{Yummy Stuff}

I love to cook. I love to try out new recipes. Sometimes I have to make myself make the same thing. I also love to experiment. Hugo's always says he’s lucky if I follow a recipe exactly the first time and then it’s a miracle we have the same thing without me changing anything. Sometimes this turns out really good and sometimes not so good. This morning it turned out good! I was making pancakes, I made some with blueberries and then I decided to see if we liked red currants in them. Then on the last couple I decided to try and mimic the flavor of our favorite pastry here in France, Croissant aux Amandes et Chocolate.

Imagine a croissant with chocolate inside soaked in an almond sauce and then sprinkled with almonds and powdered sugar, Heaven! So I added some almond flavoring, coconut and chocolate chunks to my pancake batter. Yummy! It was delicious. Definitely going to do that variation again.

Today we have a wedding to go to. It will be a full day affair. The wedding is at 3 but then the reception right after goes until all hours. It will be fun to take pictures and see what a French wedding and reception is like.

Monday we are taking off for Frankfurt, Germany. Hugo and I really need to plan what we are going to do there soon, like I should be doing that now:) Reminds me I need to download and burn a new book on CD for the kids to listen to in the car. We just finished listening to Peter Pan, it was really fun.

I have a few more templates (I made my Dance Dance Revolution page into one) that I will be putting up soon, maybe I will have time tomorrow before we head out...

One new page for me:

My little girl loves babies and she has really latched onto this vintage doll that was given to us. She calls it her 'Baby Emma'. It's so sweet to watch her.
Credits are found http://www.digishoptalk.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=78807&cat=all&ppuser=422

{Just Because}

I like to create and I like to share. I have been making these templates for the sketch challenge at www.elementalscraps.com and I thought I would put them on here for anyone who wants to visit my little blog. The linked circles is for the challenge for this month, you get a free kit for participating :) Anyway would love a link if you use them. Have a great Tuesday!



download links:
http://download.yousendit.com/C8C70EB37CEE5813
http://download.yousendit.com/2EF867EF0F3EF811
http://download.yousendit.com/12D90A537C7EDA25

{Winter Break}

So apparently the kids are on winter break now. If you knew me at all you would think I was the kind of mom who would be super involved with her kid school. But since I don't speak French I am pretty much in the dark. If Sol hadn't come home with a note on Friday saying there was no school for the next two weeks I would have had no idea. I would have showed up to take them to school today. At least if I had done that nobody would have been there to see me look so stupid :)

I am excited for the week of with the kids. I miss the laid back days of getting up whenever we want and not having a specific schedule. Don't get me wrong, there are good things about having to get 4 kids up and ready to be out the door by 8:15 everyday, for instance we all have breakfast together and I read the kids books and we learn a new song for church at breakfast (I don't usually eat breakfast so I need something to do while they are eating). I do plan on doing that during winter break but I didn't this morning so I'm not off to a great start.

I wanted to scrap some picture of Ike before he had chicken pox so I made this page of him eating his first real food (also for lifts with a twist). I'm a lazy mom in a lot of ways. I don't do baby food. I have better things to do than sit and spoon feed a baby for 20 minutes when half of it ends up on his clothes anyways. So I just wait until they are about 7 months old and start handing them food at meal times. Keeps them occupied atleast.


Credits are here
http://www.digishoptalk.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=76583&ppuser=422

{Poor Baby}

I thought my kids were having such mild cases of chicken pox but Ike’s got it bad. He’s probably got a couple hundred just on his head, and since he is bald you can see every single one. The poor guy. He hasn’t been sleeping hardly at all. I just kept thinking oh this is probably as bad as it is going to get and then I would look at him a few hours later and see 20 more pocks. He was sleeping so badly that Hugo and I ended up staying up until 2:30 watching LOST because why not enjoy ourselves if we are going to be up all night with a fussy baby? Now all his chicken pocks are starting to scab, a good sign but definitely doesn’t make him look any better.

Poor Baby



Here are my latest scrapbook pages. I was really happy how this one turned out, kind of funky and grungy. My 5 yo seriously get's into this, he is awesome!



Our first trip after we moved to France. The beaches at Normandy were beautiful and so rich in history, amazing!

{Jinxed!}

So I think I jinxed myself yesterday about the whole ‘good mom’ thing. Today I think I am going to get the chance to prove myself. We started out with Hugo not setting his alarm clock and so he was running too late to walk to the gare to catch the 5:38 train he needed to catch in order to get to Paris in time to catch his train to some town north of paris. So I had to wake up all the kids and drag them down to the car to run Hugo to the gare. I had to run a red light to make it but he did catch his train, with literally one minute to spare. By then of course the kids are all bright-eyed and bushy tailed and the chances of them going back to sleep are slim to none. So I resign myself that I am up for the day when Jocelyn comes up and says, “Mommy what’s this on the back of my neck?” Chicken pox. Yes I thought we had gotten by with only Solomon getting it but no, it looks like I am in for the long-dragged out version where they come down with it one at a time every two weeks. She already has more pox on her than Solomon had, hopefully it doesn’t keep getting worse with each kid.

But good news is that when I called the Dentist to cancel our appt for this afternoon I discovered that our appointment was for the 14th (gotta love this language barrier thing) so at least I didn’t drive all the way into Paris for a non-existent dentist appt!

{Good Mom Day}

Why is it that I feel like I am a good mother on the days where my children play together nicely, we do fun things together and everything goes smoothly. If you really think about it I should feel like a good mom on the days when my kids are being rotten but I somehow manage to stay calm and patient. But at any rate today was a good day. The kids played together really nicely, I played some fun games with them. In general a good mom day.

This past weekend we had a break from the gray skies and rainy weather. I decided we had to take advantage of that. We thought about making a run for Eurodisney but decided that we should save that for when we can get the discount tickets. Instead we went to a big park in Paris called La Jardin d’Acclimatation. We had a great time. There was a little amusement park area, menagerie, playgrounds. Afterwards we walked around downtown Paris. I was looking for this beautiful coat I saw a few weeks ago but we didn’t find me one. But on the bright side we found a really good boulangerie to eat at and I had my first Croque Messieur, tasty. On the way home we found a video rental place near us. We rented Nanny McPhee and watched it with the kids. Loved it, maybe I’m twisted but I had a good laugh when the kids were ‘eating’ the baby.