Ok, 5 kids in bed, Ken hanging out with Ted and Sean… time to blog. Yesterday night was a big one for Ken and myself – dinner date at The Mongoli Grill! One of our favourite restaurants, (she) Chris watched 4 of the kids and we took Echo along for the experience. It was so nice to sit and chat, though Echo did not sleep or stay in her carseat once she had her bananas she was content to people watch. Ken and I both brought enough home for a second meal (though I had mine as a late night snack).

My dinner, well what was left after I ate as much as I could

Our plans for the weekend have changed once again. Apparently at the Valley Zoo the wolf program is only on Sundays for the months of January and February. I don’t want the boys to miss their first Sunday back at Sunday School so we  are going NEXT weekend. This weekend we lucked out – Saturday is a free Michaels program. This is the first time in months even Trinity will be able to go.

This is actually a bit of a blessing, what with the kids still having the post holiday buzz, Trinity’s fever and other odds and ends that came up we haven’t gotten much beyond reading the Little Boys Who Cried Wolf. I am hoping we can get our colour toner in and print out some of the neat colour images I have found. Only printing in black and white is a definite limiter. Though we have managed to get started on a word search based on the story. Zander did a dot to dot though not of an Arctic wolf. The big frustration is that MOST of the good items I have found are on the Enchanted Learning site… I need to get a membership there as the one I have been using has expired. I would totally suggest this resource. We have found it to be an amazing help on our projects. I do plan  to add some links to the side of my blog of our favourite resources, I just need to sit down and actually focus on it.

Gavin and his workbook

Focus has been shifted once again project wise. I have NOT managed to scrapbook, I HAVE managed to get more done on the surprise gift, but today Ken gave me the pattern for my brother and his wife’s belated Christmas present – a wedding sampler. So that is my focus for the weekend, the hope is to finish it by Sunday night so that I can move onto the next belated Christmas present and be done with it.

I have started the research for our Chinese New Year celebration, activities to go to AND crafts and such for at home. The plan is to have the boys make a lapbook each, some free standing crafts and wall hangings all based on the Year of the Rabbit. Of course where did I start? The UK Site! Tomorrow we are painting toilet paper rolls red for our fire crackers. I figure we will need a couple coats of the red to cover the roll properly and then we will either purchase gold paint or a gold pen to do the decorating. So so far we have our work on wolves, Chinese New Year and our math and English books to start off our 2011 year.

(she) Chris is back home for the weekend and then back for another week Sunday night. I think this coming week Ken and I will take Echo to The Mall and do a little window shopping and maybe pick up a new outfit for Echo at H&M. I love their baby clothes – that is where we got Echo her Hello Kitty dress she wore on Christmas Eve. It is nice to have some together time to look forward to.

We had a problem with our furnace yesterday – the pilot light went out, and while Ken was fighting with the furnace he left the oven on to try and keep a portion of the house warm. I figured if we had to have the oven on… why not make cookies? So the boys and I made up sugar cookie dough and a batch of chocolate muffins. Fun and educational.

Gavin and Zander working on the dough for the chocolate muffins

So other than that we have worked on our workbooks and tried to get the boys to understand that we HAVE TO push the limits… everything can’t be easy. I am hoping if we keep on them they will be a bit more open to working harder and trying new things. BUT I really should get back to the sampler… after all we have a craft event tomorrow to get to!

80's much?