Tales From a “GREEN” Minivan

From the time my daughter was little she’s always been so different from myself. A friend of mine whose daughter is a few months older always used to joke we got the wrong kids! Her daughter was always so rough and tumble and Mackenzie was always super careful didn’t really enjoy sports and was a real girlie girl unlike my Tom Boyish ways growing up. Over the years I’ve always heard how much my own mother and I were alike so I just assumed that Kenz would eventually gain some similar traits.  Can you believe that it’s taken me 13 years to finally realize that that’s not going to happen.

I think many parents have so many expectations for their kids, but so often their expectations are too high and just not realistic.  I was the social butterfly, always around a group of friends, talking on the phone, having sleepovers etc. Mackenzie is just as content to be with a bound sketchbook and pen or a good novel  off in the corner by herself.  Is she lonely? Perhaps.  Do I worry about her? On a daily basis.  The thing is I need to accept her for who she is for her to grow as an individual. I can encourage her strengths like art and protect her from the things that cause anxiety.  These things are the very things I thrived off of when I was her age, organized group activities.  We’ve tried to encourage her to join Cadets and that was a bust, sports are not her thing, so our next step is finding something that she loves and that is art.

From the time she was very young I knew she had a talent. This is one of her drawings that she drew for me at age three.  Most kids at three years of age are still content to scribble on blank pages, but not Mackenzie she wanted to create art. Over the years she has continued and amazes us daily with her creations.  She’s always very modest and self critical, I think this may be the sign of a true artist?

She’s now branching out to different forms of drawing she has a computerized drawing Tablet and uses photo shop to colourize black and white sketches.  It truly amazes me on a daily basis.  Here’s a few recent things that I grabbed to scan when she wasn’t looking. She hates praise and I’m not sure if she realizes just how talented she is.

I know I’ve mentioned the new Laundry room a few times now, but I decided it’s important enough in my life to warrant an entire entry of it’s own. First off a huge thank you to my nextdoor neighbour Greg who is a plumber and could make all of this magic happen!  Here’s the old kitchen “laundry closet” soon to be my “utimate pantry” (this will be an upcoming post as I need your best ideas!

For the past 7 years I had been doing laundry in my kitchen, which I know is not that bad as I didn’t have to lug everything down to the basement, but to me a kitchen is for food, appliances and eating, not buzzers, mismatched socks and dryer lint!  The old laundry team- my trusty Maytags that I bought from a friend have been great machines for the past 12 years. When we decided to move things upstairs we realized that they were not going to fit in the 4×7 room, so a stacked front loading set was the answer.  I decided to look up that friend that I bought the Maytags  from all those years ago, and noticed her current machines from some Facebook photos were much older.  I decided to pay it forward and offer the machines back to her.  She was delighted!

The new Silver Blue Kenmore set has been here for about 6 weeks, but it wasn’t until about 3 weeks ago that we got everything installed.  I am in laundry bliss!  It’s amazing this new technology. Wow did I ever sound like my grandmother there, but it’s so true! Now wash cycles do seem to take longer, but the dryer totally makes up for that.  Most loads are completely dry in about 25 minutes! I think it would take me longer to walk downstairs and hang out my clothes on the clothesline than to wait for them in the dryer!

I still need to set up some sort of shelving unit on the right hand wall.  Ideally I’d like to have an area for detergent, a place to hang things to dry and a place to store empty laundry baskets. Yes they’re empty, before they always had either dirty items, or stuff that had not yet been folded or folded but not yet put away. So send me your ideas!

I’m looking forward to getting everyone back into a scheduled routine this week including my night owl husband!  We’ve had a pretty laid back summer and did fairly well getting out the door on time but there was a few days of sleeping in that can’t happen once school starts.

My plan this week is to make a few meals in the slow cooker and also have a Friday Family Fun Night with a themed meal. . Ironically on my way home from Toronto one of my husbands friends who works for Jarden in Florida (the maker of Crockpots) asked me to check out their new Crockpot iPhone App, it’s still in the soft-launch process, but I’ll be sure to report back on my findings after playing with it for a few weeks.

This weeks menu:

Slow Cooker Lasagna- this was a big hit with the Slow Cooker Club and I actually didn’t end up testing this one out yet. I made a couple of substitutions as I was too cheap to by ricotta, so I went for Cottage Cheese instead.  Can’t wait to try it!

Slow Cooked Prime Rib Soup- This is a specialty of mine.  I don’t really have a recipe, I just whip it together and it’s always delicious.  I use the leftover meat and bones from a Prime Rib Roast as the base, but first I sauté the veggies (potatoes, turnip carrots, onions and celery if I have it) in some butter and salt and pepper then I add the Prime Rib and bones and let it slow cook all day with a little thyme for seasoning.

Home Made Pizzas- I’ve posted my Pizza Dough Recipe before a couple of years ago, it’s super easy to make and is so tasty. I think I’ll also make some mini pizzas for the boys lunches as well, now that they’ll be coming home for lunch (this should be interesting)! Mackenzie really likes Donair Pizza, so I’ll do one of those, mini-pepperoni for the boys and BBQ Chicken for Andrew and I.

Seafood Chowder- This is my Christmas Eve staple, but I generally make it every couple of months.  I noticed Fresh Haddock was on sale this week, and I have some frozen lobster already to add to it.  I really like the Sobeys Chowder Mix as they don’t add Salmon to it, I’m not a big fan of Salmon.  Perhaps I’ll make some fresh bread to go with it, Helen has been experimenting with some breads on her blog so I should go check it out!

I’m going to do a separate entry for my Friday Family Fun Night, can’t wait!