June 21-22

Summer is here! And… well rain and wind and storms on the way. In fact, not only in Minnesota but devastatingly so in Alberta specifically Calgary, High River and portions of Southern Alberta. We lucked out with the weather never really hitting here but Joe and Faithe had downed branches and worse on their street as well as multiple days of no power. Bree had some of the same in the city as well! I know that that is done and gone (since this is a delayed post) but the clean up in both areas remains. It is hard to see what all happened around my friends and family up north and not be able to be there with them. Thankfully our friends and family on both sides of the border made it through fine.

Nana and Baba left for their weekend camping trip after collecting the cousins on their way out. Of course that made our day start… well exactly the same – schoolwork in the sunroom…

July 4th knowledge continues

After we continued with our Independence Day learning Emanuel was ready to get back to his dig. He is loving the process, as slow as it may be, AND the chance to boss around his helpers. He is quite generous with both compliments AND tool sharing for the most part.

Nana and Baba had bought a large watermelon before they left so of course we had to cut it up and chow down! This was the best one to date.

The weather on Saturday was less than beautiful with lots of rain. So out came the rainboots! Photo op!

Ok, so the boys were less than enthused about standing in the drizzly rain.

On our outing to do some shopping we ALSO stopped at a couple garage sales. For 3.00 I got a boat load of dolly things… Groovy Girls in fact. What a deal! And two happy girls to boot.

The kids behaved in vehicles for the last week+ so they earned their bubble machine. We found out that it requires the Gazillion brand bubbles so there is some more bubble shopping to do but the first round was AMAZING. Other bubble brands just don’t compare with the dripping technique and the speed of the air going through.

So many bubbles

Ken and I worked on the last of the cataloguing of the wood for the playset… best we could do while the weather was so ick.

3 boxes to go through total

Though once the sun came out out went the kids. The weather was so horrible that Nana and Baba returned with the cousins in tow. The water level was too high near the campsite and with Joe and Faithe still home watching for power and downed branches it was not worth staying.

So the solution… freezies!

Weather did not cooperate but we found fun anyway. And the kids got bonus time with their cousins before Nana and Baba left for Mexico!

BUBBLES

June 19-20

Father’s Day is over, so now it is time for our move into Independence Day studies. The kids really did not know much about… of course me either. We had Sean asleep on the couch in the basement and Nana and Baba doing their thing in the kitchen as they are suddenly close to their next Mexico vacation (2 weeks). So our location of choice for our half day of learning – the sunroom. Luckily if you go in in the morning the room is not too warm, we opened the windows and turned on the ceiling fan and enjoyed the morning sun.

Gavin and his cursive

Zander and his calligraphy

We have a few books to read, some handouts and all. The twins are each doing their own little lapbook and then Emanuel and Trinity are combining all of their as well as  the joint stuff from the twins in a third. This is our first with any sort of individual books in a while.

In the meantime Echo ran rings around us in her party dress of the day.

Juice break

Which was also the party dress for the next day!

With schooling in the same place.

The boys took a break and watched Animal Planet with Uncle Sean…

And then the main event… babysitting Lily Bean for a few hours that afternoon! Sick kid at the sitters so we lucked out with our own bonus baby.

Tummy time (we try to be conscientious sitters!)

Echo was rather put out that she woke up to ONLY baby and not Aunty Bree. It did  take me a bit to realize that the main reason Lily didn’t want to settle and eat was that the house is rather chilly with the A/C on… easy solution… go to the sunroom!

And then naps until Aunty Bree came to pick up Lily!

With my best helper ever

Trinity was over the moon with the entire situation, except the bottle feeding which required a special nipple to mimic breastfeeding and demanded a specific angle to latch.

And then before they left… we attempted the ROLL! ATTEMPTED.

Pesky arm in the way, maybe next time?

Babies make every day BETTER! Especially our bonus borrowed gem Lily Bean! Thanks again Scott and Bree!

Kisses

And a smile to end on

For all of our Easter resources please refer to the blog entry titled “Easter Resources“.

March 26-27

Has it really been SEVEN WEEKS since Ken’s folks left for their vacation in Mexico??? Yup, yup it has! Our time of solo family living has come to a close for the next 5 months (or when we get our own special place… timeline flexible). We did not tell the kids the exact date of their return… a combination of grandparent surprise AND the interesting experiences we have had lately with delayed flights!

But first, before all of that – TUESDAY and our Easter focus education, crafting and general FUN! We had our book of the day – Easter by Let’s See Libraries: Holidays. Our last two books are all rather technical about Easter which is nice after all the stories we enjoyed previously.

Easter

We made TWO different baskets today… the first from our beloved Art for Kids site… through The Homeschool Classroom site.

Printed out

The other a wonderful simple woven paper envelope type basket from Education.com. As usual, links will be on the resource page or contact me personally!

Woven

We had to do the Jellybean prayer and poem… where each colour of bean represents part of the Easter story. Of course we didn’t have the right colours in our beans but we enjoyed them anyway. AND Trinity was able to draw some, count them AND copy the word JELLYBEAN for our lapbook… yes yes proud Mommy speaking!!!

Please excuse the background lol… the text get in me was a character talking about a decadent desert

We ended our night, after a family trip to Target (actually not too horrible!!) with an egg themed Dinosaur Train. Oh and popcorn!

Watching movie

The movie

Wednesday marked the end of our solo living of course… though the kids didn’t know that! I even managed to deflect suspicion when we had our in between flight call while I was already multi tasking two things. We had a dental appointment to alert them to (yup the reminder came mere weeks AFTER they left), an engagement (one of Ken’s friends here in Minnesota) and of course letting them in on a little bit of the getting Ted and Sean home debacle now over a month old (how has the time gone by???).

We made name plates out of foam with foam letters for each of the kids… there was some definite creative use of our letters going on!!

Easter names

We had a new Wild Kratts to enjoy — focusing on the Rhinoceros!

Symbiotic relationship

Art for Kids has not been slow on the adding of Easter themed items… first the Easter Bunny and then a Basket with Eggs! Gavin drew BOTH for us. Perfect to add to our lapbook folder. Assembly to follow… soon… I hope!!!

The bunny

The basket

We had our book of the day – Celebrate Easter by Deborah Heiligman, though the cover on our book was different than that link.

Celebrate Easter

There was cleaning to do…

Hard at work

Jell-o Jigglers to eat…

Jiggly

So all nice and organized… and ready for THE RETURN!!

Little miss adorable