Winter activities

My morning was spent registering kids for activities, and let me tell you - it's frustrating! Not getting into details, but trying to fit two kids' activities into a certain time frame is not easy on its own. Add to that the fact that apparently this year there are no full day skiing camps for teens, add to that that only other options require twice as long drive and twice as much money, *and* will mean that my younger one will have to miss her naps (still much needed for everyone's peace)... Ugh.

So far between the two kids we have swimming, soccer, gymnastics, dance, rugby and skating, once the swimming level is completed.

And, by the way, how is that Christmas shopping going? 1/5th completed, the rest to go....

Getting ready for Christmas

Fall has flown by. Between Halloween costumes, walks in the park, purchase of the new phone and of course working full time I have completely forgotten to update my little blog. We still cooked, baked and read books all through the fall. Sophia's new favorite thing to do on our weekend if the carousel. We first found it in October and got maybe three weeks of Saturday entertainment, but then it was closed till the Christmas season. Now it's back and I plan to take my little cowgirl to ride those horsies until it closes again. Christmas party at work has come and gone, leaving us witht he first ever Santa picture. Although Mama had to sit on Santa's lap and Sophia only agreed to sit on his lap by proxy - on my lap :)) Once Santa was gone Sophia gladly climbed into his chair herself.

My Christmas shopping is nearly done, and I'm happy to say that only maybe 20% of it was done in the mall. Thank you, online stores. With a few additions for the stockings my gift list will be completed. On the To Do list we have:

- Send greeting cards to our friends and relatives

- Take the kids to Bright Lights in Stanley Park to ride a train

- Visit baby beluga (because we love her)

- Go to Science World (because we've never been)

I am hoping to have some time to see my friends and bake some cookies :)

Time for spring

Happy Spring to you all! The trees are waking up around here, some overly zealous rhododendrons are already in fool bloom and even though it is gray and gloomy here today - it is already spring!

Since I haven't baked anything disastrous in a while I can only brag about a slow cooker beef stew that I made on Saturday with slight modifications of this recipe. As recommended by some of the reviewers this recipe can easily be started of in a pan in order to brown the beef, and then transferred into a slow cooker. I cooked mine on high for 2.5 hours before adding vegetables, then another hour or so. It does need a lot of flavor added to it so I added beef broth, vegetable stock, can of diced tomatoes and good two spoons of paprika. In future I will also try adding some asparagus to the veggies.

To add entertainment value to this post here are some pictures:

Long forgotten Valentine's day crafts:


And some pictures of my kiddo enjoying spring:

"Look mama, tiny pine cones!"
"I am in the puddle!"

Open book

I've been reading a lot this year. My library card went over limit of the 30 free book requests, and I already borrowed books both in my son's and husband's name. I am still hoping to read to new releases before the year ends. How many books did you read this year? :)

My Sophia is big on reading too. We read poems almost every night and we go through at least a dozen books from the library every month.

I even got my son into reading - thank you Gregor the Overlander, you did what even Harry Potter couldn't.

I think we can call 2010 a Year of Reading in my family.

Currently reading: Count Zero by William Gibson.

A Hard Day's Night

I have been trying to keep my perspective, and stay positive! That's the best I can say about the last week or so. I constantly need to remind myself to stay positive, as I slip into my usual sarcastic self. I still haven't done any sewing, but I got out my knitting needles and actually knit about 20 rows just to get a feel of the new bamboo needles and the cotton thread. Something new, although might not be very exciting. I got my glasses out and am trying to be okay with wearing them :) So silly to be self-conscious about wearing glasses, but I guess I am not the wisest of them. A conversation with a friend made me get my guitar out, but guess what - I didn't play, my daughter did. She loved mama's guitar, and kept telling us how pretty the instrument is. At the end of the day, even if the only accomplishment is to make Sophia happy, it's totally worth it. But not only that, my son suddenly got all excited and asked me to teach him to play acoustic. My dear husband laughed that mommy needs to learn herself before she can teach anyone. True , of course....

On the baking topic, I made a PW's Chocolate Sheet Cake and it is FANTASTIC! Make it, you won't regret it!

I also survived taking my son to his swimming lesson and entertaining Sophia on the playground for 45 minutes (If you didn't know, in that specific time frame a 2 year old girl can climb- with mama's help- and go down the slide approximately 45 times!). Soccer practice next night was a piece of pie after that, as there were no high structures to climb in the proximity of the field.

