Teacher appreciation week

This year, teacher appreciation week snuck up on me! It's usually Valentines week... but this year it was a week early. Thanks to Pinterest, we managed to find a few ideas for 3 days of treats for staff!

First off was the flower pot filled with suckers! This is where the idea comes from.

We hot glued the ball in the pot and then started poking in suckers we found at Walmart.

Maelie enjoyed the fact that she could participate.

We had to punch them in once in a while!! We managed to fill it with about 110 suckers!!

Missing something?

How about a ribbon to finish it off? We also added a sign thanking the staff at Maelie's school.

Day 2, we filled 1X8 bags with M&Ms.

Then I added a cute little poem that I found at this website. I had the poem printed at Staples as the color quality is much better than the printer we have here! Aren't they adorable?

The final idea of the week was some Extra gum packs. I saw the idea online and just modified the poem.

Didn't it turn out cute? It smelled so minty in my kitchen even through the wrapping! :)

Maelie was quite proud to give her treats away to the staff. She loves to give!! Just like I do. I hope they were happy with our treats this week! :)

Happy bday Bill!

Feb 3rd was Bill's birthday. Maelie was up at 5 am to make sure we had everything ready for when he got up! He prefers to wake up in a *slower* way.

He was barely up when he was bombarded with his presents.

He was able to survive through that and then sit in the living room with his coffee..... followed by cheesecake!! There's nothing like early morning cheesecake! LOL

We had a nice lunch at the buffet :) Happy bday Bill!!

Weekend away

This past weekend, we were invited to go to our friend Jacinthe's surprise birthday supper. Most of her family is in Quebec and Montreal. Since Jacinthe and the kids were going to be in Montreal for a hockey tournament, Pascal decided to organize a supper there. This way, more people could come! We figured we may as well sleep at the hotel so we wouldn't have to be on the road at night. We always love going to hotels!

Maelie and I left at the crack of dawn on Saturday. We drove right into the sunrise! We went shopping in Pointe Claire and checked in to our hotel room early in hopes of going for a swim! It turned out so did a ton of people ! The pool was packed!

We met up with everyone at a nice italian restaurant. I put Maelie in charge of taking pictures... and since she said she knew how to use it, it didn't dawn on me to tell her to put the flash on! So all the pics are blurry and yellowish. Here is one pic that wasn't blurry! Myriam eating her pizza.

And of course... if you read the post on Jacinthe's wedding in October, you will have seen the pepper. Well apparently, the pepper was looking for its partner, and we found it. Maelie of course took a picture of the salt shaker!

After the supper, we headed back to the hotel. The pool was still packed so we went to bed! The next day though, Maelie was able to treat herself to a fun time!

It was quite a decent sized pool!

I love her eyes as the sun is shining on her face. She is so adorable and precious :)

She went down the slide a whole bunch of times until she was worn out!

After the pool, we stopped by another mall and she picked up some shirts on sale at her new favorite store Aeropostale ! She got really lucky and got some shirts for under 3$! After that exciting outing... home sweet home and back to real life!

Once home, we went out for a late lunch with Bill to celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary (Jan 28th). I can't believe it's been that long!! I really enjoy my life. I enjoy who I am now, and who I am surrounding myself with. I am truly blessed!!

January 2013 - where did it go?

WOW... this month had really flown by!! and if you look at my blog posts you would think the world ended on December 25th because that's the last time I posted! Goodness!

I will fill in the blank month by letting you know what we've been up to! I barely have pics this month either though... !! I really hve to catch up for the rest of the year. Maelie will grow up and see a big hole in her life for January 2013... she'll wonder what the heck she did in that big gap!! :)

Maelie got a bunch of moon dough colors for Christmas so she made a snowman :) Very appropriate for the amount of snow we had!

She made some beeswax candles with a kit she received at Christmas.

Grand-maman visited before the new year and we had a great time! We taught Maelie how to play Scattergories. She loved it!

Maelie ended up going home with grand-maman. They had a great time! I met up with them on New Year's Eve. Of course grand-maman had to bake a bit with her helper Maelie.

I enjoyed taking pics of the little chickadees through the window. Brrrrrr too cold out there!

The blue jays eat everything they can find! Fortunately they don't eat cats or young children.

How about a big hug before we go? Maelie is SO not the cuddly type!!

Lots of snow! We didn't think we would get this much this year!

On New Year's Day. we went for lunch with Grand-papa and Lucie. We had a great time :) and it was yummy!

Once back home, Maelie played with her gifts. Here she is in her Orbeez spa.

