Who Would Have Thought ?

We were Skyping with my mom a few days ago and I said to Julia: "Do you want to see Grand-mère fall off her chair?" She looked at me, puzzled. "Go get the rag quilt we made." My mom did not fall off her chair but you should have seen the look on her face ! She wondered for a whole minute if I really had made this myself...Well, I wouldn't have if Sister Walker hadn't convinced us to do it as a Young Women's project.

Julia chose the material (I sure wouldn't have picked those colors) and I did my best to sew each square:

Then the squares together:

...yelling at the machine once in a while (okay, way too often....)

...but persevering with a smile:

The "back" is done !

Let's cut the "front" now !

Last step: washing machine !

And voilà !

Sister Walker was so proud (she saw first-hand how hard the whole process was for me. She came to my rescue more than once!) that she gave me her sewing machine. I guess it means I have to keep going now! Who knows, I might get better ;) We already have a few sewing projects in mind and hopefully Julia can learn too. You might not know, but my maternal grandfather sewed for a living. Maybe Julia has inherited his talent...

Happy Birthday Granny Hayes !!

Granny's birthday was yesterday. We went to bring her some chocolates tonight. She was in a very good mood ! She told us Cindy brought her chocolates too and I guess she's hoping those chocolates keep coming ;)

We love you Granny, and we do love chocolate too !!!! Happy Birthday !!!

The Wise Men's Cake

As you know now, since you remember everything I post, in France we celebrate the coming of the Wise Men. They came a little bit after the birth of Christ and the "Epiphany" is January 6th. There is no day off for that little celebration and most people celebrate on the first Sunday of the month. Family and friends gather for a special kings'cake in which something is hidden. The person who gets the hidden object (which usually represents someone in the nativity scene) is crowned King or Queen (when you buy the cake, a crown is actually provided) and is supposed to bring the next kings'cake (and you eat cake all month).
 
On Sunday the 5th, we made a kings'brownie but I decided to wait until we had the elders over to share the tradition and make the actual kings'cake, since only Keld likes it (it's with almonds). I prefer the other type of kings'cake, the Southern France type,  the brioche (although instead of the traditional candied fruits, I put chocolate chips inside, of course!). We made a few of those this month and I made one as a back-up plan too, in case my "real" kings'cake didn't work out.

Because, once again, you will remember, I completely failed last time I tried a kings'cake. This time my sister Géraldine didn't just send me a recipe, she sent me a link to a video where Hervécuisine shows you how to make a kings'cake. This was a great idea, I was just worried that I would now have no excuse whatsoever if I failed..except the conversion from grams to cups or ounces I guess. But, fortunately, I think it worked out okay.

You will notice however that the cake isn't round (as it should be) It's just that the dough came in that shape and I was worried it would be too small if I cut it (Hervécuisine has a much bigger dough).
Julia went under the table, as the tradition requires, and told Keld who should get each piece. Elder Skirvin got the fève and was crowned king.

But I think Elder Teutau liked the cake more :)

As you can see, Kelden got hold of the camera...

 So we were late, but we had fun anyway !

Happy Birthday Evan !!

Evan turned 1 last week and we celebrated yesterday.

Since we know he loves his mom so much, we made sure he had some alone time with her in the morning and took Bruce and Linda sliding with us.

Sliding is hard work so we went to Special and Grandpa Bruce's to regain some strength afterwards.
And then we were ready to party some more. Evan opened the gifts first, with, as usual, lots of help.

He was nice enough to share his new toys.

We had a great supper and, of course, a wonderful cake !

Happy Birthday Evan !!!

Missing the Holidays

Julia and Kelden went back to school on Monday. I hope they had fun during their holidays. I already posted about Christmas, sliding and skating. I don't have pictures of the swimming (I brought them twice but you're not allowed to take pictures) and I don't have good pictures of the sleepovers either (we had Linda over and Special had them ALL over).
So here's what else we did during the holidays (and for which I have pictures!).

Our usual (baking):

We practised reading and writing (even if neither Julia nor Kelden had any homework!)

We took out all the toys and used our talents as photographers...

We dressed up:

We went outside too (when it wasn't -40 that is).

Zack was pretty happy to have his siblings play with him, even if sharing still isn't is favorite thing to do...

He's safe this month, but next January I will be registering him for kindergarten!

Skating

Skating season started on my birthday. To celebrate, Julia and I went on the following day and they let us go for free (there was no cashier -maybe she was at the Santa Claus parade).

People think I bring Julia so she can learn how to skate, but the truth is, I like going skating and Julia is nice enough to come along. So, even if I am the one who needs lessons, she's the one getting all the tips from everyone (adults and younger kids).
The following week, we brought Kelden and an orange thing that is supposed to help you skate. Well, it didn't work for Kelden that day but Julia liked it as it made her go faster.
He tried it again at the oval (the Timmins outside skating rink) and this time it helped (it always works much better with Papa !).

We had Linda with us that day and it was her first time skating. She didn't want to wear Zack's bob skates initially but after touching the ice with Kelden's skates she decided to switch and it worked much better !

We didn't have an orange thing for her, but I had brought something else to help her go faster :)

Yesterday we went skating (inside) again.

Kelden is really improving, even if he still can't skate totally on his own.

And Julia now goes too fast for me to take a nice picture !

They only lasted half an hour (I guess they were tired from the swimming earlier :) so I was on my own for a little while.

We now need to get Keld on the ice so Zack will follow !