February 8-9

And… Ted ALMOST gets on his plane and home on schedule. There is weather a coming apparently and it hit Toronto (his stopover) closing down the airport before he could get in the air here in Minnesota. So Ken and Sean dropped him off, got mostly home and had to turn around and come back. This is AFTER they had lunch, shopped a little more AND went to Top Gun in 3D at Imax! That left me and the kids home alone for the bulk of the day. So of course  there was school work to do…

Breakfast with Uncle Ted

Sneaking in an extra night

BOTH boys got 100% on their main words and Gavin even got Reinsch right. I am tossing it on the list but not counting it toward their totals as it IS tricky. So even if they get it right we do it the next week too, memorization!! In celebration of words well done they headed outside to play in the snow.

The tests

It was actually a rather decent day so the kids went out multiple times throughout the day.

The great white outdoors… American version

The poster was an all out success… we all had a hand in it. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed doing the Chinese Characters.

So proud of our work

We also assembled our fireworks. Note the characters on those too… Gavin helped Ken and I with those! You can find the instructions on Activity Village under Chinese New Year crafts (the link for the site is on right).

Gavin and our work

We also spent some time with a paper pack I got on sale at Michaels to make some special Valentines. Sadly the post office has been hard to get to so I have a bit of a stack of mail to add some of these too!

Special Valentines

A Saturday is always a bit slower, except when you add in even MORE company!

Best buddies

Teaching Quinn to play Skylanders

Bree and I worked together to create, from scratch, fortune cookies!

Finger burning perfection

I love it when Echo gets a chance to hang out with her American God Mommy! It was too bad Scott was busy. 

Snuggles

We actually had Steven here as well, he brought Quinn over and then Bree picked him up. So we had a full house! Of course the men were more… boring and thus no pictures… but the kids kept us entertained!

About the same size!

We finally got Bree and Quinn to open their gifts from Christmas! I promise pictures of Quinn in his scarf later!

Opening presents

So we had company coming and going… Now we are slowly slipping into real life – soon Sean will head home too and then… Ken goes OUT to work and it is just the 5 of us! Can we do it??? 

Why so serious???

November 17-18

We actually MISSED recording our thankful thoughts Saturday!!! But with good reason – we had a HUGE reason to be thankful that we shared – we got to go visit family for a birthday celebration!

Visiting

I really didn’t take too many pictures but we had a ton of fun

So we had family, pie, good food, puppies and plenty of hugs all to be thankful for! And a lovely reminder as to WHY this move south was really a good reason. For the first time ever we are close enough to enjoy a more casual celebration with members of Ken’s family. It was two of his cousin’s birthdays this month – Robbie and Jessica so we were over at his Aunty Judy and Uncle Jim’s to celebrate. Ken’s other Uncle Greg and Debbie were there too so we had a large portion of the Johnson clan to enjoy time with as well as the relative puppies, fish, and a frog to see! It was a terrific afternoon/evening!

Bossing around Uncle Greg

In the morning Ken and the boys got their hair cut AND Ken SHAVED! So not only did we party but we partied with style! I am one happy (and proud) Momma and wife! On Sunday we DID remember to think of our thankful things!

Trinity: kitties

Emanuel: Thomas the train

Gavin: having a turkey on Thanksgiving

Zander: having a mom and dad

Sunday was a busy but quiet day. We had a slow morning with our new colouring book stack for the kids in the morning. It seems to be working as long as the kids don’t get too excited! And then it was time to rally the troops and run errands.

Of course we had to spend some time on the Nat Geo magazine Gammie got for the kids.

While I do not have the safety buttons I need to finish the penguin for my nephew yet I DO have stuffing… that means the teapot CAN be finished… which would complete everything but Trinity’s wand for her Christmas presents! That feels GREAT! Now to find a special box to put the set in as every little girl wants a nice box for her teaset.

We treated our pretty well behaved kids with ice cream cones from McDonalds on the way home (and a plain burger for Miss Echo). Thankfully we got a good deal on the necessary turkey the day before on the way home from our party so it was minor groceries and stuffing. I love that the nearby center has quite a few of the stores we like (Cub, Michaels, Bath and Body Works, Walmart) all in the same area so we could park and go to a couple and then head to the other side and walk the rest.

When we got home it was MY turn to put a feather on our Gratitude Turkey (sorry about the hair, I was in a rush to get things done).

Turkey

We also made a Thankful family poster. We all took turns drawing little pictures of things we are thankful for. The end result was rather nice, I thought AND it had us ALL talking about and thinking about things in our lives. What made my heart happy was the lack of THINGS, toys, possessions and instead so many things like the sun, friends, family… dinosaurs (guess who said THAT one?). The race is on to get toner so that we can get our centerpiece done for the Thanksgiving table in time.

Our family page

The emails have been checked and it is certain – Tuesday night (after 10) Nana and Baba return so the race is on to try and get all the little things we wanted to get done before they get home done. We have rebuilt the cabinet we brought down with us which of course was missing the rod for the coats that we need a home for (of course a dowel works so we may need to go and get a new one) but we have been working on clearing spaces here and there. The kids are VERY excited that they will be back soon!

Some evening block building (Gavin)

October 10-11

Middle of the week can be interesting, Thursday always feel slightly anti climatic, not quite Friday not the middle of the week. 

Busy AND productive!

With Tuesday being a tip to the library Wednesday was a READING DAY! We started with dinosaur books (I listed them on the Tyrannosaurus dinosaur page… which will be up… eventually). Our Halloween story of the day was a silly one called Cheech and the Spooky Ghost Bus. A giggle of a book and a great first one for our Halloween stories.

Story time

We did our next Halloween themed craft as well – pumpkin bags. We had to make them slightly smaller than it called for as I could not get sheets of felt bigger than 9X12 inches at Michaels. But the kids had a blast weaving the ribbon and gluing on their faces. Tiny bags they are PERFECT for our finished ghosts. Now I just need to get some black ink to make some fingerprint art!! One step at a time.

Making pumpkin bags

Ken found us a season of Word World for the boys to work on their simple language structure issues. I love how they give jingles for the sounds of letter combos. 

Word World

Thursday morning was exciting for Emanuel and Gavin… though Ken forgot the camera while he let me sleep in (seriously!). The tooth fairy left her tooth offerings under our fairy looms! You can make your own fairy loom HERE. She brought them Playdoh no less! I was told in great detail about how wonderful she is and how happy they are. I think a precedent has been set. 

We have continued on with our book work. In fact, Zander had a completion – the reading review book  I bought halfway through summer is finally completed. Gavin still has a couple pages in the same book and Emanuel in his leveled reader. I am so impressed at how much progression there has been in their reading. Even Emanuel is trying to learn the sounds of letters a little more. 

Zander and his finished review book

We started our second Halloween book but as it is the HISTORY of Halloween we are taking it as a two parter. BUT we finished our Velocoraptor book… Velociraptor by Janet Riehecky (in Spanish and English). Friday is a no new dinosaur day so tomorrow Emanuel and I are going to go through ALL of our dinos and make a page of the herbivores. Today we looked at the Sauroposeidon… arguably one of the TALLEST dinosaurs ever found. OH and then I found out that one of the videos we have been using – a Discovery one got this particular dinosaur pretty much COMPLETELY wrong! I will share those links on the Sauroposeidon entry… eventually. I am so far behind on these! Time for some two post days I guess. 

A bit of Halloween

Ken had a second interview as well. It went rather well with a potential THIRD interview next week with the owner. So please keep a positive thought and a prayer for Ken and his job hunt!

Creative boys