I have been a bad blogger this week and for that I must apologize. A combination of sick family (yes all 7 of us to some degree or another), Echo surgery anxiety and an end of the month “adventure” building up (to be disclosed by the end of the month, sorry) and blogging has completely slipped my mind. While I cannot guarantee that next week will be like. I hope to post at least SOMETHING before and after Echo’s surgery… 

Anyway… 3 days. Lets start with today just for fun! Well, we lucked out with our contact at a nearby town library. There was a Dr. Seuss party this weekend for the little ones. Perfect for our Trinity and Emanuel so Karyn, the two kids, myself and Victoria met up at the library to enjoy the party. Victoria works there some evenings and Saturdays as a second job. It is a beautiful building and their library program is amazing! I hope we can go back for more special events!

First it was storytime with TWO Dr. Seuss stories to enjoy. I love their little reading area with its fish in a tank and comfy reading chair!!!

The awesome reading corner

And then it was craft time… 3 crafts! There was a Cat in the Hat hat to create with paper, a t-shirt to colour (our 2 didn’t do a Seuss theme but amazing pieces of art all the same) and finally making a fish bowl using toothpaste and ziploc bags. I have some ideas to try this with other colours of paste for other projects! They smell REALLY minty!!

Assembling hat with Aunty Victoria

Decorating shirts

Toothpaste fishbowls

We stuck around for a little play time at the train set and picked out a few books to bring home and enjoy but Aunty Karyn is getting over a cold as is our Trinity so it was time to head back to town with Aunty Victoria along for the rid! We have missed her, it has been some time since we have had a nice visit. 

The plan for the day – a Green Food Snack/Potluck party for St. Patrick’s Day. We had a lovely variety of goodies including our now basically complete pot of gold. We still need to paint the inside and attached the base legs with hot glue. I figured people would rather NOT have black paper all over their chocolate loonies. 

Pot of Gold

I made some special greenish bread the night before in the breadmaker with 5-6 drops of food colouring put in when the beeping occurs to add in nuts etc. I think I needed to double that but I was worried about changing the flavour. Definitely a conversation starter!

There were green grapes, celery, green jello, Irish Potato Soup (directions to follow in another blog sorry! Have too much to type already for this one!), scalloped potatoes and sugar cookies cut like 4 leaf clovers. All in all a good spread.

After the snacking

Kristen, Fydo and Lauralee rounded out our gathering and we had a great time snacking, chatting, reading books with the kids (Lauralee is Trinity’s FAVOURITE storyteller right now). It was a lovely and restful way to spend an overcast afternoon. We wore green, ate green snacks and chatted. Lovely.

Of course we had to take our yearly picture of the kids in green. We did a 4 and 1 thing as Echo was not overly interested in photography. She actually had a DIFFERENT outfit to wear but… OUTGREW IT!!! MILESTONE!!! Our Echo is starting to out grow 6-9 month clothing! SCORE!

Little goofs!

A slightly cranky baby

Now for YESTERDAY… well, another rough day for yours truly feeling rather overdone with the knowledge that Echo is to have surgery so soon… BUT we managed to continue on. The twins and I wrote up information and interesting things we learned about Ireland and St. Patrick’s Day on a special page. I did the writing they did the dictating. They actually retained an awful lot! And then there were the adorable Leprechauns the little ones finished with me! I thought they were so cute, out of a file a friend sent me (thank you again!!). If you want to check out my Education.com collection for St. Patrick’s Day for next year be sure to click HERE.

Leprechaun

And Emanuel's

BUT late morning She Chris came by between clients at work to take me out to get lunchtime groceries (I think Trinity would have lynched me if I had made noodles for one more meal this week!). We managed to get quite a bit at Walmart for under 15.00. We also stopped by her work for a bit so I got to meet some of her co-workers and superiors. All very nice people and quite entertaining. 

Then in the late afternoon Kathy came for a visit. She forced me out the door sans kids and treated me to some most delicious Umi Sushi Express, a little wander around Walmart and an evening of positive thinking and chitty chat. Just what this worn out and worried momma needed. I truly am blessed in the friends I have met through out my life. 

Another special friend moment! Kristen over after work for a visit!

We have accomplished a lot with our little family and I just KNOW there is more to come. I am going to spend the rest of my year and my life creating more adventures for us to have, not more ordinary trips to places I think it is time to make EVERYTHING an adventure! I am going to do something special just for Echo’s surgery. We have our facilitator meeting in April and I am hoping to find the time to go through what we HAVE done (the big stuff) and find pictures of some of the things we could not save to show him to put with the stuff they completed. Definitely something I want to do as we do it for next school term! A sort of added scrapbook page for everything, especially with adding Emanuel into the mix officially!

I would love it if any of my readers, friends and family would weigh in on anything we have done since about October that is noteworthy that I should look for pictures of! Give me another perspective! You can leave a comment here, email me at rosereinsch@gmail.com… catch me on Facebook as Lisa Reinsch-Johnson (be sure to tell me who you are and why you are friending me if you are not friended yet), msn or Twitter! Whew that is quite the list! OH or call me, txt me or.. GASP.. tell me in person! 

