Tag Archive | bees

MidWay in Retrospect

So sorry this took so long… videos are apparently harder to upload for us since some youTube update occurred. Sorry for the delay!!!

May 8-10

Mid week and our 3rd walk… though my battery died early on in our play time we did run and draw and hear a woodpecker! It was supposed to rain but instead remained rather hot and overcast for the whole day.

Helpful siblings

A pretty big success… in an hour Ken’s mom managed to teach Zander to tie his shoes! I simply could not sit behind him and do it right handed so was having all sorts of issues teaching him myself.

All 3 days was a bit of a mad rush to make Mother’s Day cards… Trinity AND Echo each have two GodMommies, we have 3 Grandmas and one Great… add in the boys’ 3 GodMommies and that is A LOT of cards. Art for Kids came out with a how to draw bees and the boys thought they were perfect for cards… Bee-cause we love you!

Bees!

More cards

We have made ourselves some Photo Tulips from Activity Village HERE. Pictures to follow eventually… gotta get those pictures printed to glue in them.

We snuck in some puzzle time.

A bit of a tricky puzzle with its hologram shimmer

And Trinity returned to her first lapbook story to tell and retell it to any and all who would listen!

Are You My Mother?

The weather on Thursday was not walk worthy so we were busy with books and more. The dino of the day was a book instead of a specific dinosaur. A rather gruesome in a not so realistic way, book… Dino-Dinners by Mick Manning. Emanuel made a beautiful picture using more than a few of  the included dinosaurs.

Gory

Our Mother’s Day themed book was The Mother’s Day Mice by Eve Bunting. The kids made pictures from the story using their fingerprints…

Fingerprints

When the weather doesn’t work in our favour the creativity really comes out. Echo and Emanuel worked together to create themselves a substantial and impressive tower.

TOWER

And then Emanuel branched out in a solo endeavor and made a man.

Block Man

The twins made an acrostic poem using the word Mother! Very creative joint venture.

Poetry

And then we filled the bathroom sink and had our first trial run with our plastic egg and popsicle stick boat. We hope to make a few more all to test at a lake.

Test time

Friday we added in some cleaning for our schoolwork before Trinity’s party. Zander did an amazing job on the bathroom! But first we had our walk. It was a bit of a chilly morning so we wandered the neighbourhood instead of heading to the park. There is an amazing flowering tree on our street.

Flowers

One of the bike paths (we miss our sidewalks)

We had a very exciting completion – Trinity is officially done her FIRST lapbook – Are You My Mother? was a huge success!!! I am so proud of her. We are going to pick another book for next month, and then go from there.

Well done Miss T!

Reading the book to her sister

We made the tissue paper flowers the little girl in the story made her mother in the book Mother’s Day by Anne Rockwell.

Pretty

The afternoon warmed up nicely and with Daddy home sick we took our noisy selves back outside to play and run and burn some energy before dinner and bed!

Back out in the sun

Need a bigger soccerball!

We had a movie from the library that included a Dora Mother’s Day episode… Food With Friends.

With a freshly cleaned Fat Sheep as well!

What a lovely week, spring is REALLY here… time to enjoy it!

Such characters

A Sunday of Fall Fun

October 7

Fall weather calls for fall themed adventures and of course a Sunday afternoon is a terrific time to do so. Add in Nana and Baba and the cousins AND their parents (Joe and Faith) and we had two full vehicles of kids and adults. Of course the kids ALL wore their new winter coats with pride! Echo long before we even left!

All decked out minus her mittens

We got as far as a cousin picture…

The cousins minus Echo in front of an apple tree in the (at that time) parking lot

before nature made herself known in an obvious way with a very visible VERY tiny snake… Thanks to Baba they all got to see and touch this little critter (with yours truly a SAFE distance away). A Northern Red Belly apparently. Something new and interesting to note about Minnesota – the snakes here – NON venomous! Speaking of critters in the state… the night before I got my first experience of a MOUSE in the HOUSE! ACK it was skittering across our unfinished ceiling along a… get this… copper pipe (talk about a TINY pipe)… traps have been set and I am to start placing bounce sheets in everything (apparently the smell offends the mouse’s delicate nose… Well works for me, I LIKE the smell of those sheets and HATE the idea of a mouse in my drawers!). 

SNAKE

After the snake was released back into the wild it was time to start with the apple orchard. The sun was out, the wind as well (but not too bad) and the kids ready to run. We started in the barn where all sorts of things, including Nana and Baba’s favourite apples – HoneyCrisp. We especially had to check out the bees on display with some of their honey. 

Checking out the bees

Ken and I snuck the kids out of there pretty quickly, they are not all huge fans of apple cider yet and with loose teeth abounding candy apples were a definite NO NO. So instead we headed over to the Kettle Corn stand to buy a bag to share. Very yum, though the kids assured us NOT as good as Baba’s.

Kettle corn!

And then onto the other entertainment… there was goats to see and pet…

Goats were there and so were we?

And a hay maze to check out that was VERY simple I am told. Of course the kids were not SUPPOSED to be on top of the maze, ours weren’t… but others…

A little knowledge

Time to maze it up

We then took advantage of the loose hay that you COULD climb all over and took pictures, ran off energy and covered the kids in hay! 

Cousins in the hay

After all the fun at the apple orchard it was time to pack back up and head over to the Country Sun Farm. They had all sorts of things there to see… of course we had to go feed the animals corn… goats, sheep, chickens, turkeys… all of the kids were impressed.

