Welcome to week 4 and the almost last post of my month of honesty!

Day 22

Another Friday, another date night. And a special one since we went all the way to the city to see a yarn bombing. Friday always feels transformative. I feel like me, not mom, not teacher… Just… Me. And right here, right now I am proud of that. 38 years old, 5 kids, in a different country then where I started, married 16 years… I can’t imagine loving anyone else like I do Ken. In all honesty, I feel blessed.

BONUS PICS

Yarn bomb

Day 23

Ken is a napper, especially on the weekends. We even manage to share the bed… sort of.

Day 24

Time for some Sunday honesty… I have a hard time sitting idle so I take sewing everywhere and crochet in public… I am only able to have bursts of extrovert socializing so often hide in comfy corners… I love people and small children but am horrible with names… With 5 kids my experiences with church service can be less harmonious and more stress inducing struggle, so a lot of my faith and religious experience is born out of my quiet careful sewing… I am shy and love quiet but enjoy watching others be outgoing and crazy… I am told I shine in one on one or small group gatherings… I know my limitations and try to push my boundaries… I am not always successful, but I always try to be genuine. Honest truth.

Day 25

A continuation off “Lisa doesn’t like to sit idle” combined with a son who didn’t want to swim on an evening we spend 2 1/2 hours at the YMCA on. Sometimes it feels like we live there… which I am ok with. Yes, that is more schoolwork for my full day homeschool kid. He says I am “diabolical”. I need to practice my evil laugh.

BONUS PIC

Yup… diabolical.

Day 26

Why do we even have desks? Trinity and Emanuel prefer to learn about elephants on the floor… That is Zander’s Pj clad butt and my comfy chair. Honest truth, comfort over desks, clutter over forced tidy… so far it seems to be working (that and today was pajama day).

Day 27

And the photo many are sure to be expecting… welcome to our garage. It WAS a 2 car at the beginning of summer. Before bikes and an attempt at cleaning began. Oh well, I bet we make all the neighbours feel awesome about their garages as they drive by!!!

Day 28

Thursdays are special, the only time any of my kids wear uniforms! Trinity and Emanuel in karate… Echo in cooking, and I tortured the twins by forcing them to go swimming. Evil mom buying them new suits and tossing them in the pool for an hour.

BONUS PIC

And as for myself, a decent mile!

And that is the week, just a handful of days left! 

Mid May marks the end of a new experience for Emanuel and Trinity, well a temporary end as we have already signed them up for the twice a week continuation in July.

We were lucky to have a new opportunity pop up at the local YMCA. A very talented sensei has decided to open classes (and maybe eventually a full on local dojo) for children ath our branch. Sensei Tom is AMAZING with the kids.

For 8 weeks, we have come out every Thursday with their homeschool buds Bella and Drew to start out learning all about karate.

On the 18th of May we marked the end of this first program with the receiving of their yellow stripe on their white belts. This also came with a lovely certificate we are going to frame and hang up here at home.

The kids were super pumped when we told them we had already registered them for the next sessions in July (Sensei has a June commitment, so we have a gap). And we are super proud of their willingness to jump full in on a new activity.

Woo! New year, new start, keeping up… not bad not bad. I don’t do resolutions, just gradually change my patterns. So here’s hoping.

Anyway… December, last month… well… Christmas, of course. Winter, some snow (sort of), busy busy. But now for the actual details of the month…

We had our traditional paper chain countdown, perler bead Advent chart AND of course, went to Activity Village for their Advent fun. Just a warning – they have gone to membership now, it is a reasonable cost and I have already signed up.

Early on in the month Shandai and I gave it a go at a Vendor sale and set up a table of my crochet and her knitting pieces. It wasn’t a huge success but it was fun! And hopefully something we can do again!

A pretty view out the back of the building

We did all sorts of fun crafts at home and at Daycare.

You really can make any picture Christmas-y

Practiced our recorders.

Christmas with the Schwartz family is a yearly much looked forward to tradition. Of course we decorated our small gingerbread houses.

This is mine, you can see the rest on the overflow post HERE.

Opened presents and had so much fun.

Look what the boys got!

Ken and I took the girls to Jeffrey’s Christmas concert. We had Christmas with the Novaks on Christmas Eve. It was so much fun and we were there way past bedtime.

We found Anthony a stuffed appendix and made him up the certificate! He loved it!

Of course we had our Sunday School Christmas pageant. The Schwartz family came to watch.

We had a whole family of angels.

We also had dinner out at McDonald’s to celebrate.

We saw Santa a SECOND time (the first was at Macy’s with Nana and Baba HERE) at the YMCA. There was all sorts of fun to be had there. 

We had our monthly Bookit reading program pizza.

And made cookies. This year we tried out a new gingerbread recipe from the Activity Village site HERE.

Monster Cookies

We had some lovely mail come. 

Seriously WHO SENT THESE?

And spent plenty of time at the YMCA.

Gavin

Little Lotus Yoga pose

It was a jolly Christmas. Full of fun and friends and gifts and giving.

From Ken to me

I got these lovely puzzle pieces for Ken.

We took full advantage of our new fryer and made FRESH poutine!

We even made it to one of Anthony’s indoor soccer games.

Skyping family!

For New Years we spent the night at home with a lovely drop by last minute by the Schwartz family for an hour or two.

Yup quite the month!!! I hope you enjoyed the wander through images!