The week is quickly coming to a close and I think I have FINALLY determined what we are doing this week – finishing! I found a couple of the older Prek workbooks the twins have been working on in the past and put them in their folders. We are actually trying something slightly different, last night I filled up a folder for each boy with their name on it with math pages, some dot to dots, unfinished PreK workbooks and such and had them choose what they wanted to do and how much.

Gavin went all out on his unfinished number workbook from Sesame Street and almost finished the whole thing, proving that his grasp on the number 13 is improving (for some reason when they count often they leave that number out??). Emanuel is continuing his work on his PreK lapbook!

Working hard

Zander did considerably less but volunteered to go out and do part of their daily summer/fall chore and pick up all the good apples and some of the bad. The hope is to get as many as possible cleaned up this week BEFORE the leaves join the apples on the ground. This also has me hopping on the applesauce trying to use up what are definitely BIGGER and REDDER apples this year. All that rain has done wonders on the apples but the raspberries… not so much.

Zander and Emanuel picking up apples... sort of

Trinity and Echo have done some more bonding, mostly Trinity discussing where Echo’s nose is, and telling me all about her. During my bath Echo spit up all over herself so she got an impromptu shower with Daddy that went rather well.

Explaining where her nose is

I left out a craft today in favour of another trip out to the fountains at the legislature. The weekend weather report is looking rather nice but with so much other stuff stuffed into it as well as the inevitable busier time at any of the “fun places” in the city we opted for today. Tomorrow I have promised (as long as the weather is nice) to put the sprinkler on and refill the pool… oh and slip them some freezies IF the apples are mostly cleaned up.

Emanuel, Zander and Gavin

Me and My BIG Girl!

Of course 5 min into that event – on a perfect day – no one else around at the little fountain and only one family over at the “pool,” Gavin starts crying… he jumped off of something and fell and hit his head! With swim shoes on and everything and right after I had said – be careful! Luckily we got him sitting down and holding a wipe to his head to see if the bleeding would stop, which gave me the time to get Trinity into the fountain for some play before we left or we would have had a 6 yr old in tears AND a VERY angry 2 yr old. It pretty much stopped bleeding but looked total ick so we packed everyone up, went through McD’s drive through (no supper yet of course), dropped the other 4 kids and myself off and picked up something for Gavin and Ken to do at the hospital and sent them off to emergency. Gavin was actually MORE upset about not getting to play more at the fountain than the wound. With our weather quickly changing I am not sure we will make it back but we will make it up to them – either the park or zoo or something!

Watching cartoons and waiting for Gavin

After a couple hours at emergency they were able to head home with the injury glued together (?), if that holds we are golden, if not he has to go back in to emergency and get one stitch. So fingers crossed the glue is the solution!

All glued up, Ken took a picture of the wound but I won't share that one here.

In order to keep my mind off the one child that was NOT here, I did a bit of crafting – one more page for Echo done and ready to go into her book…

Brothers and Sisters

and some dishes, tidying and chasing of the 3 that are here and mobile. Thank goodness for PVRed tv!

We got some mail today from my brother and his family. They were planning to make the trip up this weekend but Holly and my nephew Jimmie caught colds. Which is totally too bad – we have not seen them since last Christmas. But I have high hopes for us making it 3 hours south of here SOMETIME in the foreseeable future.

New clothes for Echo

Scrapbook and a movie for the big kids

So a relatively sedate day totally went wild by the end! But we are all in basically one piece and home for the evening which is a definite plus. The rest of the night I have to get back to work on that stocking and hopefully talk designs with Ken, who is now hours behind on HIS schedule for the evening. Serves us right for making an evening timeline when we have 5 kids!!!

I just can't help but take more pictures!

Why is that number important you may ask… well today was a good day for our little family! As we had run out of fruit and most of our veggies and the new eflyer was here from H&W we headed over there… and for $17.29 (see told you it was important) we got all of this:

$17.29 Worth of Fruits and Veg!

That’s right this whole pile of FRESH food was under $20.00! Ken walked out of the store bags in hand AND smiling! And the world kept on turning… crazy that! Tomorrow I have plans – for lunch I am making the family pita pizzas using those lovely pitas we picked up today, a can of tomatoe paste we accidentally bought that was supposed to be SAUCE, ham slices and some cheese. Talk about YUMMY! The kids are excited as I plan on letting them help as well! Just don’t ask me about supper – I haven’t figured that one out yet!

So the excitment of the produce store (where farmers send their fruit and veggies of course) spilled over to trying out another new store – Giant Tiger. Looks like a dollar store from the outside really but had a nice grocery section where we were able to pick up ramen noodles (4 for a dollar) as well as replenish the powdered ice tea supply that crazily enough the boys like as much as I do! Of course there was some asking for things – lots of silly items and toys and stuff there as well but I managed to have all 3 boys come out of there without crying and whining! How did I do that – MAGIC – ok ok – the strawberries you see in the above picture really come in handy! As does promising grilled ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch along with big glasses of milk! Go figure!

