April 7-9

Sometimes it is fun to curl up under a blanket and watch shows together.

Especially when we have a Wild Kratts to enjoy. That third season is finally out. New animals!!!

Kangaroos!

We had a fun spring/Easter themed book to read and draw a picture from.

And Miss Echo took a dress up break. She is definitely our princess of the day.

The kids did a venn diagram comparing what we know about Jesus and the Easter Bunny to see what sort of celebrations and such corresponded… things like bright colours and family together time of course.

Emanuel and Daddy snuck out to get spiffy… brand new haircuts! Though the lady did go shorter than we usually like with our curly haired boy.

That left the twins to follow suit with showing off their buzz cuts thanks to Daddy!

That evening we sat down and built our next science kit… a solar car. Sadly the next day when we tried it out it was not very willing to drive. Ken figures some tweaking is required. So I brought out the tiny solar grasshopper we got last year on a steal.

On Tuesday we gave a new method of egg dying a spin… Volcano eggs. You mix the dye (liquid) with baking soda using a bit of water, spread it on the eggs like paint and then add vinegar and watch the fizz. We used our plastic eggs that we picked up at Walmart though the results were not brilliant. I need to check into different dyes and the like for next year. The fizzing did please all! Who doesn’t love a good volcano activity?? We found our original instructions on Toddler Approved HERE.

Emanuel has started earning arrow points for Scouts. One of the ones they are doing with the den is a puzzle. They each have a part of it to assemble on their own and bring in a couple weeks to the meeting! Exciting!

We had a lovely sunny day to enjoy and a trip to Sam’s to take so photos first in the sunshine and then off we went.

Of course after that we had to enjoy just a little more sunshine in the backyard… it is a bit of a mucky mess but we managed.

We have been talking about the religious roots of Easter lately. The kids are starting to grasp the full life of Jesus now and it is interesting to see and hear how that impacts what they figure THEY should do – be kind, share His story, share…

We had planned to do family photos but with the snow still apparent I settled for some cute ones with the girls.

Echo then played in the sun room while the kids took their recess and played out in the backyard. It truly is starting to look like spring… so far.

Emanuel had his big wheel out…

The grass in our dish is starting to grow…

And we even found time for another chapter of Treasure Island…

An Easter themed storytime…

And a Wild Kratts!

Hermit Crabs!

Spring is here at least for the moment and we are trying to face every moment with a smile and our best intentions. New life, new start, new us!

Even a touch of green outside!

April 1-3

We keep getting chills and snow but spring is finally in sight! However, as in past years, we did NOT do any sort of April Fools in our home. Moderation is not really a great skill among our boys and I really did not want to risk escalation of silly little jokes into tears and frustration in the ranks.

The month started on a Tuesday… so we had the following Saturday and Home Depot to look forward to… in fact we have a birthday party AND a sleepover to look forward to as well! Talk about starting a month with a bang! I am doubly excited about the sleepover as the boys have been asking for AGES to have someone come over and stay and all of a sudden I have two Novak boys fall into my lap. PERFECT!

We do need to celebrate a new month. How better to do so than with an educational video and fresh buttered popcorn? So Planet Dinosaur went into the PS3 and everyone settled in for a few hours of dinosaurs.

On Wednesday the kids worked on playing a game Gavin came up with – combining a Squinky gameboard with their Skylanders. It was not explained to me but everyone seemed to agree on the rules and get along REALLY well!

Thursday was a total fun day for us. We wandered a few stores to run errands including a wonderful children’s clothing consignment store that Darcy showed me where we found a play dress for Trinity and flipflops for the girls at a steal. They have a colouring contest going on right now with pictures of the fish they got for the store where you try to name it. Each of the kids did up one to send back in. My favourite name was Emanuel’s – Swish The Fish!

Dollar store booty

Brand new play dress for a steal

We also had our weekly Sam’s Club run… with lunch there this time! 8.00 and all of us were fed… with a variety of things. Seriously EIGHT DOLLARS for SEVEN PEOPLE… the math is grand!!!

Which led to a FRUIT SALAD BAR for supper!

On the way home we saw the start of the last (we hope) mini blizzard. There were tons of warnings starting on the the Thursday evening until later Friday. Just a big sudden dump of snow! The kids were not impressed.

Started with rain

To this…

Ending like this once again

We also planted our grass for Easter egg pictures… it was a neat idea I saw on Facebook to make real grass for Easter baskets.

And that was that… time to look forward to a fun weekend that STARTS on Friday with a birthday party! And to celebrate the fact that Miss Trinity does NOT need glasses (as was figured out on Monday oops.. forgot  to relay that!).

Ok, Sometime this week I HAVE TO put up the old dinosaur blog posts that are languishing in drafts un-loved and alone. So be sure to check back for some BELATED dino fun! Anyway…

March 27-31

March 30th – Happy Birthday Little Brother!

The twins are really excited about coming up with new questions and then working together to answer them all. We use Ken’s netbook and hunker down and go one by one. It is hilarious as we find answers, sometimes follow links to further information. Some of the questions are an adventure for me too… things like Why are snails slow? Who created the first superhero? Are there more meat eaters or plant eaters on the planet?

We moved on from Google to working on our hunting skills with the I Spy game!

And best of all – a lengthy Skype call to Aunty Holly and Cousin Jimmie. Jimmie was on break from school so he had lots to show and the time to do it.

We ended the week with some creative endeavors. Gavin made some rather interesting cookies out of Play Doh. Trinity made up a cupcake.

The kids all did reflection journals. Working our way through Dirty Jobs episode by episode has been great fun!

We also started a new book for family reading time – Treasure Island. The kids are quite put out with me. I am reading it WITH them so they have TONS of questions I simply CANNOT answer. This is not a classic I have read! I think we will either read Little House in the Big Woods or Charlotte’s Web next (Gavin is quite worried about me reading the second one as he says… I do not like spiders so I shouldn’t have to read it.). For this story we are doing a pictorial summary of each chapter. Drawing out main points and the like. Something all ages can be involved in!

On the last weekend of March we had errands to run and quiet at home time to enjoy. I lucked out and in a walk through Walmart looking at Easter stuff we found FAKE eggs to dye. We plan on still making the real eggs with Nana but the fake ones could be saved and used year after year!

Trinity and I worked on ANOTHER special page in her scrapbook. After all Ken had ditched us for a guys’ only night over at Chris Schwartz after errands so it was time to be rather low key.

We tried something I saw on Facebook – making string eggs and found that we REALLY need to use the small water balloon balloons. (back onto the shopping list they went).

The kids just sat back and enjoyed the day with me.

On Sunday Ken got home in time to take them out to Sunday School.

Definitely a stay at home sort of day after that with a fort to build and music to make.

AND being the 30th a HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my younger brother James! So we had a looooong lovely call. I miss the heck out of him and his family!!!

We ended March with a relatively quiet day at school.

And Ken and Emanuel running off to Scouts. I am so glad we decided to put him in this. He and Ken are enjoying it a lot. It is time to work on the extra stuff at home as well to get him I think what is called Arrow Points. luckily a lot of it is stuff we do at home through school. I just have to have us sit down and do some of this stuff we have done over the years again!

There goes March… did you blink and miss it too????