Hmm, Wednesday… what is there to say about Wednesday? Well, the excitement level here hit a new high! After all, Grandma and Grandpa Mike were HOME! With all their new bits and bobs and of course time to say hello and catch up. Gypsy was right there with the excitement of course!  So what to do with all that excess energy? Well, it was time to walk it out!! And what a walk!!

We started off with some tree climbing… 

Up a tree

And then down a few back ways that are rather pretty to find this gem on one of the outside walls of the art building…

I love this one

And then onto the city’s information centre where I got tons of new ideas of things to see, some to read about and of course more photographs! (of course the woman knew mom too!)…

Thanks to a random gentleman for taking a group shot for us!

Where to next? Well, there are TWO pet stores in town, one just food and supplies so we decided to go the distance and REALLY walk. Past the apartment complex we lived in before leaving town (when Emanuel was tiny) and to the row of townhouses mom and I both rented in. What a trip back in time (though those stand condemned now after a lot of shifting of ground)…

We took the long route home past the floating dock…

Dock

Seeing a duck with HER multiple babies…

Ducks

And the perfect park for Trinity… with a slide her size and all… At this point Trinity started complaining of sore feet so I had to piggy back her for a while. She wore her pony sneakers instead of the sandals I suggested (that we purchased last year) and paid the price. We found out AFTERWARDS that she had blisters on BOTH feet. Definitely TOO SMALL.

Anyway then it was time to cross another place off our list… The Lefse House. It is a Norwegian bakery and coffee house. It smelled DIVINE! I picked up some fancy cookies – Cardamon cookies. That everyone BUT Ken loved. Totally light and tasty!

Lefse House

Then to Liquidation World to collect a variety of snacks… and then home with some VERY tired out kids and dog! What a walk! I think we were all ready for quiet time, though some less willing than others… That ate up over half our day and wore everyone out. So of course we had to do our daily weather report and play in the backyard and watch some quiet tv.It was a GOOD day! Emanuel and Trinity got an extra treat – a walk with Grandma and Gypsy where they ran into MORE friends and side tracked to a park!!

Thursday was waffles in the morning and then It was time to deal with Trinity’s feet. She needed new shoes dreadfully and Mommy and Grandma were the right ones to help hunt for them… while we ALSO hunted for flowers and tomatoes to go into the slightly late garden containers. And who is the best person for THAT job? Trinity of course! She loves flowers.  We hunted down the perfect shoes at Walmart for under 8.00! Perfect fit, girly butterflies, in pink no less! And the price made Mommy smile! 

Ready to shop!

The shoes

So of course once we got home, unpacked and to the backyard it was time to GARDEN! Even Echo got in on the fun running here and there and enjoying the sunshine!

Gardening

Off and running

Tomatoes

Though there was arguing and bossing around we were OUTSIDE enjoying the sun, working on our skills for following directions. Then Grandpa Mike decided it was time to get out the pool. That amped the excitement up even more… time with Grandpa AND the pool! Filling it with air was a bit of a challenge and in the end only the bottom layer was filled which was more than enough to put water in (and the pump on the charger)… the boys wore their shorts but Miss T wore one of her swimsuits. 

Filling the pool

Splish Splash

With 4 wet kids and dinner ready we decided to put them outside. They used the box for the new lawn mower (the blade dropped right off the old one while Ken was mowing earlier in the day). Perfect for a picnic and later playing imagination games. 

Definitely a wonderful way to end the month, and now we have a plan to deal with the next. We will be at my mom’s for June with the hope of finding a place no later than July. Bonus if we find one by the 15th. We have expanded our search area and are just going to go for it. Lots of prayer, networking and communication to be done. I just want my own home again… somewhere safe and healthy for the kids. Though we are more than thankful to have somewhere to be right now. 

Just a little hint of Sailor Moon

Now who remembers THIS?? A boat by Gavin

We have, completely by accident, stumbled upon an animal of interest… namely the Opossum. Emanuel did a dot-to-dot that ended up being shaped like one and the questions began. While colouring his picture we found an ADORABLE image of a baby one and that clinched it! So now I am on the hunt for information, lapbook portions and other interesting bits about the possum. It really does not connect to anything else we are planning on learning about this year but why not? The interest is there after all!!! 

Beginning of the interest in possums!

We again spent our morning working on stuff that is rather easy just to complete. The boys had some very rudimentary Little People themed books they were given when tiny from friends in the UK that were started and now they are completing. Not difficult at all but the repetition of things like colour words, sounds, etc. is good for them too. Besides it is a GREAT reminder that we always complete what we set out to do! 

Working towards that next completion

We started our list for next year’s garden… I am hoping to do a container garden as we do not want to dig up the lawn in the front or back so we are a little limited. The list so far is: celery, corn, carrots, cabbage, peas, blueberries (can we even grow those here??) and pumpkins… We moved at the wrong time for gardening this year so I figure we will plan out what we need, what we will grown and where we want the garden NOW and save it for in the spring. 

Emanuel was the lucky boy who got to go along with Daddy to run errands today… they stopped in at a place not far from here to pick up some Halloween and Easter decorations I had set up a pick up through Freecycle with! Mainly Easter stuff it was very exciting to go through the bags! We are well decorated for the next Easter!

Almost a full bucket of Easter stuff!

Together they also bought stamps (a long delayed letter to my Dad I want sent), stopped in at Macs to get a pay for credit card AND went to Superstore for some much needed baking supplies (I actually ran out of FLOUR!!) and meal fixings (French dressing!!). Quite the adventure for Emanuel. 

