Behind behind behind… the blog is so far BEHIND! BUT looking back at our accomplishments and fun of months past is actually rather fun. AND a great way to boost the creative planning gears for continuing our learning fun! So please enjoy the overflow of December memories.

Trinity and her very special Christmas ornament from her penpal Ella!

Dancing away during our Christmas song practice

Emanuel has some lovely creative journal entries!

The art of Echo

OH and of course a dose of Mystro or our kittlyess household….

Just so much fun kid stuff.

We had some marvelous fun with friends too!

Decorating cookies with the Novaks

Celebrating with the Schwartz Family

Receiving some sweet gifts from James, Holly and Jimmie too that I HAVE TO share! 

And dressing fancy!

Just a December in Minnesota! 

March 1-4

First Saturday of the month was also the FIRST of the month. Talk about a quick start to the third month… Home Depot of course! This time it was making a Trojan Horse piggy bank! Not the strongest piece and definitely not a family favourite but cool.

We had visitors over lunch for a play date. Last week it was the Schwartz family – Chris and Renee and their kids. This time it was the Schwartz family Matt and Fran and their twins Henry and Izzy. They are between Trinity and Echo in age and most definitely NOT identical. I was so thankful Fran was able to come. It was great to see yet another adult woman in person. Sometimes the snow and cold really does isolate you.

The next day it was Sunday School as usual. We are really seeing the benefits of a church that has Sunday School virtually every Sunday. The kids do love going to class.

Then nap time for a Mommy who still had the vestiges of a cold. While I was snoozing away the kids and Ken were doing some necessary ground work on the tools used in making their own pinewood derby cars. Familiarity breeds understanding and SAFETY! What was absolutely brilliant was that it was TRINITY who was the last one working away with the tools. Very serious business.

We also enjoyed some girly time doing up the first of I am sure MANY scrapbook pages in Trinity’s Hello Kitty scrapbook! We do love a good sticker!

And of course in order to prove she could pull her own weight Miss Echo took a go at the vacuum. What a good helper!

I would love to say March started with lovely spring weather and sprouts of green but… well more snow once again.

The twins and I did our first animal reports. We are starting with books and internet searches and then hoping to move to bibliographies and paragraph form!

We had a complicated combination of swimming lessons for the twins at 7:30 and Scouts for Mr. Emanuel at 6:30. With the distance between the two It was a whole family all evening affair. We lucked out and Darcy’s older 3 were (semi) willing to watch the girls for Aidan and Emanuel’s session. I think that was my first experience with real babysitters!!!

The next day it was back to work… we are especially working on the concept of chores and how they are a part of being a family and NOT the means to money or reward. Mommy does a lot for the family that there could be help with. So why not pitch in and let us have more time to have fun TOGETHER?

We are all about the Lego lately. With the table out for Perler beads or the Lego game the kids have gravitated to the kitchen and together play time more and more. It is nice!

But more importantly… the family also have been enjoying more baking time together. I don’t know why we don’t do this more often! Especially with Nana’s awesome mixer at our fingertips (and yes it was unplugged before Miss Echo started her tasting).

Our focus in March really has gravitated to stuff we do TOGETHER!!!

December 20-22

Our last weekend before Christmas had us with one more day of “real” school. AND seeing that Saturday was the first day of winter, a return of more snow and some cooler temperatures.

In our Gammie packages there was a craft kit so how better to end the last full week before Christmas than to get to work making Santas? And when we ran out of beards… elves.

More books of course.

We greatly enjoyed our read by Gammie story!

And then Ken and Nana executed Trinity and my idea of a box puppet house. Activity Village (link on right) put up a previous Advent’s printable Christmas people pages and so we printed those out and put them on popsicle sticks for our puppets. Supplemented by any finger puppets we found laying around.

Ken had registered the kids for a special Christmas Home Depot craft – snowmen made out of paving stones. VERY cute!!!

Sunday was the last scheduled Sunday School session until after the New Year. Miss Trinity wore last year’s finery and looked absolutely adorable. Our family and only a handful more kids were there but they had a blast. And came home with chocolate for all.

We rounded off our morning with cookie making and decorating! So many sweets in the house right now!

There was a reason for the last minute icing. Our afternoon/evening Sunday was our Novak/Reinsch-Johnson Christmas gathering over at the Novak’s. Talk about excitement and chaos… it was PERFECT! We had supper and snacks (oh the variety of snacks including our cookies) and games and visiting. Definitely an amazing way to spend Christmas with friends who are so much more than just friends. Chosen family!

We were there super late and drove home in somewhat nasty weather with kids who were full of Christmas cheer and exhaustion. Now enjoy the rest of the party pictures!!!

Christmas colouring

More present opening

Alex the musician

DINNER

Godson and I

Action hair

Fishing for words

Hanging out

A room of artists

The first 3 were made by me, I am not sure where Aidan’s is (I think he keeps it in his room) but I have cross stitched stockings for all the Novak boys.