I figure I will start this blog entry with attempting to boost the membership of a yahoo group I am in charge of… It is called Stitch ‘N Chat. It is a small group so far and not overly chatty but I am hoping to change that! Feel free to go, check out our main page and request membership OR simply message me here with your email and I can send you an invitation!

Now back to our regular Friday… Workbooks are a lifesaver. Progression is made with the possibility of completion which makes it much easier for the boys to swallow. I wish we could feel more agreeable to the task but at least I have decreased the whining (of course Zander STARTING his morning with a 20 min time out due to whining about STARTING schoolwork seemed to get the message through). 

We started reading about St. Patrick’s Day… I made sure to get some storybooks along with our factual ones. All from our local library! 

Books

Which gave us the opportunity to make our second themed craft – you cut 3 shapes out from a file I was gifted made by Teacher Created Resources. What you end up with is a shamrock (we printed half pages so they are smaller), then you glue on some shiny bits and there you are. 

lots of sparkle and glue

We have a few worksheets of a St. Patrick’s Day theme to share with you all. For Trinity we had a colouring page, Emanuel simple math using pictures, the twins subtraction and a nice more complicated maze. We are making St. Patrick’s Day folders for the twins (Emanuel is keeping his with his worksheets in his duo-tang). I have made mini books for each of the boys using gifted files. One is a School Express thematic unit the other from The Simple Homeschooling Classroom. I am not sure if these files are available but they are good resources all the same. I have downloaded a memory game from Currclick you can find HEREthat is a free download. I haven’t printed it out yet but plan to. 

Post worksheet Word World

Our church is holding an after church activity for families and friends this Sunday. If the weather behaves it will be out at the lake – skating and sledding… if not, at the church for games and activities. I have chatted with the woman in charge who has found us some skates to borrow! So we now have enough for everyone. I am not sure how much of the family will go, I think it starts at 2pm which means Echo may be sleeping and if it is rather cold she will be kept home. Otherwise we will all go… no matter what the CAMERA will be there! 

We finished our Inuit lapbook – it had a grand total of THREE folders involved. We have personal art, interesting tidbits of knowledge and of course lots of creativity. I am VERY proud of all my boys (even Emanuel had a hand in this one by offering up some personal art) for working so hard on their book! 

Cover

Some of the extensive interior

We broke out the gift that was dropped off here for the kids on Wednesday – the one thing they did NOT get for their birthdays but rather wanted – PLAY DOH! We had finally gone through last year’s supply and as much as I love making everything, Play Doh is not a part of my repertoire yet. Maybe later this year! 

With numbers!

And some St. Patrick's Day flair

We were hoping to have Grandma and her puppy over today for a visit but the weather worked against us. We got well over 15 cm of snow I am told today and the roads were less than perfect between her home and ours. So instead Mike went snowmobiling and later in the day we took our borrowed van (dropped off on a cake run) to (he) Chris’ birthday party! The kids watched tv in the basement and examined the pets in residence while we socialized… there was pulled pork for dinner and a very yummy cake! 

The cake

D&D the boardgame

Happy Birthday Chris!

I ended the evening with the creation of these felt bows in St. Patrick’s Day green… I put little star embellishments on Trinity and Echo’s and left my own pair plain. The one with the alligator clip is for Echo while Trinity and I have bobby pins for ours. 

GREEN

I was mean mommy tonight and had the twins clean their room… they were too wound up to sleep anyway so why not put that to good use? We found a few toys that had been misplaced… oh and the carpet… nice to see that too! 

Tomorrow is the sledding and skating event for the church (if the weather stays reasonable) and then there is the prep work for next week… after all we DID finish our Inuit lapbook!! I think we have some books on volcanoes, Gavin’s cross stitch to progress with, more information about Ireland and of course workbooks. With all this snow I am sure the boys will want to go out and enjoy the backyard. Not so sure on Trinity though…

Smiles for the camera

So I forgot to mention that last night while looking for something else Kathy found a stash of candy wrappers in Emanuel’s room… so I have an idea now where the candy has been sneaking to! But the best part was when we were cleaning it up (not a huge pile) and Emanuel was running the wrappers to the trash when Trinity walked in. She took one look at the stash and said “that’s not where you hide candy wrappers” and walked away! ACK! We waited til she was out of earshot and laughed our bums off. Although now I am wondering if my bottomless pit was the only candy snitcher! 

THE socks

The rest of the Hello Kitty potty training swag

Speaking of Emanuel – today was his official NEW BED DAY! Thank you Freecycle! Not only did the woman have a lovely single bed BUT she also had the sheets to go on it! Actually TWO mattresses and boxspring so we are debating what to do with the second mattress as that puts the bed up a bit too high. He is one excited boy, though we had to clean up the whole room to move things around and keep his nightlight where it is. Now we wait and see if he falls out of it tonight! Thank goodness his floor is carpeted. 

He set his bed up just how he wanted it

It was an Emanuel day. Ken has been slammed with work due to someone else’s error so he was unable to take the twins to the gallery for the drop in but they made up for it with movies in the basement and Trinity went with Karyn to the library. Emanuel and I had our afternoon fun! First a walk to the convenience store to get a slurpee (mittens were a MUST). 

He IS his mother's son

Next on his list – a bubble bath! I used lots of soap and he had a blast on his own… with his slurpee in hand. 

Ok so he needs a good book to finish it off as a proper relaxing bubble bath!

And then STORYTIME! We read some of our library books and let Echo and Trinity join us in the end. 

Storytime on the new bed

Hammy picture to celebrate the day

I got totally side tracked this afternoon while cleaning the floor and sorting the extras. While my livingroom is starting to clear out for the tree my kitchen table is a jumble. After finishing Trinity’s original Kitty’s friend I checked out a link a friend sent me and got started on THESE! I posted some up for sale on my Facebook page It’s a Hoot, but I figure there are so many bows out there for sale I will focus on these as mainly gifts! 

I think they are sooo cute

Kristen and Fydo dropped by to pick up some forgotten keys and visited for a bit so we have still have company today! I just wish Ken could beat these deadlines into submission and have a day off! It has been about 2 weeks now since he has had one! Cranky and unshaven Kenny is not much fun for the rest of the family… or for himself either! Thank goodness Fydo was able to spend a little time in the basement with him talking about programming. Thank you Fydo!

Another at home weekend of course. The van is not yet fixed, Ken is swamped and the house is still not to the point where I can pull out the trees. The never ending list of chores just seems to build up, but we are making progress… tomorrow there is no Sunday School with Remembrance Day and all so we will just have to work doubly hard to catch up! OR at least make some progress getting into two of the final closets of boxed items! 

She climbed in all on her own!