Oops a slightly fuzzy picture

And the minor repercussions continue in regards to my email losses… I managed to loose ANY email I responded to earlier this month by cleaning out a couple of “folders” that were not actually separate folders… so I am still hunting down contacts… IF you have not heard from me in a while via email or had asked me a question or I had asked you one… PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE email me back at rosereinsch@gmail.com. I would love to make sure I have contact info for everyone better placed away! 

Stuart is officially in a bit of a pickle. He was showing off for a cat (seriously, why waste your time, we all know cats are superior beings right?) and got caught up, literally, in a blind. Now what did TRINITY take from that? Well… her interpretation was that a mouse ran through a door with a pink cat after him… VERY interesting, right?

4 different portions of the chapter

I had to call Ken up to help Gavin with his math temporarily… he and I couldn’t get through to each other what we meant with the idea of a fact family. Between Ken and Gavin they persevered and I have found a set of cards I plan to try out once I get the time to print them out. It is things like this that remind me what an adventure homeschooling can be and how lovely it is to have TWO committed parents… and that I am VERY grateful we have the internet and an upstairs laptop to make hunting down terminology a breeze! 

Last night I made up another scrapbook page while I was moving all my supplies back downstairs and onto my new shelving. Now the big question is – will the trend continue… or more importantly – will the 12X12 sheets supply hold out? 

Another page done

I am doing the prep work tonight for a fall craft that will have the kids stitching… very simple backstitch type stuff but with their enthusiasm of all hobbies parental related it should be right up their alley. This is off of my very favourite UK craft site – making felt leaves. I am thinking I will draw on the lines they are to stitch with a pencil of some sort though.  

Now it is time to tidy, get the leaves sorted out AND maybe craft??

Look a popcorn gnome!!!

In starting out week we started our concentration on learning about the days of the week. We have walked through the names multiple times but this week I have decided to use some of my online resources and find some worksheets to help cement the information. This ties in nicely with what Gavin needs to learn about to progress in his math book. Though I am finding it harder to track down good worksheets about the months.

I finally found the time to trim down our coin flashcards my sister-in-law Holly pointed out to me (they are using the same website for some resources in my nephew Jimmie’s classroom). I printed them out on cardstock and wrote the answers on the bottom left hand corner on the back. Gavin spilled a little paint on a few of them but on the back so I am not going to waste the paper to reprint.

Flashcards

With dealing with the months I found a variety of pages to get us started. The first worksheet was more about seasons and time to just sort of tie that in to the months in the year. The bulk of my pages ended up coming from EnchantedLearning. Just search out months and days of the week and there is quite a variety of printouts for all sorts of ages and levels. This is one subscription I am planning on keeping up for as long as I can! For starting with the days of the week I gave them this worksheet first based on the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We have a couple copies of this book though I have already packed them up (figures). the boys are rather familiar with the story. We did, however, find a youTube video of the story for tomorrow.

Working on the worksheets

Completed Weekday book

I sent out emails to the two homeschooling egroups I am a part of to see if anyone else has some ideas and personal experience on this subject. I cannot emphasize enough how helpful it is to have cyber support group when homeschooling. We are the only family in our group of friends and even our family who is homeschooling so often times when things come up or we need information our usual avenues are simply not there. The city we are moving to has a rather active homeschooling environment. The big yearly conference is based there. That is actually one of the reasons we chose this city as our new home. Where we live now is surrounded by schools so people who chose to live here tend to enrol their kids in them. I think we all are looking forward to a fresh start.

The boys have all rather consistently proclaimed that the basement playroom is “boring” and that there is “nothing to do” down there. So the solution to that – take advantage of the sentiment and BOX IT ALL UP! Everything except for probably their downstairs Legos and either their Lincoln Logs or Mega Blocks is going to be put away. That saves me a bundle of work right before we move. All they want to do lately is play outside anyway. As the scuffed and bruised shins, dirty faces and worn out children at the end of the day show.

We do have a concrete sign of permanent spring into summer season here. The owners of this house planted tulips in the front yard years ago. They are still coming up. We haven’t started any sort of container garden this year as we are still not sure what we are moving into. I think once we get settled I will go get some starter plants or a houseplant though for the kids to watch. I would LOVE to get an aloe plant. My mom had one when I was growing up, it got HUGE! I must sneak out to the front tomorrow and take a picture.

When I was packing I came across a book I had originally bought when I was pregnant with Trinity with the intention of reading it while I breastfed her. It was a great find and now has reappeared for me to read over the month of May. I do love a good history book and this one is a wonderful look into the French Revolution. I really need to get into a bookstore and peruse the history section again and try and find another gem.

Liberty

We are starting to go through the stuff in the cupboards with the intention of using up and NOT replacing. Tonight was a package of pudding, the kids certainly were not complaining. I want to use up as much as we can and each time we go to get groceries we are taking our time and truly thinking through what will FOR SURE be used. I want to get focused on the idea of having nearly NO toss out of food. What we bring into the house must be eaten not wasted. We did really well at that the year Ken was sick. After all there aren’t much in the way of left overs when you have so many kids anyway and ours are thankfully not overly picky.

I am still on the hunt for super affordable Hello Kitty things. I scour eBay every so often and have friends keeping eyes open. The plan is to keep collecting affordable items to give our resident Kitty fiend for Christmas. At this age expensive just means she loses or breaks (potentially) something expensive… lower price means I don’t have to be on top of her when she plays. If I can get ONE kid out of the way early on all the better.

Now to continue with the cleaning, packing and watching of Black Adder.

Our cookie monster