Basically the past 3 days have culminated into a crafty explosion. A combination of cold weather and a swamped Kenny kept us home from our library meet. The other family confirmed to come was from out of town and not going to risk the roads. So instead we had different areas of play and worked on getting ready for our tree! 

Working on a newly unearthed Thomas puzzle

Lego area

...and our quiet reader

Our tree is a prestrung light tree that we bought way back for the twins’ first Christmas. Last Christmas some of the lights were failing… this Christmas we could not get a strand to go! So this year we strung lights up on our prestrung tree! Ken bought a string and then Kristen and Fydo brought their spares! So we are well lit. We may even string some on the railing or something. BUT Ken and I got the tree up in the corner by Friday night so that on Saturday the kids could decorate with Cousin Veronika… chaos! 

Decorating

Decorated though in need of some more lights added. Note the cute dress (and pj pants) Trinity is wearing - Xinny dropped off some handmedowns of Isabella's! Trinity is beyond pleased. Thanks Xinny!

We did some pre party errands out and about in the cold (V’s jeep has HEATED seats…)… and then it was time for our December Craft-o-palooza. Sadly She Chris couldn’t make it and Karyn and Lauralee had other plans. Victoria was still feeling under the weather so that left Cousin Veronika, Kristen, Xinny and yours truly! We had a blast! I started with the two scrapbook pages I still needed to do for Emanuel from previous Christmas photography sessions. 

Our first official portraits as a family of 6

2009

And then there is the card making… we made a nice amount for one evening and the time just flew! We had our potluck to keep us full and Veronika and I made one run (almost literally – it WAS cold out) to the nearby store for slurpees for those interested. 

Even Fydo got in and made a card!

Outside

I love his inside bit!

Kristen brought me some duct tape I needed to finish a project in return for a hairbow so Veronika and I made a second trip back at the end of the night, to Michaels and exchanged the roll I bought that morning for another pattern (a gift for my sister-in-law can now begin). She decided to stay the night so we had a late girly chatty night (like 3 am!!) and then in the morning hung out before she headed home.

Kristen's amazing cards

Her last 2

Veronika's... sorry this pic went fuzzy on me

The rest of Veronika's

I have good pictures of 3 of Xinny's, this one I had to make one like it myself!

That top bit is a punch!

Trees!

...and mine. I made that bow on the left out of loops of ribbon

The one on the far left is the copy of Xinny's

The second from the right is pop up style

And my last 3

Then there is  the Friday night crafting that preempted the blogging… gotta get all these gifts done after all. Take a peek at the results of my labours!

Trinity and Echo's ornaments

A gift

The hair things I made for the girls

I also took advantage of the time with Izaac to take pictures! Aren’t they cute??

BABIES

I was also able to finally finish Anna’s stocking and sent it back to the city with Xinny for completion. I hope they enjoy it!!!! I would love to do it for another little girl!!

Ready to assemble

And with that deluge of pictures it is time for me to get back to crafting. It is a good thing we all had afternoon naps, though with the freezing weather all our plans went out the window for anything outside the home! Oh well! Tomorrow we are cleaning out drawers to put away more things for our Christmasy livingroom and hopefully getting a go on the last of our snowflake learning before assembling our lapbook. I promise the NEXT blog will be much more kid oriented!!

Echo's new favourite activity - stacking Play Doh containers

And the verdict is in… we are doing just wonderful with our homeschooling plan! YAY! Our facilitator came today (he was a little late due to road etc) and we went through what the boys had been doing, how they were progressing and discussed some of our personality struggles. I always feel WAY more confident after one of his visits. We are VERY blessed with our facilitator and do so love our board. 

Celebratory Slurpee and our Light up snowman (shared by all - both)

And now back to another two day blog! Today we declared a snow day after the facilitator left. That is another of the bonuses to homeschooling – we can create our OWN snow days… and yes… it IS snowing! In fact we woke up to snow coming down. The kids are so excited and I have put a bowl out for tomorrow to catch fresh snow to be brought in and played with in the morning. Tomorrow will be another brief day, as much as organized schooling as we are heading to the local library branch in the afternoon to see if any other homeschooling families can come and meet up. And if no one can make it… well we get to go to the library – win win right? 

SNOW

Anyway… after getting through the facilitator meeting pretty much unscathed (Zander only acted out a little) I decided to put Trinity and Emanuel down for VERY needed naps and let the twins go down and play a game on the PS3. Sadly the basement is a bit of a mess as we are moving stuff around in the main closet in there and had to get into the other closet for Christmas stuff… 6 or 7 buckets of stuff later and there IS some space in the closet… but it is still a mess! 

