I seem to have gotten into the nasty habit of combining days for my blog entries… lazy me! But in all honesty, Monday was a pretty quiet day. We stayed home (big surprise, after all we are still without the van), did schoolwork, cleaned, and generally did whatever.

Emanuel made a card and tried to write his name!

Trinity spent some time cuddling her sister

Today was a bit more exciting! We had our Minister over along with Nathan, Ada and Baby Anna to talk about Sunday’s baptism. Nathan and Ada are 2 of 4 godparents and the only local ones. (Bree and Scott are the other two but unable to make the trip from Minnesota) It was a great visit.

The girls chatting

The kids worked on Play-Doh while we chatted, well worked on making a mess! Except Gavin who made a little series of amazing constructs.

Gavin and his creations

So we are all ready for Sunday church wise. Now I need to make up the shopping list for dinner after. Ken ordered the cake last night on a grocery run. The month sped by way too quickly even without our usual vehicle. I have my purple bows cut out thanks to the Cricut and the party supplies in the ready.

The big completion for the day for me is a headband for Echo’s Christmas outfit. There are two separate portions  to this one. The headband itself is made out of one leg of a child’s nylon. The instructions are HERE. The second part is the bow itself. Korker ribbons with the instructions HERE. I am really enjoying making the hair things for the girls.

Finished headband!

Other than our minister’s visit the kids’ day has been relatively quiet. We didn’t get much schoolwork done but the plan for tomorrow is worksheets worksheets worksheets. Some days just line up better for imaginative play anyway! I still have to set up and take pictures of Echo in her costume AND in her cloth diapers… why is there never quite enough hours in the day???

Getting her Hippie look on (the headband is one of the nylon ones without its finished bow)

A bit of a whirlwind weekend, but we managed to make it through. The next two weekends are going to be busy busy as well. And even with our weekend starting with some sad news we managed to make the best of it.

Friday was a pretty average day. The chalkboard is definitely a favourite activity right now, enough so that I am going to have to clean some chalk dust off of any of the low lying surfaces around the easel. After all it is MUCH easier to set chalk and brush down there than put it away when you KNOW you are coming right back… right?

Gavin and his picture

Emanuel whizzed right through a bunch of his PreK pages. If I can get him drawing the letter on demand and colouring some of the bigger pictures in the book we may even finish it before the end of October and move onto a more challenging one (courtesy of Aunty Holly who sent their unused workbooks our way a while back). It is so cute watching him and Trinity work together on his pages… well he does the work and she supervises but they BOTH have fun.

Working Together

Friday night was GAVIN’S night to spend some time with Mommy before bed. So we started a beaded keychain. Sadly we ran out of time last night so Emanuel’s night got postponed. I like having that one on one time when everyone else is tucked away in bed. Gavin is making an angel, this pattern is a first for me as well so we are both learning as we go… first we had counting to do to make sure we had ALL the beads (we were missing one white we had to pilfer from another kit) and in doing so sort them into colour piles. Then we had to make sure we had the thread set up and figure out how to read the pattern. We did not get too far this first evening but he is all ready to go as soon as his turn comes along again!

Gavin and his beads

Ted came over (and stayed the night – the guys were tired and why risk another check stop repeat?) and watched Dr. Who with us and hung out. In the morning the kids were overjoyed to see he was STILL HERE! Karyn and I drove him home on our way out to do some shopping.

Talk about an unusual shopping outing… 3 stores and I got maybe ONE item that I needed!!! Yikes! At least at the Dollarama I managed to get the party supplies I need as well as a hair thing to go with my dress. Just a little splash of colour.

Blue of course

Echo did pretty well out and about in the carseat though we had to take her out when we went into Dollarama. I did put her in disposables as I was not sure where the washrooms were or how long we would be out. I am having a tiny bit of trouble finding a duplicate math workbook. It turns out that Chapters DOES have it… on their website. To get free shipping I have to spend 25.00 (which means first I have to HAVE 25.00)… the workbook is 8.00, and the BOB book set 2 is 16. So now I have to decide what I need to put me over and go from there. What a pain!

