Tag Archive | Chococat

Remembrance Day And More

November 11-12

Remember Remember the 11th of November… Thank you to all service men past, present and future who make our WORLD a safer place. Though we may not understand motives, causes or reasons behind things, these wonderful and GIVING individuals give their ALL to keep our world safe and secure for ourselves and our children… Lives have been lost for causes great and small and it is those lives that we remember. Thank you!

And on that note – our thankful children for the day:

Trinity: my friends

Emanuel: the city

Gavin: having my mom and dad give me money to buy toys (is that a veiled hint??)

Zander: having people to play with

And apparently, today Echo is thankful for her Colour Wonder paper and time to colour with her sister.

Colouring together

Works of Art!

We did our moment of silence the day before as the morning went as I figured – Echo on a noise making rampage! I am so glad we took time yesterday to really try and grasp the concept of war and Remembrance of the men and women who sacrificed so much for us. We are careful to ensure that they understand it is not one or the other country’s army that is important but that the WORLD has people who fight to keep us all safe. After all these children are not one or they other. They are both Canadian AND American.

Our Canadian American 🙂 one of 5

Monday was a semi holiday for different people so I made the executive decision to go lighter on the kids… but of course we must first be thankful:

Zander: for ice cream

Gavin: for doing crafts with my Mom and Dad

Emanuel: the earth

Trinity: my Chococat

It was Zander’s turn to do the Gratitude turkey. Everyone gets REALLY excited when it is time to put another feather on.

Hello turkey

Today’s dinosaur was most definitely NOT a dinosaur… Due to the finding of an almost intact skeleton of a Woolly Mammoth in France of all places (such finds including fully frozen specimens are much more common in Siberia!) I just had to cover this amazing creature. You can find the article that brought this to our attention HERE. Thank you friend on Facebook. Zander joined us on our Woolly Mammoth investigation.

We finally got int the time to finish reading our Judy Moody book. And do the last of our Me Collage, colour some spiffy bandaids and of course get our fan club sheets! I have a folder that everything is going to go in. On Tuesday Zander and Gavin will glue the pictures we saved from the teacher print out to our front page! We used the Toys’r’Us Christmas flyer to cut out some favourite things and of course dug into the sticker box!

Certificates

Collages

Decorated Bandaids

Echo has been crazy busy with her crayons and papers. She comes over every so often and has me write her name over and over all over her picture! Such a proud little artist!

Echo’s Art

And we had ANOTHER set of instructions from Art for Kids! This time to make a snowman. I am  told that the nose placement on Gavin’s is all  the rage… at least that is where it looks COOL! We still have not had enough snow to make are real one. Which is just fine with me!

A bit Picasso?

Oh and don’t forget our poem practice!!

So cute!

Our week began rather well, I think! We are certainly finding things to learn about and keep ourselves busy. There are definitely days that I just wish I had another hour or two (thus probably why I keep accidentally staying up too late!).

I just can’t get over how grown up she looks at such a tiny size

Halloween Photo Overload!

Yup MORE pictures!!!

Baby Reaper

Cue evil laugh!

Just love this costume

Quiet thought

Ok so no more comments.. just cuteness!

Just the girls

My penguin

My super heroes (Zander left)

Just the animals

One more

Alex

In my Halloween shirt thanks to Gammie

With Snoopy

The CANDY

Halloween Here We Are

October 30-31

The day before Halloween was the best day for us to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas. I was surprised… Trinity watched it one and a half times! Even Echo sat through most of it. They giggled, they wiggled along to the music… it was great! I really need to get my hands on a copy of The Corpse Bride.  The kids decided the front needed some Halloween decorations and went out and did all this wonderful art on the sidewalk without telling us as a surprise!!

I think this is the haunted house

Jack-o-lanterns

Zander’s skeleton

What else did Tuesday have going for it? Well, we worked on our pictures from our Lego and birthday party sticker sets… the kids did their spelling and such as usual.. Emanuel coloured a child in a DINOSAUR costumepicture instead of learning about a NEW dinosaurs…

In dinosaur costume

There was also that SECOND pumpkin to spiffy up. This time everyone but Trinity put their hands in (or spoons at least) and got it cleaned out. We did a ghosty, vampire face on this one! I think it turned out rather neat!

