Archive | January 2011

Away For An Overnighter

So we are spending the night at my mom’s WAY to cold to drive home in our van which takes FOREVER to warm up… so hopefully I will have more time to post tomorrow night. It has been a GREAT day, but I will fill you all in tomorrow!!! HUGS

Grandma Anna and Phoebe.

Sunday Sofa Beds and a Sewing Completion

On a very chilly day Ken and all 3 boys were sent out to Sunday School while the girls and I stayed home, but not to rest… I spent well over an hour tidying and sweeping Emanuel’s room and then sorting through all of his clothes in his dresser. I have not completely cleaned and organized both his and Trinity’s rooms… the next big project is OUR bedroom. Which is not a simple matter as a lot of the things that were other places have been “temporary” placed in our room. Not to mention ALL of the out grown Trinity clothes I have yet to sort and discard any ruined pieces from. One step at a time, but all done before the 12th and the boys’ joint birthday party.

I spent a nice chunk of last night and today stitching away and was able to finish my zombie piece. It is now ready to be sent off this week. I am actually hoping to get MOST of our belated packages out the door. Cold weather or not!

All done

Sean and Ken made it to IKEA to get our sofa beds finally. Quite the undertaking, they had to remove the two middle seats, all the carseats and the stroller to fit them in. For once they each came in ONE unwieldy box! Talk about excitement though. They are such cute little sofas, the perfect size for our boys… and fun too, as they can choose to lay on it like a sofa or pull out the cushion to sleep. Nothing fancy and I do want to get some quilted blankets to act as added comfort, but not spend too much at the same time.

As a couch

As beds

Tomorrow we are planning on driving down to my mom’s for the day. I need to go to the baby supply store there and the kids have not been to visit in ages. Not since Christmas Eve I think actually. So the hope is that we get off at a decent time in the morning, but with 5 kids and much more limited space in the van we shall see how it goes.

Here are Gavin’s two pictures from our conservatory trip!!

From two different sections of flowers

I found a great site for our next animal project – since the boys got a frog for Christmas and the zoo does a drop in on Sundays for it, we are going to do some frog research. Ken is going to load some YouTube videos onto his netbook for the kids to watch and I am going to scour our personal library for some books with frogs in them. Again we are doing a single project together as a family. That way we share the load on the more difficult worksheets.

Hopefully tonight will be a nice and relatively quiet evening. I still need to pack to go to mom’s – winter clothes, pj’s for the ride home, as well as collect up blankets for each of the kids for the ride (the van does take some time to warm up). It is a lot harder to pack for these trips without the stow and go and the room that we had in the newer old van.

A busy Trinity on Sunday morning

Starting the Weekend

I have to admit it, Friday evening I was just lazy and didn’t get around to posting. I am going to ATTEMPT a daily post for the month of February. Anyway, Friday…

We spent most of the day at home on Friday instead of heading off to the conservatory. It was a combination of Ken having work to do and his sitting on the phone for over an hour sorting out an internet payment we attempted to make to my Alberta student loan (seriously we have never had so much trouble trying to PAY BACK a loan!). Instead the twins and I got to work on finishing a couple projects – cleaning their drawers which is something we do each Friday, and putting the sticks onto the fans they made for Chinese New Year.

Circular fans (Gavin left)

Then I got them to work on their Valentines. Each kid has their own set (though I need to pick some up for Echo still) and this year Zander and Gavin are writing out ALL of theirs by themselves. It is a bit painstaking but they managed to truck through quite a few before needing to stop. Sadly the finish on both sets means we HAVE TO use pens… which is tricky with boys used to being able to erase mistakes.

Working on their Valentines (Zander left)

After Ken FINALLY got off the phone we packed the whole family up and went to Walmart to do some shopping. We needed to get wipes and laundry detergent so of course I stopped by the kids section and got Echo a pair of slippers (the crib shoes I lost one of seem to no longer be stocked sadly) and a shirt on clearance for Trinity. Which means I got side tracked and also go juice boxes for the kids, Echo’s first Valentines card AND those candy hearts with the words on them (I plan on having the boys try and read them before snacking). We are not doing a huge party thing for Valentines but we will still be giving people Valentines, having some snacks and spending at least half a day playing games and such.

I have made plans for the 5th to for sure go to the downtown mall and enjoy the activities there, but other than that we are putting the bulk of our effort into the boys’ birthday party. My mom and Mike are making their cake so I am in charge of the rest of the snacks and decorations… I went with lots of bright and bold colours. Gotta love Dollarama!

We FINALLY made it out to the conservatory today. It has gotten cold again so we were hoping that the feature pyramid would be a nice warm one, no such luck, but it was so pretty it made up for the chill. I think if the day had not been so cold the pyramid would have been warmer. It is amazing how they can control the climate in them. We did manage some lovely pictures of Trinity in her outfit bought for her by Aunty Karyn before having to put her coat n, but Echo’s finery went unseen. I am thinking we are going to have to dress her up here at home and stage some photos.

Trinity, Emanuel, Gavin and Zander

Echo Asleep

Little angel

Th kids did their usual drawings based on the plants there in the room. Gavin’s are getting very interesting, this time he drew the pyramid around the flowers too! I am thinking if he keeps up with this interest we will have to find a way to get him art lessons whereas Zander is much more my hands on and active boy!

I will try and post pictures of his drawings tomorrow!

Our afternoon after a bit of shopping was relatively quiet, Ken and I each took a nap, as did Echo, Trinity, Emanuel AND Zander (he was acting up). Gavin spent most of his morning peeling the paper off of broken crayons. These were then used tonight melted down and made into new crayons!

In the molds

So with Sean over tonight so he and Ken can watch Band of Brothers I have spent my time working on a cross stitch, writing out Trinity and Emanuel’s Valentines and playing around on the computer. I was almost too lazy to get this up too!! Ack! But I have to get that Zombie cross stitch done. And tomorrow we begin the baking.

Trinity and Me

With Daddy