Tag Archives: ASL

Meyer Lemon Pancakes and Homemade Lemon Syrup

Recipe, Sign Language, , , , , , , , ,

My husband brought home a bag of gorgeous, organic Meyer LEMONS, which are in season now (January-March). Meyer lemons are thought to be a cross between lemons and mandarin oranges, so you can imagine they have a sweetness to them in addition to the usual tang you find in lemons. Meyer lemons are also juicier, more tender and have a thinner peel than regular lemons. Swooning!
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These pancakes were INCREDIBLE -fluffy, a little sweet but tangy from the lemons, they cooked like a dream. I did some research to find recipes to use up these beauties and decided breakfast was the way to start: Lemon Pancakes amped up with the tangy sweetness of the Meyer lemons.
BUT WAIT!
Before I started on the pancakes, I made some Homemade Lemon Syrup from this recipe using freshly-squeezed Meyer Lemon juice. This quick and easy homemade syrup is full on lemony-goodness that makes a perfect complement to the lemon pancakes. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re dating now.

Homemade Lemon Syrup

1 1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup water
peel of 1 lemon, in large chunks

Place sugars and water in a medium saucepan. Heat over med-high heat, stirring occasionally. Add lemon peels and bring to a boil. Let boil for 2-3 minutes for thin syrup, 4-5 minutes for thicker syrup.
Recipe adapted from jensfavoritecookies blog
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Lemon Pancakes

1 cup all purpose flour
2/3 cup icing sugar (or 1/3 cup granulated sugar)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup plain yogurt or sour cream
1/3 cup milk
zest of 2 lemons
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
3 Tbs butter, melted
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
In another bowl mix together the remaining ingredients. Pour this wet mixture into the dry and stir quickly, only until just blended. The batter will be thick and bubbly. Pour about 1/4 cup of batter for each pancake onto a preheated hot griddle. Cook until bubbles come up and other side is golden brown. Flip over and cook for 1 more minute.

Serve with Lemon Syrup (above).

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Recipe adapted from “The Joy of Cooking”

YUM!

Here’s how to sign LEMON in American Sign Language.
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What do you do when life brings you LEMONS?

I Heart Chocolate

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Oh boy, it’s almost Valentine’s Day, and I met a woman yesterday whose family is partly responsible for bringing me some of my fondest memories of Valentine’s Day as a child. Her name is Karen Flavelle, and she is the owner of Purdy’s Chocolates in Vancouver, a company that currently ranks in the top 50 in Canada to work for. Karen spoke at my mom’s group, mCentred, and she lit up our boardroom full of moms telling us about growing up as the daughter of Purdy’s owner since 1963, Charles Flavelle. Now, as a mother of 3 grown kids, she explained how she and her husband managed to raise them while also lighting their own work worlds in business and finance on fire (lots of planning, teamwork and strategizing).

Apparently, chocolate didn’t play much into her own childhood unless they had parties and dinner guests, but if she and her siblings helped out at the factory on Saturdays, they were allowed to eat the chocolate at the end of the day -tummy aches usually followed. After university, Karen didn’t start out her business life working for her father, but she did work her way up the corporate ladders at General Mills and Cara Operations in Toronto before purchasing Purdy’s from her dad in 1997. She’s been hands on since then while also embodying one of the most dynamic and business savvy women in Canada. It was such a pleasure to meet her yesterday and hear her honest account of both the difficulties and triumphs of being a woman in a predominantly-male field. One member of our group asked her about the proverbial “glass ceiling” in the workplace for women.

Karen replied that the idea of a glass ceiling is directly related to how you look at problems and that a ceiling describes something you cannot control. She prefers to look at difficulties as hurdles. Hurdles are just obstacles to get past: you figure out the best way to do that -over, under, around, whatever -and keep making your way.

Now that’s what I call great advice!

