My God-Son Anthony took control of the camera during our Dr. Seuss inspired get together. I felt I should share with everyone the best of his pictures.
Busy crocheting
Peek a baby
Pretty in purple
Pepsi can in detail
Caught unawares
The children descending upon the grapes and strawberries
A good pic of my eyeshadow
Yes, YOU
Kiara
Self portrait
Aidan
Reclining with a smile
Look boys!
In the kitchen
Snoopy
Adorable
Trinity
Asleep
January 26-28
How to end a week of saying good bye and getting used to a new normal? Well by celebrating Darcy’s birthday with homemade cupcakes and mint icing over at their house. Sadly, big Andy was not there but we made up for it with lots of fun, some good pizza and amazing friends.
Anthony with his Canadian flag. Thank you so much for mailing one down Sharon!
Skylanders in a new location
We were there from noon well on into the evening. The kids had a blast and we 3 adults got to visit and relax.
Sleepy Echo with Andrew… new hair cut and all. Poor thing, he scared her earlier in the day by accident!
There was a new dog to play with (Darcy is looking after her grandmother’s chihuahua for a while) which had Echo in absolute joy. A dog HER size! She was nearly fearless by the end of the night, playing with BOTH dogs and visiting with Snoopy the cat.
Snoopy
The wee dog
I am hopeful that now that Ken’s great job hunt is at an end I can focus on visiting more with the Novaks.
Anthony and Trinity
Supper together
Ken helped Andrew and Anthony out with setting up a new Minecraft account. I think that if Anthony does not get his own before his birthday that will be our gift to him.
The guru and his disciples
I wish I had a better picture of the birthday girl, but we had such a great time relaxing just like this all afternoon!
Darcy and the lap dog
This is definitely a bonus to being close… time with our god-son!
Anthony
Sunday was an at home day, the cousins were still here until the middle of the day and really we were not motivated to run any errands. So lots of fun kid time and yours truly snuck in a nap!
Relaxing tv time
Monday was back to work and life. But first – 5 kids in the great white outdoors. Ken took a bit of time off his lunch break and took Echo out to join in on the fun. I just love any opportunity to put that teddy bear hat on her. I got the pattern from CrochetSpot of course. Right HERE.
With Daddy
So much gorgeous snow
We started our Chinese New Year Library book marathon with Monday… We read the book together, talk about it and write down some key points and then make a little mini card style thing. Title, picture and of course the points. This is going to be one interesting poster. Our first book – The Runaway Wok. Also one that we read LAST year back in Canada. Something that the kids remembered right off and thought was TERRIFIC that they had this book in BOTH countries. What a memory they have!
Looking through the pictures a second time
Our booklet for our poster
Book #2… Bringing in the New Year. Beautiful illustrations, informative and fun. We really enjoyed this one!
We are alternating illustrators… so here is Gavin
Book #3… yup we were one a roll… Max Celebrates Chinese New Year. This one the BOYS read to us! They did a great job, each reading half of it.
And together with the leveled reader
Of course we had our kiddo tv to watch… I love how much they take away from these Junior shows.
Yo-ho-ho
We are working our way through the many worksheets and colouring pages on Activity Village and Education.com (both links to the main sites are on the right). I am hoping that we can continue our basic stuff – math, reading, etc etc as I feel like we are progressing nicely. And now that Ken is working again we can work towards some more pricey learning options in the next year! Whheeeee!
I just LOVE this hat!
October 30-31
The day before Halloween was the best day for us to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas. I was surprised… Trinity watched it one and a half times! Even Echo sat through most of it. They giggled, they wiggled along to the music… it was great! I really need to get my hands on a copy of The Corpse Bride. The kids decided the front needed some Halloween decorations and went out and did all this wonderful art on the sidewalk without telling us as a surprise!!