After lunch I managed to make a nice difference in the mess we call a garage and sort most everything into piles – the boxes to be compacted into garbage, the stuff to go to mom for her to give away AND the rest I SHOULD really find a home for INSIDE. (that will come in time…) The owners of the house are coming by next week – the wife has still not seen the newer carpet in the basement and they want to take some more of their stuff our of the garage so I definitely want to make sure they have clear access to it!

Supper was spaghetti – such a favourite but such a mess! So the boys had to have their post spaghetti apocolypse bath… at least they have gotten better – at this point MOST gets on THEM and NOT the floor or chairs or even the table (how they manage it I am not sure but it has meant that spaghetti is STILL a nekid kid affair – ok underwear or pull up only). After which we headed back the the Legislature to meet Chris and Chris at little after 7pm.

Splish Splash

A little cooler than last time but still GREAT fun. Like last time we started in the smaller pool with the waterfalls bowls in tow of course. We then went over to the deeper pool where we all got nice and wet. I tried Trinity in the boys’ old floaty but she was having NOTHING to do with it! Tons of tears and a face plant later we gave up on that one. Maybe next time when it is warmer.

So NOT Impressed... Next Time Maybe?

Chris and Chris came bearing ice tea and lemonade so the boys were more than happy with the entire situation… of course the fact that they were each promised a strawberry when we got home helped too! I am hoping I can convince Ken to head back there a second time this week… maybe with more friends in tow?

Aunty Chris, Emanuel, Gavin and Zander

I have been working on a pattern Ken designed for me for my sister in law Holly. The part I am working on right now is a bat symbol that I chose to do in her favourite colour purple. I have had these Light Effects threads from DMC for ages that Ken’s mom had gotten me for Christmas one year so am doing it in those. I think the colour number is E155… I plan on doing the saying in black (310) and it is all on a piece of 14 ct aida cloth – white. It has been slow going as to preserve the thread I am using Thread Heaven to keep it from fraying and doing the one strand knotted onto the needle. I hope to get through the bat by tomorrow night and then on to the saying (which I am not yet going to divulge!)… I plan on posting the pattern on the site along with one I made my cousin (Chemist) so keep an eye peeled.

A More... Feminine Rendition of the Bat Symbol!

So all in all a good day… no mini miracle yet but lots of moments of sweetness… and that is worth it in and of itself!

The Whole Family! Emanuel, Gavin and Zander Front Row.

Ok so with all my complaints about the government lately a trip to the provincial capital may seem odd… maybe gutsy? Well, not so much! But first… our craft of the day!

Today’s craft was off of a website my cousin in BC actually alerted me to: One Minute Crafts.com and was called Sunny Dais Foot Art… Very simple really (though there was a video to watch first which was nice!). First you trace out your foot (or in our case each child’s foot) on a piece of white or scrap paper and cut it out.

Gavin getting his foot traced.

Then you cut out the feet and trace them onto your coloured paper – 4 for each colour – yellow, red and orange… We did orange for Emanuel, red for Gavin and yellow for Zander… as well as trace a cd on yellow paper for your circle and cut out.

All the cut out shapes!

Next you place them in an alternating pattern to make your sun rays… and glue the circle over the middle… I actually added a second circle on top of that as my white glue dried kind of lumpy to make a smoother finish. And then we placed it on the wall above our tree!

Finished Sun

Lots of fun for the kids, and then we talked about what a sun does for us and whether or not it is warm or cold when the sun shines right now. They were so proud of their feet being the things traced out and used! Would totally suggest for anyone to do BUT we DID cut out all of this ourselves and make the pattern.

Now onto my playdate – while we could not co-ordinate with any of our friends who have children we did plan an outing to the Legislature with Chris and Chris… not to complain about the government – even better – to play in the fountains! There were 3 that you are allowed to go into, one a calm pool we skipped, another with little tiny waterfalls and then a huge one that is a nice deepness and great fun to sit in and float around! Next time I need to bring our floaty we have for babies for that pool! It wasn’t too deep for Trinity to stand in but too deep for her to do anything but hold onto us.

The Leg and the Pool You DON'T Play in!

We brought the boys some of our Ikea kids’ bowls to play with and a cup for Trinity and let them loose… they climbed all over and splashed and played for about 2 hours! Even Trinity got in on the fun a little, though she was not interested in getting anywhere close to the waterfalls and really did not want to wander too far from us where we were sitting and cooling our feet.

Chris, Trinity and Me 🙂

Gavin sitting in the Waterfall!

Zander in the Waterfall!

The deeper pool was great fun for the boys, and hopefully next time we can spent more time over there and actually sit in and relax! The water was surprisingly warm and very clean.

Ken, Chris, Trinity and Emanuel in the Deeper Pool

Emanuel, Zander and Gavin

Snack Time! Emanuel, Gavin and Zander!

I am very happy with my day, it got hot in the house but we had fun in the morning and a BLAST in the evening… a good day to remind oneself that you make your OWN fun and there ARE things to be done on a shoestring budget that don’t FEEL like you are cutting corners! Well it DOES help that the company was terrific too!

Sign of a Successful Outing! Fast Asleep!