Karyn and I had another special treat – supper at a Japanese restaurant – Mikado. I had the tempura (not as good as the little restaurant downtown but yummy) and the Miso soup. Mmm… Karyn had the avocado tempura sushi I think it was called. It was nice to get out, eat something unusual AND be out without the baby.

Karyn and her meal

This is the last Sunday of the month that has Sunday school during it so the boys and Ken did their usual trip to the church. We are already starting their practices for the Christmas pageant. Hard to believe time is passing so quickly. This left Karyn, Trinity, Echo and I to do some cleaning and relax. Ken phoned us after they left the church so we could pack up and head to The Mall. I saw a commercial for winter jackets at H&M that were under the usual 40.00 and thought we should check it out (grrr van). We lucked out and got two from a super sale (50% off) rack and now just have to find them snowpants.

I also got a green onesie (thank you Karyn for your eagle eyes) for Echo’s costume and splurged on the cutest Hello Kitty dress! It cost over 20.00 which is pricey for a dress at H&M but take a look at the picture and tell me it wasn’t worth it!!!

Hello Kitty

A trip to The Mall of course means snacking at the largest food court. I had forgotten I had Echo in cloth diapers and that I had fed her TWICE in 2 hours so I had to pull out the disposables and change her. But she had fun sitting and watching the people around her.

Miss Echo

Waiting for food (Zander left)

Karyn and I took the girls to the new Victoria Secret/Pink store and took a look around while Ken took the boys straight home. I think I will go back to get some new underwear but they don’t carry nursing bras in the store and the free shipping is only available in the US for now. But it was fun to go into a store I had preciously only been able to see on a trip to Minnesota or South Carolina.

This basically filled the afternoon with a brief stop over at Michaels to get an item I hadn’t bought on Saturday and after Karyn left sent the 3 youngest and Ken to nap. This freed me up to finish the last of my scrapbook pages.

Pushing her head up

First trip to Church

The hairbands and clips are still a work in progress so I will share those later, but Gavin did make critters out of pipecleaners on Saturday that were really neat!!

Giraffe, Pig and Lion

One of Trinity's bought hairbands

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the week and the countdown to Echo’s baptism on Sunday. Tuesday morning the minister is over to discuss the ceremony and in the meantime I have a house to tidy, and meal to plan. Don’t forget the homeschooling… the van still not being in our hands and any other loose ends we have sitting there for October. Does it ever get caught up? I hope so!!!

Sweet Pea

Mid week comes so quickly when there is a holiday Monday. It gives me the strong impression that I have not done enough in the week honestly.

Yesterday was an off day, the kids were cranky, Ken was busy, Echo clingy and the house a mess. So I took a whirlwind tour through the living room and kitchen and cleaned my heart out for around 2 hours while Ken held Echo, got the kids bathed, fed, teeth brushed and in bed ON TIME (so lovely), had a little cry which felt heavenly (sometimes I worry too much – no worries though …NOT baby blues). I did come up with a great activity to keep the kids busy while I cleaned – Perler Beads.

Beading party (Zander red)

They have begun working on Halloween crafts and worksheets, so to go with that I had them sit down and do a Halloween shaped bead craft. Zander and Gavin did manage to finish something but Emanuel decided just to play around and make squares of bead colours. I have a Halloween wall in the hallway this year as we can’t do our usual decorating until AFTER the baptism, so instead of a month of Halloween stuff up we get a week. Oh well.

Start of the Halloween wall

Our Thanksgiving was certainly a great DAY and most of the EVENING but the ending… well Ken has certainly got BAD LUCK. Luckily this has NOTHING to do with anything WE have done, but still… We spent the end of the evening playing games and watching Dr. Who (I am still not totally sold on the 10th Dr and plan on NOT watching The Girl in the Fireplace.). Settlers is one of our long time favourites after all.

