Chips Casserole

Yes, a chips casserole! Yes there is actually chips in it.  It may not be the healthiest meal, but I can guaranty you that you will love it!  It's always a hit when I bring it to a potluck diner. This casserole is even better the day after. 



Ingredients:
2 celery stalks, minced

 

2 hard boiled eggs (cut in pieces)

2 cup of cooked rice (I use Minute Rice-- 2 cup of water for 2 cup of rice, then use all of it)

2 cup of Mayonnaise

2 cans of cream of chicken

2 chicken breasts, cooked and diced

 

2 bags of plain chips: 1 for the mixture and one for the top (that you will crush in pieces)
1 small onion (optional)

Cook each ingredients separately.   Chop, minced and dice the ingredients. In a large bowl, mix the celery, eggs, rice, Mayonnaise, chicken, cream of chicken, onion and ONE bag of chips.   Once all the ingredients are mix well, pour it in a in a large rectangle Pyrex pan or 2 square one.  Cook at 350C for about 25-30 minutes, until it's the top of the casserole is golden. Once it's golden, pour the second bag of crush chips on the top.

For the chips on the top, I usually prefer to keep the bag by the casserole, so everyone can choose to put it on or not. Also if there is left overs, that way the chips won't get all stale. I forgot to take a picture of the final product (oups!). But here how it looks without the chips

 

Hope you will enjoy! If you try it, let me know what you think :D

 

 

 

Funny Friday

We were at the hospital to visit my bran new niece J Ellie arrived on August 20^th. She is one tiny baby at 6 pounds and 5 ounces. She measure 18 ¾ inches.  My girls went to get something to eat with my dad. When they were on their way back, Valérie had an interesting discussion with a nurse.

Nurse: “Hi, are you here to see a baby sister, brother, or a baby cousin?”

Valérie: “A little cousin. She’s a girl.  She has 2 big brothers that are almost the same age (4) but they are from 2 different moms.”
Nurse: “ How did that happen?”
Valérie: “What you don’t know the secret to how babies are made? I do.”

And Valérie left it like that and walk to the room.  My dad and the nurses were laughing.  Dad told me the discussion that went on.

Valérie look at me and said: “Yes mom, It’s true I know the secret to how babies are made”.

Me: “You do? “(I’m sure I was white lol as she never asked me any question about this subject)
Valérie: “Ben oui (well yes). My uncle loved someone so he had a son.  Then he loves matante (aunt) and that is how he got two babies with her.  When two person love each other they make babies!”

Let just say that I felt like laughing but stayed calm. Lol I was kind of relieve that she didn’t know ALL the details just yet ;)

 

 

Camping with my extended family

This year marked our 20e long weekend family get together on my dad side. Every year, for the past 20 years, a big bunch of us meet up for the long week end at one of my uncle and aunt house. We camp, play games, laughs and eat too much.  When we started 20 years ago, everyone was in a tent except for one of my aunt and uncle. We were maybe 20.  Since then, almost everyone has updated to RV of every size.  There are only 3 tens left and we are one of them. This year, we were 45.  Usually we’re over 50, but two of the little children had chicken pox and their whole family couldn’t be there.

Here’s the view from my uncle back yard

 

To celebrate the 20e year of our family reunion, we decided to pay a caterer.  We ordered “fricot” (is like a chicken soup/stew).  That way all my uncles and aunts didn’t have to cook.  They still don’t let us do it and we are all over 30 years old.  We will remember the “fricot” for the rest of our life. The caterer had forgotten to put the chicken bag in when she took it off to get the bones out.  So our “fricot” had potatoes, turnip and carrots. Let just say that this was put down in our memory book. Ha ha!

We have activities/games on Saturday evening. Here’s Valerie try to take a bit at her apple.

 

Being with my extended family for the weekend is so relaxing. We are a really close bunch. I love that we stayed close even if my pépère (grandfather) passed away in 1987. There’s no stress. No one wears a watch and we are always wondering what time it is.  A man that was there for the first time commented that we look like a family that doesn’t have any problems and stress, and that enjoy life to the max!

