March 5-7

Midweek sunshine had the kids out in an extended recess. This has been a wonky winter… huge spans of too cold weather and the snow just not being packing friendly. So anytime they can get out and run run run it is worth it!

Baking sugar cookies is a two day thing so Wednesday was baking… the result was absolutely delicious as usual.

That evening Echo and I had fun playing with baking soda and vinegar. I saw this as a toddler idea on Facebook. You take a baking tray and put toy cars and baking soda on it. Add vinegar and let them play. I decided to strip her down to her pull up and put it in the tub to minimize mess. The cars were nice and clean and Echo thought it hilarious. Boy did we use a bit of vinegar though!!

On Thursday we assembled our own kaleidoscope from a kit we got for Christmas from Grandma. It was a lot of fun putting it together and then reading about the history of them thanks to Wiki HERE. And a short video with some information that we sat through.

Mr. Emanuel is wowing me with his increased wish to read harder and harder things!!! Way to go big boy!

Friday marked the start of a new portion of our homeschooling routine – learning to use Google and the internet to answer our own questions. First we made a list earlier in the week of things we just wanted to know and then the twins took turns writing the questions into Google to find answers. I would screen the sites that come out and then the kids would take turns reading out our answers for me to record.

Back to Legos…

And then baking again… we could not show up empty handed at the Novak’s!!

Which is where we went that evening. We had a dinner and playdate sort of day… we brought the side dishes and Darcy got pizzas.

The kids played games and hung out and watched movies (Depp Wonka’s Chocolate Factory – I brought my copy) while Darcy worked on a birthday cake for her god daughter and I played supportive friend. Not that she needed much of a cheering section. Darcy does AMAZING work!

In fact the girls are no ADAMANT that she make their cakes this year too!

So we ended our week with an amazing evening of play time for the kids and an adult visit that included some amazing artistic creativity for yours truly!!

March 1-4

First Saturday of the month was also the FIRST of the month. Talk about a quick start to the third month… Home Depot of course! This time it was making a Trojan Horse piggy bank! Not the strongest piece and definitely not a family favourite but cool.

We had visitors over lunch for a play date. Last week it was the Schwartz family – Chris and Renee and their kids. This time it was the Schwartz family Matt and Fran and their twins Henry and Izzy. They are between Trinity and Echo in age and most definitely NOT identical. I was so thankful Fran was able to come. It was great to see yet another adult woman in person. Sometimes the snow and cold really does isolate you.

The next day it was Sunday School as usual. We are really seeing the benefits of a church that has Sunday School virtually every Sunday. The kids do love going to class.

Then nap time for a Mommy who still had the vestiges of a cold. While I was snoozing away the kids and Ken were doing some necessary ground work on the tools used in making their own pinewood derby cars. Familiarity breeds understanding and SAFETY! What was absolutely brilliant was that it was TRINITY who was the last one working away with the tools. Very serious business.

We also enjoyed some girly time doing up the first of I am sure MANY scrapbook pages in Trinity’s Hello Kitty scrapbook! We do love a good sticker!

And of course in order to prove she could pull her own weight Miss Echo took a go at the vacuum. What a good helper!

I would love to say March started with lovely spring weather and sprouts of green but… well more snow once again.

The twins and I did our first animal reports. We are starting with books and internet searches and then hoping to move to bibliographies and paragraph form!

We had a complicated combination of swimming lessons for the twins at 7:30 and Scouts for Mr. Emanuel at 6:30. With the distance between the two It was a whole family all evening affair. We lucked out and Darcy’s older 3 were (semi) willing to watch the girls for Aidan and Emanuel’s session. I think that was my first experience with real babysitters!!!

The next day it was back to work… we are especially working on the concept of chores and how they are a part of being a family and NOT the means to money or reward. Mommy does a lot for the family that there could be help with. So why not pitch in and let us have more time to have fun TOGETHER?

We are all about the Lego lately. With the table out for Perler beads or the Lego game the kids have gravitated to the kitchen and together play time more and more. It is nice!

But more importantly… the family also have been enjoying more baking time together. I don’t know why we don’t do this more often! Especially with Nana’s awesome mixer at our fingertips (and yes it was unplugged before Miss Echo started her tasting).

Our focus in March really has gravitated to stuff we do TOGETHER!!!

