Hubby has been away since last Thursday.  And you are surprised I haven’t blogged about it yet?  Well, being that I was alone with the kids and only have Mickey to guard the house (his bark isn’t quite a bark, not like Cosmo’s old bark) it just didn’t seem like I should be putting it out there on the internet, you know?

So, yes, Hubby has been away at a conference and we have kept ourselves pretty busy so that we wouldn’t notice how much we missed him.  The kids have been great.  Friday through until Tuesday, they slept in every morning and I got some pretty great sleep.  It all went downhill on Tuesday morning when they woke up at 5:30am for the day. And since it was the day for Opa to arrive, it was ok with me, I got a lot accomplished on Tuesday.  I baked up a couple of batches of mini-loaves, one pumpkin the other lemon.

Of course, I didn’t know that Opa doesn’t eat pumpkin.   All the more for me!  With Opa’s arrival last night, I felt a sense of relief that my back-up had arrived.  The kids finally went to bed.  Only to have Apple wake up every 45 minutes until 3am.  It would appear that she caught her brothers cold and could not sleep properly.  She slept from 3am until 7:30am which was great, but I am spent, done, ready for bed.  I hope that tonight is better I could use a good nights sleep.

For our special dinner tonight we had Party Chicken.  This is another of my Aunt’s recipes, she is a wonder that woman.  easy, easy, easy is all I can say.  My Aunt cuts the chicken breasts into small pieces, but I  leave them whole.  Line a pan or dish (depending on how much chicken you use) with dried beef, we don’t get this in Canada, so I use any dried salami or beef from the deli counter, wrap the chicken with a strip or two of bacon, lay on the dried beef, mix a can of cream of mushroom soup with 1 cup of sour cream, pour over chicken, bake for one hour at 350.

And tada!! Serve with potatoes or rice and choice of vegetable (more photos on flickr).

I felt terrible that Hubby wasn’t here to see the kids with Opa, sitting playing Lego, then after supper Opa, A and J played Monopoly Jr.  It was a great evening and makes me wish we had so many more of these nights together.

Back to normal with Hubby home tomorrow, can’t wait.

In keeping with the handmade tradition that I started last year, I have been working feverishly on a handmade gift that I finally finished!  Yahoo!  And this is why I have not been paying enough attention to my blog lately.  I committed myself to finish this caplet and I needed every spare minute and then some.  I think it turned out great.  If only I had uploaded the photo and realized that I was not in focus before I packaged it up and sent it off.  Either way you get the essense of the caplet.  It took me seven days to knit.  Non-stop knitting (as in during naps, and evenings, only stopping long enough to get in my reading time before bed) but alas it is finished.  I think it turned out well and can’t wait to see it on the person it was intended for.   Now, back to my pumpkin hats.  I have another order of four to do up before I can even think of doing some more for my shop.  I guess next year I will start much earlier if I want to really stock up on them.

My next handmade gift is a gift close to my heart.  I gave the gift of my photography.  I know this has been my life long dream to be a photographer, but I truly wanted to start giving some of my photography as gifts because it is the reason I take photos to begin with, to share with others.  So these too were packaged up today and sent off, both are the same photo, but because they are framed differently they look a little different.  I hope to keep on with my new tradition of handmade gifts and am already organizing my Christmas list.

And just because we were laughing and having fun the other day, here are two happy photos of J and Apple.  I am so blessed with happy kids that I just had to share.