 

 

It was a great weekend (as always). We did get a few showers, but it didn’t last more the 5 minutes at the time. One of my cousin even gave Valérie a ride on his seadoo. She was so excited.

 

I’m already looking to next year and so are the girls.

 

 

Close to your extended family? 

Gardening 2013

I love gardening!  I'm far from being an expert, but I do learn something every year.  I have 3 raised bed of 4" x 8". I was so excited when my husband built the extra bed this year.  I think I was worst then a kid in a candy shop!  Every year, my daughter Valérie and I choose at least one new vegetable to grown. This year, we tried 10 more. Sometime it's a hit, sometime it's a miss. 

Our garden consist of :

Yellow wax beans
Green beans
Purple beans
Cherry tomatoes
Beefsteak tomatoes
Another kind of tomatoes
Radish
Peas
Snow peas
Cucumber
Carrots

These are my go to vegetables, as they grow very well.

New this year:
Purple peppers
Zucchini
Cauliflower (looks like it's going to be a miss)
Betts (looks like it's going to be a miss)
3 kinds of lettuce
Kale
Parsley
Spinach

It's growing slowly but surely.  The weather was not ideal in June, so some crops are blooming later then usual.  This week, we have finally started to collect vegetables from the garden. I am even able to froze some bean and snow peas.  Here is what we collected this morning (don`t mind my daughter that was still in her PJ and she looks so tired in this pic!)

Do you have a garden?  What do you grow in it?

Nephews and Nieces

I’ve been babysitting my little nephew, Sébastien, for the past week.  My brother had to work last minute and his girlfriend new shift is 8 to 5. Oh how I love this little one.  Well, he’s not that little anymore. He is 3.8 years old. We are having a blast! The kids get along so well. I love that my brother lives close and we can see each other when we want to.

I am from, what you would call, a “broken home” or a “blended family”.   I have a total of 10 nephews and nieces, with two more in the making.  I honestly think that they are all precious. I love them all to pieces. They bring a lot of life in family reunions. It does bring me back to when we were young and running around with my cousins. As of now, the nephews outnumber the nieces.

Francis (my sister’s Husband son)-17yo

Chase (my brother’s)-4yo
Sebastien (my brother’s)-3.8yo
Brandon (Husband sister’s)-2.3 yo
Abygail (Husband sister’s)-9 months
Samuel (Husband brother’s)-1.3yo
Hugo (stepsister’s)-2.5 yo
Maelle (stepbrother’s daughter)-3yo
Noah (stepbrother’s)-11 months
Amely (my BFF’s daughter)-18 months

My brother’s girlfriend is expecting a little girl, Ellie (said in French) for the end of this month.  My husband brother’s wife is expecting a baby for December.  We will have to wait for the birth to know the sex of this one.  They want to keep it a surprise.

 

How many nephews and nieces do you have? Are you close to them? One more than the other?

 

 

Ham and Potato Soup

I personally love soups and could eat it all the time. After looking at different recipes, I’ve came up with my own.  Sadly, I’m the only one that liked this soup. My husband and kids are not fan of soup in general.

 

My version (measurements are an estimate as I did it more by eyes):

3 Large potatoes, diced

¼ to ½ cup of kernel corn (I used frozen corn)
¼ cup of celery, finely chopped
2-3 ounce of ham, diced (use frozen leftover ham)

1 ½ - 2 cups of chicken broth

½ a can of evaporated milk
1-2 tablespoon of margarine
2-3 tablespoon of flour
Salt and pepper (season to your liking)

 

In a sauce pan, put the potatoes, celery and corn. Add water just enough to cover the potatoes. Boiled until the potatoes are cook.  In the meantime, in a frying pan, melt the margarine.  Once it’s melted, add the flour, one tbsp at a time.  Mix well.  It will give you a paste. Then add the chicken broth.  It will become almost like gravy.  Once everything is blended, add the evaporate milk. Shimmer until the potatoes are cook. Add the diced ham. Take both pans of the heat.  Pour the frying pan mix in the sauce pan.  Stir well.

 

Hope you like it!

 

 

Do you like soup? What is your favorite?  How about the rest of the family?

 

 

It's All About Cakes

One of the things that I like to do is cooking and baking.  I love when I can figure out the recipe to dishes that I love to eat in restaurants.  I also love doing cakes for my girls’ birthdays.  I have learned, with the help of mr. google, how to make and use fondant. I personally don’t like to eat the fondant, but man does it ever look great ;)

I thought I would share with you the cakes and cupcakes I have made in the past 4 years.

 

Here's Audrey's Cakes:

 

Her Baptism Cake. This was my first ever cake covered in fondant.

 

 

For Audrey's second birthday, my brother and I decided to celebrate my nephew and Audrey at the same time. They were born only 6 days apart. I went with a bug team. :) Valérie helped me with some bugs. Can't you see which one?  She was almost 5 at the time.

 

 

 

My little pumkin LOVES  Lalaloopsy, so for her 3th birthday, it was to be assume that the cake would be just that ;)

 

 

 

 And to her demand, she wanted an Hello Kitty cake for her 4th birthday, which was last week:

Now on to Valérie's cakes:

She was so in Mickey Mouse Club House at 4yr.  Here's my version of the cake:

 

Which girls doesn't like the princesses? Valérie at 5yo.

 

Then last year, it was all about BRAVE (6yo)

 

Who knows what she will be asking me this year lol

 

Here's 2 more cakes that I did for my babysitter children this year:

 

 

And finally, but not the least, cupcakes that I did. I was very proud of how these turned out! They were a really hit.

 

These were for Valérie's teacher babyshower.  She is also one of my collegue.

 

 

And these are the one I did for Valérie's classmates at the end of the school year, this year.

 

Wow, what a long post this is lol

 

So do you make your kids birthday cakes or to you buy them?  Do you let them choose the theme that they want?

 

 

 

Menu for the week of July 29th to August 2nd

 

Here's our menu for this week.  I haven't made a menu all summer and I was always wondering what to cook. So I'm back at it now.


Monday: Pork Chop with wild rice and corn.
Tuesday: Haddock and wedge potatoes with a salad
Wednesday: Left over (as Thursday is garbage day ;) )
Thursday: Steak, bake potatoes and string beans
Friday:   Soup and grill cheese with carrot sticks
Saturday & Sunday: Extended Family get together on my dad side where we camp all weekend.



I only plan for diner. Lunch is easy, as we often eat leftovers or sandwich or whatever we want.  Do you plan your meal for the week? Do you plan EVERYTHING (snack, breakfast, lunch, diner) or just diner?

It's Bittersweet!

 

For those that didn't know this yet, I’m a school interventionist and I love my job.  I have been in this last school for 6 years now and loved almost every minutes of it. Our old school was built in 1953.  It was a school that had a Chapel at the back. 

 

In the 1990’s beginning of 2000, the parents had to fight hard to keep their school. There were about 70 students at the time and the school district wanted to close it.  The parents won!

The Chapel has since been transformed in a gym (which was not a real gym) and a cafeteria at the same time. Every day, at 10:45, the janitor had to get all the cafeteria tables out and ready for 11.  Then after all three diners, at 12:30, he had to wash all the tables and floor so the gym teacher could teach at 1:05. We had so over grown our little school that there was 12 portables classes attached to the original structure.

 

My office had no window, a bit bigger than a closet, had a staff washroom and the (half) elevator door in it. Oh how convenient you may say!   Not convenient at all.  Most of the time, it was a pain, especially when I needed to meet with some students. We were always interrupted. But man did we have fun!  Staff playing prangs on the others,  lots of laughs and just plain having fun while doing do’s with what we had (or didn’t have).

Working in our school, you had to not have any personal bubble. There was no space to have one lol. Coming from a small school, you learn to know the parents and the grandparents. It is really a family school! Entering in the school, there was like a positive aura.  There was something special about our school and staff.  That’s what everyone that came in said.  We are about 30 full-time staffs and about 4 part-time. We are like a family. The dynamic between everyone is one of a kind. You can feel the positive energy.

