I figure one of the best pick me ups ever is time out with a good friend. Wednesday afternoon was my first chance in AGES to enjoy the company of a friend (FEMALE friend) without kids and outside the house. Bree met up with me here at the house in the middle of the afternoon and then off we went to Applebees. A first time in years for BOTH of us. With appetizers half price and a quiet restaurant we were in heaven! 

Gavin sneaking in some mommy time before I headed out

Well over an hour later we drove over to Target to do some shopping and wandering before heading back to the house to say good bye to Ken for his gaming with the guys. Bree stuck around to get to know Echo better and talk to the kids (and beat dinner time traffic). Quite the wonderful evening for us all! AND I was able to get her godmother’s gift we had saved before we drove down. 

Getting to know her American Godmommy

Which reminds me… we got our new Moo cards with this address and current information! So now every letter we send out, package, etc will go with one as well! We figure since we ARE going to be here a while and they had a major deal (no cost just ship which here was 5.00) getting them was not a horrible thing. I am not in any of the pictures and Ken is WAY in the background of one but there are 5 great and varied pictures of the kids. 

Now not to forget about the kids… today we had a nice chunk of our day filled up with HOMESCHOOLING! I am so pleased that we found our math books. Zander dove right in (somewhat willingly) while Gavin opted to work hard on his butterfly cross stitch. His plan is to finish this piece as soon as he can. I am not sure if that will lead him to moving back to the other unfinished piece or start a new one but I am so glad he is this interested in stitching. 

Hard at work

Add to that colouring, talking about Thomas trains and Daddy being in the thick of it and I consider our time a success… of course we topped that off with a family walk around the neighbourhood. It really is a lovely neighbourhood. Though we did find a few mosquitoes. And took a few pictures.

Start em young

The weather was beautiful for our walk and after that the kids went into the backyard to play with the neighbours, and apparently help them garden. Seriously this is a GREAT area. 

Gavin on left

RUN

I am still working on sorting through the last randoms of our stuff. I have found all the school supplies that survived the evil downsizing (seriously in need of UP sizing now… time to watch the sales and hand-me-downs) and my personal craft supplies. Now to make concrete wish lists to purchase once one of these companies pans out for Ken… two or 3 more companies have asked for further information from Ken! 

We ended our day with the adding of Gabriella and Zachary to our already active household.

All the cousins

This weekend is Joe’s birthday so the kids are here potentially until Sunday. Of course we have our own plans as well… Saturday afternoon we are joining the Novaks to celebrate Andrew’s 12th birthday and then Sunday… Sunday Ken and I are going SOLO to the Renaissance Fair. I am so excited about that one! Not much of a spending budget but we are dressing up AND I am taking my camera with!!

Learning something new every day

As we continue to attempt to declutter, organize and progress as a family I find myself often debating what to keep… do you keep every paper and piece of art? Choose the best of the bunch? Go random? Well, when I think about it… this blog IS my memory book. Every day I write down the mundane, the whimsical, educational, emotional… all the milestones are here, the art, the interest, the quirks and more… do you think my children will look back at some copy of this and sigh? Or maybe reminisce? More likely, with my bunch, they will shake their heads and wonder at the time mommy spent on this site… the insane focus on each and every step, the massive amount of photography… But I bet they WILL look back and I can say SEE you did this!! Now WHY am I thinking about this? Well on top of the above reasons I got an email last night that deals with keeping memories. You can check out the blog entry on the Confessions of a Homeschooler blog. She has a great free download for dealing with all the wonderful things you have around created by your children. For a schooling OR homeschooling family. 

Speaking (er typing) of milestones, today Echo did TWO shuffling steps! YAY! She was VERY unimpressed by it, would rather I had just swooped down and picked her up… BUT she did it! The twins were right there and saw it, I caught it out of the corner of my eye… and were very congratulatory. What wonderful big brothers she has. 

Standing on her own

Advent has begun here in the Reinsch-Johnson residence and we actually have quite a bit to do each day. We start with our regular calendar and a discussion about the day, then there is the I’ve been good chart that Santa WILL see, they have been told! After that our Perler Bead Advent countdown calendar that we add a shape to and then count the days left. Whew! And then this year the boys brought some items home from church. A little Advent calendar that you flip up a flap for each day and it has a verse and a book… a finding object book with a bit of the Bible to read each day. Today’s reading was Genesis 3, 1-7 about the apple. You then looked at the picture, found the apple and talked about trees and fruit and such. 

Some of the learning fun

But there’s more… today marks the beginning of Activity Villages’s Advent Calendar as well! This is a favourite of ours as it is daily and last year had us end up with 100 new ornaments! This year you make your own village! Most of the kids have opted to string their houses up but Zander is doing the table version. Added to that they have activities and such for each day too. Today was a focus on stockings. Emanuel did the colour by numbers to go with it! I love the series, especially with the time difference as I can access the next day early and get my print outs done and supplies organized early! I can’t wait to see our villages unfold!

Colouring their houses

And the final portion of our Advent season – this is for the twins really – our Polar Express lapbook. Today we did the first two mini books, read the story again (a first time for the little ones to sit through) and folded our folders so we can start piecing it together as we go. Our lapbook is from www.ajourneythroughlearning.com. When I checked their site briefly I was not able to find the exact one we used but if you search on Currclick there are a few options connected to the book. Once we finish the lapbook we will watch the movie again. It really is a very good rendition. 