Group effort

Gavin trying carving

Pumpkins together

And then to top off the day we took the kids out in the front yard for a trial run of the costumes! I will definitely redo the ones of Trinity and Echo, Trinity with face paint and Echo to get the BEST image we can of her with the Death of Rats (seriously we love Terry Pratchett can you tell?). In fact, that feltie is my idea designed by Ken and stitched by yours truly! 

Death and her Death of Rats!

Our very own Chococat

Batman (Zander) and Spiderman (Gavin in ACTION POSES

One of my all time favourites… PENGUIN !!!

The 5 together

We took the advice of Art for Kids and did our own water colour resist using crayons and black water colour paint. You can find instructions HERE. They had a blast drawing their spooky pictures and then painting the black over. I am not sure where all my water colours went as I am rather sure I had some small packages BUT Gavin was nice enough to share his set! 

The painting

Our finished art!

Now HALLOWEEN! Well, it was a wonderful day! I slept in way more than I expected to… this bug had me looped and I was up late the night before working on Echo’s Christmas present (photos  to come), thankfully Ken was able to continue his application code and job search and let me sleep while the kids had fun with Legos and toys and things. We have recently done a clothes sort for the season so it SHOULD be easier for the boys to keep their room clean with less clothing in the drawers. Note I said SHOULD. We did work on some pictures I printed from Activity Village(my go to place for so many crafty things) and enjoyed the sunshine at the kitchen table. 

Playing with goo

I have yet to let the twins know but as of Halloween they BOTH met their 20 sessions of reading and earned their pizza coupons! So now we have to determine when they can use them.  I took some time and baked some chocolate cakes and as per Darcy’s request we covered one in ORANGE cream cheese icing (sorry no picture). I actually found a nice and simple recipe for it as follows (ok not the cake, that was a box mix!): Quick and Easy Cream Cheese Icing Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup of butter (1 stick), room temperature
  • 8 oz of Philly cream cheese (1 package), room temperature
  • 2 – 3 cups of powdered sugar
  • 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

METHOD

1 With an electric mixer, mix the butter and cream cheese together, about 3 minutes on medium speed until very smooth. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl to ensure even mixing. 2 Add the vanilla extract and mix. Slowly add the powdered sugar. Keep adding until you get to desired sweetness and thickness. 3 Either spread on with a blunt knife or spatula, or spoon into a piping bag to decorate your cake or cupcake.

Once all of that was done, Ken showered and the kids prepped to go we packed our pumpkins up and headed out to the Novak’s. When we got there they were having an impromptu dance/carving party so our pumpkins fit right in. 

Carving

Our pumpkins came along for the ride

Since Andrew and Anthony were not ready for their plans Ken and I took Aidan (and briefly Alex before he headed back to wait for his ride) and our 5 and started trick or treating on the street the Novaks live on. We made it all around and back to wait for Darcy while she dropped off the 3 big boys for their groups. Darcy got back and we piled into their van and headed to a newer neighbourhood to round off our fun with a couple more streets.

Trick or treat!

The 6 we took out all together

After that it was back to the house to eat some candy and play some bingo! 

Bingo!

We hung out until nearly 10 when Echo was definitely in need of bed and all of the Novak boys were home (well except Big Andy who ended up with truck issues).

The whole group!

On the ride home we had 4 of 5 kids ASLEEP in the van (Echo went back and forth, I think she is getting closer to potty training and was annoyed that her diaper was wet… sadly with all the goings on we have been doing disposable more now). We stopped off for the closest thing I could get to a slurpee – fountain pop… and then home we went.  Definitely different from our previous Halloweens but in a good way. Our kids had fun, they spent time with special friends and basically family and Ken and I got to spend time with not only an amazing friend but our godson too. The kids really look forward to their time with the Novaks and when they ARE all together it seems like they do nothing but have fun. 

We had soooo much fun!

This entry was posted on 03/11/2012, in Uncategorized. 2 Comments