I think this is the haunted house
Jack-o-lanterns
Zander’s skeleton
What else did Tuesday have going for it? Well, we worked on our pictures from our Lego and birthday party sticker sets… the kids did their spelling and such as usual.. Emanuel coloured a child in a DINOSAUR costumepicture instead of learning about a NEW dinosaurs…
In dinosaur costume
There was also that SECOND pumpkin to spiffy up. This time everyone but Trinity put their hands in (or spoons at least) and got it cleaned out. We did a ghosty, vampire face on this one! I think it turned out rather neat!
Group effort
Gavin trying carving
Pumpkins together
And then to top off the day we took the kids out in the front yard for a trial run of the costumes! I will definitely redo the ones of Trinity and Echo, Trinity with face paint and Echo to get the BEST image we can of her with the Death of Rats (seriously we love Terry Pratchett can you tell?). In fact, that feltie is my idea designed by Ken and stitched by yours truly!
Death and her Death of Rats!
Our very own Chococat
Batman (Zander) and Spiderman (Gavin in ACTION POSES
One of my all time favourites… PENGUIN !!!
The 5 together
We took the advice of Art for Kids and did our own water colour resist using crayons and black water colour paint. You can find instructions HERE. They had a blast drawing their spooky pictures and then painting the black over. I am not sure where all my water colours went as I am rather sure I had some small packages BUT Gavin was nice enough to share his set!
The painting
Our finished art!
Now HALLOWEEN! Well, it was a wonderful day! I slept in way more than I expected to… this bug had me looped and I was up late the night before working on Echo’s Christmas present (photos to come), thankfully Ken was able to continue his application code and job search and let me sleep while the kids had fun with Legos and toys and things. We have recently done a clothes sort for the season so it SHOULD be easier for the boys to keep their room clean with less clothing in the drawers. Note I said SHOULD. We did work on some pictures I printed from Activity Village(my go to place for so many crafty things) and enjoyed the sunshine at the kitchen table.
Playing with goo
I have yet to let the twins know but as of Halloween they BOTH met their 20 sessions of reading and earned their pizza coupons! So now we have to determine when they can use them. I took some time and baked some chocolate cakes and as per Darcy’s request we covered one in ORANGE cream cheese icing (sorry no picture). I actually found a nice and simple recipe for it as follows (ok not the cake, that was a box mix!): Quick and Easy Cream Cheese Icing Ingredients:
1 With an electric mixer, mix the butter and cream cheese together, about 3 minutes on medium speed until very smooth. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl to ensure even mixing. 2 Add the vanilla extract and mix. Slowly add the powdered sugar. Keep adding until you get to desired sweetness and thickness. 3 Either spread on with a blunt knife or spatula, or spoon into a piping bag to decorate your cake or cupcake.
Once all of that was done, Ken showered and the kids prepped to go we packed our pumpkins up and headed out to the Novak’s. When we got there they were having an impromptu dance/carving party so our pumpkins fit right in.
Carving
Our pumpkins came along for the ride
Since Andrew and Anthony were not ready for their plans Ken and I took Aidan (and briefly Alex before he headed back to wait for his ride) and our 5 and started trick or treating on the street the Novaks live on. We made it all around and back to wait for Darcy while she dropped off the 3 big boys for their groups. Darcy got back and we piled into their van and headed to a newer neighbourhood to round off our fun with a couple more streets.
Trick or treat!
The 6 we took out all together
After that it was back to the house to eat some candy and play some bingo!
Bingo!
We hung out until nearly 10 when Echo was definitely in need of bed and all of the Novak boys were home (well except Big Andy who ended up with truck issues).
The whole group!
On the ride home we had 4 of 5 kids ASLEEP in the van (Echo went back and forth, I think she is getting closer to potty training and was annoyed that her diaper was wet… sadly with all the goings on we have been doing disposable more now). We stopped off for the closest thing I could get to a slurpee – fountain pop… and then home we went. Definitely different from our previous Halloweens but in a good way. Our kids had fun, they spent time with special friends and basically family and Ken and I got to spend time with not only an amazing friend but our godson too. The kids really look forward to their time with the Novaks and when they ARE all together it seems like they do nothing but have fun.
We had soooo much fun!