Have you ever had one of those days where you THINK you have gotten nothing done but when you sit down and look back there actually was a lot accomplished? Today turned into one of those sort of days! Although last night took FOREVER to end – or so it felt.

I simply could NOT get my mind to shut down last night… thankfully Trinity slept through the night in her own crib so I did not have to worry about my tossing and turning keeping her up and Ken was on a nap and accomplish sort of schedule (thanks to his meds he is still a little off on nights and days). I even tried my favourite trick of visualization to no effect.

What I do is picture myself in my favourite era costume (oh don’t worry I KNOW this sounds silly but it works for me!) which just happens to be Regency. (I love love love the books! not the Harlequin ones but if you are interested check out Carola Dunn! Her Regencies are great as are her new books!) I try to imagine it in the greatest detail… the underclothing, the ribbon accents, the texture of the materials, the shoes… how the hair would be styled… Then I picture a curving staircase like you would find in an old tower and imagine myself walking down it – again imagining the sounds the fabric would make, the shoes… (there is a reason! Wait for it!) This downward motion is to mimic falling asleep – the slow relaxation, the sinking of the mind into subconscious, the deepening of breath that goes with sleep. On a good night it is an almost seamless falling asleep before my mind gets bored with the stairs! Except for last night of course!

Anyway, back to the day at hand! Our morning was an odd one – as we ran out of time last night and had promised the boys they spent a large chunk of their morning playing with the Click Start computer. To date we just have two games beyond the ones on the computer already – Thomas & Friends and a colouring one but the boys love it!

Trinity was quite upset as she is not allowed to play on their computer so Ken dug through the basement to hunt down my first laptop (seriously old Dell from my 1st or 2nd year of University!) and let her go nuts. I figure since it is the ultimate spare (Ken has my previous laptop to this one as his own) we may see if some of the games my mom found for the boys will run on it… but I doubt Trinity will let them have a very long go! She has pretty much staked it as her own!

Activity wise the boys did a bit of everything! Two of them made more trees out of puzzle pieces that I will glitter up and put felt backs on, for the Fall unit Emanuel went onto the Fisher Price website and we made him his very own picture to print out that he and I coloured together. Fisher Price Site under the holiday link at the very bottom. I am planning on using this site to make Halloween cards for the person of  their choice and then a card to go into their Halloween lapbook!

The twins did a more complicated activity one at a time where we went over the letters, their sounds and then tried to match the picture word to the letter. Some success but we do have some work to do on recognizing sounds of individual letters.

The boys spent a little time cutting out the spare crayons from one of the colour mini books to paste on the covers of their shape and colour lapbooks later. I accidentally printed out too many so this is a terrific way to use up something we already have! Now I just need a page of shapes for them to pick and choose from and their covers will be quite exciting.

Zander and Gavin did a bit of work on their insect lapbook. Emanuel was simply not in the mood to draw a critter of his own so we let it go, Ken is going to find something a little more fun for him this weekend. It is just a little reminder from time to time that he is NOT as big as the other two… sometimes that 2yr difference just sort of fades away!

During the twins’ time in the backyard they took their insect lessons to heart and started their own little bug jar! A poor ladybug was caught and added to a jar of leaves with wax paper on top (holes poked for air of course)… Ken figures we will let them have it for a couple of days and then make a big show about releasing any and all critters in the jar to make their way in their fall preparations. I must admit I am VERY glad they do not have the same aversion to bugs and the like that I do!

Our letter X did not make it very far – in fact we only managed the letter page itself and none of the mini lapbook. A definite first for us but with their excitement about the bugs and the special computer time I figure it was worth it. I am planning on doing the rest tomorrow after our weekly run to H&W. That and some more activities for each of the current lapbooks. Right now we have colours and shapes, insects and fall on the go… and there is PUMPKINS to get started later this month, not to mention HALLOWEEN (oh that one I AM looking forward to – I have a bunch of borrowed Halloween stamps!)… I am determined to keep us good and busy!

A nice chunk of my afternoon was spent with Ken making a double batch of sugar cookies. MMM of course we snitched some dough – that is the best part. So now we have a ton of the sugar cookies and a couple of uses in mind!

This left our kitchen table covered in cookies and the boys in need of a place to eat dinner – so they got to eat at the low table (don’t question the newspaper apparently they needed a table cloth and it HAD TO BE that!). So all in all a day out of the norm for this family!

I am determined to finish the stocking this weekend… and Trinity’s costume, I think we are gaming tomorrow night and Sunday is Sunday School for the big boys… I think I am just really glad that we are maintaining a norm… things crashed around us earlier this year and here once again but we are not falling as hard as last time! I’ve got my “Pollyanna” on!