I have to admit that as much as I am looking forward to our spring move I AM going to miss our local produce store. Where else can you get 10 lbs of apples for 4.00 in the middle of winter? So tomorrow I get the slow cooker out and make fresh applesauce. A family favourite.

Another favourite, at least for the kids is the Dollarama. Where else can you go and let the kids basically pick out anything they want and NOT break the bank? Although sometimes the choosing can take some time. Apparently it is not a decision to take lightly.

With their Dollarama stash! (Gavin right)

The week is over, almost before we could get a good handle on it. One more week until the party, and a mountain of baking to be done. Last night I got in some more scrapbooking, 2 pages for Trinity this time.

First night in the toddler bed

Letter to Santa

In honour of Chinese New Year and some free time I made up some origami bunnies from this site.

Shiny bunnies

Oh and for our frog unit – jumping frogs ALSO from the same site.

A family of frogs

I only have the kids’ version origami paper so it was a bit thicker than what I have used in the past but still they are cute! And the kids LOVED them. I can’t wait til the star paper I ordered for first birthday gifts gets here. I loved making the stars for Trinity’s first birthday. For schooling today I printed out a Valentine’s Day themed math page – they had to fill in the missing numbers to count from 1-100. I sat them down with the Math mini office and let them go at it. There was only 3 mistakes between the two of them. I was VERY proud of them though, they got a little frustrated but kept at it. We took frog templates from the same site and each of the boys worked on colouring some frogs from images Ken found on the internet. All of the ones they did are called dart frogs. Tomorrow we start our written down observations of our frog (who if you remember is named FROGGER). Not sure how exciting that will be, but it will be interesting.

Now to get back to work on the tidying. I have a bag of items from the Dollarama to find homes for. Always a bit of a puzzle.

Had to pop her into this to see if it fit yet... I think she may just wear this out tomorrow!

All that work and getting up early (for us) this morning and the facilitator was a no show! Ken left a message on his phone after an hour had passed and tomorrow will call our board personally to see what happened. So Echo and I had a late morning/early afternoon nap while the kids did what we had planned originally for the time the facilitator was here – Play Doh. First was the free for all, make what you like and then they did some dinosaur work before running out of time before lunchtime.

Play Doh chaos (Gavin blue)

Dinosaurs from the book (Zander green)

Yesterday was a relatively slow day too – lots of cleaning and prep work. But the kids did worksheets of course.

Back to the sheets (Gavin right)

And Gavin worked on his apple lapbook… it is fun going over those apple facts again, especially since right now we are finishing up on our applesauce.

Gluing apple facts (Gavin)

To celebrate that we all got together and started a few batches of the apple leather. I am planning on defrosting some raspberries or strawberries and mixing them in with the applesauce to try and make something more “fruit roll up” like. At least I can control the sugar content.

Setting up the leather (Gavin left)

Zander and Trinity took advantage of the lovely fall weather and did some leaf raking, not enough yet to do any true pile jumping though.

Raking leaves (Zander)

Last night’s treat for myself and Ken: chocolate with white chocolate chip cookies and milk! We had bought cookie dough from my mom when her work did a fund raising drive and this is my tub. SOOO good, especially coupled with episode 3 of Sherlock… although it ended on a cliffhanger and wiki says no new episodes until Autumn… 2011!!!

Nom nom nom

I even got a scrapbook page done – this one is from our trip to the conservatory – Emanuel’s flower art!

For Emanuel's book

The rest of today was pretty basic – though the twins got sent to their room for a nap. When Ken was in charge they would not listen and play quietly and attempted to wake up their siblings so they were sent  to bed. This meant that when Trinity woke up from her nap she was the first one up and got her very own livingroom snack picnic.

Picnic

Emanuel did some more workbook work too – the letter J and things you would find at a market… His focus is limited but when we do do our pages he is soaking it up. Trinity likes to come and watch so it is my hope that she is actually taking in a lot of it too.

Working on J

Since we have not gotten word on the van yet Ken had to contact Sean and catch a ride to run some errands. Man do I miss the mobility. With such a large family we simply can’t go out with a friend and the bus… I cringe to think of all these kids on the bus. BUT if it comes down to it, you do what you have to!

I finished up a headband for Echo using the bra strap material I bought on the weekend and a butterfly embellishment I had from doing a tutu for another little girl. Now I just need some more “fancy things” to add to other straps and I will make her a few more!

Pretty

Tonight’s dinosaur themed books was Digging up Dinosaurs by Aliki. A bit over their head but they enjoyed looking at the pictures after I read it and remembered hearing some of the words on their video.

Learning about dinosaurs (Zander left)

So tonight there is a bit more cleaning to be accomplished, a late dinner to be eaten and some sewing (hopefully) to be started!!! Now if I could just get my laminator… grr on the no van.

