July 5-7

With all the holidaying over we were still home alone. The first Saturday of the month but no driver, we did not make Home Depot for the monthly craft. In exchange we had a large amount of quiet…Just the two girls and myself is so very very different. We started our morning with dry cereal and cartoons in the livingroom. A nice slow start to a whole day of homebody fun.

After breakfast we moved the fun outside to the pool Daddy had hung around long enough the day before to blow up. It is HUGE with just two little girls in it.

We had treats in the sunshine and played babies and mommies.

With a quick lunch indoors…

And then back out to make pain fireworks. I bought black poster paper specifically for this activity. This is a yearly craft for us. Put liquid paint on the paper, place a plastic lid on top and smack it with a hammer. The impact makes the amazing fireworks you see the girls making!

They also did some personal creating

After all that fun it was time for tv and napping.

Then back out into the yard.

A trend that continued into Sunday where we had our play time and then drained the pool. Of course we watched it go all the way down the drive and then down the street to the flood drain.

We took total advantage of our girls only time while the boys were out on their camping/Gabbi’s birthday party.

Of course with everyone coming home the 7th was a write off… well… except for sewing! Of course now to post and move onto the July learning!! 

February 8-9

And… Ted ALMOST gets on his plane and home on schedule. There is weather a coming apparently and it hit Toronto (his stopover) closing down the airport before he could get in the air here in Minnesota. So Ken and Sean dropped him off, got mostly home and had to turn around and come back. This is AFTER they had lunch, shopped a little more AND went to Top Gun in 3D at Imax! That left me and the kids home alone for the bulk of the day. So of course  there was school work to do…

Breakfast with Uncle Ted

Sneaking in an extra night

BOTH boys got 100% on their main words and Gavin even got Reinsch right. I am tossing it on the list but not counting it toward their totals as it IS tricky. So even if they get it right we do it the next week too, memorization!! In celebration of words well done they headed outside to play in the snow.

The tests

It was actually a rather decent day so the kids went out multiple times throughout the day.

The great white outdoors… American version

The poster was an all out success… we all had a hand in it. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed doing the Chinese Characters.

So proud of our work

We also assembled our fireworks. Note the characters on those too… Gavin helped Ken and I with those! You can find the instructions on Activity Village under Chinese New Year crafts (the link for the site is on right).

Gavin and our work

We also spent some time with a paper pack I got on sale at Michaels to make some special Valentines. Sadly the post office has been hard to get to so I have a bit of a stack of mail to add some of these too!

Special Valentines

A Saturday is always a bit slower, except when you add in even MORE company!

Best buddies

Teaching Quinn to play Skylanders

Bree and I worked together to create, from scratch, fortune cookies!

Finger burning perfection

I love it when Echo gets a chance to hang out with her American God Mommy! It was too bad Scott was busy. 

Snuggles

We actually had Steven here as well, he brought Quinn over and then Bree picked him up. So we had a full house! Of course the men were more… boring and thus no pictures… but the kids kept us entertained!

About the same size!

We finally got Bree and Quinn to open their gifts from Christmas! I promise pictures of Quinn in his scarf later!

Opening presents

So we had company coming and going… Now we are slowly slipping into real life – soon Sean will head home too and then… Ken goes OUT to work and it is just the 5 of us! Can we do it??? 

Why so serious???