December Events

I'm sure you'll all agree that December was a busy month! Well it flew past here and now it's January already. Happy New Year everyone!

We had a lovely month - my awesome cousin Catriona and equally awesome sister Ali both visited and Ali stayed for Christmas.

Gingerbread houses were constructed by Ali and Fiona...

Christmas photos in cute matching dresses were attempted, with partial success, but they never made it into christmas cards...

We performed a dramatic enactment of How the Grinch Stole Christmas in the annual Hamer talent show. There were many other spectacular talents on show this year too... here's 10 minutes of the most impressive talent showing you've seen.

Santa Claus stopped by and brought Fiona the backpack she wrote to him to ask for. She had what she described as "the best day ever" opening presents from all the kind and generous friends and family we have. Adele had fun too but was a little overwhelmed.

Adele had a big assessment at Shriners, which is an amazing hospital for children specializing in (among other things) orthopaedics. We are lucky enough to live very close by and they provide services for free to people who do not have insurance or whose insurance doesn't cover the treatment they need. She's been diagnosed as having mild cerebral palsy which almost exclusively affects her left leg, and we're going to be doing physical therapy there two times a week in addition to the PT we do once every 2 weeks through the Minneapolis schools early intervention program. There's no reason she won't learn to walk, it'll just take a while, but all the extra PT will be great.

We headed to the U.P. for New Year and stayed in a log cabin in the woods with some friends.

Minneapolis has been eerily warm and almost totally snow-less so far this winter, so Fiona was very excited to stomp around in the snow up there.

Adele doesn't like to wear her mittens so didn't last long but enjoyed rolling around in it and observing for a while.

We had a great time hanging out with friends, and Fiona and Adele loved making two new friends of their own.

Today (and I did initially plan to just write about this before feeling a need to summarize the whole month) Fiona requested that I paint her fingernails (for the first time). She noticed a girl in her class at daycare had hers painted and asked me to do hers for her. She asked for red, which, luckily, is one of the two nail polish colours I own (the other being clear) so I painted them for her. I'm guessing that this is only the beginning of many requests for things she'd like because her friends have them...

She was so happy she kept bouncing around and it was very hard to get a picture in focus!

So that's the excitement for today. And who knows what tomorrow might bring!

Lazy Vegetarian: Day 29, 30 & 31

I know, I fell behind. Here's a catch up!

Saturday 29th

Breakfast: Toast with nutella, mauled by a bear.

Lunch: We went to the zoo with friends in the morning and had some lunch there. We all shared some fries, Ben and I shared a cheese quesadilla and the girls shared a hot dog.

Snack: I invented a new BEST SNACK EVER. Pretzels dipped in nutella.

Dinner: Tonight was Ben's cousin Sarah's wedding. I failed to take pictures of any of the food or, even more sadly, the cake. So I'm just going to write a list...

Vegetable spring rolls with spicy dipping sauce

Pita chips with hummus and spinach dip

Falafel

Veggie sandwich

Potato taquito

Chocolate caaaaaake!!

The girls had so much fun dancing the night away and we had an exciting bus ride back with a variety of spirited young people dressed in sports team shirts and halloween costumes. My sister Ali will also be happy to hear that she is no longer the only person I know to lose a shoe on a bus.

After we got home we put the tired little girls to bed and hung out with Ian for a while. By then it was Sunday morning and it seemed appropriate to have some snacks from the pizza place round the corner...

Cheesy garlic bread, mozzarella sticks and cheese fries. Enough cheese? Just and no more.

Sunday 30th

Breakfast: Adele was up at 5am so I drowned my sorrows in a nutella sandwich. Which she then ate most of, and Fiona ate the rest of. I got the crusts.

We stopped by to see our friends Tim and Shannon and their little cutie Owen on our way back home and they kindly provided us with food to keep us going for a while.

We stopped at Qdoba for dinner which we rarely eat at and were pleasantly surprised by! They have an option to choose 2 "little" things which was perfect... I got gumbo for myself and a cheese quesadilla to share with the girls, and Ben and I shared some queso dip and chips. It was very delicious.

Later there were some peanut M&Ms for car snack. It was too dark to photograph in the car so this lovely picture was taken from here.

Now... yesterday!

Breakfast...

Back home. Back to normal. Latte, toast. Toast with... peanut butter and nutella.

Today's mug just came in the mail! It was a gift from MPR for giving signing up to be sustaining members. We were sustaining members before but then our credit card number changed and we forgot to update it so then they were not getting their money any more, so when they did the latest membership drive (where they offer thank you gifts when people sign up) I was excited that one of them was an awesome giant red mug and we signed up again.

Lunch. Ben took the day off to recover from the weekend so we went to his favorite chinese buffet. So healthy...

For dinner we went to Cathy and Erik's house so Fiona could go trick or treating with her cousins. We had baked potatoes and I brought vegetarian chili.

Of course, being halloween I had to eat some chocolate! YUM Almond Joy!!

So there you have it. A whole month. Here are some things I'm sure you picked up on:

1. I eat a lot of toast

2. I really am lazy, I wasn't kidding

3. There is no shortage of cheese in my diet.

Also, after putting the names of all the cheeto competition entries in a hat and picking one at random I can declare with fanfare that the winner is.... MATT!! Your exciting prize will make its way to you hopefully some time this year :-)

Also, because I know you're dying to know whether crunchy or puffy wins, here are the results...