Last Thursday, they started demolishing the old school. In a few weeks, there won’t be any trace left of our old school. Some may ask why they didn’t try to preserve the old building?  It was in a shape of no returns. There was mold hitten in the walls. You could smell it.  When they started demolishing, they found espesis (don’t know how to spell this lol) in the chapel walls.

 

Now in September 2013, we will be welcoming 238 students in a brand new school!  The new school has been built on the same lot. I will get a new office with an actual desk and A WINDOW!!! I know where my desk will be ;)  But I will miss the old school.  We have made such good memories.  I hope that everything won’t change too much. Oh, I know it will. There won’t be as much traffic in my office. It will be SO quiet. My office will be the farthest from the classes (I used to be able to basically hear everything that was going on). We always joked that if we found the new school too big, that we will just need to all go in my office to feel like we did in the old one.

There are so many positives with the new school! The students will actually have a REAL gym and cafeteria.  There will be places for those that need to intervene with students (we use to just sit on the floor in the hall). I will actually be able to see my students without interruption. Work wise, I will be able to do so much more!!! Can’t wait to finally put foot in the new school! We heard a lot about it, but weren’t allowed to go in.  The new school will be ready at the beginning of August.

In the meantime, I will probably have a few tears for the old school as it is being demolish, but will be so happy that we finally have a new school!!!

Visit at the dentist

***Update: After only putting the little mirror in Valérie's mouth and $39 later, the dentist told my husband that she had lost the cap on her tooth (which was what I thought) and that he didn't do that as an on call dentist. "Here a prescription so she doesn't feel pain anymore, and wait for your dentist to come back from her vacation".  Wow! I was surprise. I though that he was there to fix thing. He knew that my dentist was on vacation until August 6th.  I will try to reach a dentist Monday. Hopefully I can get it fix before it gets worst.  We are leaving on vacation for a week on Friday. ***

My oldest, Valérie, came to me, crying, yesterday telling me that one of her tooth hurt so bad L  I ask how long it has been hurting? She told me it has been “a lot of days” but she didn’t want to tell me because she was scare that I would be mad at her. Poor thing! (You would think that I was a mean mom lol) I checked her tooth and could see that it was the same one that the dentist fixed when she was 3 or 4 (can’t remember).  The dentist had put a cap on, as the tooth had crack.  I’m guessing that maybe the cap is not on the tooth anymore and that is why she is in pain.

Have you ever try calling your dentist or any dentist on a Friday and in July? I haven’t until yesterday, noon! WOW! What a job.  Call my dentist first. The office is close for vacations until August 6^th.  Then I proceed to call at least 10 more. On the 10, 8 were on vacations until the second week of August and 2 were close on Friday.  This mom was starting to panic. I wanted my daughter’s pain to stop like yesterday. Finally, I posted something on my status on Facebook.  A friend of my told me you could get information for a dentist on call from the hospital.  So I call the front desk and was given the number.  I proceed to call the on-call number.  The receptionist told me that the dentist would call me back within 24 hours, but that because it was 1pm it should be today. He did call back, but it was the longest 3 hours of my life!!! At least, Valérie wasn’t in pain anymore. I had given her Advil to help.

We have an appointment at 11:30 this morning. Hopefully, all will go well. I really hope that it is a great dentist, as Valérie loves going to the dentist and I wouldn`t want her to get a bad experience. My husband is going with her as he is able to stay calm. I, on the other hand will cry with her if she cries and I am honestly scare of dentist. So I don’t go with the kids so they won’t know it lol.

 

I’ll update my post later on tonight to let you know how it went.

Happy Birthday Audrey!

