As the parents of 5 we are homebodies on these holidays. And with homeschooling we planned our own party! I, of course, will blog about all that later! but in the meantime… I hope everyone had a lovely day.
Archive | February 2014
January 2014… Successfully Enjoyed, Experienced and Now Remembered
January 23-30
And now we get into the end of the month. The FIRST month of 2014… And the final countdown to finalizing our decision to stop with 5 kids. I can honestly say that I feel no regrets, sending Ken to the doctor on the 24th for the in office procedure (I will spare you the picture he took of it). If we do feel the need in the future for more children there are those already in existence that need us more. Having the procedure on the Friday did mean an at home weekend. Not that the kids complained as it culminated in the cousins coming to visit as well!
But first the Thursday (23rd)… I decided that since this year we weren’t going to make our own fortune cookies that we could still make our own fortunes! Jumbo fortunes. Even Echo made her own (translated loosely by myself).
I went out with Ken to an appointment and stopped at a more local small Asian market where I lucked out with super affordable red envelopes and lucky candy for our Chinese New Year celebration. The kids and I are rather excited about our celebration. We even sent off envelopes for the den Otter 3.
We had a half day on the Friday.
With some time squeezed in with Daddy learning more about magnets. These kits from Christmas are REALLY coming in handy! We used the last of the kids’ Christmas money to pick up some strong magnets at Lakeshore which has made them even more excited about it. (and had us sit them down and discuss where we do NOT put these magnets – laptops, electronics, Daddy’s computer!!!!)
Nana went and collected the cousins before she headed off with Daddy to the doctor. It has become a family tradition here… she also took Ken’s brother for his. It went smoothly and they were home before we knew it… though then Ken headed right to bed to sleep off the medicine, stress and hopefully through the first of the pain.
The weekend was quiet… with lots of potty attempts. We are still rather hit or miss and I sense a long road ahead with this one.
Saturday was a whole day of cousin time.
Sunday was the beginning of what we now see as Echo’s “Helping” phase, which often is not so helpful!
We skipped Sunday School so that the kids could spend the time with their cousins before they had to head home. Emanuel and Daddy took a few minutes to finish a Scout task. They had to figure out where to go when there is a fire.
And then on Monday it was back to school and Chinese New Year as usual. This time with some panda learning. You simply cannot learn all about China and such without touching on one of our favourite animals!
On Tuesday the kids finally sat down and worked on their rubberband loom. So many pretty (though still very basic) bracelets. Enough to add some to the package to the den Otters and give some to me! I need to take some time and try this thing out for myself! We do not have the rainbow brand version that is one you can change the set up on, but if it catches on with the kids it will go on the list for the next holiday!
We had a minor but consistent argument about electronics that night, so I called an hour of no batteries and pulled out games and toys… we started with dominoes, first the traditional line them up and knock them down with moderate success.
And then doing a matching version. I think I played MOST of the rules right with the kids, but we had fun regardless.
And then onto the I Spy game with a BELL! That was noisy and crazy and totally enthralling to all. Operation back to the basic fun — SUCCESS!
Mid week and we are back to the books. Education.com and Activity Village have been amazing resources for us! Though remember, now with Education.com you only get TEN worksheets free a month.
The twins headed outside to add to Nana’s ice garden. Simple water, food colouring and cold weather… we freeze ours out in the sunroom.
Miss Trinity and Miss Echo have been learning together lately. Big sister must impart that wisdom on her little disciple. Everything from school stuff to online gaming!
And to top it off… Emanuel had his first extra field trip for Cub Scouts — to the police/fire station! Baba took him as Ken got stuck at a dental consult. But Darcy shared pictures with me and I was told by himself and Darcy that it was SOOO much fun!
And with that we are left with ONE day of January to see through and the start of Chinese New Year – year of the horse!! What a whirlwind month!
