Friday is in our sights now! Which means in the morning we are off to Public Health to weigh and measure Echo (still no doctor’s appointment but the doctor is back from holiday next week). That meant that today was an “at home” day for the kids and myself (Ken still had errands to run).

Little sweety

Back to the adding and subtracting worksheets for the twins. Ken is trying to work out our payment order so I can order the things I need to progress from where we are according to my plan. I am admittedly getting a little anxious about the whole thing. I just want to get going with everything. With how the worksheets are going over I am hoping to find some Addition and Subtraction workbooks at the Education Station. Less printing out for me and more of a forward movement in the complication of the pages.

Zander still at work on his Lightning McQueen

I am trying to push the boys harder with more complicated sheets. Today’s challenge for Gavin was a dinosaur picture where you follow a series of instructions to colour and further finish the picture. His page was about the Brachiosaurus.

Gavin's completed worksheet

I am having some problems getting the twins back focused on learning to read but with my huge leap forward with Gavin understanding how to subtract I am still feeling like I am making a difference. Their printing has improved too, just not their willingness to learn to read for themselves.

It is still a bit of a shock, the fact that we are almost to October. I am not sure if we will celebrate Thanksgiving but Halloween and Fall are of great interest for the boys. I have a bucket of crafts completed and to do for Halloween specifically. Thankfully Ken already found that bucket and it is sitting in our bedroom as this weekend I am going to have to sort through and get them ready. Last year we made black and orange paper chains and the year before bats. This year I already have some colouring pages off of  the Michaels site and our foam craft to do with Ken. For fall we are going to make Leaf Print Note Cards for sure, other than that I am still in the thinking stage.

The twins spent some of their afternoon out on their bikes in the backyard. We are definitely needing to get them BIGGER ones for next year! But they do have fun in the backyard.After biking they moved  to creating a little sitting corner to enjoy the view. I love it when they get creative!

Time on the bikes (Zander red)

Emanuel spent some time himself  on his workbook. He has not shown too much interest the past week or two but today was all about it.

Working on the letter I

And while he did that Gavin and Trinity coloured together using her jumbo crayons.

Gavin and Trinity

I managed to get the kids’ yearly pictures printed out at Walmart this week. They had an anniversary sale with their 8×10’s 2.00 a piece. It is awfully late I know for pictures  taken in February and April BUT they are going up and I am going to hold off on changing any of the ones around the house until we move. IT is just not worth the hassle when I am not sure if we are going to be able to hang everything I have up now in a new place.

Now that I have the Facebook event posted for the Baptism I have to make sure I let everyone else know – SUNDAY OCTOBER 24TH at 11 am at Trinity Lutheran church, if you are planning on attending let me know (email, msn, phone etc) so we know what we are at number wise for lunch etc. I am rather excited – our last one!

Now if I could just get our upstairs into some semblance of order before our facilitator gets here on Wednesday….

Talking on the cell phone with Daddy

Mid week comes so quickly lately, but we made this one count! Echo decided to make last night a late one and then once I got her settled and snuggled in my left arm went completely achy. So I stayed up LONGER to get that sorted… so not exactly an early morning.

Sleepy baby

So in the morning after watching our dinosaur movie AGAIN, having breakfast and all that, the kids settled down to read together (I know 4 kids, one book and TOGETHER! definitely picture worthy!).

Back to the dinosaur book (Zander light blue)

Our afternoon turned sunny and relatively warm after Ken and the kids woke up to frost on the ground, perfect weather for the big treat of the day – THE ZOO! Almost empty except for a few parents with their kids and a busload of teenagers we had the run of the place. Echo’s first zoo trip!

Mommy and Echo (with a screaming Emanuel in the back)

We didn’t see everything but we did get to see the guinea pigs (the ones that are left, there were originally more than 60 but someone poisoned the poor things).

Guinea Pig

Of course we had to stop at the favourite enclosure – the lemur. Actually the boys had a rather good idea which way to go to get there! The weather is still nice enough that they were in and out on both sides.

Playing lemurs

To top it off the tortoise was outside having a meal – the most Ken says he has EVER seen a tortoise move, they may be slow walkers but this one ate FAST!

Hungry tortoise

We wandered a bit but headed right over to see Lucy the elephant. We lucked out, she was out on her walk and taking a break to munch on the grass. This time the kids were much more excited and showed really no fear. When Ken went to take pictures from a different angle all 4 wanted to follow to see her eyes.

