March 13-17

On Thursday it was the twin’s turn to work on their pinewood derby cars. Sadly we all sort of fell apart to a rather nasty cold which had our school week light and our napping heavy!!

This is all part if Gavin’s master plan I am told.

We did make a Sam’s Club run that has started a new family tradition. If the kids can at least attempt to behave on our shopping trip we then agree to have a post shopping snack. The prices on their food that is ready to eat are AMAZING… and also include a family favourite – pretzels! It is a great way to bypass the frustrated kids in line at the cash. Ken stands in line with the purchases and I have them sit at a table and order food to share. 5-6 dollars and we have some pop, pretzels and even a hotdog or pizza slice (that is really like a quarter of a large pizza!). We even caved and chose the more difficult cart to push around to humour the girls.

In fact, once the car working was done and the sickies were STILL sleeping it was back to the Lego game. Having that table out has saved my bum during the sick time.

Friday was quiet learning. Mainly things like watching Veggie  Tales and then going and doing the Sunday School sheets or what we have now started – Dirty Jobs. We are watching episode by episode and then doing a reflection journal page about it. Trinity is drawing and then I write, Emanuel drawing and then copying two sentences and the twins 4-5. We are working on having a title for our pages – Dirty Jobs Episode whatever… and on working more on telling all about something not just simple sentences. Anything to expand our work and our skills!

Keeping tabs on our week thanks to Activity Village

Saturday was a special day. We had plans to meet up with Matt and Fran and their twins again… but this time at IKEA for our favourite family lunch – meatballs! Although, with kids still recovering we had smaller appetites than usual. I really need to carry some ziploc in my purse for extras when we over order!

After lunch it was time to go across the street to MOA and the Lego store. They have this great play area out there for the kids to build.

Echo and Izzy

I was especially excited to go… this is the only place that has a Typo store for my favourite pens AND Body Shop (except airport where I never fly anyway to get into the store section and when anyone does they are closed) for my facial soap.

I could not resist.. I had this sort of pen in high school!!! 4.95 plus tax!

Sunday was really nothing special. We had way too many sick kids to do anything and no Sunday School so it was a lay back and enjoy naps and rest…

And time to set out our leprechaun trap! Because we all know Lucky Charms are the perfect lure! Sam’s Club had a double box on for sale so the kids were over the moon… as long as the leprechaun didn’t take off with the goods!

Monday was St. Patrick’s Day. With kids still suffering from this cold we did the best we could with our Green clothing. Got the picture in at the very least… but no green lunch.

Trinity and Emanuel were starting to bounce back so we focused mainly on THEIR St. Patrick’s Day fun.

Emanuel’s cover for his dinosaur book we read together

Playing a number game

Father, Son and Holy Spirit on a 3 leaf clover

Not the most impressive start to the week but it is great to see that even limping with illness we do get a wee bit done each day. Progress is progress! Enjoy the random MOA pictures!

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!!

February 6-7

It is always a bit of a mental adjust when the inlaws leave for one of their extended leaves. Nice and hard at the same time. Nice, because it puts us back to the 7 of us working as a family unit again but hard because man do we miss them! We have been promised that they will have internet and may Skype and I even had Ken slip in a gift for the birthday girl – it was Nana’s birthday on the 6th. Baba always gets her the best presents – a whole beach!!!

We had a bit of major birthday excitement. The day before the last of the gifts Aunty Holly and Uncle James had sent from Canada got here. So on the 6th we opened the gifts from them AND from Gammie! Talk about a list completer day! Emanuel got the Pokemon he had been dying to have, Gavin Pokemon cards. Zander even got a brand new Lego set. We snuck out earlier and Ken got each of the girls a little something so they would not feel totally left out. 5 pleased kids I am telling you!

Think he wanted it???

Thanks Aunty Holly, Uncle James and Cousin Jimmie

Echo and her pony

We really took a day off school for the most part BUT that did not stop progress on the car. Emanuel and Ken are a building force here. With lots of interested eyes keeping a careful watch on the progress. After all… the race is on the weekend!!!!!

The Olympics start on the 7th and while we are not doing a whole unit on it we are cherry picking things here and there. Of course covering Russia and some of the winter sports we could watch. Xfinity has a section of clips from the Olympics which the kids have taken to watching every morning and discussing for fun. It has actually been a little difficult finding information about Russia for the age range we are working with here. Once again Activity Village has been a great resource you can find their Sochi section HERE. Or go to Art for Kids and look through their drawings HERE. They have covered a few of the sports with some how to illustrations.

We totally started with a couple of sports we were able to follow drawings with. Ski Jumping and Bobsled. This is actually the first year of women being allowed to compete in ski jumping at the Olympics. Zander was quite upset about this… he said girls can do anything so they must have been missing out not letting them try sooner!!! Talk about proud momma!

Of course we looked up our two sports on the internet… and I will share our links!

Ski Jumping:

• Activity Village HERE
• Art for Kids HERE
• Infoplease article HERE
• We of course had to do the video thing… an Olympic trials

Bobsled

• Activity Village HERE (video at the very bottom)
• Art for Kids HERE
• Library.thinkquest HERE
• Infoplease HERE
• Kids Britannica HERE
• Our video from youTube with Chris Lori

• Equally exciting is that my own cousin Brad Reinsch is listed as 4th ranked bobsledding pilot in Canada!! Very cool! 

Emanuel also drew up his paint job on his car. It is a Batman themed piece and looking AMAZING!

We are preparing for Valentines with tiny cards printed off the Activity Village site. I love printing off stuff on cardstock (best price ever at Sam’s for a ton of it!!) and letting the kids create their own little gifts. These are for them to make for their siblings. We have several purchased ones (or given to us from Gammie) to use to mail out. Another thing to get done and mailed!

The kids lucked out and Nana left her iPad behind. So we are having some kid together time of course!  With limited fighting thankfully!!!!

On our own once again… yup yup!