Mommy and Echo

Labour day was far from work for me… of course Ken wooed me into another LATE evening with 3 more episodes of Dr. Who… the first was a 2 parter so OF COURSE we had to watch the second part and then he was sneaky and turned on a 3rd when I was feeding Echo. So… I slept in… and then got up to get up and was sent BACK to bed due to lack of things to do… so (and I shudder to admit it) I did not get out of bed until past 2pm! But what an amazing morning/early afternoon of snuggle time with Baby Echo. Something I would not trade for ANYTHING.

The boys spent some time outside prepping the backyard for our visit with Harley. Apples up off the grass and toys in the garage. It is not much longer before we have to go through all the outside toys and toss the cracked and broken. I don’t have high hopes on a lot of salvageable toys BUT we have to move next spring anyway so we have no idea what sort of a yard we will have. Hopefully FENCED!

After all the apple picking I have a much clearer picture of how far behind I am on the applesauce. I am determined to catch up and get it all done and frozen, but wow a bit intimidating! And there is STILL more apples on the tree…

The most red they have been!

Over last week the boys and I managed to get our Gardening Lapbooks done. They always enjoy the process of putting together the final product and this time there was lots of glueing and some creative placement to make sure everything fits.

Front cover

Interior

Inside flap

Back cover

My goal for this week is to assemble the Apple Lapbooks. We did all the work and then got busy with our summer outside activities and time just got away from me. Good timing anyway with the boys doing their summer/fall chore of cleaning the apples up and my constant applesauce making. I am thinking it is time to make up some apple leather for a special treat!

Chris and Chris joined us for dinner Monday night, mom had to leave right when we got our hamburgers done to take Harley to doggy school. It was nice to have someone over to hang out with even though She Chris was feeling ill from a cold. Mom is helping them plan their wedding and us our Halloween costume for Echo so there was lots to talk about.

Grandma Anna and Echo

Playing in the backyard with Mike

Our new set up of having folders for the boys to work on in their drawers seems to be going well… they spent their morning working on numbers (and ignoring the letter practice TOTALLY… so I guess I need to pad the folders with more FUN letter activites). Then Gavin sat down at the easel and worked on a picture.

Gavin's art

Zander decided to do a more “hands on” approach to art and built himself a castle! I love it when they take initiative and make their own creations.

Zander's castle

Of course we managed to get in a little more number fun with the Cars themed workbooks – just one page though before Trinity woke up VERY insistent that we look at the Cars dvd we finally unearthed in the basement (don’t ask me how half the dvds I was looking for for the van got put in a box with books).

Some play in the now VERY fall like weather in the backyard with a new set of chalk and some of the better quality balls and the kids have had a rather full day. Too bad the basement is a mess and we are loads behind in the laundry. Figures a long weekend and we DON’T get ahead on that! Gavin also reminded me that it has been FIVE DAYS since he got his forehead hurt. I am very proud of him for keeping track himself AND for reminding me each day how long he has to go.

Group project (Gavin)

It has certainly been an adventure this afternoon – Ken had a 2:30 appointment that managed to last most of the afternoon and into the evening leaving me with all 5 kids… I did manage a bath – Echo actually LIKED the bouncy chair with its vibrating setting long enough for me to have a bit of a soak. Love the thing – we got it way back when when Emanuel was tiny and on sale…

Bouncy chair baby

After she decided Mommy had relaxed enough my afternoon got a bit more… difficult. I have not managed more than a few minutes away from her without her sensing and waking back up! So I got in a bit of a video of her tummy time, sorted out an argument in the backyard and came back to one VERY angry baby girl on her tummy and HOWLING!

Head up

And then I find out how “smart” Canon has gotten with their cameras… apparently the one I have to replace the dying model I HAD (made my goal and now have a new one to attain!!)… its battery is SMALLER, so I had 3 batteries charged and waiting that won’t fit in the camera… and ONE in the charger that will. Talk about frustration.

Speaking of photography and my current addiction – taking pictures of Echo… I have managed a few more, Ken has yet to do any editing on them however minor or major but I am having a blast racking my brain and deviantArt for ideas and going wild with them. After I finish Echo’s nursing necklace, my next project is to make her a tutu using my tulle and a plastic hairband. Seriously, it is suggested by the same person who made up the instructions for the tutus I make. Photo props for the win!

So not the best background but I am loving the higher pixels

With Ken gone over 5 hours our week’s plans have altered slightly, the conservatory is moved from tomorrow to Thursday so Ken can get things put off today done. Which means tomorrow we crack out the brand new play-doh that I have been hoarding for the past few months. After all what good is NEW play-doh on a sunny day? I figure we get our lapbook fun on and then move on to making the kitchen a play-doh creature creation area and maybe even SAVE a couple of the really good ones to dry out and put on shelves (as I remind myself we have NO spare room upstairs… but I can always find a place to show off something special, that’s what Mommies do).

I still have that baking calling me to be done… after all what is the Reinsch-Johnson home without applesauce muffins? A sad sad place that’s what.

Grandma Anna always gives the baby a piggy!