Karen brought us 2 of Purdy’s new artisan Single Origin dark chocolate bars from Peru (slightly fruity, intense chocolate flavour) and Ecuador (roasty, more fudgy flavour) to taste test, and also some Himalayan Pink Salt Caramels to sample. I was swooning!
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So yes, I got my chocolate fill yesterday in that boardroom with Karen Flavelle, and also some amazing nuggets of wisdom from a fellow mom and business woman. But I’m still putting together some little bundles of love for my kids for Valentine’s day -I like to give them a small jar to fill with some candies & those beautiful foil-wrapped Purdy’s heart chocolates, as well as a new book. After school, we’ll come home and eat some chocolate and read by the fire before (a super-healthy) dinner. I can’t wait!

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Here’s Karen and I signing the ASL sign for CHOCOLATE:
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Thanks, Karen! (And I think I owe some credit to my mom for passing on her love for Purdy’s chocolate at Valentine’s Day, too!)

Happy Valentine’s Day to you, and your lovies!

Year of the Horse (and Noodles!)

Education, Parenting, Sign Language, , , , , , , , , , , ,

My husband is half-Chinese, and our daughter was the first grandchild born into his side of the family so we were all very excited to celebrate Ella’s first Lunar New Year when she was not quite one year old. I didn’t know much about Chinese culture, but during my pregnancy I had looked at the characteristics of being born under the sign of the HORSE (which is also the Chinese zodiac sign we just came into this week for 2014). By New Year’s, Ella was eating solids, and her proud Grandma made an incredible feast of traditional Chinese dishes meant to bring us good luck and fortune in the new year. One of the dishes Grandma made that Ella could eat was NOODLES.

Long noodles [mee-yan]

Traditionally, long NOODLES symbolize longevity and are served uncut. If the NOODLES are cut, it symbolizes cutting your longevity short. Only I didn’t know that -all I knew was that mealtime usually meant me sitting next to the high chair helping Ella keep bite-sized foods on her tray and hopefully into her mouth. Uh-oh.

Ella was hungry by the time we arrived for our New Year’s dinner that night, and I had plunked her right into the high chair as Grandma brought her a dish of NOODLES to get started on. I reached across to start cutting Ella’s NOODLES and I heard a gutteral, “Nooooooooooo…. don’t cut the NOODLES!” as she spied me while heading back into the kitchen for more food. My husband chuckled at the puzzled look on my face, and I was informed about the symbolic nature of long NOODLES.

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Oh dear. I had cut some of the NOODLES before she managed to eat any. I quickly scooped up the short NOODLES and replaced them with fresh, long ones. And against my better judgement and experience as a mother, I let Ella eat the rest of the long NOODLES, and she was in heaven! Anytime Mom lets food be fun is great, of course.

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I sat nice and close to supervise the eating, and we giggled a lot together as she manoeuvered the long, slippery NOODLES. My husband took these photos to remind me of the time I almost blew Ella’s first Chinese New Years (there are some short noodles on her bib, but we picked up the rest and replaced them with ones that would ensure a long, healthy life)!

Somehow along the way, her nickname became NOODLE, and we still affectionately call her that today.

Oh, mealtime is always an adventure!

Here’s Ella today doing the ASL sign for NOODLES:
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And the ASL sign for HORSE:
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Happy Lunar New Year to your family from ours!

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Shoe Crazy

Parenting, Sign Language, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Today got silly. After walking my son into his classroom this morning and kissing him goodbye (that’s not the silly part, he still willingly kisses me in public), he called out, “Shoe, take Mommy back outside!”. I laughed and said, “Oh nooooooo…”. Then I started to shake my right shoe towards the door and hop, mimicking that my shoe was, in fact, taking me outside by force. Ian giggled like crazy, and his teacher looked at me like I was actually crazy. Sorry, Ms. S, no time to explain!