Learning Our Way to the Year of the Horse (mah)
January 15-22
We are definitely revisiting some old favourites with our Chinese New Year reading. And with each one recognizing facts we already know and gems yet to be learned. One of my favourite aspects of Chinese New Year is the celebration of prosperity, family and all things positive. We can always use a little positive energy right? We slipped in some time to make a get well soon picture for a mom I met online through a multiples group. We figure a fun picture by the children would be an even better pick me up than a simple card! I am so impressed by the lovely heart all these mommies show. Our new books definitely had the boys ready to read read read. And we made ourselves a stable for our Chinese New Year year of the horse. We got our popsicle stick instructions from Activity Village HERE. It was a goup effort. The girls used markers decorate the stick while the boys did the gluing together. This week was the week of sweet Echo pics. She is in the middle of a hat phase and 2013’s Christmas present from myself fits her better this year – a teddybear ear hat. I got the pattern off of CrochetSpot HERE. The next day we had to brush out her hair, dress her up and take a few big girl pictures too. The girls also modeled the aprons I made them for Christmas in front of the kitchen set they got from Aunty Holly, Uncle James and Cousin Jimmie! You can find that pattern HERE. Friday was a total wash with a run to deal with passports. A WHOLE morning eaten up by the rather intense application process at the only office in the state. We had an appointment time thank goodness and the poor girl had a boatload of paperwork to do. Thankfully Ken and I had wandered down memory lane and got all the transcripts that exist for Ken for the entire time he was in public school. You need that proof to show that he was in the US enough for the kids to qualify for dual citizenship. My OCD of keeping lists of our addresses, baptism forms (which are a viable secondary ID here in the US???) and all that fun stuff came in really handy as well as Nana coming along to wrangle the kids. You have to have them there for a visual confirmation of their application and both myself and Ken to agree that they should even have the darn thing in the first place! But what a gateway passports are to getting all the other ID set up like Social Security and sorting our kids out so that they are set to live in either country! Lucky babies!
After all that government related fun the kids kicked back with some gaming. Funny how touch screens are natural to them!! Our weekend was a quiet one. Saturday there was lots of time to play with those new toys… and for Trinity to work on her sticker book. One of those lovely ones where you pick up sticker packs and collect what you need. Of course on Sunday they had Sunday School and an excuse to take ANOTHER picture of them all dressed up. I look forward to spring when going as a whole family and staying for service will be much more reasonable. We did luck out with the Sunday afternoon thaw. It was so nice that the kids were out there without coats, shovels in hand to help clear out the driveway. We are not on the best side of the street for the sun to melt it all away completely. We are loving the idea we found on Facebook of freezing coloured water in balloons to freeze and then burst and display. Nana and the kids have expanded to include freezing coloured water in other containers to add to what they are now calling her ice garden. My favourite is the blue balloon. We started the next week with dinosaurs… potty sticker sheets (still spotty luck on that one)… and well dressed scouts… and boys in the mood to learn how to swim!
On Tuesday we roped Daddy into teaching us about the first of 3 Chinese locations – the Great Wall (which became Trinity’s favourite). I have to admit to some interest myself on that amazing landmark.
Of course we continued with other learning leaning to China and all things Chinese New Year. We used Activity Village AND the official Kai-Lan site thanks to Nick Jr. HERE. Even Echo is getting in on the language practice.
We had a short reflection on what we could remember so far about China and Chinese New Year. I do love seeing what sticks in their brains.
We rounded off our first half of the week with some lovely dragons all ready to dance thanks to the generosity of Lakeshore. At our last visit to them to craft it up we mentioned we could not make this upcoming week… Ken had his vasectomy scheduled. So the girl gave us the shapes to add to our own paperbags. I had the presence of mind to photocopy this for future use!
Miss Trinity had a proud workbook completion…
And Emanuel lost ANOTHER tooth. So time for a tooth fairy note!
With the kids covering Terracotta warriors with Daddy!
I think we are well on our way to enjoying our countdown to our second very special New Year celebration of our year.