Happy 12th Birthday !!!

Maelie is officially 12!! It all started a few days ahead...  we decided to celebrate on the Sunday since Bill was not working. We went out to eat at a buffet place that Maelie enjoys a lot... and then she got a present opening session!

 

She also was quite lucky to receive some cards and money from afar!! Needless to say, money and gift cards are the number 1 present at this age!!

 

Which one do I start with???? Maelie had  blast and was quite spoiled. Now she is ready to go on a shopping spree.

On Monday we went out with Naomie and Sonia for a bday supper. The restaurant brought her a huge piece of delicious cake since it was her bday... her comment to me afterwards? Mom I wish they just brought my normal kids meal ice cream.... hehe needless to say, Sonia and I enjoyed the cake !!

She was so excited! Maelie is like me. Birthdays just make her happy!! I love that!

On her actual birthday morning, I took out the DQ ice cream cake! Yum yum yum! Who doesn't love ice cream cake for breakfast on their birthday?

Maelie was happy as can be!!

TA-DA!!! I am 12!!!

Maelie is growing up into a wonderful girl. She definitely is showing clear signs of teenage years to come, but she is kind hearted, hard working, motivated, loving, generous, smart and beautiful! I could not ask for a better daughter!! she makes all of my days brighter! I love you baby!!

Debate - new for this year!

This year at school, instead of having the English speeches, they changed it to Debates. First the kids debated in their classes, and then they were voted into teams of 4. 2 grade 5 and 2 grade 6. They debated in front of the school. I was not gonna miss that of course!!

Maelie and her team did well. She was well prepared for all the topics.

The team won gold in the gym and then moved on to the School Board debates! This was exciting! They had to prepare for some topics, but they also were going to have surprise topics on the spot. So on debate day, we headed out of town to another school for a while day of debating! It was quite exciting :)

They were hard at work preparing for the debates... it was fun to see! I know we debated when I was younger but I forget how it was as a child.

It was VERY close all day! Our school was ahead for quite a while. We ended up in 3rd place. 1st and 2nd place were debating (for gold and silver). We debated with the 4th place for bronze. Thankfully, we won!! Hurray!! 3rd out of 19 schools is really good! Maelie's side for the final debate, with no time to research anywhere, was that scientific testing on animals SHOULD be allowed. This is a very hard topic to debate with no access to research facts and statistics. It could have gone either way!

I was extremely proud of Maelie! I love that she is involved in so many things :)

Ah! Speech time again!

Once again! Speech time at Maelie's school! Maelie worked hard for weeks on her speech. Once she got going there was no stopping her! Initially, she had written enough to make her speech over 6 minutes! So we had to cut some parts out :) She read it to me over and over and over! This is one project that is both a student and parent homework! Yes the student has to memorize, but the parent has to listen and make suggestions along the way! I think I heard her speech over 200 times!! but I wouldn't change it for the world!

Maelie did a great performance at school. The speech was in French and you would easily believe French was her first language. She won 2nd place, and I was extremely proud of her! Even if she hadn't won anything, I would have been more than proud. She has a great, expressive stage presence!

On another note, I discovered why I don't post on my blog as often anymore. I notice that every time we change Windows, things change, all the programs change... and I discovered that when you change my usual way of doing things, I don't always adapt easily. So I end up disliking the uploading of photos and then the viewing, editing and loading of the pictures! UGH!  I wish that nothing changed with the programs ! once it works.... don't change it!!

So I will try and post more. Maelie actually is the one who commented on me not posting much. I did tell her though that the fact that she doesn't want her picture taken, or that she says "this better not go on your blog" affects my decisions too!! I will try and post more often, for the simple fact that she enjoys reading the blog when she gets older. I wouldn't want her to miss out on this season of her life simply because I hate windows 8! LOL

March not-so-break

The March break started off with Maelie going for a sleepover at a friend's house. She came home and wasn't feeling that well. Her friend's sister had the stomach flu... so that's what happened to Maelie Sunday night! I am really afraid of puking. I hate it with a passion!! SO out came the cleaning products. I bleached the washroom SO many times for the next 2 days. I used hertel with bleach to wash the toilet after every single use. I sprayed Lysol to kill germs and Javexed the toilet and floors. I was determined to NOT get the stomach bug!!

