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!
As do the faces of sweet little ones. My “loaner baby” Lily Bean.
And sometimes I get out from behind the camera… briefly
Gavin (above) and Zander have two of the most amazing pairs of blue (blue grey?) eyes!