Nice and comfy for the feet! I wish it had a heater, then I would have my feet in there all the time!

School started again on January 8th, and real life resumed!

This month's big change was that Maelie's teacher got pregnant and left! That was quite sad as we really loved her as a teacher. We are happy for her though as she will get another bundle of joy in her life.

We've had crazy weather this month, and some kind of stomach bug that left Maelie really tired. She is all better now though! Her foot is doing well most days. Knock on wood... no more colds or flus!!

Merry Christmas 2012 !!

Merry Christmas !!! We wish you all a wonderful day full of love and family :)

Maelie was up at 2:30 am asking me if she could open up her stocking. The answer was No! Go back to bed! We finally were all up by 6:45. It's like Christmas threw up all over our living room! The presents are from the whole family. Maelie was soooooooooo excited! She always gets Bill and I to open our presents first so that she can get the whole stage after that!

She had a little helper this year again.

He was very eager to see what was in the packages!! He clearly understands how to open presents! Good thing we had a couple gifts wrapped up for him too!

Maelie was so happy with all her presents!

This is one goft I kept hidden! Her famous Plasma Ball that she has wanted for over 2 years! When you touch the ball, the electric current makes a line to meet up with your finger. It's pretty neat, and it has made her one happy little girl!! She set up her whole bedroom with every light up item she has. It's officially the cleanest room in the house!!

I made some turkey, potatoes, veggies, etc etc etc for supper. I made the Epicure 3 onion dip again... I am seriously addicted to that!! It's scary! :)
I had some candles on the table for supper and Maelie was rather angry. She HATES having candles anywhere so she told me she would blow them out immediately. I at least got her to wait for one picture with the candles before she blew them out!

Dessert was a Dairy Queen Christmas log. Maelie loves the DQ cakes, and so when our friend Jacinthe introduced her to the DQ log, she said she wanted one for Christmas. There is already a missing piece because Maelie stated that since it was Christmas, she was allowed to have dessert for breakfast. Just like on her birthday. And so we did!

We popped our Christmas crackers !

Christmas evening was filled with family game night again. These are evenings that Maelie looks forward to all the time! Word Sweep was a new game she got for Christmas.

We also played You're it. This game requires us to be quick! And apparently, it also involves spilled water! Maelie and I both spilled our glasses while Bill sat there thinking "I knew this would happen!" Somehow, our french blood makes our hands move A LOT.

I LOVE a quiet Christmas at home :) I am so happy that we chose to do it this way a few years ago. It is a wonderful tradition that keeps us off the roads, away from stomach flus, and in bed early! Some people may call us boring, but we love it! We are together and that is what counts.

Thanks for reading my countdown to Christmas this year!  I am so happy with all the memories we created for our family.

Merry Christmas!!

Countdown to Christmas 2012 - Day 24

Christmas Eve!! The day we've been looking forward to for a long long time! :) Maelie was coming to work with me this morning. It was quite a relaxed morning!

I brought my boss a tin of homemade gluten free cookies! I hope she likes the kinds I made. Everyone seems to love the peanut butter balls.

After supper Maelie FINALLY got to open up her Christmas jammies and the game night present. It was Christmas-oply! I love that game! It's like monopoly but quite festive.

It was a miracle because I won! Maelie usually kicks our butts big time!! We had a fun evening and decided to go to bed quite early so that Christmas would come quicker!

Countdown to Christmas 2012 - Day 23

Christmas Eve Eve! That's how Maelie is keeping track of the days.... I am glad we are only 2 Eve's away! :)

Today, Maelie was working on her nails. She is getting SO good at it! She has longer nails than me so it's more fun to paint hers.

I let her paint my thumbs because if she paints all my nails, I will just bite off the polish. That's what happens when you are a nail biter!! This is the cute pattern she made for me today:

This afternoon we went out to shop a little. Our Zellers is closing so we popped by to see of there were some good sales. There is not much left !! We did find a few things for half price though.

This evening was my gluten free baking evening. I made 4 different cookie recipes with gluten free items. I wanted to make a homemade cookie tin for my boss who is allergic to gluten. They taste good, but are a bit more granulated. Some recipes work much better with the normal flour. I tried Nutella cookies and they seem to have turned out ok! All it is is 1 cup Nutella, 1 egg, 1 cup flour! You can't go wrong with that! I hope she likes them :)

Early bedtime tonight as we have to go to work tomorrow for about half a day. A lot of people bring their kids on Christmas Eve and we socialize and have fun. Can't wait!!