Lucy the Elephant

We tried to peek in at the tigers but they were not in their enclosure. We figure there were repairs being done. BUT the wolves were out and in fine form. Trinity LOVES the wolves – she calls them Harley – her word for dogs. We want to go back on the weekend for the 11:30 wolves presentation, just not THIS weekend.

Checking out the wolves (Zander left)

Our last stop was the Arctic foxes who we saw when they first had their babies. It is a large family and apparently a lot of work for the parents so they have  put up some coloured plastic in front of the glass that is immediately in front of their den. But they were running all over the place and the kids thought they were AMAZING. I figure in a couple weeks we will be back there, chilly weather or not, to visit those foxes some more!

Arctic Fox info

Arctic Fox

After our zoo experience we had some shopping to do. Our favourite produce chain has opened a brand new store here in the west end. Very fancy but still the great prices, and since today was their grand opening we got a free reusable bag as well! The kids were VERY impressed.

H&W

And at Walmart I managed to get something off my Baby Echo List – her Christmas dress! 18.00, size 0-3… the second piece is a little pair of pants so I still may need to pick up some tiny baby tights (far from my favourite but the baby legs are too big for her baby legs!). It is very sparkly and definitely what I had in mind. Great price too!

Echo's Christmas dress

After all that excitement the kids were settled down to do their pictures from their zoo trip. Zander did up the zebra (we saw them last time), Emanuel the elephant and Gavin the lemurs… ring tailed of course (his favourite).

Zander's zebra

Gavin's lemurs

Emanuel's Elephant

AND  THEN to amp them all back up – Ted, Fydo and Sean came over. Fydo was in town for work (he lives in the city we are considering moving to in the spring) so Ken picked him up and brought him over for the evening.

Fydo meeting Echo

That of course means we ended up with netbooks and xbox and other electronic games out. I do believe Trinity is now an addict! She got to play pacman with the joystick!!!

Little Gamer

An evening of gaming, and good company is certainly a great way to end our Wednesday.

Gaming

Of course that means less time for our to do list tonight but it is worth it! Tomorrow we have to get started on our official plan for the year to show our facilitator… among other things. Talk about a fun way to start our fall.

Happy girl at the zoo

I am still getting used to the overcast fall weather… we have to get out of that “it is a cold summer day” mode of thinking and into “put a sweater on and go outside.” There is so much pent up energy in the house right now. We’ve had an outbreak of screaming and even some of the dreaded bed jumping! Thankfully the twin’s sturdy but raised bed and not the little toddler beds in the other two children’s rooms.

Don’t get me wrong, we have managed some schooling in the chaos. Gavin and Zander both worked on their first and last names in their copy books. Gavin is a much tidier printer than Zander at this point who makes his letters huge and spread out… and complains more! In the end Gavin had more lines completed just due to the fact that Zander took two lines for his name to Gavin’s one.

Completed copy work

We have gotten a move on our apple lapbook completion. We didn’t do all of the activities the file called for but when it is done at least they will have something to look through and enjoy. Slow going as we are not overly motivated right now but at least we are making progress. I did figure out how to get what we need from the supply store – we just need to get a payment order form from our board… which is something Ken has to accomplish this week if possible. Fingers crossed… there always seems so much for us to do and not enough time to do it.

Zander's picture related to apples

BUT I did manage a completion – Echo’s stocking is done – well the portion that I do. It still has to be put together by my mom but all of the cross stitching is done! A big project done in good time. So now I just wait on patterns from Ken.

All done!

We did hand prints in the Model Magic clay and the kids spent some time with smaller amounts making creations of their own. It takes about 72 hours to cure so it will be interesting to see if we can keep little fingers off it long enough for that to happen!

Much better than the cement!

Using a straw to poke a hole so we can hang it later

Completed hands

Tonight’s story was more fun than strictly educational BUT had lots of long names for Mommy to stumble through: Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp by Carol Diggory Shields. It is fun to have a themed book each day. The math sheets the boys do are all “dino themed” as well – well they have a picture of a dinosaur and since they generate a new one each time I just keep printing until they get the hang of it!

Story time (Gavin left)

I took some pictures last night of baby Echo in our room. I was up late anyway getting her to settle and then thought I would take advantage of her relaxation. Flipped her baby blanket from Aunty Esther over the bedrail and used the inside of it… instant backdrop. But what a gender neutral set up!

So sweet

Close up

So some schoolwork, sewing, stories and clay… not a bad day in retrospect! Now without a sewing project at hand maybe I will try a new game or something…

Gavin and Emanuel made this using scrap paper - we had a screwed up print out of dinosaur cards, inside is the information that was with the picture glued in like a book!