Books and baking

Monday 17th. Asher is so pleased that I have finally allowed her to look through these body books. She will often just sit and look through them. She is getting much better with turning thin pages.

Hannah and Hezekiah absolutely LOVED listening to Brendon read The Book with No Pictures. So much fun. If you want a copy they are on special at the moment (NZ$26 down to NZ$19). Just click here. And they have free international shipping too!

This evening all three of my older girls joined me for Zumba. Sofia enjoyed having them all there and it was fun for me too. It was great to see how much Hannah had improved in just 1 week. I had given her some simple tips for some of the moves and she did so well.
Next week is the last one for this year - so they will probably all three join me again for that last one. Then we have to wait till February to get going again. I'm going to miss it. And I think Hannah and Ruth will too.

Tuesday 18th. Asher has been waking up early lately. I then bring her into my bed, hoping she will get back to sleep (and allow me a bit more rest). She is generally not interested in getting back to sleep and this morning she managed to wake me up by tickling me with raspberries on my cheek. It had me laughing so much and was a fun way to wake up.
The photo was taken later in the day when she decided it was time to tickle Mum again. :-)

Wed 19th. I used buckwheat flour for the first time today and made some banana waffles for the children to have for breakfast. Buckwheat, despite it's name, is actually a seed. So a nice gluten free option. The waffles were a great success. The only problem was that I just threw things in and although I thought I wrote down what I did - I can't find the "recipe" anywhere. So more experiments will have to happen. :-)

When Hannah and Hezekiah spotted the rain they quickly headed out with their tent. Shadow didn't stay long with them and was the first one to head out the rain. I am glad they got out to play as early as they did (7:30am) because the wind picked up so much that it was a really wild day.
Ruth is not mad about our pan breads for lunch, so she came up with her own "pudding" recipe for lunch. She loves the mixture of the cheesecake that she makes every week, and so used that base recipe but left the egg out, added cream, left the lemon out and added more vanilla essence. Today she decided to make it have a bit of a caramel flavour too. A nice healthy lunch option for her. :-)

Thursday 20th saw Ruth making some donuts. She made these (gluten free) to take to Brownies for her Cooking badge. Safe for diabetics too (xylitol used instead of sugar). She also took a piece of cheesecake for them to taste.
Friday 21st. I just find it so cute when Asher climbs into the toy box to play.
Saturday 22nd. The girls were so pleased to be asked to join a massed orchestra that Ken was conducting with the North Canterbury Academy of Music. The practised last Sunday afternoon and then had the dress rehearsal last night. The concert was this evening. They all had a great time and were exhausted when they got home (very late).




Sunday 23rd. After breakfast we got working on lowering Asher's mattress. She had managed to fall out of the cot on Wednesday when I put her down for her nap. It ended up being a very long afternoon for me.
On medical advice I got her checked out at the local doctors (because the fall was over 90cm) and then we were very thankful to have gotten an appointment with her chiropractor later in the afternoon.
Ruth travelled in with me and was such a great help coming home when Asher was tired and hungry. Asher had put her neck out with the fall, so I was very pleased she could get it sorted so quickly. I was also very thankful that it did not cause an immediate seizure.
Unfortunately soon after this photo was taken on Sunday, she was outside with Brendon and the others and she did have a seizure.
Thankfully only 2 to 3 minutes and she got enough air in. It was very disappointing though, having not even made it to two weeks between this time.
She was very tired and a bit miserable through the morning but perked up nicely in the afternoon. Here she is playing a game of "hide and seek" with Brendon. They had so much fun and her little laugh was so contagious.
Rachel and I spent our time together in the kitchen today. I wanted to try making quinoa flour and used that and buckwheat in the waffles.
We used my normal waffle recipe and just changed the flours as well as adding a banana for extra sweetness. It made for a very light and fluffy mixture because of the extra effort of separating the eggs and whipping the egg whites before folding them in.
We decided to make donuts at the same time and those were really nice - so light and fluffy.
We were just about to take our "selfie" when Brendon came in to get Asher. So we had our first "photo bomb" too. :-) We both felt it added wonderfully to the photo though, not negatively effecting it at all (as is the official definition of a "photo bomb"). Thanks for the extra smile Brendon. We love you so much.