Have a Happy Turkey Day (if you are in Canada) and let's remember to be thankful for what we have, as often we concentrate on what we don't :) Hug your kids, kiss your spouses, and send a prayer into the Universe asking for some of that for everyone.

We are NOT weaning

I was planning to wean my daughter this summer. If things would have gone the way I planned, she would be weaned over the Canada day weekend and the following week. I'd go with the Jay Gordon's method, and hope for a slow but certain transition to her won bed with no mama milk. Well, things happen. Things sometimes happen the way you absolutely do not want them to happen. And so, the happiness seeped out slowly from my summer. What was left was the constant realization how quickly things can change. I suddenly understood, that I simply cannot go through with this. I love nursing my daughter. I love to put her to sleep every night - I read her poems while she nurses. I cannot imagine taking this away from either of us and so I will not wean.

I don't know for how long our nursing will go on and I'm sure that I will eventually decide to wean again. Though I hope that it will be HER decision and it will be a slow and gradual process and not a sudden ban imposed by tired mommy. All that I know - it is not the time yet. And I'm happy about that.

I'm a little late with this, but still almost on time for the International Breastfeeding Week :) PLease note that it says - WHO recommends exclusive breastfeeding until a baby is six months old, and continued breastfeeding with the addition of nutritious complementary foods for up to two years or beyond. So that's where we are - BEYOND!

In serach of a perfect day

Hello there! Now I finally understand why some blogs seem to do just that - disappear into nothing-ness for days and weeks and than resurrect themselves with profound apologies. Apparently life happens, and when it does you don't always think - I need to blog first. No, it usually is - I need to sleep first!

The last two weeks have been hard - all of four of us had been sick, though not all at the same time, but in a age-appropriate order; DH first, myself second, then the kiddos. Fun times, fun, fun times...

Since all of us are now on the mend we could actually do something fun now, but just one thing gets in the way - sleeeeeeep. I feel like I need to dig myself a little cozy hole somewhere in the midst of unfolded (clean!) laundry and sleep for a week or two.

Exercising would help with my sleepiness, but the wind blowing at 40 km/h I am not willing to spend more than an absolute necessary minimum of time outside.

So now, that you know all this vitally important information about us let me tell you about some books and recipes and Etsy finds.

Since we are traveling next month with DD i found her this tiny cute and sweet backpack from bratsacksbaby.

As far as reading goes I'm stuck between the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon and The Host by Sthephanie Meyer. The Outlander series are overwhelmingly enormous and only encouragement of my friend on GoodReads keeps me going. As for The Host... I feel a little un-excited about it. I don;t know what it is - just the whole Twilight thing exhausted my interest to the author and while I expect to like the book I'm just into reading it.

You might wonder how did I do with the Easter baking and I'm ashamed to admit that I chickened out. I had postponed baking until Sunday and that was the day when DSS had to go to the emergency room (nothing serious, in case you are wondering), so the baking just had no chance of happening. I did bake some banana bread and it was moist and sweet, but DH complained that it was a little to moist. Still in search of a perfect recipe :)

We did not take any new photos, so my exploration of digital photography is currently halted.

Photo report

Olympics in townIf you can get over the fact that the flame is fenced in, it's actually really cool.



Yep... Pretty cool...



Oh the cupcakes.... The idea was to use raspberries to achieve the pink color of frosting, without the dye. Oops, I didn't realize how runny it will make the frosting. Tastes great, seriously. Worth the trouble? Probably not, unless you are allergic to red dye.

But look how cute the mini cupcakes are! I suppose I should call them muffins, since they are un-frosted.




And finally, my own, the very best mini cupcake:

Recap

Since I haven't baked anything from scratch this week I'll have to entertain you by bits and pieces of our week.


I made a fantastic salad, seriously... Fat-tas-tic.

Olya's Rocking Quinoa Salad

My daughter helped me mix :) Here is our photo-proof



In addition I made soup! That doesn't happen often, I just dislike soups in general. This one doesn't have a recipe as I kind of made it from whatever looked good at the time. It happened to be chicken stock, roasted carrots and onions, red beans and some bacon (could be more). Kids loved it, so did I.




To top off my futile attempts of being a chef I made some out of the box President's Choice Organic Brownie. No picture as I was beyond tired, but it tasted really good and was super easy to make - just needed to add 2 eggs and some melted butter.

My next planned venture into baking will be cupcakes for Valentine's day. I have never ever made cupcakes before. Yikes. What do you say - another failure to look forward to? :)