breakfast | Lessons from my daughter

Emily is starting grade 11 on Wednesday!

I can’t believe my baby is 17 and going into grade 11…

So as of today, we need to get into our school routine and one thing we absolutely need is food!

Homemade meals for lunches and dinner.

So today, we cooked…

Before we tackled this cooking, we had to eat so hubby made us breakfast

Toast with bacon, egg, fresh tomato and avocado covered under mozzarella. You gotta love a man who can cook!

I made one of Emily’s favorite. Shepperd’s pie! Only corn, no peas and carrots…. If you make yours with peas and carrots, it’s perfectly fine with me. Should you invite me for dinner and serve Shepperd’s pie with peas and carrots, I will eat it and love it but mine is made with corn.

Last week, I discovered Shake N Bake… How did I go 40 years without knowing I could do this with chicken is puzzling to me… So today I made chicken fingers. Easy to make, good on their own with dipping sauce and succulent in sandwiches.

Jonathan made his biscuits…. yummy delicious and oversize biscuit. Good with fresh jam, nutella, peanut butter and bananas or with soup…

Speaking of soup I made a yummy Potage Parmentier. Mine is a really simple recipe. Leek, a little garlic, potatoes and vegetable broth. Once it is all cooked, it goes in the blender. No cream required!

Today we added a small amount of mushrooms because they were chopped 🙂

I can make many yummy meatloaf but today, Jonathan decided he was making a meatloaf inspired by a recipe in his new cookbook: The Ketogenic Cookbook

I say inspired as we didn’t have all the ingredients…

I call this, his caterpillar meatloaf…

Regardless of the look of it, it’s delicious.

I made my zucchini-banana bread loafs (minus the nuts) into muffins so Emily can take them to school!

I also have chicken salad for sandwiches, lots of veggies for crudites and dip, a variety of cheeses, some fruits and many snacks for the lunch boxes.

Oh, and I still have everything I need to make another one like this!

Today was a good day, except for the part where we hit 30 degrees celsius which is 86 degrees farenheit and we have a tiny AC unit that didn’t quite cool down the kitchen, even with a fan on…

Saturday April 11th 2015

I have had my new camera since Christmas but haven’t had a chance to take it out yet….

I could have taken it out but there was just too much snow for me to care but today… today was going to be different!

First, we went out for breakfast and I sat across the table from Emily and took pictures… Emily had a big bright window behind her so I had to play with the settings quite a bit.

I also told Emily not to worry about me taking so many pictures.

I LOVE those 2 pictures!!!

My girl, just being my girl.

Next, we were scheduled for make-overs at our MAC store at the mall.

Remember how we were there for the Cinderella at MAC release? After spending a small fortune, Alicia invited us back for make-overs.

Today was make-over time!

We arrived just before 1pm and Alicia was kind enough to book Emily and I sitting next to each other. She also booked us for a little bit longer than the allotted 30 minutes as she had noticed that Emily needed a little more time to be comfortable enough to be touched by a make-up artist.

I was assigned to Rachel who was great and allowed me to stop and take pictures of Emily whenever I had a chance. I also made sure I had their permission to use their names and pictures in my blog!

Ladies if you read this, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for being so accommodating and for making my daughter feel like a top model.

Emily picked her colors and decided what she wanted to get done.

She went with purple!

Emily allowed Alicia in her bubble.

Emily and Alicia!

To all employers out there! You can’t train someone to be like Alicia was with Emily. This ability to make someone feel comfortable is a talent, not a skill. Alicia must have been in contact with others that have special needs or she has an affinity… or both!

She is now part of a select group of people that have reached out to Emily and made her feel just like everybody else. She is now a friend of Emily. Not someone Emily will call to go out but someone Emily will say hello to and chat with and return to the MAC store to buy more stuff because Alicia is there!

Maybe this is what “they” mean when “they” talk about inclusion.

For all the kids that are being in proximity to someone like Emily, a percentage will go on with their life and remember that they had school mates that just wanted to be treated like school mates… Those kids will grow-up treating people around them with respect, regardless of their differences.

Today, Alicia did just that. She gave Emily more time, she allowed her to be herself and made her look beautiful.

Thank you Alicia, my girl looked like she belonged on a magazine by the end of our session!

What Emily didn’t know at this time… is that we had a big surprise in store for her at 3:30pm

We had a late lunch/early dinner planned with family members…

She figured out as soon as she got to the table that this was no ordinary lunch.

Barb did such an amazing job decorating the table and wrapping Emily’s box. We are so lucky to have relatives in the same town we live in.

Most people take family for granted. We lived far away from families for many years so now that we have relatives near by, we enjoy them and I think they enjoy us!

Today, Emily finally got the confirmation that she will be meeting the dolphins from The Dolphin Tale movies.

We are going to Florida:

We will go to the American girl doll store in Orlando
We will go to Clearwater Marine Aquarium to see Winter
We will visit the Harry Potter theme park
We will visit Animal Kingdom
We will visit Epcot (eat in Japan)
We will visit Magic Kingdom

Thank you Sunshine Foundation of Canada.

I sent my first fax to the foundation in September 2012…. 2 years and 8 months later….

See the tears of joy? This is the girl who wasn’t supposed to understand and show emotions…

The table looked awesome and Emily was so excited that she barely ate….

So after this early dinner, we decided to end the day with a hockey game. We went to see our beloved Moncton Wildcats play the Halifax Moosehead in the second round of the play-off.