March is a special month – within the span of a week my brother AND my father have their birthdays. I will warn  you now… March was photo heavy!! And VERY delayed… but better late than forgetting all about the blog and giving up on it… right?

Our trend of almost every evening at the YMCA has continued. I think we are really taking full advantage of our membership right now.

Ken and I spent more than a few weekends with an evening at the indoor soccer games.

Some of those nights Aidan and Alex joined our kids to avoid having to go watch.

We spent some fun time with the Schwartz family.

Of course there was plenty of school going on.

We had a tiny bit of snow to enjoy.

We had a bit of a fashion show month.

The completions in class just keep on coming.

And I found time for some baking.

Don’t forget about St. Patrick’s Day!

Or our monthly Pizza Hut.

The sunroom has finally warmed, with the help of the new portable fireplace and a tidy room we have really been enjoying the space.

We finished up a redecorate on Emanuel’s room!

We also put up improved clothing rods for the girls!

I got in lots of crocheting time.

And found a yarn that reminded me of a famous painting.

Snuck in a cross stitch pattern – a birthday gift for my mom!

And after making them at Cluby, Trinity helped me make some knotted blankets for our sunroom chairs.

Spent some time at church.

It was great to spend time with friends who are family.

And just straight out family! 

Ken and I snuck out for our own time together too.

All while we played and learned and kept ourselves busy!

 

 

NOTE this is being posted on the 15th and I just want to send out a prayer to all those involved in the bombings in Boston. The world we live in is such an amazing and at times scary place…

April 9-11

Some days are special days and some days we MAKE special… today after a successful (with only a few glitches) morning I put the girls to nap and let the boys Minecraft it up with minimum fuss for once!

Of course first we had to learn all about penguins… our second book for the day was National Geographic Science Readers: Penguins by Anne Schreiber. Penguins really are one of the most interesting birds. And today we found out WHY they are black on their backs (to hide them from predators from above) and white on their stomachs (to make them hard to spot when fishing!).

We had a video covering the career and death of Captain Cook… apparently there is no clear answer as to WHY he was murdered… killed… whatever… Thanks to Crash Course World History. A little over their heads but enjoyable all the same.

Gavin and Emanuel assembled an ice box off of our Mr. Popper’s Penguins lapbook.

We also had a phone call from Grandma on her trip down Route 66… assembly line phone call!

And since apparently winter is not willing to let go… we had snow themed pages in our brand new nature journals.

The middle of the week was definitely not a sunny spring day… however that did not stop us from learning even more about penguins. This time we made clay ones to go into our tiny refrigerator with the clay food.

We had a fun second story in the form of the book Little Penguin The Emperor of Antartica by Jonathon London. This time instead of reflecting on the story itself the 3 boys worked together to create their own little story.

We made fingerprint pneguins…

Then the boys snuck off on me to do Lincoln Logs…

With our Mr. Popper’s Penguins the boys re-enacted a phone call in our chapter… too cute!

The boys went and played with the neighbours. In the process of learning the proper catch and throwing techniques Gavin’s cheek got in the way! He was just fine about it though.

Thursday marked a rather massive amount of spring snow… so of course the twins had to go out and play in it for a while.

Our second book of the day was by an author we really enjoy – Antoinette Portis (Not a Box) called A Penguin Story. This time the 3 boys (Trinity refused) drew their own adorable penguins and we stapled that together to be a mini book.

Here is how our weather ENDED on these 3 says of SPRING…

We did a Wild Kratts that was appropriate for our theme if only because these are animals that are MISTAKENLY showed with Penguins – Polar Bears and the Walrus are NORTH Pole critters… the Penguins SOUTH of the equator!

So our 3 days have been filled with Penguin learning and snow… I think the kids don’t believe me that it is spring anymore!!!

January 20-21

It was hard to do it but on the 20th Ken and I had to make the drive to send Karyn back to Canada. I don’t think Trinity really understood what that meant. She really was thinking Karyn would just be back soon.

After dropping off Karyn really the rest of the day was resting and sleeping for yours truly. We stayed up late the night before (of course). It is so unreal, saying good bye again with no set date to visit each other again. BUT the visit was amazing and that is what counts!

Monday had a slow start due to the ending of our visit. BUT we got our feet under us and worked our buns off to do our best with our school work. What to start with? Well… Art for Kids has always been an inspiration for us! This time we had THREE pictures to draw… the roses from before, an adorable penguin and a spider! Zander did all 3 on one page and then wrote a story with me about the picture (I will share that in another entry eventually I am sure). 

The Lincoln Logs (I know, so classically AMERICAN) appeared on the floor for some intense family building, from instructions… but with some alteration of the roof! We had to liquidate ours when we moved so having a Nana and Baba set to visit with is great.

We made a family favourite for lunch – pita pizzas, just using tortillas instead of our usual pita. 

As a SUPER special treat to make up for the lack of Aunty Karyn I busted out some Smarties of the Canadian kind to share with everyone! YUM!

We have made a great start with our Chinese New Year… of course starting with the traditional story about the great race to the Jade Emperor. My main resource for this year’s festivities is Activity Village. It is the year of the SNAKE! I have already contacted Xinny to get the characters to use for it and am looking forward to a couple snake crafts as well as our usual library books, colouring pages and time together talking about China! This year we are going much more stories and together time and less the country itself. 

So life is trundling along with our new countdown to seeing Ted and Sean!!! After all these visits are done we are going to be one mopey family!