Gaming

Our pre-meeting morning was a Lego morning, easier than pulling out stuff we already had sorted and thankfully they kept it pretty much all in the same place. Gavin actually made a ZOO!!!

Fun with Legos

A zoo

Yesterday we worked hard to get some workbook work done…

Workbooks

We started our felt ornaments. Trinity and Emanuel didn’t stitch theirs but rather decorated… lots of glue and sparkly bits! 

Fun with sparkles

Gavin stitched and decorated his own. We used templates from Activity Village… the one I am most excited about getting to is making the Christmas Pudding Beanbags. I don’t know that the boys will do a blanket stitch but as long as I put the beans or rice in a ziploc bag first I think we should be ok.

I have the patch now to get going on that pink top and bottom set a friend sent Echo… VERY cute, I got it off of eBay (of course). I figure I will match little bows on the cuffs of the pants and maybe on the sleeves…

Bunny patch

Last night was ANOTHER planned visit – my cousin Elizabeth came over and cut the boys’ hair (thank you so much!). I didn’t get any pictures while she was cutting it – we were too busy visiting. BUT I do have a good picture of post cut hair and Emanuel! Doesn’t he look so grown up! I love having family over and the haircuts saved us a bundle. So many talented family members!

Looking sharp

I stayed up late last night working on Christmas projects and will most likely do the same for the rest of the week. Time is ticking! I cannot believe how fast November is moving along. We are still stuck in city but are working on busying up our weeks a little more.

The crafting day is still on on Saturday though we may be small in number in the end (the weather is VERY snowy). In the meantime I am working hard at getting rid of a particularly nasty bum rash on Echo. We almost had it beat and she had a nasty poo and burned right through the cream and the new skin. So baking soda baths and lots of changes tomorrow onward. At least with the cold weather it is not a huge issue to be home to do so.

Queen of the Christmas Barrel

Since I have found my lost photos that are now awaiting nails to go on the walls the hunt has turned to two pairs of missing skates… I am running out of places for those to be hidden so may have to cave and get two more used pairs. BUT we wrote our letters to Santa (in Trinity’s case I wrote something and then she drew a picture). Those are getting sent this weekend. The kids want me to write a letter for Echo so we will write that tomorrow. I took my paper from here, and if you are in Canada hereis the information for writing to Santa.  Now I am sure more has occurred in the past two days but my mind is totally full of Christmas prep and Christmas crafting! I will be so much happier once some of these projects are done!!! 

Ready for Bed!

‘Tis getting close to the season… so I will share a few links I have come across already!! Ok so my usual UK site led me to THIS UK site… We are already sifting through their ideas here at home. The big activity we are onto for gift making this year is the felt ornaments (yes yes continuing the felting theme). My new interest in feltie has had both of the twins ask to make ones themselves and the simpler Christmas shapes are a great introduction and practice for them and small stitches. But back to the fun stuff… last year we did the Advent Calendar on our favourite UK site! NOW Activity Village is a UK site so I was able to get the next day (they release it day by day) early in the evening and print off for the next day. Last year was ornaments… we coloured and then cut them out, and I laminated each one! We are really looking forward to seeing what THIS year’s is! (I think the year before you coloured a page a day and made a book!)

Besides my mother’s sugar cookie recipe there is a favourite CAKE recipe that we make each year. Chocolate Candy Cane Cake! It is a Kraft recipe and total yum! Of course I will be making it at least ONCE this year! 

Today was a much better day attitude wise. I only REALLY had problems with Gavin and those were mostly resolved by giving him his allowance and taking him to buy his slurpee. The rest of the kids have opted to hold onto theirs and go to the Dollarama this week for a 1.00 item. They were also given a rather special treat – once all the schoolwork was done that we could do with at least a partially upbeat attitude Ken drug out our Rubbermaid tub of Thomas the train wooden train pieces. Sadly the train table (not Thomas brand) is slightly damaged post move and stowed away but we made do with the top. 

Workbooks...

Snowflakes

And then train time with Dancing!

The felt is all cut for the start of their Christmas projects so that is on the list for tomorrow. We are talking about giving and how special it is to MAKE something for a loved one. I want to instill that in them young as I love making a gift and love receiving them just as much! As well as it teaches them new skills, creativity… blah blah blah. 

And now I am sure we did MUCH more in a day but wow am I out of it with the crafting… Lauralee and Karyn took the little two to the library event where the theme was DOGS. Apparently much fun was has by all!

It's a puppy

We got some lovely mail I will share with you tomorrow and I am back to work on my cross stitching! It feels good to be back on it, even if I am working on black (yuck). So enjoy the Christmas links… and I hope to  be more cohesive in my blogging tomorrow! 

Happy Baby Fun Time