What are You Eating?!?!

Ever thought you'd eat a tractor?!?!??

Now, I can't take credit for this design. A wife of one of Tom's customer's gave him one for Christmas. So, on the weekend, I braved the Christmas crowd at the Bulk Barn (which wasn't too bad) and found all the chocolates I needed!

Now, if you know your tractors, you are usually a green tractor fan or a red tractor fan. So, to keep everyone happy I made some of each!

Snow Day

Today is a kid's dream come true...a snow day before Christmas holidays start.

While the snow falls and blows and drifts, I've managed to keep my kids busy enough that I don't think they've even whined once!

Here's how we managed to fill half of our snow day...

Christmas Card ball

Candycane cookies (and wreaths and a ladder..not sure why the ladder).

Advent!

It's beginning to look like Christmas around our house!


Every year, I buy those cheap chocolate advent calendars for the kids, but, this year I decided to sew an advent calendar and put my own treats in for each day. I wasn't sure if this was going to be too big a task, but I surprised myself.


I found a great fabric panel that already had nice squares for pockets. I just had to cut out each individual square, iron little seams down each side, and then sew them on the red panel. A little time consuming, but I'm very happy with the results. Take a peek...


I'm not sure what I'm going to do exactly for the numbers of each day. I may just take some ribbon and hang the number on each pocket and after the kids get their chocolate, they can tuck the number in the pocket and they can see how many days until Christmas.

Here's a close up of some of the pockets.

CELL PHONE VR BIBLE

Found this on a blog, and since I don't know how to link it to mine, I thought I'd just retype it.


Ever wonder what would happen if we treated our Bible like we treat our cell phone?

What if we carried it around in our purses or pockets?

What if we flipped through it several time a day?

What if we turned back to go get it if we forgot it?

What if we used it to receive messages from the text?

What if we treated it like we couldn’t live without it?

What if we gave it to kids as gifts?

What if we used it when we traveled?

What if we used it in case of emergency?

This is something to make you go….hmm…where is my Bible?

Unlike our cell phone, we don’t have to worry about our Bible being disconnected because Jesus already paid the bill.
Makes you stop and think ‘where are my priorities? And no dropped calls!

Coming Soon to a Blog Near You

more coming soon....

Our Sunday Afternoon Walk

Yesterday was a beautiful spring day so we decided to take walk around the Dorchester Mill Pond (for those who don't know, it is a walk in the woods around a very large pond that takes about an hour).

Garrett was running way ahead as per usual. Faith was taking turns walking with me, Tom and Haden. We came to a curve in the path and larger hill to go down. Garrett and Haden were nicely jogging, so I thought I would join them and burn a few extra calories. Tom had Faith and they were just a bit behind us.

We came to a wooden walkway-type bridge that has no railing (because it just goes over a small, knee-deep creek). As I'm jogging just behind the boys, I hear a big SPLASH behind me. I turn around to see Tom holding Faith. She is drenched from head to toe. Tom is soaked up to his knees. I call to Haden and Garrett to come back, and go running to Faith. She is dripping and shivering and crying. I quickly get all her wet clothes off and wrap my sweater around her.

Tom tells me, as we are walking back to the van, that just as he and Faith approached the wooden walkway, he had just thought to himself that maybe he should hold her hand. She was running, but had tripped on one of the boards and went diving head first into the water. It all happened so fast, and I don't even think she was in the water more than a couple seconds. Tom got her out pretty quick. I didn't even see her in the water.

We laughed about it soon afterward. And, once she was all dry and warm while daddy carried her back to the van, she was asking to go slide down the slides again before we went home.

Oh, by-the-way, we didn't even make it 1/4 of the way around the pond. We'll try again next Sunday. This time someone will be holding her hand. :)

Collecting and Boiling

On Wednesday we started collecting the sap that was filling out sap buckets quickly.

On Thursday we started boiling sap...

and boiled it....

and boiled it...

and boiled it some more.


It was a long process of boiling, but we managed to get about 2 litres of maple syrup in total. It was much more than I anticipated.


We even managed to get some maple sugar (even if it was a result of boiling too long!).



So, this morning we just had to have some maple syrup on french toast. YUMMY!!

Yummy Pure Canadian Snyders Maple Syrup

This year, we are tapping our maple trees for the first time. We braved the cold wind last night and drilled some holes and hung up some sap buckets.

We can't wait to collect enough sap to boil it down to syrup. The ratio of sap to syrup is 40:1. So, that means, we need to get 40 buckets full of sap to get one bucket of syrup. It was quite exciting when we saw drips of sap coming out of the tree immediately after we put the tap in.

The boys had to keep peeking to see how much was dripping out of the tree.

It will be interesting to see how much we get to make. The boys will be checking those buckets every day (the boys meaning Haden, Garrett AND Tom)!

Only Once

I did something today that one should only do once in their life. And, you should try it at least once. Maybe twice. But, probably not three times.

I DEEP FRIED A MARS BAR!!!!

I feel my arteries clogging already.
But, oh, oh, oh. Was it ever yummy.

For those of you who are curious (I know you want to try it now, too), I took two Mars bars and refrigerated them over night. You probably don't have to refrigerate them that long, but I wasn't even sure I should try this. (So, I waited over night...and, yes, this morning I thought I should still try it.)

I made a batter of 1/2 cup flour, 1/4 cup of corn meal, a pinch of baking soda and enough milk until it was the consistency of a pancake batter. I then cut my Mars bar into small bite size pieces. Dipped them in the batter and placed them, a few at a time, in the deep fryer. They only take about a minute or two to brown up. I scooped them out, ever so gently, and placed on a paper towel...to soak the excess oil, right!?! (At this point, I don't think it was really going to change the caloric count too much.) I grabbed my fork, poked one warm morsel, and popped it into my mouth. mmmmmmmmmm I think the best word to describe these tiny bits of sugar fried in oil are EVIL! YUMMY EVIL! My hips will love me forever!

But, I recommend everyone should try it at least once in their life.

Now if you will excuse me. I have to spend the rest of the day on my treadmill.

There is no picture. I do not want any evidence of me actually eating them.

Oh. And, yes, I did share with my kids and Tom.

Girls Night Out

Yes, I actually got to have a girls night out.


Cindy and Barb came to London, and we had an evening out at the London Food and Wine Show a couple weeks ago.


It's was very yummy (as you can see from the picture).







Cindy even got her picture taken with "the hunchback".


What's his real name, Cindy?!?!

Too Big Too Fast

Well, here's the latest.

Haden has lost another tooth.

He's getting too big, too fast.

He truly looks like a boy now.