BDT

Today was my colleague Michel's birthday. He wanted to go for lunch at BDT with a bunch of work friends. The BDT (Brasseur du Temps) is his absolute favorite hang out. He should have shares in that place!! Their beer is apparently amazing and they brew it on site. I don't really drink so I wouldn't know.

The BDT paid for his lunch and they served each and every guest a Caramilk shooter after lunch for free!! How generous! I passed on mine since I don't drink, but it looked really amazing and I appreciated the gesture.

Forgive the next picture if you don't like girls in bikinis... but this was my gift to him.

Happy birthday Michel!

Thai Chick-un Pizza

OH MY GOODNESS!
This is seriously food for the Gods! :)

I tried Dreena Burton's Thai Chick-un Pizza from her 3rd book Eat , Drink and be Vegan last night and WOW. I cannot believe I am making such good food from scratch!! :)

Bill didn't share my thoughts though as he called me at work to tell me that thing in the fridge that looked like pizza was disgusting. hahahahahha Of course he meant that in a loving way! He doesn't believe pizza should have a little "peanut buttery" taste. :)

Jacinthe had some and she loved it. I can't wait to hear if Nicole from work likes it too! She was going to eat the slice I gave her tonight.

Yummy new book!

When I got home from our trip, I had received my new book Let Them Eat Vegan! I had preordered this book and waited patiently for it to arrive!! Dreena Burton is my new favorite recipe book writer EVER. She has 4 vegan books and her recipes are extremely busy-mom oriented! :)

I've been trying to incorporate a more plant-based approach to our lifestyle and this book is PERFECT for that!! I have marked up so many pages of recipes I want to try!

Here is the first recipe I tried in the book. It's called Thai Almond Chickpea Curry. I must say it is DELICIOUS. I had some for supper last night and lunch and supper today. It's THAT good. It is not a lot of work either! I served it with brown rice and salad. It was truly amazing!

Where on earth were we?

Last week, Kathleen shared how one of her poems was being published in a local book. They had a book launch last Thursday and I decided Maelie and I should head up north 5 hours to surprise her!! We arrived at the signing where the 13 authors were signing copies of the book. It was so special to be there with Kathleen to share that moment! A brief moment of fame possibly giving her the motivation or confidence to get some more things published!!

Here is Maelie trying to understand the poem....

Francis was there for support!! Such pride in his lovely lady!

Here is a cute tree outside the local library...

Maelie and I slept at the hotel for the first night. She was SOOOO comfortable in the hotel bed!! I found it a bit soft... but it was nice :)

As we drove, we ended up face to face with the Ukrainian Church! How surprised we were. Apparently there is quite the Ukrainian heritage in Vald'or due to the mining.



 What better street to house a Ukrainian Church than the Ukraine street!!

Friday afternoon, Kathleen showed us a bit of the city. Maelie was quite fascinated with the mining stories! We saw the log houses where the miners used to live, and we saw some mine shafts. She was quite excited that we were sitting on gold!!



Here is one of the mine shafts in the touristy part.

Driving around we saw another cute little church! This one was a Russian church. It was teeny tiny!

Kathleen made an "alarming" sound when Maelie touched the door and so she FREAKED out, turned around and ran away!

We stopped by at the duck pond and walked around a little.

Maelie loves the forest, so she quickly found a huge branch and walked around.





We went to pick up Sandrine and Nathan at school and daycare and headed to their home. We had an awesome evening playing bowling!

The next morning, before we left, the girls colored together in the living room. It's SO sweet to watch them together even with the age difference! :)

Nathan is SO talkative and adorable! He is 2.5 yrs old and it shows that he wants to decide everything. But he is SO adorable and friendly!!

When we left, the whole family was in the window waving at us! Unfortunately we can't see them very well.... but we do see them when we look closely!

Thank you for your hospitality Kath & Francis. We had a WONDERFUL time with you guys!!