ImageBut here’s what happened. Fifteen minutes prior to that exchange at school, I had asked Ian if he could find my other running shoe within the mountain of shoes and boots by the front door, while I searched for it in our equally disastrously full hall closet. Once found at the back of the closet, I pretended the shoe had been willfully hiding on me. “Look, Ian! Now it’s trying to escape and not join the other one on my foot!” I said, as I pretend-wrestled the shoe on. That lead to big giggles on the floor in our hallway. Then Ian took my lead and commanded the shoe to sit still while I tied it up, which brought on some full-on belly laughs. He continued to command the shoe to make me hop, jump up and down, and finally head outside to go to school with him. 

A truly silly moment that came out of nowhere.

I love those silly moments. Mindful parenting is no mean feat, and I learn on the job everyday. Ups and downs, hills and valleys, keep walking. But those silly, giggling moments together are what keep me feeling light in my heart. Truthfully, I will admit that I have days where it seems like there’s a disproportionate amount of seriously grumpy parenting moments verses silly, fun, and creative ones. And I think that’s part of why I write this blog, to keep myself accountable and to remember to BE silly and enjoy the lighter moments of parenting. My kids know the ASL sign for SHOES, and I don’t have to say it out loud when I want them to get their shoes on. I just call their name to catch their eye and sign it. Except when we pretend my shoe is controlling me, of course. Then we just giggle.

 

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Try using the ASL sign for SHOES when you are heading outside. The visual cue of signing SHOES while you say, “time to get our shoes on” can help kids of any age learn a very common routine, and stay on-task, without you even needing to use your voice.

Please tell me I’m not the only silly mom?

Garden Variety Family Walk

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We wanted to venture outside today beyond our soggy backyard, so my hubbie & kids headed back to the UBC Botanical Gardens -our first visit since August. Earlier this week one of my returning signing clients had asked me about the gardens after reading my summer canopy walk post, and I remembered we still hadn’t gone back to check out the cultivated gardens. The canopy walk is now closed for the season, but the forest trails and formal gardens are all open and admission is FREE now until spring! Lots of great exploring for little feet. Here are some photos from our day visiting the cultivated side of the gardens, which were still showing lots of colour and activity despite being November.
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My kids loved seeing all the veggies & plants growing in the huge Food Garden area:
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Ian chomped on some kale, literally (oops! we realized too late not to pick!):
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Have you ever seen a cultivated fruit tree growing flat against a structure? This is the side view of a full apple tree: (how did he get more kale?)
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We decided it was WAY more fun to read the Alpine Garden’s trough plant names out loud like they were spells from Harry Potter…
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…Scutellaria PONTICA!!
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There’s also a beautiful outdoor amphitheatre:
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Multilayerd stone & cement walls surround the amphitheatre:
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My daughter was inspired to show us the duck calls she learned at outdoor ed camp this week:
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To end, we raced the Labrynth around and around to the end -no skipping over lines!
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BYE-BYE!

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Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow…

Parenting, Sign Language, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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My little girl left yesterday to go to outdoor education camp with her grade 6 class. Okay, she’s not actually that little, I know, and she’s more than ready for a week away with her friends and teachers from school. But I was a bit teary and feeling tender as we pulled up to the school and schlepped her gear to the waiting bus. She saw my moist eyes and shot me a wide-eyed look of despair: please, please don’t gush and embarrass me with a million kisses and hugs, Mom! But that’s all I wanted to do.

I wanted to squeeze her until the very last minute before she got on that school bus.

I held my enthusiasm in as much as I could. I know she needed me to send her off strong. I took a deep breath and gathered my reserves. Suddenly I had a vivid memory of the first day I took her to daycare at 2 1/2 years old. She was a very social kid and was interested in the new toys and teachers that greeted us. I was encouraged to stay and play for a little while but then wisely told to move on without a lot of goodbyes or delays (those teachers were so smart!). It was terribly difficult to leave her, but I knew I had to go. I looked her in the eye as I stood at the door and signed “I Love You” before heading outside. I did that each and every time I left her at daycare, and it very slowly got easier to turn away and head out the door. Some days she cried when I left -tears would literally pour out of her eyes as she signed “I love You” back to me. But some days she didn’t cry. Some days I would have to call her name to catch her eye as she ran in and began playing with another little friend. But either way, soon enough we created a routine that always included saying “I Love You” in sign language before separating, and it was all ours.

