I touched on an important point in my last post. I feel waaaay less holiday stress this year… I don’t know if it because I’m not dreading another Christmas without my Mom or because I have had less stress and drama in my personal/social life. Besides hot lunch, which has been running rather smoothly, I’m just a parent that can volunteer if I choose to. I have actually been able to attend events this year! I know, crazy! So, without that added stress I’ve been able to find more holiday spirit than I have in years!
Let me just take a minute to set a scene in your mind before I introduce myself. I’m sure it will be one that all you parents out there can relate to. Do you ever have that moment where you’ve just sat down after a day of pure insanity? That moment where you’ve just poured yourself a glass of wine, the kids are settling down for bed, and your think to yourself: Self, you’re in the home stretch, you can start to relax now! Only to hear a little voice pipe up with the inevitable ‘mommy I need some water’ request?
All the while you are thinking: Ha, of course you do! You little shit’s always need water once you go to bed. Every. Freaking. Night! So you wait for it…The repetitive, ‘Mommy I need some water’ requests that seem to go on FOREVER. Today for me, it continued of course, but with a twist from the usual…
Darling Son: “Mommy I need some water to flush the coins down my throat!”
Mom: “I’m sorry, WHAT did you just say?”
#&$^&^#?!! {#($*#($&@!}*???! That is a picture of what my brain did at that moment. Disorganized chaos, with a lot of punctuation for emphasis…
I take a deep breath and regroup, and using my parenting voice I gently and calmly say: “Sweetie, did you just tell me that you have coins in your throat?”
My blond-haired darling solemnly looks up at me and croaks out, “Yes mommy, I have two coins and they’re stuck in my throat.”
“You mean pretend coins right?” I continue in my parenting voice.
“No mommy real coins, two! I put them in my mouth, and my tongue swallowed them, I didn’t.” he replied.
“Oh, okay then. Well let’s go get your shoes, because we need to go to the hospital.” At this point his eyes well up and tears start to flow…
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Okay, so that is how my parenting conversation went. The conversation in my head went more like this…
Darling Son: “Mommy I need some water to flush the coins down my throat!”
In my Head: WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY?????!!!! Please be lying! Please be lying!
Parent Voice “Sweetie, did you just tell me that you have coins in your throat?”
Darling Son: “Yes mommy, I had two coins and they’re stuck in my throat.”
In my Head: Oh Shit! Oh Shit! How is this even possible? SAY SOMETHING IMPORTANT WOMAN!!!!
Parent Voice “You mean pretend coins right?”
Darling Son: “No mommy, 2 real coins! I put them in my mouth, and my tongue swallowed them, I didn’t.”
In my Head: Shit! Shit! Shit! You’re not lying! PANIC, PANIC, PANIC! MUST DO LIFE-SAVING THINGS!!!
Don’t Panic! He’s swallowing and talking so they probably went all the way down.
STAY FUCKING CALM WOMAN! You’ve got this! You do stupid mental drills in your head for this kind of thing all the time because you’re weird. It’s emergency go time, let’s do this! Go team Mom! BOOM!
And yeah… There they are, both of them, in the belly.
The promised introduction…
My name is Danielle. I live in Penticton with my husband, our two children (4-year old son & 7-year old daughter), and our two giant dogs.
😂 She had to keep “Darling Son” home for the week while she was on Poop Patrol. (did you just sing Poop Patrol Poop Patrol we’ll be there on the double? 🎶 Yeah, me too 😂).
While she was digging for treasure… so was I.
Christmas chocolate treasure!
Ninja bought me a wonderful Purdy’s advent calendar this year and my nightly ritual has been Heaven. Every night I take my beautiful box down off the shelf, untie the ribbon, find the next little treasure box, take my delectable chocolate out, retie a perfect little bow and put it back on the shelf.
This week we finished up our gifts for the Girl’s classmates. I love this treat! It was easy and not expensive. The only downside was that the week AFTER I bought all the Goldfish… my PC points offered 3000 points for every $10 spent on Goldfish 😡!
Chicken Tortellini Soup
Adapted from A Spicy Perspective
1 tablespoon oil
1 large sweet onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
2 cups carrots, sliced
4 garlic cloves, pressed
2 chicken breasts
9 cups chicken broth
8.8 ounce package tortellini
2/3 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons parsley, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
1/2 teaspoon paprika
Salt and pepper
Place a large sauce pot over medium heat. Add the butter and chopped onions. Saute for 3 minutes to soften.
Add whole chicken breasts, chicken broth, thyme, crushed red pepper, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper to the pot. Bring to a simmer. Lower the heat a little and simmer 15 minutes, until the chicken in cooked through.
Turn the heat back to medium. With the broth still simmering, stir in the tortellini. Stir well so it doesn’t stick together.
Once the tortellini is cooked through, about 10-14 minutes, turn off the heat. Stir in heavy cream and parsley. Taste, then salt and pepper as needed.
This week a birthday package came from Uncle Smelly and Auntie! The Girls LOVE their gifts from them. They are the only ones without kids (although we are still holding on to hope 😉) but their gifts are ALWAYS spot on! It may be because they are big kids themselves lol. This year the Girl’s received a knitting craft, a book, a pottery wheel, and a “new” backpack. SBean HAD to wear it that very day… she now thinks she is a superhero… Captain Jolt 😂.
We finished up Brownies for 2016 with some good old fashioned caroling 🎤. We took the Girl’s to the Retirement home my Nana lived in. It was pretty amazing. It brought back memories of doing the exact same thing with my Brownie group in Winnipeg, so many years ago. The true spirit of Christmas is watching the elderly folk’s eyes light up with each song. Very special. They asked anyone who didn’t have the flu shot to wear a mask. We decorated them and not 1 girl had an issue with them. Lucky we wore them too because I would have hated to pass on our cold to them 😷!
Unlike HBear the marshmallow, SBean was born for the cold weather! It’s weird because HBear was born in Winnipeg and SBean was born here. As the temperatures get cooler she becomes happier?!?!
I was out finishing up my shopping… that’s right, finishing 🤗 and I decided to go to a local deli and get a sandwich. Best.. Sandwich. Ever. Love me some Il Vecchio!
Like I mentioned, HBear and I picked up a cold this week. On Friday morning HBear came into our room crying that her tummy and head hurt. She was on fire but she was shivering. She spent the whole day sleeping and whimpering. By 3pm I was in fever mode too.
At least she got to participate in the hot cocoa part.
We spent the weekend sleeping and doing lego and puzzles. The calm before the storm.
0 thoughts on “Chicken Tortellini Soup, Digging for Treasure and Christmas Spirit”
Saw that you were involved with cookie dough fundraising. How did that go?
We offer those programs at https://www.easy-fundraising-ideas.com/products/cookie-dough-fundraiser/ and we are always looking for feedback from people that sell cookie dough.
It went very well! We did online and paper orders and sold over 600 pails. We were running 2 other fundraisers at the same time and our school has just under 300 students. I would say it was a great fundraiser :).