Today we watched some videos with Irish dancing. I definitely have to share them both. Trinity also coloured an Irish Dancer today. You can find her on Education.com right HERE. 

We finished assembling some simple games – the Currclick Irish themed matching game (seriously check out their site and search St. Patrick’s Day… this is the freebie, link on right side of my blog), and then another from Education.com – a math activity – Pots of Gold. Not overly difficult addition and subtraction but a good revision and a chance for the boys to teach their brother.

Filling the pots with gold

We did our “smelly shamrock” craft today… pretty simple – you need either to print out the shamrocks on green paper or do what we did and have a template (great practice with cutting shapes), some green jell-o (I used jell-o brand, I wonder if the no name brand would smell as good… white glue and paint brushes. You can find the instructions HERE. We will have to see how smelly they are tomorrow, but we have plenty of jell-o powder to make more. 

Applying the glue

We coloured some simple Celtic knots, Our favourite UK site has some great St. Patrick’s Day printables. You can find some HERE.

With Emanuel and Trinity's knots

It was library today so Karyn, myself and Trinity and Emanuel made the trip to the downtown branch. Karyn alerted me to the fact that there is a substantial teen rated manga section in the upper levels… so I now have some reading to do! I still want to PURCHASE the back Gin Tama volumes but for now I can catch up and enjoy them, temporarily. AND the first 3 of Mushi-shi… YAY. 

Craft time

Books!!

We have a couple crafts to get working on over the next few days… I just need to find the time to make one of them myself first. I am hoping that we can just keep on having bits of fun through out the next two weeks and still find progression occurring… I have a few more books from the library to read tomorrow and of course more videos to watch. And that WIP to come back to… I promise more pictures are to come! 

A moment of quiet play before Baby Sister of Doom attacked!

Ken has finally succumbed to the family cold. Today was not his finest day health wise and it certainly did NOT help that he was up late the night before. We had a minor mix up on Karyn’s flight times (and location) and could not agree if it was an am or pm flight. So Ken stayed up in case it WAS an am flight (and kept me up with him, so you can imagine how tired I was as well today) and kept the phone by. Of course it turned out we were basically totally WRONG on our info and she came in this afternoon with Ken there waiting but still… totally the Reinsch-Johnson way of doing things – err on the side of caution but make sure you do it in a crazy way. Not that I was complaining much… I am coming to the end of the current anime series obsession – Mushi-shi. Which I officially want to collect in manga form as well. To make Ken’s life easier I am compiling a list of the mangas I want and which I don’t have. Should be an interesting list. I actually have been collecting a few over the years but VERY slowly and am very much behind.

I have started a project to make something for Petite Sheepette to wear at the August wedding. I am trying to make two little behind the ear clips of matching ribbon to Echo’s headband. Either that or a decorated choker… I am still in the planning stages. It can be super frustrating to try and make two identical (ok nearly) bows!

Working on bows

Today we focused on yesterday’s ignored math. Gavin is in the final two page testing series in his. I am finding out through these short tests (which we just do as worksheets) what things we need to go back to once we are done. So far the big one is the months and time… we seem to have the concept of a calendar figured out and are well on our way with the days of the week… it is just the bigger concepts we need to do work on.

We also did a chapter in our story. I think we are getting into the final stretch here.

Two more illustrations

Tonight we welcomed back Karyn from her Alaska trip. I will share pictures of the gifts tomorrow due to laziness tonight. BUT we went out for dinner – Karyn, Lauralee, Echo and myself… to the Wok box. Echo spent most of her time in the highchair… though it was a little too big for her. The food was great and even with Echo’s later moving around we were able to sit around and visit.

Quick snapped picture

Ok so the highchair is still a little bit big

The evening ended in rain again! Always! Seriously I am starting to wonder if the sun is scared to come out at this point. So very very wet. I would absolutely love a week of sunshine. Fingers are definitely crossed that Saturday turns out to be a sunny day. Friday we can BBQ and eat indoors but with the weather all nasty on Saturday we may end up a bit cramped in my brother’s place.

Our big excitement (beyond Karyn coming back and Lauralee visiting)… the neighbours cat felt the need to rest on our fence! They actually have 3 as far as I can tell, the other two long haired orange tabbies.

Kitty

So today was not heavy on the work but a good day. We accomplished things, we spent some time together and the kids watched quite a few episodes of Curious George on the Netflix. It is the best way to deal with a house full of people getting over being sick and rainy weather. I just hope that the rest of our week can be nice and relaxing. Or at the very least, that we have fun while we do things around the house. Check out Hooked on You… Seriously!