Feeding those animals

We peeked at the corn maze but chose not to purchase tickets… 

CORN MAZE

And then headed into the structure to look at pumpkins (numerous) and fall and Halloween displays and to send the kids into the… corn pit????

Pumpkins everywhere

Echo was a bit too little for the pit so she enjoyed the company of the adults and checked out pumpkins on her own. 

Hanging with Uncle Joe

With fresh mini donuts and water it was time to head back to the house, we totally wore out the kids… and then some!!! I think it was a great day out. And now we have a bunch of interesting experiences to document in our journals and a critter to read about! Oh and a new recipe for honey pumpkin pie I will share AFTER we make it! I will be sure to share a few of our findings and illustrations! 

Post play snack

Nature Centre Explored, Cross Stitch Finished… Lisa at Loose Ends!

Well the snow seems to be here to stay though not in large quantities… yet. This meant our trip to the local nature centre was a little abbreviated. Though Ken is very interested in returning and trying out the walking paths when spring returns. We did go in and check out the exhibits inside the centre.

Checking Out the Bits and Bobs (Zander)

Checking Out the Bits and Bobs (Zander)

While there was not a HUGE amount to see the boys (and Ken) found it all very interesting. There was a bat cave to go into, a gopher hole to crawl through and of course an assortment of animal parts, rocks and wood to examine.

Owls and the Like

Owls and the Like

In another area was an actual part of a bee hive! You could walk right up and look at the bees at work. There was also a ton of information on the life cycle and the like. So now the boys are VERY interested in adding something specific to the bee in their insect lapbooks!

Bee Hive Info

Bee Hive Info

Bee Hive in Practice! (Gavin left)

Bee Hive in Practice! (Gavin left)

So all in all worth our 15.00 for the year family pass. We did not manage to meet up with any of the homeschool families also planning on heading in for longer than a nod and in one case a quick chat but it was great to get out. There was a couple of what looked like school trips there too so by 11 am we were heading out and back home (good thing on the way home Emanuel fell apart – too many early mornings and shortened naps). They also have weekend programs that you can drop into – next week is frogs and toads. So I am trying to work out how we can make that AND the free beading activity for adults at Michaels. One option is for the boys to go on Sunday after Sunday School next week (the program is both Saturdays and Sundays) OR I could just miss the Michaels event – would not be the end of the world!

This afternoon the mail actually came with something GOOD for me! Beyond good – I have been RAKed! Sounds a lot more painful than it is – trust me! RAK stands for Random Act of Kindness. Yup, a wonderful individual on my Canadian stitching egroup had some 14ct aida sitting in her closet that she had no plans for so sent it my way! I do not know if she or anyone else realizes how amazing and wonderful this is! I now don’t have to worry about fabric for the laundry list of patterns and ideas I have running around my head! That and someone who also says they enjoy my blog reached out and did something so wonderful! It is my intention with this blog to not only remain accountable to myself, my promises and my family but to reach out to other people and share my joys and tribulations. The fact that ANYONE reads my blog amazes me let alone gets anything from it! After all, I am just Lisa, mother of 4, married to Ken… usually people know me because of the twins, or the fact I have 4 kids (which apparently is a HUGE number??) or that I am married to Ken or the daughter of Debra. This whole being known for something *I* do myself is new to me! I look forward to posting many pictures of items made out of this fabric – hopefully many will be gifts in and of themselves!

RAKed I Was!!! Thank You!!!

RAKed I Was!!! Thank You!!!

This afternoon we worked on our volcano lapbooks. We erupted our volcano – something that Trinity thought was great fun until Ken added more stuff to make it go again and then she got a little freaked out!

Ready to Go! (Gavin red)

Ready to Go! (Gavin red)

Eruption!! (Gavin red)

Eruption!! (Gavin red)

So Proud! (Gavin red)

So Proud! (Gavin red)

Each of the boys coloured some pictures, the twins drew their OWN interpretation of a volcano and I found a couple facts to include. Nothing fancy but the focus really WAS on the volcano itself! Definitely a worthy end to the 3 packages of homemade play doh we were gifted.

Sparkly!!!

Sparkly!!!

Emanuel and Ken made a special little volcano out of brown cardstock and some felt I had around the house from Christmas presents LAST year! I am determined to make sure that every lapbook he does has some sort of PreK style activity so that he doesn’t feel like everything we do is a struggle (and this time he got some Daddy time one on one as well).

Working Together!

Working Together!

All Done!

All Done!

Sewing wise I finished off the 3rd little monster… I am not sure which is my favourite BUT this one has the best blending of colours in my mind. I cannot wait to get books or something to place them on so I can add the googly eyes to get the final effect. Though I must admit I am going a little batty waiting on the next project. I can’t go back to my major unfinished as the box of threads for it fell out of the back of the van a while ago (thanks Ken) and have yet to be sorted and I am so NOT in a sorting mood!

Monster #3!

Monster #3!

I spent a bit of the evening stitching some spots along the seams on one of the kids’ costumes, and made sugar cookie dough for tomorrow. I figure with the applesauce I pulled out of the freezer I will make some fresh applesauce muffins tomorrow. Mmm

Tomorrow I figure we will head over to Michaels with our 50% off one regular priced item coupon in hand… cardstock is already on sale so I will pick up some tinsel green embossing powder and get started on our Christmas cards. Of course there is H&W to check out and then back home to finish the volcano lapbook and HOPEFULLY colours and shapes… Gotta keep busy right??

Nothing is Insurmountable! Not in This House!

Nothing is Insurmountable! Not in This House!