Gavin has decided HE wants to sew some gifts as well. I am keeping one of his personal designs but after that am giving him free reign to gift out. Right now he is working on a UK pattern (they are great as they don’t use half stitches). It is a joke card and very cute. He has a lot of patience for this and persists even when he gets knots and stabs his finger. 

Hard at work

Zander has opted NOT to sew, instead he focused on time with Echo (he is my sheet holder when I attempt pictures), fun with Lego and he was the first one out the door this afternoon to build a snowman. His exuberance did finally convince Gavin it was a good idea and they BOTH built snowmen… all I have for today is the works in progress but they went for the REAL deal… rocks for eyes and mouths and a carrot for the nose!

Well on its way

Work in progress

Emanuel was my indoors boy with his workbook excitement and a mini craft… We couldn’t find my 3 sided beads (I have them in holiday colours darnit!! But I will find everything in the end… I am down to my last closet to organize). What we did find was a bunch of Christmas ornament craft supply my friend Kathy gifted us a year or two ago. With some pipecleaners, imagination and careful creation of patterns Emanuel was the proud creator of TWO beaded candy canes. The blue and green one (not pictured) was VERY short and chunky but we managed. I am sure AFTER Christmas is over I will find my bead stash!

Traditional Candy Cane

In order to get in a bath I needed 5 min to myself so I dug out my surplus stickers and embellishments, got everyone a piece of paper folded into a card, had the boys help the little ones and snuck off. We ended up with 4 very different Christmas cards (including two pinks!). I just have to add in our moo cards to each one going to someone and check them off my list. Slow going as I am trying to keep organized but it is going! Last night I finished TWO gifts and crossed off some more people. I hope to do the same with a US package. 

Completed cards

I received some mail today! I ordered some blue hair extensions off of eBay and they finally got here today. I will have to play around with them and trim them down to size but I am so excited! I wanted to dye my hair blue but have heard some real horror stories so this is the next best thing! AND they were under 3.00 for all 3!

Hair things

So with snowmen, Advent calendars, talk about trains, sewing and all the other random occurrences we seem to have kept busy! I wouldn’t say the time has flown by but I blinked and it was past 3pm! Yikes! Take a look at THIS Lego creation! The boys now want that many Legos too! 

And the crafting goes on… for me as well. BUT I did manage some time in between crafts to clean up my ribbons (the kids dumped one container and the other container was a mess by my own work). Now the kitchen table… well… yeah let’s just ignore that one for now! I know I have! That leaves my laminating to trim up, a house to “assemble” for Zander…and of course a hunt for something for Trinity to “do” tomorrow… 

Echo's embellished pj's

Baby with her cube

I have come to the conclusion that jammie storytime is too young for the twins… since Karyn is away on training we took the WHOLE family to storytime… way to simplistic for the boys who are bigger than everyone else and (in Zander’s case) louder. BUT we did the stories, sang the songs AND coloured the craft. Today’s theme was jungles and the craft – colour 3 parts and combine them on a popsicle stick to make a lion. 

Lions

We are still working through our cranky stage BUT I had two pretty willing individuals for some workbook time… on the floor since our kitchen table is a mess and the blue table was set for drying crafts… Emanuel is able to count rather far but is still working on his recognizing of number. The Math Mini Office is an absolute godsend. Gavin has gone in leaps and bounds with his reading (so has Zander really) though he is adamant that writing is NOT his favourite thing. I keep telling them – if you want to learn to type you need to learn to read!!

Workbook floor time

We finished our simple ornament craft. There is a lovely video if you like that over written instructions but you can make your own popsicle stick trees by following the instructions HERE. We only had a limited amount of the sparkly pipecleaners but I think the regular green looks great as well! We did not sandwich a ribbon for the little ones so I have to decide if they are going to make cards out of theirs or if I am going to hot glue some ribbon on now instead. 

Finished trees... fun and simple!

We got our Christmas cards in the mail today! EARLY! This year we are trying something different… with the move and our change in contact info and the fact that we simply cannot make enough cards for everyone I decided to go with Moo.comand buy mini cards. They are half the size of a regular card and you can personalize them and everything! So we used 6 different pictures – one of each of the kids and then a family shot (thanks Fydo for the amazing picture by the way!). So you may (if you get a card) not get the same card as someone else!! Actually, if you are interested  in buying stuff from there please contact me. I can refer you and you get 10% off AND I get some points towards my next purchase (ie. cards for NEXT year!). So I am already thinking about who gets which card, and hoping to SEE most people so I don’t post. This year has been (and the years to follow will be out of necessity) all about economizing. I don’t want us  to sacrifice our fun or our giving but I want us to do it in an intelligent manner. 

Moo cards!

Echo is standing on her own more and more. I need to catch her at a good time and get a picture! We think she will be walking VERY soon… what a Christmas present huh? In time for her to walk right up to trees and start UN-decorating them! Good thing she is adorable right?

Our Echo

I am working on ornaments lately – bitty 2 inch sock owl ornaments! Tomorrow I hope to have one up for sale… and maybe gift one… I swear this is the busiest November/December I have had in years crafting wise – I am just way behind where I usually am at this point! Thank goodness the kids are getting to the helpful age with things like baking! And with that back to work I go!

Up late and did her own hair.. had to take a pic!