Helping Mommy

Standing tall

Now the problem actually came on the drive to return Ted to his home. Of course there is check stops all over the city in the evenings on holidays and Ken and Ted (driving my mom’s loaned car remember) got stopped. Nothing to worry about… or so they thought… after all mom had the car’s registration up to date, Ken AND Ted have the proper paperwork for being in this country and Ken for driving… but they do run names anyway. That is where the issue came in… apparently there is ANOTHER Ken Johnson with the same name, birthdate, and general description. (not a huge surprise after all Johnson is SUPER common) This is where the similarities ended – the OTHER Ken is armed and dangerous and A FUGITIVE! So here is Ken and Ted sitting in the dark in the car waiting while the police come back, this time with their hands on their firearms and surrounding the car. It turns out it took them a longer time than usual to come back as they even waited for BACKUP! They asked what was in Ted’s backpack, pressed Ken about who he was… the big difference and saving grace was that the OTHER Ken has tattoos and Ken could easily expose his forearms and show the ultimate LACK of those. All  this took time and turned a 5 min trip to take Ted home to an hour long excursion with Ken coming home wired for sound and frustrated. His ultimate decision – no way he will EVER get a tattoo!!!! My suggestion – he should hyphenate his name like the rest of us. What a coincidence!

So I was up late with Ken Monday night, listening to him wind down and be the sympathetic ear. This had me up past 4 am and exhausted the next morning (thus the lack of a blog entry yesterday).

Today was a bit of an unusual morning as well, first off I was up before 9am. We got a notice on our door that the block’s water was being turned off for 4 hours. Talk about an inconvenience, the kids couldn’t rinse off their toothbrushes after breakfast which was totally upsetting to them! So I had to be up early to have my morning bath. Which worked pretty well as today Echo is TWO MONTHS OLD! So I had to send JUST Ken to Public Health for an official weighing in. It was her first little excursion WITHOUT me and felt so WEIRD! Apparently she is doing just fine weighing in at 9lbs 2 1/4 oz with a length of 20 3/4 inches (she STARTED at only 18!). I guess a couple people mistook her for a newborn! She is just a little pocket Venus to us.

Heading off on their adventure

While Ken and Echo were gone we worked on our workbooks… the two different ones seem to be going well. Zander is focused on tidying up his printing right now and Gavin on phonic sounding out. It is a bit of an uphill battle right now with both but they are getting excited about it. They WANT to do more pages, and right now we are rewarded every finished page with a frog sticker. We are not making any permanent markings when there are errors, everything is done in pencil and then once correct rewarded. I don’t like red pens, never have!

Working in the sun (Zander front)

Some time was spent on math as well. Gavin worked on a dry erase marker book that we have two of now that deals with addition, he is a real whiz at it now! Though we have not gone past the total of 20. Zander did a Halloween picture where we counted all the ghosts – 25. Emanuel had the colour dry erase book where he practised writing the colour names… sort of. Our markers are dying so I am thinking the next trip to IKEA we will have to pick up some of their VERY affordable markers.

Note Gavin's use of our Math Office

The kids have been outdoors off and on all day enjoying our still lovely fall weather. Echo and I went back to bed for a nice chunk of the afternoon when Emanuel and Trinity had their nap. Echo was completely worn out from her screaming at Public Health (Ken said she did NOT approve of the weighing) and the stop in at Safeway. And I was worn out from another late night myself. I love snuggling in with the baby for a sleep.

Gavin and Emanuel

The plan originally was for Ken and the boys to head to the Fort but the weather looks even better for tomorrow afternoon. So once Trinity goes to bed off they will go (this gets rid of the screaming fit she has when she is left behind). Hopefully this will give me the opportunity to get something done or at least have a quiet afternoon while the boys go and experience some local history. Then there is the front lawn to mow once more before we get our inevitable (and much requested by the boys) snow.

I am hoping the stove will be clean enough for us to start our corkscrew ribbons to finish the white headbands I made out of little girl nylons. I will post instructions for both when they are done!

So tomorrow afternoon should be great fun for all 4 of my guys. Not so much for mommy and her mountain of laundry to sort and put away. Has to be done!

Little Lady

2 months today!!!