Back at the school bus yesterday, I gave her a long hug and told her I loved her, and to enjoy every minute of camp and to tell me all about it when she got back. Then, because it was time for her to go, she turned around and started walking away, but before she got too far, I called her name and signed, “I Love You”. She smiled and signed it back to me, and I felt so much better.

LeeAnn&Kids

Ella signing “I Love You” with me & her brother, 2010

Poppies for Remembering

Parenting, Sign Language, , , , , , , , , ,

How to sign REMEMBER in American Sign Language:

Photo of me signing REMEMBER

Are you REMEMBERING our lost soldiers this weekend?

On November 11th in Canada, we observe Remembrance Day as a memorial to the members of our armed forces who have given their lives in the line of duty in wars since World War I. Poppies are a very visual symbol of Remembrance Day since 1920 after the poem “In Flanders Fields” was written, a poem which referred to the vibrant flowers that first grew in the churned-up earth of soldiers’ graves in Europe. The poem was written by Canadian physician and Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae on May 3rd, 1915, after witnessing the death of his friend, a fellow soldier, the day before.

Poppies are to be worn on your chest over the heart.

I REMEMBER learning the poem “In Flanders Fields” in school as a child, and now my elementary school-aged kids are bringing home their drawings of vibrant red poppies and renditions of the poem in social studies projects every November. Two years ago, my daughter’s girl guide troop made pretty felt poppies, and their creative craft inspired us to make more at home. We always pop some money into the Canadian Veterans Poppy Campaign donation cans and proudly support their efforts each year, but we don’t take a poppy from the tray.

Making the poppies is easy and only requires pieces of red and black felt and some black thread (after sewing the layers of felt together, we hot-glue safety pins to the back for attaching the poppies -this keeps those usually-used stick pins from pricking, and also keeps the poppy fixed in place instead of popping off). It’s a fairly easy craft for kids to do once they are able and old enough to cut with scissors and/or sew with a needle.

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Because they are handmade, our felt poppy brooches are all unique and garner lots of attention.

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My daughter and I made some extra poppies this year for grandma and grandpa and also some for the kids’ teachers. While stopping by to visit our good friends at Bloom Essentials Spa in Vancouver, owners Kim and Nicole’s enthusiasm for the poppies gave us an idea: my daughter and I could make more poppies for Bloom to sell at their front desk and then donate proceeds to the Veterans’ Poppy campaign.

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The $2 poppies sold out in a day, and I’ve since delivered another batch to the shop for the Remembrance Day weekend. More importantly, Kim and Nicole are also generously matching our donations to give to the veterans! I’m so proud that a fun craft with my daughter turned into an activity that could teach her the power of doing, donating, and REMEMBERING.

(a very special thanks to my friends and Bloom Girls, Kim & Nicole!)

Signs of Halloween

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HALLOWEEN is almost here! Much more than just candy and trick-or-treating, I’ve always emphasized the fun and playfulness of Halloween with my kids. Halloween is a very visual event, so take the opportunity to identify and talk about the things you see out in the world with your babies and kids. Putting ASL signs within your conversations will help your babies and kids learn new vocabulary, and it’s easy!

Here are some Halloween signs to keep you signing with your littles this week:

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Here’s a song you can use some signs in:

IF YOU’RE A GHOST (If You’re Happy & You Know It)
If you’re a ghost and you know it,
You say BOO,
If you’re a ghost and you know it,
You say BOO,
If you’re a ghost and you know it,
And you really want to show it,
If you’re a ghost and you know it ,
You say BOO!

Come inside for a little Halloween fun at my house!

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Yes, Halloween is one of my favourite family “holidays”. There’s lots of kid-friendly fun stuff to do outside at the farms, veggie stands, parks, and neighbourhoods. Inside the house, we decorate with crafts my kids have made in the past and present, and add some little scary touches. Little by little, we’ve found some traditions that have become our own which our kids look forward to every fall.

