These past two weeks have been a bit rough. Aubrey has had a chest infection and we had a week of dr appointments.
On Monday between work and Aubrey's Dr appointment I decided to whip up a simple dinner using leftovers. I chopped up ham and fresh brocolli and tossed that with leftover rice. I put that in a greased baking dish.
I poured a mixture of equal parts mushroom soup-milk over the rice concoction. (Jeff took this picture and as he was watching me prepare this I think he was skeptical! I sometime look like a tornado in the kitchen, I admit it!)
I then topped that off with cheese and seasoned bread crumbs.
I baked this for 40 minutes at 375F. It tasted a bit like risotto; this literally took five minutes to put together... An easy meal for sure. I loved that the broccoli was not overdone.
By Tuesday Aubrey was on the mend; we received happy mail from my friend Steph. I think Aubrey sported her new touque for the rest of the week!
Since we had a lot of "home" time we decided to make up special valentine packages for her friends at school; which whom she desperately missed all week! We took a quick trip to Dollarama and picked up some supplies.
Since we were schedule to go back to the dr's yesterday, we decided to make up some monkey valentine cupcakes for the special ladies at the dr's office.
I found this recipe for carrot cake and cream cheese icing recipe on Pinterest. Then only reason I deviated from my go-to recipe was because I didn't have all of the key ingredients; pineapple being one of them.
I quickly whipped up the batter and told Aubrey she could help decorate the cupcakes with sanitized hands!
This carrot cake recipe was amazing; the Greek yogurt added a great tangy flavour and it wasn't too sweet. We didn't add the nuts as stated in the recipe but instead added raisins and coconut to give some texture.
I bought this monkey cupcake set at dollarama; I think I want to get these again for Liam's birthday! It came with the 26 cupcake liners, yellow sprinkles and 24 sticks with monkey faces for only $2; like what!??!
I used a round tip on my piping bag to make a smooth look for the monkey; I thought it was sock puppet-esque and the colour was perfect.
Aubrey put the monkey faces on and the yellow sprinkles.
I had these valentines packages from last years clearance. It's so nice to have plastic to individually wrap the cupcakes; it makes the perfect gift for one special person!
All ready for delivery!
Once the kids were in bed I wanted to have a salad for dinner; I needed a crunchy crouton-like addition for my salad....oh ya chips will work!
With the additions of crunchy ham, a whole avocado and potato chips I successfully turned a healthy salad into a not so healthy salad!
So yesterday the sickness drama took a little turn when Liam broke into a crazy rash from the medecine he was taking for his ear infection (yes we had separate dr's appoinments for him this week). Poor dolly but he really felt fine...the worse part was him missing his nap to go to the dr's office.
So last night once all was quiet I took time to sit and reflect. Wow; what a couple of weeks this has been; dr's visits, waiting rooms, multiple medications, sleepless nights... I am choosing to see the positive. Thank you Lord for Canada, thank you for health care and thank you that I am able to take my kids to a pharmacy to get them the medication they need. We are so very blessed. There is always someone who would trade their worse day for what may seem like your worse day. I am choosing to not be shortsighted and miss what is happening around me.
When we were leaving the dr's office yesterday Aubrey whispered to me, "Wow that was so much fun to give out the cupcakes, I think we made them happy!". I want to continue to instill in my kids that there is always something to be thankful for in the midst of any situation and you can always choose to be a blessing to others around you. The funny thing is that all of the things we planned for others actually brought such joy to us and made the time fly by; our mission statement continues to be "sharing is fun!".
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