Crunchy: 2 votes

Puffy: 5 votes

Both: 2 votes

Cheese and onion crisps: 1 vote.

Hawkins cheezies: 2 votes. Canadians...

So yay for puffy! They are really the obvious choice ;-)

Lazy Vegetarian: Day 28

Breakfast. I hauled myself out of bed around 5am to finish up packing for our trip. There was no time for toast, no time for coffee, just go, go, go. I had a granola bar in the car because I was hungry!

We dropped off the dog and then we were on the road. We stopped at McDonalds for some breakfast and coffee as the sun was coming up and I had an egg mcmuffin (no bacon). At first he tried to give me no egg, but luckily after some back and forth the one that came out was baconless. It was still pretty gross though. The hash brown was good but Adele ate that. The mocha machine was not working and I ended up with regular coffee which I doctored with 4 sugars and 4 creamers and was still not good. SEE? THIS is why I eat the same thing every morning! I can't handle a disappointing breakfast!

Sunrise...

For lunch we spotted an Indian Buffet when we stopped for gas just past Madison. Fiona had just woken up and it was the perfect time to stop. And it was delicious. Mmmmm vegetable korma.

Car snack! Chili cheese fritos.

We made it through the tolls and traffic and under the scary old bridges...

And arrived at the apartment we're staying in, which is lovely, and our friends Ian, Olivia and Carole arrived a little after that, then Ben's friend Matt met up with us for dinner... turns out there's a great place round the corner for Chicago Pizza!! It was very dark inside...

Dinner: Chicago pizza!

I know, you can't see it. This is what it looked like (from wikipedia). I'm actually not sure exactly which kind of Chicago pizza it was, but it was delicious.

Ohhhh yum. Roll on breakfast!!

Lazy Vegetarian: Day 27

This is going to be the fastest blog post ever because I have to be up tomorrow at 5am and I'm not quite finished packing yet...

Breakfast: Toast and Tea. I did manage to buy more coffee this evening though!

Today's mug is another from a trip to Scotland.

Lunch: More beans on toast!! One can = 2 meals. YUM. I ran out of hot dogs, so this one is just toast, beans and cheese.

I finished off part of Fiona's dinner (hummus and bread) as a pre-dinner snack...

Dinner: Leftover quiche, sweet potato bites, steamed broccoli (I added some teriyaki sauce to the broccoli after I took the picture).

This weekend we're going to Chicago and I'm sure there will be some exciting and delicious foods to share!

Lazy Vegetarian: Day 23

Breakfast: Fiona asked for pancakes so that's what we had today! I made them with whole wheat flour and they were yummy!

Today's mug is from the trip to Scotland we took in 2007. I won round trip flights for two to Dublin in a competition at the Fineline on St. Patrick's Day (just by putting my name in the jar, I didn't have to embarrass myself in any way!) so we flew to Dublin for a few days then to Scotland for the family holiday, then back to Dublin for a day before heading home.

Mum and I being statues...

Edinburgh

We stayed in a beautiful house way out in the country. This is the hill behind the house. You had to climb it to get cell phone reception... a bunch of us climbed it one day, which involved trudging though a stream raging river, climbing over some fences and staring down a number of sheep.

These little girls are not little any more. And that makes us OLD.

Catriona has never been more impressed with an activity...

We made it!! Who got text messages?

We stayed in a B&B near Dublin for a night on our way back but I don't remember where it was... pretty though!

It was a fun trip!

Lunch: We hadn't been to the mall for a while so we went there this morning. We had pita pit for lunch... YUM!! I had falafel and hummus and veggies and we all shared some fries.

Fiona chose the Blues Clues ride to go on.

Adele doesn;t like to go on the rides, but does like to watch her sister!

This afternoon we walked (and Fiona tricycled) over to the park for a while. She's getting really fast and is pretty good at steering now. It took a lot of practice - I think she got my coordination genes!

Adele went on a big girl swing for the first time and LOVED it. I have a cute video but it's upside down and it's going to take some time to right-side-up it, so I'll have to post that another day.

Dinner... leftover soup and bread and some frozen taquitos (well, they weren't frozen after I cooked them).

This evening I put my mediocre sewing skills to the test and worked on Fiona's halloween costume. She has a party tomorrow and I'll reveal the finished product tomorrow. Prepare to be underwhelmed with the effort on my part ;-)

Lazy Vegetarian: Day 18

Breakfast... shocker! Toast! Latte!

Today's mug is Ben's from a cruise he went on with his sister Laurie...

Jealous.

After I dropped the girls off at daycare I stopped at the store. I managed to resist all of these though the effort caused me some serious pain.

Lunch: Mini baguette with brie and tomatoes.

In the afternoon we met up with our fabulous friends Kate and Audrey at the Wood Lake Nature Center and had coffee alongside the taxidermy...

Ben didn't get home from work until after 9 tonight so I had a snack while waiting for him...

TIME FOR A POLL!! We have a longstanding debate in Ben's family about which is better... crunchy cheetoes or puffy cheetoes? Which do you prefer? Leave a comment here or on facebook with your answer and you could win an exciting prize!!

Dinner... leftover curry. Adele ate a big bowl of this for dinner too. She rocks at eating food.

Still yummy. And still enough left in the fridge for another dinner for two, despite freezing half of what I had left over from the first time. Neverending curry. Mmmm.