Around the second weekend of October, the Halloween bin comes out of the basement! We love to decorate the house a little, inside and out, to encourage trick-or-treaters. Decorating also allows our family to enjoy anticipating the big night. Outside, Christmas lights with ghosts on top light up our dark-at-night walkway:

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I’ve found that gel gems and wall stickers are one of the best bangs for my decorating buck because I’ve learned to be very careful in applying and removing them. And I always save the packaging and so I can re-use them yearly. These bat wall stickers were the perfect thing for our shoe bin in the front hall:

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Because my kids are old enough, I can let them help out (and go nuts) with decorating the bathroom mirrors and inside windows with gel gems (this guy greets us as we brush our teeth and also glows in the dark):

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Instead of emphasizing the candy, we always make lots of treats to eat at home and at parties. One of my favourite treats to make with the kids is creamy jello jigglers. I have a post with the full recipe for these, but here’s a look at the Halloween-themed jello we made this year:

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What kind of Halloween fun is your family up to?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Lee Ann

A Mom’s Back to School List

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widecrayonsbacktoSchool
Okay, July and August are now past tense, and I’m quite pleased with what we accomplished from our family summer bucket list (more on that very soon). As far as I’m concerned, though, it wasn’t truly back to school for us today because the kids went to school for 1 hour; I don’t really count that as school, that is just all the kids (& parents) seeing each other and reacquainting themselves with school life again. The teachers and school staff are fully launched back to work, oh yes! But myself and my kids? We are very slowly wading into the “back-to-school” waters, which is actually just how I like it: nice and slow.

My kids are starting grade 2 and grade 6 this year, with my daughter entering a brand new school for the grade 6 late-entry French Immersion program -we are all holding our breath to see how another location and different language works out for her, but I have a good feeling about it. So, tomorrow will be the first full day of school, and that’s where my brain is going now…

It’s time to make a new list just for ME! I work part-time teaching my baby sign language classes 3.5 days a week, and have 1.5 days to manage our home and work lives, as well as some volunteering. I want to make what little time I have work for me, not the other way around. Making a list has become a terrific way to remind myself of what’s important in life.

I’ve been thinking hard about what kinds of things fill me up so I don’t get run down while I fulfill my passion towards my family and my work.

These are some of the things I’m looking forward to doing once my kids are back in school:

My Mommy Back-to-School List
• Drinking my morning cup of tea while it’s still hot, in one sitting (no microwave warm-ups)
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• Riding my bike, by myself with no kids attached to mine or wavering ahead of me in
traffic:
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• Listening to CBC Radio 2 as I do the breakfast dishes

• Walking once a week in the forest trails with a BFF (Best Fitness Friend):
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• Creating my new wellness plan: a proper fitness schedule actually booked into my schedule, so no excuses

• Painting my summer-scraped toenails a fun, fall pattern like this:
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• Opening up my Pinterest “Recipes to Try” board and actually trying some of the recipes I’ve pinned

• Visiting the public library and leisurely perusing the brand new books shelf for ideas

• Looking over my own favourite cookbooks to get ideas

• Organizing some meal plans and recipes with shopping lists

• Making homemade soup like this Celery Potato with Blue Cheese recipe:
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• Going to my favourite yoga class and practicing at home

• Reading a novel I’ve been dying to read with a (hot) cup of tea

• Tackling some fall home projects like organizing my pantry & switching over the closets from summer to fall

• Booking some Mommy playdates & catching up with my friends

Fall is a good time to switch gears and think about a list for just you. Here’s a hot-cuppa-tea toast to all the things that “fill us up” so we can live & work better this fall!
Lee Ann

One Fun Thing

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One of our bucket list items this summer was to visit local tourist attractions that we normally don’t have time for during the school year. Have you been a tourist in your own town?