Four years ago, today, I gave birth by C-section to a beautiful 6.11 pounds little girl.  I was so excited to have another girl!  I wanted it so bad.  I have a great relationship with my sister and I wanted Valérie (my oldest) to have the same.  Little did I know that I would live through a lot of emotions and sleepless nights the second time around.  Audrey threw up after every feedings for the first month of her life. The poor thing couldn’t keep up with the flow of my breast milk coming out.  I had to pump as much as I could BEFORE feeding her. She was basically skin and bones. She was so tiny.

She barely slept at all. Her 3 naps were generally 15-20 minutes longs and she didn’t sleep through the night either. What a difference with my oldest that slept through the night at 1 month old.  Audrey just started sleeping through the night about 4 months ago. Yes 4 months ago, at 3 years and 8 months old.  How many times did my husband came from work and I would just look at him crying, giving him the baby and telling “Hi mon amour! I’m going to bed”? At least every second day.  Because of him, I was able to keep myself somewhat sane haha.  On the bright side, at least she was always a happy baby! Always smiling and giggling.

This tired mommy didn’t enjoy the mistletoe as other would have. Her first tooth, at 5.3 months resulted of her biting me while breastfeeding, ouch!  I so remember crying when she started crawling.  That meant that I now had no time to relax at all!!!  She was only 5.5 months old.  She started walking at 9 months and running by 10. 

I know I sound negative, but those were my thoughts back then. I still remember those feeling even after 4 years.  I always joked that Audrey made sure that I didn’t have a third child lol.  But beyond all of this, my little Audrey is a little clown. She always makes us laughs.  She’s a real sunshine! She a hugger. Once you know Audrey, you don’t forget her. That is the effect she has on everyone.

We had a GREAT day today, celebrating with little friends. We had a celebration over the week end with the family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins…).  She was so happy to see everyone.

 

 

I love the little girl she is growing up to be! Happy Birthday my little princess!  I love you so much xox

I'm not a clown

I will be adding from time to time funny things that my kids says or do.  Here's the first one.  A day with one of my friends.  Audrey was being silly.

Renee: "Oh my little clown face!"
Audrey  looked at her very seriously and replied: "I don't have a clown face, I have a little girl face!"

About Me

Maybe it's time that I introduce myself!

My name is Linda. My first language is French, so bare with me if I do some spelling/grammar mistakes ;)
I'm a wife to a wonderful man, Kevin, and a mother to two beautiful girls, Valérie-6 and Audrey-4. I'm also a school interventionist and an Avon lady. Life is a like a joggling game.  I try to love every minute of it, even if it's not always easy.  This blog will mainly be about my perception of every moment and my thoughts about things that happen everyday!

Looking forward to your comments/opinions.

Happy blogging!

MAMANNNNNNNNNN (MOMMMMMMMMMMMMMM)

Oh the joy to be a mom!  I love my girls with all my heart, but after hearing MAMANNNNNNNNNNN practically all day, I (sometime) have a lot less patience toward them.  Audrey, my youngest (almost 4) is the one that would say it the most.  Today, I have lost patient.  When she said MAMANNNNNNNNNN (yet again), my ton of voice changed and I answer “WHAT AUDREY?”  Her respond was “I love you so much maman!”.  Ouch! This maman felt like hidding. I felt so bad for loosing patient toward her.  The lesson learned today: stay patient even if it’s the 100^th times I hear MAMANNNNNNNNNNNNNN.

One day I actually asked my oldest, Valérie-6, why they always said MAMANNNNNNNNNNNN even when PAPA was right there. Her answer was that they always say Maman cause I always answered right away, has for papa, they practically always have to repeat themselves. Lol Loved it! And it’s so true.

 

Is it MOMMMMMMMM or DADDDDDDDDD in your house?

A Summer Day

It was 40C with humidex today.  I will rarely complain about the temperature has there is nothing that can be done.  But for me, 40C (104F) is way too hot!  I can’t understand my friend that loves it and that thinks that this is the perfect temperature to go to the beach. I will rather stay home with the air conditioning on.  Well, I did try hard to stay in the house, a thing that is not always easy with kids that loves to play in the little pool.  I would usually let the girls play outside by themselves but not when they play in the water.

 

How hot is too hot for you?