Working on Walking

Adele is doing well with her new shoes... she likes to wear them and is more stable with them on. They are kind of clunky with the orthotic and the larger shoe on top so she has trouble with things like climbing the steps for the slide, but on the whole she's doing a great job.

She is tired of being carried around and really wants to be able to get around on her own, and today when the physical therapist came over she brought this!

We have a push-along toy that Adele likes to walk with but it causes her to hunch over forwards and she needs to be standing more upright. The walker goes behind her which encourages her to stand up straight. As soon as she got going she really loved it and was laughing and so proud of herself for getting around on her own.

In the afternoon we went to the tennis court to give her a large space to practice in. It was really cold so we didn't stay long but she walked around a bit. Here's a video of her practicing...

And here's one of her watching Fiona (speed demon).

I'm glad she seems to like it and I'm sure she'll be running around in no time :-)

Ben's Birthday

Last Saturday Ben had another birthday... and that meant a whole weekend of partying!

On Friday evening we got together with his family to have a joint celebration for him and his Dad. His Mum made an egg, black bean, salsa, cheese concoction which was delicious and served it with tortillas, avocado and crispy roasted potatoes. Yummy!

For dessert there were birthday cupcakes and apple cake. Together the birthday boys managed to blow out all 10 of their candles.

Fiona was very excited to lick the frosting off the top of her cupcake!

Saturday was Ben's actual birthday and what he wanted to do more than anything was go to the Zoo to meet Diego. Well, we had to oblige him, and Fiona was quite excited to do that too, so it worked out. At least, until Fiona actually saw Diego and then got kind of freaked out because he was too big and couldn't talk. I felt really sad for her and guilty for not explaining well enough in advance what Diego would be like in real life (i.e. a dude in a giant Diego suit). Oh well.

(Here's Diego, from a safe distance)

We had lunch at Fuddruckers which cheered Fiona up because she got to eat only chocolate milk and french fries and that's her favorite!

In the afternoon we had a dance party. Even Brodie joined in, which the girls love.

I gave Ben Robo Rally for his birthday and our friends Tanya and Boyd came over in the evening to eat pizza and play it with us. I failed to take any pictures but we had a really nice time.

Happy Birthday super love!!

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... tea and leftover pizza! Yay vacation!

Adele and Olivia shared some nutella and toast and chili cheese fritos. Breakfast of champions!

We headed down to Navy Pier and walked around a little, the had some lunch...

Lunch: Vegetable panini and waffle fries.

After lunch we went to the Children's Museum. It was so fun, the girls had a really great time.

Fiona loved the tree house area where she could fish...

And Canoe!

I have some cute pictures but it's taking Foooooorrrrrrrrrreeeeeevvvvvveeeeeeerrrrrr to upload them so I'll post them on flickr some time when we're back. Hopefully some time in the next year.

On the bus on the way back I spotted this fantastic advert. I'll leave the interpretation up to you, but I think it's very interesting ;-)

This evening we went to the rehearsal/family get together dinner before the wedding tomorrow. It was so nice to see and meet some of Ben's cousins and family (and family to be) and the dinner was really delicious! Fiona was surprised and delighted to come out of the bathroom and find... Grandma!!

Full disclosure: I had more salad and beans and potatoes than shown, but I had to borrow Ben's phone for the pictures (it has a flash) and kept forgetting to take the picture before I started eating...

Salad!

Mashed potatoes, red beans and rice...

Corn muffin. I love these so much.

Bread roll (shared with Fiona)

Pecan pie. Ohhhhhhh YUM.

It was super delicious. We went to this restaurant. Next time you're in Chicago you should go!

We're having a great trip and are so happy to be able to spend time with people we love who we don't see nearly often enough :-)

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 25

Breakfast. Tragedy! I ran out of coffee. And I tried to buy some more after dropping the girls off but Kowalski's only had Folgers and some other weird brand. What the heck? I had already warmed up the milk before I realized so I had to have hot chocolate instead. Disappointing.

Today's mug is from Colgate University where Ben's cousin Amanda studied. He thinks she gave it to him as a gift when she visited Ann Arbor.

Lunch: My friend Sang spotted British baked beans at a store and instead of just letting me know he'd seen them actually bought some for me as a surprise. Which makes him pretty much the awesomest friend ever. Thanks Sang :-) Most recent recipient of that honored title was Emily, who brought me Shortbread from her trip to Scotland, so if you'd like to win a place in my heart, you know what to do...

I had some beans for lunch today on toast with chopped up veggie hot dogs and cheese on top. Delicious.

British beans are different from American beans, I think mainly because they're not flavored with maple or molasses. They have a more tomato-ey flavour. I like American beans, but I could never eat them on toast.

Here's some interesting beans trivia, shamelessly copied from Wikipedia.

• 1886: Heinz Baked Beans are first launched at the Fortnum & Mason department store in London, United Kingdom, although they were manufactured in Canada.

• 1928: Heinz Baked Beans start being made in the United Kingdom.

• 1941-1948: The Ministry of Food classifies Heinz Baked Beans as an "essential food", as part of its wartime rationing system.

Essential Food. No kidding!!

After that I had some tea and a piece of the aforementioned Shortbread...

For dinner this evening I tried something new... acorn squash baked with butter and brown sugar (and maple syrup). I used this recipe though I used 1 tsp of sugar and one 1sp of maple syrup for each half instead of 1 tbsp of each. It was definitely enough.

I made onion, spinach, tomato, three cheese quiche to eat with it, and while I was working on these things I got dinner ready for the girls... short order cook? Yes. That's me.

Adele entertained herself very nicely while I was cooking. Before I got the video going she was saying "lie down, go to sleep baby". In the video she's just saying "lie down".

Ben got home late and by then it was bath and bedtime, so I warmed the food up again later. It was good, but I was super hungry ;-)

That's all for today. I promise, tomorrow I'll announce the grand prize winner of the cheetoes competition!