We had started the tradition a few years back to choose one fun thing to do as a family before the summer ended. Over the years we had done bike rides, pool visits to soak up the last of the sun, evening ice cream shop visits, little stuff like that. Several years ago, our daughter started begging us to go on one of those red trolley tour buses… oh, brother. My husband and I are not keen on tour buses and we found ourselves saying, “Oh, yes, sure, one day we’ll do that!”. And yes, we managed to distract her and not do that for quite a while, but finally the jig was up, and it was her “one fun thing” end of summer wish.
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So off we went, and we had a blast! We learned tons about our city, so many exciting things we had no idea about at all, and we caught the bug for being a tourist in our own town.

Flash forward to this year, and we decided to embrace the not-so-sunny weather this week for our “one fun thing” before summer ends. We hit the UBC Botanical Garden and Greenheart Canopy Trail, a new local destination for our family.
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It was a great place to go to on a cloudy day because the trees protected us from moisture (okay, yes, I mean rain!) and the cultured trails took us through all sorts of wild forest growth. We could let the kids run and play without getting lost easily. There is a paved path suitable for strollers:
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This path leads to the more formal cultivated gardens -an Alpine, Carolinian, Food, B.C Native Garden, and a very cool labrynth -that you access through this cool tunnel:
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We didn’t spend much time in the formal gardens, but my kids ran back and forth through this tunnel a few times listening to the echo as they ran yelling at the top of their lungs,
“ECHO! ECHO!.. Echo!… echo!… echo…”

There’s also a woodchip path which leads you through all sorts of glades and more wild forest areas.
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Following the woodchip path leads you to the Greenhart Canopy Walkway which is a suspended trail system which allows you to literally go up into the trees and walk 75 feet above the forest floor.
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So, because we were now those people who liked guided tours, we waited at the trail entrance to meet the free forest guide:
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(It’s entirely possible we might have played leap-frog here).

The guided tour was fantastic! We got to listen to an enthusiastic university grad student who also had helped build the walkway tell us about the treetop trailway, forest history, the first nations’ uses of local forest materials, and lots of cool facts about the trees of this coastal temperate rainforest including western red cedar, western hemlock, Douglas fir, grand fir, and red alder. We learned that some of the trees we saw were over 400 years old, and some were thought to be close to 1000 years old at least!

I was fascinated hearing about the Taiwanese “Coffin” tree (a relative of the redwood tree which also grows in BC) whose wood is so hardy and resistant to rot, it was used for making coffins. It also has remarkable needles whose extra-thick coating of protective sap allows the massive trees to withstand the hot & sunny climate of Taiwan -the needles look green on sunny days but show blue on cloudy days due to its protective sap. We got extremely close to these enormous trees in the first part of the walkway, and because it was a dull day, we could touch and feel the sticky, visibly blue needles.
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You can see the Taiwanese coffin trees’ needles close up in the top photo above, and then how the trees look blue-er than the surrounding greenery shown in the bottom pic.

My kids were thrilled to traverse the swingy walkways (slightly more than my husband and I were, mind you) and we all loved the incredible balance of adventure and learning. We didn’t make it through all of the gardens, but we plan to return soon. The forest is an incredible place to visit all year around. (Please note: the canopy trailway is best suited for bigger kids aged 5 and up, in my opinion. It is quite swingy and a wee bit tippy.)

So there’s this year’s “one fun thing” before school starts and we ticked off visiting a local tourist attraction (without getting too touristy) from my family’s summer bucket list, too! It was very fun and a great way to tackle a less-than-stunning summer day. I was proud to learn that the Greenheart Conservation Company which built the walkway is a local Vancouver company. They design, build and operate conservation-based canopy walkways and other nature-based attractions around the world. Canopy Walkways are the among the finest examples of the global trend in sustainable and responsible tourism:

“Construction is as non-invasive as possible using the patent pending ‘tree hugger’ suspension system. The tree hugger uses no nails or bolts or intrusive fasteners of any kind, using instead, a variable tension system to provide the least amount of infringement or impact on the trees.”

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What one fun thing are you planning this weekend?

Click here to see the ASL sign for TREE