Echo in one of her lovely headbands. I think she looks marvellous!

Modelling with Petite Sheepette

I think I finally feel enough like myself to get back to blogging… or at least a reasonable facsimile! It all started with Trinity and a runny nose and before we knew it the whole family was sick (thus just a video on Thursday, if you HAVEN’T checked it out please do – Echo and our bubble machine, CUTE). I personally spent a large portion of Thursday asleep. Thank goodness Ken works from home and was able to set up crafts or a show and let me rest as if I hadn’t slept I am pretty sure I would have felt worse by the weekend.

This coincided with a work related issue (someone touched something) so Ken’s trip back to the old house was pre-emptively postponed anyway. We do not have concrete plans as to when he will be going back, but he does have that one last trip to make. One thing we DID have was hail! Large and brief but the size of marbles. I guess Alberta had at least 3 touchdowns of tornadoes that night and golf ball sized hail in one area.

Hail

The twins got in some gaming time on Ken’s computer as well. It is a great currency to deal with when it comes to behaviour and earning rewards. It amazes me how quickly they catch onto something like this. We definitely have to keep a tight rein on how much time they get and when though or it becomes a huge issue.

Minecraft

Emanuel finished his Pre-K workbook as well! Quite the accomplishment, one which he is VERY proud of. He wants to start on a Kindergarten one as soon as I can get one for him. I want to find another all inclusive overview type one to sort if get a feel of what he needs to work the most on. And I think I will start copy book for him with letters and numbers and repetition. He is VERY keen to learn.

So proud

Yesterday was a quiet day, up until the late afternoon and amazingly enough a nearly photo free one! Oops!

I think this is pretty much the only decent photo from the day!

Kathy made it up for a visit. We were able to head out to the mall further from us and the H&M store. I got a few pieces for Echo there (one on lovely clearance) and then a couple (on sale) from Superstore.

H&M finds

Superstore pieces

We are trying a new bug repellent with the hopes that it will work better than the family spray we have been using. This is a lotion and deet free. I am hoping if I can be sure that I get Trinity covered by the lotion we will decrease the possibility of bites. It can only be used on 3 years and up so no good for Echo but I am very careful to keep Echo’s time outside to a minimum anyway.

Bug lotion

It was so much fun to get out with a friend and then easily make plans for ANOTHER visit two weeks from now! I could easily get used to this. She was able to head home late last night. We got lost looking for stores and did some touring around… went to 7-11 and then Mac’s to compare the two (she works for corporate at Mac’s)… and buy chicken at 7-11 of course.

We have made a cost cutting measure as of this weekend. We are getting rid of our cable tv and going strictly to Netflix. The rental on the pvr alone is 20.00 and we want to reconnect our cell phone before too long. So I am STILL on the hunt for Cyberchase… we need to figure out some way to either get some of the dvd’s or downloading it. Sadly all of the ways you can either for free (on their official site) or affordable (Amazon instant video) get your hands on the episodes are restricted to the US. VERY unfair!

The kids have spent most of their time on art endeavours. The weather has been overcast and nasty since yesterday late afternoon so we have just sort of let them go at it. Minecraft(their game with Ken) has been the main focus. I do believe the plan is to make a whole BOOK of illustrations. 

One of the drawings

I have a new project to consider right now. Trinity and I had another chat about Halloween and she is determined to be Hello Kitty. So that means either finding a white cat costume (and making the trademark red bow) OR making a costume from scratch. I am thinking of simply making white ears and a white tail and looking for some white mittens. A white sweater and pants for pictures but of course for the actual Trick or Treating we would have to do that whole coat and possibly snow pants thing. I am actually excited about it. The biggest issue is going to be finding the right materials to make the ears and tail.

We are already thinking ahead to NEXT weekend. It is my nephew Jimmie’s 6th birthday party and we are actually half as far away this year. That is really what is making it possible for us to go! I have to pick up a gift yet, figure out what we need to pack for a day trip and make sure that the boys are all more presentable than they are THIS weekend.

I am hoping that this upcoming week we will all be healthy enough to jump right back into our schooling, crafting and other activities. The last few days have been so idle after such a busy half week, I think all of us were frustrated. At least this time we all got sick in a relatively short period of time which means we all get better around the same time as well. 

Tonight I hope to get my crafting space finally cleared up AND watch more of Mushi-shi. Another anime of course! 

Diaper baby