February 8-12

Saturday marked our very first Pinewood Derby with the Scouts. And while we did not win, we did race a sweet car! In fact, Emanuel was more upset that he didn’t get the door prize he put tickets in for than loosing the car race! He really just wanted Blackout to race… and race it did! Aidan, on the other hand, won a bunch of awards! Big Andy even said that if we had sanded our wheels and greased our axles we may have won! But we really wanted to go by the book and sources were on both sides on any sort of wheel alteration.

The track

The cars

We were at the races with most of the Novaks (Alex was at a friend’s place as his races are another weekend with a different troop). Food was a little pricey so Darcy and I took some of the kids and went to the dollar store across the highway for snacks.

I was so pleased to see not only Emanuel out there playing but the girls and the twins as well. So much socializing and fun to be had.

1st badge!

After the races (which did seem to go on forever! We had cars only in the youngest race but had to wait for the awards which were not only at the end but after a lunch break??) we all headed over to the Novak’s for an afternoon/evening of visiting and fun. It is so nice to come over and visit there. The kids just wander off and play for hours!

Sunday was super special for us… not only did we START with Sunday School, but when the kids and Ken got back Echo and I joined them for a special field trip. But first we saw our WHITE SQUIRREL!

Then we headed over to the Chinese grocery in the city – United Noodles. That place is a wonderland for our kids. So much to see question. While it is not as large as T&T back home, it is a substantial store. They have a nice freezer section and dried foods. Not much on the fresh. We did good with some on sale items and quite a few new foods for Emanuel to try as Scouts suggested we do.

I even grabbed myself some new tea to try. We had a hard  time finding anything post extraction Ken could handle immediately but he took great pleasure in reading labels and checking out some of the (to us) crazy combinations on the shelves.

We started the week with a fun field trip to a brand new gas station which has its grand opening. First we went through the flyer and talked about sales and how coupons work. Then we headed off with our flyer and went shopping. There was a terrific deal on donuts, free coffee, bananas that are always at 38 cents a pound! We had a blast wandering the aisles and talking about what is a good price on foods and what isn’t. Reading price tags and labels.

These were a dollar a half dozen!

They had sandwiches and cheeseburgers at a total steal which made lunch a breeze! Of course that didn’t stop us from working on our school work. The twins have been taking turns each day reading one of our Valentines Day books to the rest. We are still having some mumbling problems but the smoothness of their reading is AMAZING compared to last year!

Emanuel of course had to record his pinewood derby experience in his journal.

The weather was rather pleasant so the boys spent some time in the snow.

The girls worked on a fun Valentines Day fingerpainting activity I found them on Facebook through Pinterest. HERE is the original idea thanks to Red Ted Art. I think they turned out sweet and both girls had a blast making them.

Miss Trinity and I had storytime together with a Valentines Day theme. Each book we are drawing a picture to go in our folder for Valentines Day. It is fun reading together.

Our sports of choice for the beginning of the week were snowboarding and the skeleton. I was totally unfamiliar with the Skeleton! But wow is it a scary sport! Hurtling head first down the hill on basically a few pieces of metal… crazy!!! So of course we had to get on the internet and learn all about them! And share the links of interest with all of you!

Skeleton:

• The history of on Rusbob  HERE
• 5 things to know about the sport thanks to yahoo news HERE
• Equipment and history thanks to Olympic.org HERE
• Our video and all that fun stuff is found on Activity Village HERE

Snowboarding:

• History of thank to library.thinkquest HERE
• Infoplease.com’s information HERE
• Our video etc is of course on Activity Village HERE and later on Art for Kids put up an how to draw… you can find that on their site, link on right.

The twins had swimming lessons on Monday. It was their mid way review and it looks like things are going pretty well! They are still loving it!!

We had a visit with a fairy princess…

And another Valentine book.

We ended the evening on Tuesday with some game playing. I love it when the kids help Echo learn how to play too. They can be so patient.

Mid week was another Olympic themed day with a touch of Valentines. The kids wrote their own poem using the word OLYMPICS.

The boys headed back out into the deep deep snow! I cannot believe how much snow we have around.

Trinity did up a beautiful picture of traditional Russian children.

And we did a variety of toilet paper roll crafts (starting the day before). Each kid had the option to think on their own (Emanuel’s castle tower and Trinity’s telescope) or use the list I found on Facebook for 25 different options. You can find that list HERE thanks to Kids Activities Blogs.

And there goes the first half of our week! So much snow, fun and crafting. I am very proud of our progress!

Storytime with Daddy

Been rather chilly lately!

Snoopy

Little gamers