Musketeer Maisie

Ten days and nary a post. Our days have been filled and busy and at night I've been battling insomnia while also working on keeping Maisie's fears and night terrors at bay so needless to say I've been tired. In addition, during the day and most nights I've been stepping back from and away from the computer so that I could focus more on other things. I've been getting some things around the house more organized, I've spent more time cooking and trying new recipes as well as spending more time doing one-on-one activities with Maisie.

As I mentioned, I've been doing a lot more cooking as I'm trying to cut sugar and processed foods from all of our diets and the easiest way to do that is to cook everything from scratch. Of course I've made some of our favorite recipes as well as some new ones. After our trip to England and an awesome moussaka dinner at a friend's home I just had the taste in my head so I worked on perfecting my moussaka recipe. After two different attempts I came up with a recipe that, to my taste, is the ultimate moussaka recipe. Of course we now have about 12 servings packed away in the freezer but that will serve us well for nights when I don't have the time or energy to cook or for Eammon's lunches...I love having freezer meals! Some of my other new recipes have been crepes filled with bananas and a small amount of Nutella (total yum!), Moroccan Beef & Cauliflower Stew (good but not a keeper), Coconut Curried Butternut Squash (a huge hit with everyone and will be made again), Red Curry Chicken (another huge hit which will be made again and again) as well as a super simple tomato sauce with butter and onion which was fabulous and Eammon enjoyed it as part of a veggie pasta dish. Ive also been on a roasted veggie kick and I think that because the roasting brings out the sweetness of the vegetables, both Eammon and Maisie have enjoyed almost all of them.

The other day Maisie received a video message from her Dutch friend Kayodee whom she met in Aruba. So today she decided that she wanted to write to him and also make a video to send back. I've included her little video and letter in this post...mainly because every post needs a picture and I've been a total slacker lately when it comes to taking pictures of Maisie... Yeah, gotta work on that one.

It was after Maisie's swimming lesson today that she decided that she needed to write to Kayodee and considering that she talked continuously about him and swimming with him in Aruba and would he come visit and will he be in Aruba this year, I wasn't surprised. Maisie told me what she wanted to write and I just helped her with spelling some of the words.

In the video Kayodee sent for Maisie, he sang for her. So in return for his performance Maisie decided that she wanted to be a Musketeer in her video for him. Lately Maisie, K & A, when allowed, have watched Barbie and the Three Musketeers and I swear that the girls now cartwheel everywhere. If I ask Maisie to go pick something up from the floor or table, it's cartwheels back and forth. Interesting though, because she's often holding something in one hand or the other, she now almost has a one handed cartwheel down.

We are in for a cold and wet weekend but that won't put a damper on our fun as we're having friends over to play so fun times and pictures to come. Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend.