June 27-30

We ended our week with a chapter book finish. This time Zander was our proud reader.

We returned to our original park from Mother’s Day and our first go at geocaching (HERE). Sadly the sun was hotter than expected so it was not super long of a trek but we had a blast going to a different section of the park.

Tiny frog!

All the sunshine and heavy humidity spurred us on to get that pool back up and filled for the kids to splash in. We did pick up a portable air compressor… just a tiny one that needs to stay plugged in. But you really cannot blow these pools up without something like that!

Saturday started off quiet…

Ken was out at a guys only beer and gaming overnighter so we had to make do without his imput. Luckily Renee and her 3 boys got bored and stopped by. Jeffrey photo op! It is great to have a friend who is close enough to just drop by. Makes me a little less homesick for our old place and all the local friends and family who just dropped by.

Sunday was another at home day of course so we started with playing with animals on towels to make oceans and land…

Back out to the pool where all sorts of floating was attempted…

Creativity with garage sale find blocks!

Once Ken DID get back he, the boys and I all played Munchkin. Their being able to read has opened up so many new avenues of ways to spend quality time with them!

I think it was a great way to end a weekend! We had only ONE day until the real fun begins. Not only do we end June which has been a very interesting and rather busy month but we get to lead into celebrating TWO countries’ special days. But first… SCHOOL.

Cooperative block building play time…

And a craft that was perfectly themed for the first of our celebratory days – Red and white placemats made by weaving. You can find the instructions on Activity Village (on right) under their Canada Day section.

And then back into the front yard.

Trinity and I snuck in some time to make felt maple leaf hair things (again thanks to Activity Village). We have done similar ones for Christmas. Perfect to spruce up our red and white outfits!

Echo wore one as a broach for a while!

And that was that… time to enjoy being both Canadian AND American!

Well there are some days where blogging just does not appeal and yesterday was one of them. I want to thank my friend Elaine for coming up with the idea of Wordless Wednesday… it gave me the chance to share one of my favourite spontaneous and recent shots of Echo. AND she was in pink in honour of the anti-bullying day to boot! So I hope everyone enjoyed the cuteness (I have to point out that the little hair thing in her hair – felt bow – all me!).

That is not to say that yesterday had us at a standstill! Far from it… St. Patrick’s day is just over a week away and the worksheets, videos and craft ideas keep coming. If you are interested in the bulk of the worksheets I have been talking about here you can check them out in my collection titled St. Patrick’s Day on Education.com. I do love this site as the resources are free and any and all issues I have had with a worksheet or information have been followed up SUPER quickly. As usual I am going by my old gaming name – Ayjah if you are trying to find me, though I HAVE reviewed MOST of the worksheets I used which also pops up on Facebook. 

I made the kids a special poster for St. Patrick’s Day to welcome people. You can get all the info for that HEREfrom the Original Kids Crafts site. 

A Hundred Thousand Welcomes

While watching the Discover Ireland series on YouTube we came across a sports segment that had an unknown sport with a ball and stick involved… and it was definitely NOT hockey, so of course we had to look it up! And found out all about something called HURLING! Seriously! 

I don’t know that we will attempt to play above game when it warms up but they really did enjoy learning about something new. You can find a link to what seems to be an official kids’ club colouring pages HERE. And HERE is the Wiki info. I had one of the twins colour the Hurling colouring page and the other Soccer as they are both major sports in the Republic of Ireland. And then we wrote interesting things about each sport on the back of the coloured sheets to go into our St. Patrick’s Day File. I am seriously thinking about doing their next year in a Notebooking format! They just make too many interesting things! 

I shrank down the template for this craft project as we didn’t have full sheets of green foam, and substituted one sheet of yellow and one of brown for two of them (note to self, need MORE green foam!)… we have rainbow cord (thank you whoever gifted that to us we LOVE IT!) and Ken made me up a simple 4 leaf clover template to use as decoration. I did Trinity’s sewing portion for her and the boys cut her pieces but she had fun being involved in it. You can find the original instructions HERE.

Emanuel at work, he did it ALL himself

Four completed bags

Our little Echo is quickly becoming a rough and tumble girl and has the bruises to prove it! Don’t ask me HOW she got this one, but what I THOUGHT was marker on her cheek smudged mostly off seems to be a bruise (maybe on one of her death defying climbs onto Trinity or Emanuel’s beds???)… I struggle between wanting to wrap her up in cotton and cheering on her adventurous spirit! Size is most certainly NOT slowing her down! She even tried to climb out of the tub to Daddy last night… he firmly told her no and sat her back down but she JUST is tall enough to get that foot up there on the side! 

I have spent MORE time on the WIP… features and fine details are starting to pop out which I have to admit is spurring on my interest greatly! Maybe I WILL get it done and perhaps by June! It will depend on other projects of course… and my focus but I guess if I keep the silly thing in my face more it will get worked on more! 

So February has come to a close… we survived the short month and while the van is NOT fixed (part still on its way grr) and some things are still in the works other issues have been solved! AND we have managed to get out some fun events as well! We have learned about the Inuits… Ireland and St. Patrick’s Day, celebrated Valentine’s Day AND Chinese New Year AND 3 birthdays… Now we face March. My brother and my Father’s birthdays are in March… and this year so is Echo’s surgery. I think that is going to weigh heavy on all our minds for the next 20 or so days. I would like to ask that everything think positive thoughts or say a prayer for Echo as we creep up to her date. We want her to be as healthy as possible beforehand and the surgery to go through without complications. 

Tomorrow the kids and I have to start our paper mache project… and there is a felt project Ken and I are working on altering to make it easier on little fingers. So I will have MORE crafts to share!

Rough and tumble + overalls = CUTE!!!

And the verdict is in… we are doing just wonderful with our homeschooling plan! YAY! Our facilitator came today (he was a little late due to road etc) and we went through what the boys had been doing, how they were progressing and discussed some of our personality struggles. I always feel WAY more confident after one of his visits. We are VERY blessed with our facilitator and do so love our board. 

Celebratory Slurpee and our Light up snowman (shared by all - both)

And now back to another two day blog! Today we declared a snow day after the facilitator left. That is another of the bonuses to homeschooling – we can create our OWN snow days… and yes… it IS snowing! In fact we woke up to snow coming down. The kids are so excited and I have put a bowl out for tomorrow to catch fresh snow to be brought in and played with in the morning. Tomorrow will be another brief day, as much as organized schooling as we are heading to the local library branch in the afternoon to see if any other homeschooling families can come and meet up. And if no one can make it… well we get to go to the library – win win right? 

SNOW

Anyway… after getting through the facilitator meeting pretty much unscathed (Zander only acted out a little) I decided to put Trinity and Emanuel down for VERY needed naps and let the twins go down and play a game on the PS3. Sadly the basement is a bit of a mess as we are moving stuff around in the main closet in there and had to get into the other closet for Christmas stuff… 6 or 7 buckets of stuff later and there IS some space in the closet… but it is still a mess! 

Gaming

Our pre-meeting morning was a Lego morning, easier than pulling out stuff we already had sorted and thankfully they kept it pretty much all in the same place. Gavin actually made a ZOO!!!

Fun with Legos

A zoo

Yesterday we worked hard to get some workbook work done…

Workbooks

We started our felt ornaments. Trinity and Emanuel didn’t stitch theirs but rather decorated… lots of glue and sparkly bits! 

Fun with sparkles

Gavin stitched and decorated his own. We used templates from Activity Village… the one I am most excited about getting to is making the Christmas Pudding Beanbags. I don’t know that the boys will do a blanket stitch but as long as I put the beans or rice in a ziploc bag first I think we should be ok.

I have the patch now to get going on that pink top and bottom set a friend sent Echo… VERY cute, I got it off of eBay (of course). I figure I will match little bows on the cuffs of the pants and maybe on the sleeves…

Bunny patch

Last night was ANOTHER planned visit – my cousin Elizabeth came over and cut the boys’ hair (thank you so much!). I didn’t get any pictures while she was cutting it – we were too busy visiting. BUT I do have a good picture of post cut hair and Emanuel! Doesn’t he look so grown up! I love having family over and the haircuts saved us a bundle. So many talented family members!

Looking sharp

I stayed up late last night working on Christmas projects and will most likely do the same for the rest of the week. Time is ticking! I cannot believe how fast November is moving along. We are still stuck in city but are working on busying up our weeks a little more.

The crafting day is still on on Saturday though we may be small in number in the end (the weather is VERY snowy). In the meantime I am working hard at getting rid of a particularly nasty bum rash on Echo. We almost had it beat and she had a nasty poo and burned right through the cream and the new skin. So baking soda baths and lots of changes tomorrow onward. At least with the cold weather it is not a huge issue to be home to do so.

Queen of the Christmas Barrel

Since I have found my lost photos that are now awaiting nails to go on the walls the hunt has turned to two pairs of missing skates… I am running out of places for those to be hidden so may have to cave and get two more used pairs. BUT we wrote our letters to Santa (in Trinity’s case I wrote something and then she drew a picture). Those are getting sent this weekend. The kids want me to write a letter for Echo so we will write that tomorrow. I took my paper from here, and if you are in Canada hereis the information for writing to Santa.  Now I am sure more has occurred in the past two days but my mind is totally full of Christmas prep and Christmas crafting! I will be so much happier once some of these projects are done!!! 

Ready for Bed!