November 7-9

UNO was the name of the game on Thursday with Aunty Karyn. Don’t get me wrong, we ARE doing our basic schoolwork – reading (to Karyn), spelling and of course any sort of daily worksheet, but a good teacher knows when to take advantage of the distractions, and special time with their beloved Aunty is worth the memories.

I had an extra special treat in the form of Darcy having time (after an appointment with all kids in school) and I having adults to keep the kids and I was able to reintroduce Karyn to Darcy. They met at first at our wedding and then again at the twins’ baptism (Darcy and Andy are Zander’s godparents, and we are in turn Anthony’s). We went out for a lovely LONG (keyword that, long) lunch at the Green Mill with lots of chatting and girly time and ZERO kid interruptions. BLISS!

Note the Remembrance Day Poppy that Karyn brought me from Canada on my lapel!

Karyn brought with her a variety of Canadian specific chocolates and bits and bobs. I took a picture of a few of them to share.

On Friday Ken and Emanuel got to work (finally) on the final portion of our Egypt lesson. The “crafty” thing that came with Little Passports. A bit of a mini dig with his very own pyramid. They made good inroads on their first time working on it.

We had a lovely minor snow fall which the boys  took advantage of with a snow bunny and mini snowmen.

Bunny

They used every tiny bit of snow.

It was a day off school for the cousins so they joined us for the weekend.

With Aunty Karyn added to the mix it was a wonderful day of fun and hanging out and getting back in touch with each other (with a bit of sneaking out to shop of course!).

Saturday was a somewhat planned out day with a trip to the Brickmania Toyworks. A special Lego exhibit done by local people with  tons of original pieces all made out of Lego. Gift shop included.

Hmm a bit of TARDIS

There was tons to see and we did our best to see it all. So much creativity! 2 cars, 5 adults and 7 kids later and we made it there and back.

Ok, so the bullets aren’t Lego… but the water is all those tiny clear ones!!!!

What a great sign! Look for the rest of these pictures (and there are a lot!) at the end of the blog.

After that Karyn, my mother in law and I went out to Kohl’s to take advantage of sales and an added 30% off discount. Because of them I am now the proud owner of an amazing (limited addition) Little Black Dress that was on for a steal!!! Thank you Nana! Pictures to follow… eventually.

The kids rounded off their day with a tea party.

A Saturday well spent! Now enjoy the Lego themed chaos.

The originator of this group was really into war themed projects as you can tell!

A pretty amazing tree!

There was actual water flowing out of the fountain.

Hagrid and Batman!

They can play this little soccer game on the display.

Godzilla

We spotted a fairy!

The kids

We did a mini unit on Australia thanks to the monthly Little Passports mailing. We covered their letter and worksheet and then spent a couple days finding some interesting facts from the books I requested from our local library. The big one for me was that there are CAMELS in Australia. Not something I was aware of! We have not done our usual full out unit as we covered Australia when we did our in depth unit on the VERY interesting Platypus. You can find ALL our resources on that HERE.

Our book list is relatively short but interesting:

• Welcome to Australia by Mary Berendes HERE
• Australia by Ann Heinrichs HERE
• Destination Australia by Jonathon Grupper HERE
• Australia by Katie Bagley HERE
• A Year in the Life of Bindi by Bindi Irwin HERE

There was a neat scratch paper craft that instead of making your own pictures you can make the shapes they have printed on the black covering. The boys took turns exposing the colours underneath.

I found two fun print outs about Australia on the Activity Village site. They actually have a lovely list of activities, print outs and such there but I specifically printed out two for the kids:

• Australia Fact Page HERE
• Dictionary of Aussie Slang HERE

We watched a tourist video on youTube thanks to ellacottandewing.

We definitely enjoyed our brief foray back into the Down Under!

November 4-6

One day and counting until Aunty Karyn gets here. What to do what to do??? Well not only is Aunty Karyn visiting and fall here to stay BUT it is also the month of American Thanksgiving so it was surely time to be… Thankful!

It was time to look at our Australia unit thanks to Little Passports. I got some books from the library and hunted down a few printables. I have a blog entry just with our resources from that short mini unit HERE. They even included a fun scratch card craft.

We drew up some “what if” stories about what sort of amazing and impossible adventures we could get up to with Aunty Karyn if we could do ANYTHING we could. Of course we photocopied the twins and took pictures of the littles to be able to give the originals to Karyn.

With visit imminent it was simply time to  get the house under control, tidy up and do our regular homeschooling bits and go to bed with the knowledge that by the afternoon on the 5th we will be up the EIGHT people in the house!!

Talk about excitement when we got Karyn home! Baba and I went to the airport to collect her. Her flights was delayed (of course) but we managed to meet up quite easily. Thus begins a week of fun with Aunty Karyn and a time of low school work levels but high levels of fun! I love how we all congregate around our electronics… here the girls were watching My Little Pony.

This quickly morphed into EVERYONE watching Aunty Karyn’s iPad!

Our first FULL day with Aunty Karyn started with stories and reading in the livingroom.

Then running out (for the kids) to enjoy the very first and VERY minor snow fall.

Trinity had special time with her God Mommy and got her hair braided.

And in the afternoon there was time for boardgames!

That evening we had a rather major Echo milestone – her very first big girl bed!!!! Of course she came out MULTIPLE times that night but definitely a success!!!

Trinity’s old bed

A handmedown from cousin Zachary!

Of course the girls had to end their day with some Aunty Karyn time…

And we still have DAYS to go!!!!