That brings me back further to Thursday and a rather miserable day… sadly none of us were in the mood BUT we managed workbooks, some more St. Patrick’s day related stuff AND some together time. Lots of hugs, cloths for runny noses and moments of cute Echo time. I have been sneaking in even MORE cuddles lately, though one morning Ken found me crying and Echo crying in the middle of the kitchen floor. She had bonked and I had fallen to pieces. Thank goodness Ken was there to gather us up and remind us that this is all going to be OK! 

Workbooks

We have managed to have a memorable half of the weekend… and I have plans for next week, well sort of… (She) Chris is going to watch the other 4 while we are in the city, we are taking (He) Chris’ car to ensure we get there in one piece and on time (do we ever love these two!) and we are staying the night on the Tuesday at the den Otter’s… not to mention all the local friends who will be on call! What a wonderful network we are blessed with! On top of that we are moving out tv upstairs (that is another thing, the owners finally came and checked out the leak – caused by their improper installing of the dishwasher so there is a hole in my basement ceiling right now) and the Wii for the kids and hope that things go smoothly. 

Echo

Echo

And more Echo

Snow snow everywhere but at least it is not coming down… as much… today. That certainly did not deter the twins and Trinity from going out again. Emanuel chose to stay in and we got working on dot to dots and workbooks. He is still relatively resistant to doing what her terms as “very much” schoolwork but we are getting there. 

Working hard

I was alerted to the fact that in the wee hours of the morning a cousin of mine had her very first baby! A boy! My Grandma would be over the moon… she has her boys in spades in this generation. I am not going to share any particulars as the momma has not shared much on the internet yet herself but we are so pleased for them! 

We were SUPPOSED to do our next layer of paper mache on our pot BUT I got a little TOO organized and recycled ALL of our fliers. Of course that means that today’s did not come early… so… TOMORROW we do our next layer! Figures!

We did read our last Irish themed story today. Each of the kids drew their own illustration for the story and wrote a bit about the book. I need to get our stories together and have our reading week soon! I am debating waiting until April what with the stuff in the middle of March!  Our St. Patrick’s Day/Ireland binder is getting so full! I love it! 

Too Many Leprechauns

Today IS Tuesday which means – LIBRARY! In pj’s of course… Trinity went a little eclectic and did the mismatched pj’s. We started out the only people there until late showers came. The theme was monkeys! I snuck off and did some photographing of a certain NEW sheep! Of course a blog post on Fat Sheep’s blogwill follow! 

Craft time

Checking out the manga

It is hard to believe tomorrow is mid week already! We have a special video about Ireland for the kids to watch and come Celtic fairy tales to read… And hopefully some fliers to finish our pot! 

Echo is the best at giving sudden ninja like hugs!!

Are we there yet? I am sure EVERY parent has heard this question repeated over and over again. There are days when I wonder if we will ever get to that far off “there”… Life is full of journeys: little, big and in-between. Some come to an end and some continue for the rest of your life. The true adventure is getting there… and I have to admit, some of my journeys… well I wish they were shorter.

We woke up to a ton of fresh snow on the ground and more coming down. So our morning plans went out the window in favour of the twins getting into their winter gear and working on what they are calling an igloo with a treehouse on top. I made them promise NOT to go into their igloo alone and we checked it for reinforcement. It IS very sturdy and today they realized – WARM. So the idea of an igloo working as a home is not nearly so abstract for them now!

Showing off the "treehouse" aspect

After fun outside it was back to Ireland and St. Patrick’s Day. We are focusing on some instruments today. Each of the twins picked one they were interested in (harp and fiddle) and coloured a picture of them. Then we read some information about each one I found online and wrote what they found interesting on the back of their illustration. We also watched some YouTube videos. My favourite of the two we watched has to be the fiddler. We have two more exotic instruments to learn about as well – the Bodhran and the Uilleann. The boys really enjoyed the videos for those. 

This one got Trinity and Emanuel dancing! So of course, PICTURE TIME! 

SPIN

We found some more colouring pages to share HERE and HERE. Trinity really enjoyed colouring the Irish princess and had to do TWO versions. 

We finally started our paper mache project today… glue and water and torn up newspaper is so messy! And we have kids who HATE getting dirty… so… we squished the twins’ hands in it and put Emanuel to work tearing paper strips… It was fun! Though I had forgotten how much difficulty there is in getting ALL the white glue off our hands! We made the bowl portion and the little base pieces but are going to glue those on once they are dried. You can find the project we are working on HERE. 

Getting messy

Of course there was a SECOND run out into the snow this afternoon. We have had so much come down it looked like the first time they went out! I have to admit, the igloo – rather cool! But… I think we have enough now… could someone turn it off???

IGLOO

Emanuel

I am not sure what it is about a truly snowy day but it seems to sap a lot of my energy and drive away. The world looks absolutely beautiful though with the fresh layer of white, pure snow on everything. However, I have not exactly been productive. Although it does feel safe… like we are insulated away from the world with our family together… Echo is healthy and fine in here, the boys are smart and learning well… Trinity and Emanuel adorable and Ken my hardworking soulmate… there is no depression, no PDA, no dissenting of my choice to homeschool… the world is right here and right now. Don’t get me wrong, I am on Facebook during the day… my MSN is connected (though I am slow getting to some messages) and I check my email periodically for interesting info but right now… right now the van doesn’t matter, the bread is done in the breadmaker and the house smells lovely… right now the world stands still. 

So a rather introspective day… 

So much snow!