By the time the germs were all out of the house,  realised that perhaps I should have worn gloves... I washed my hands SO often and of course had all kinds of harsh chemicals on them... so I literally burnt my hands!! I ended up with stinging skin, and the got a crusty layer on both hands. The picture doesn't do it justice! It was horrible. Hopefully I didn't permanently harm myself!!

We babysat Peluche at the end of the break. He is a fun distraction to have around, though he keeps us close to home. He seemed to take a liking to one of Maelie's fish! He didn't want to give it back!

I took Maelie shopping on the weekend since that is what she is into right now. It also compensated for the days where she did nothing during the break!! We managed to find some good sales and she was extremely happy :)

The March Break came and went and now we are just starting to think of Maelie bday in April... and the grad plans for June!!

Fun times with friends

After Destination Imagination, Kierah came over for a sleepover. The next day, we went to Clip N Climb for a fun activity. The poor girls had no energy whatsoever! THey ended up being so exhausted, we left 5 minutes early.

They climbed face to face... this one was a hard one so this is as high as they got!!

They did climb side by side and that was a bit easier!

I love seeing them have such a good time together. It's so much more fun to do an activity with a friend now!

Maelie is growing up into a wonderful young woman. I sense the teenager growing inside of her! As much as she is growing into her own person, I still sense the need for mom :) I love that feeling. I hope we grow together , survive the teenage years, and end up with a close relationship like the relationship I have with my mom. I also hope that she can have the relationship I had with my moms mom.

As this blog keeps on going, there are some events that may or may not end up on here. Maelie has her say now in what she wants published or not. I love seeing her read older posts though and she finds herself so cute! or she asks me "did I really do that mom? did I really SAY that?" Everything on here is true! So yes Maelie, you ARE that adorable and sweet!! and I love you more than anything in the world!

DI once again!

Maelie participated in Destination Imagination again this year. Her and her team presented a short play in front of judges from the school board. Her team placed 3rd, and they got an extra Award called the DaVinci award which basically congratulates them for thinking outside the box and for being so creative.

The kids slet at school on the Thursday and we picked them up Friday. They had a great time!! Maelie slept much better this year. It helped that I brought her Subway instead of eating the pizza provided there. Last year the pizza made her a bit sick, so she didn't want to risk it!!

Getting all of their luggage to go home!! There's a LOT to pack for one night away!

It was a bit bitter sweet for the kids without realizing it. A few of them participate in EVERYTHING. 3 of those kids that participate in everything are going to different schools next year, so this is one of the last big events that they will do together. Grade 6 is almost over! May as well enjoy it to the max!

February full of appreciation

The week around Valentine's Day is always Staff appreciation week at school. Maelie wanted to bring a little token of out appreciation every day this week. Some days had 2 treats since it was a 4 day week.

All ideas were found online, mainly after searching Pinterest, so I am not taking credit for any of them.

Here are the Teacher-savers. We took the wrapping off Lifesavers and replaced them with Teachersavers.

These were little bubble gums, with a tag saying "you always blow us away, thanks for everything"

This one, Thanks for your commit-MINT. It was a small pack of mints.

You are o-fish-ally the best teachers and staff! So cute! I put pretzel fishies in the bags.

These were for Valentine's Day itself, Have a Rockin' Valentine!

I also made some teacher chocolate suckers, as well as the whole alphabet made of chocolate. The chocolate racks came back empty! :)

We also worked on Candy-grams at work. We delivered over 600 this year. It seems we have more and more every year to deliver. People like to send out a treat for their colleagues, and they get some in return!

These projects have been keeping me pretty busy in February hence the lack of blogging.

We also got Windows 8, and it seems since we got it, I dislike everything! It's harder to navigate, harder to get the photo program to work, harder to upload anything... so I tend to get discouraged. I like things plain and simple on the computer and it's been hard to get used to.