September 26-30

I absolutely admit to being a garage sale lover. We found a game AND a recorder book… which only makes sense when you realize I bought recorders this summer and intent to start music next year!

We also found an early deal on snowpants at Sam’s Club! 15.00 for 60.00 children’s snowpants. THANK YOU! At the time only Emanuel was with us so we snapped them up for him. I should say, was the only kid with us that needs them. Once I find the winter coat bucket the girls are only down boots. Of course with all the sorting of things I am unclear WHERE that bucket is (fingers crossed the weather holds until I find it!).

We are still totally missing the sidewalk we always had wherever we lived in Alberta… road safety has become paramount as has Mommy’s obsession with watching how fast people drive down our street and at what times. We don’t do too badly but it seems some evenings the speeders come out to play.

On Saturday we had our numbers swelled to 9 kids! Jeffrey and Evan with big brother Nathan joined us for half the day or so while mommy was away at quilting class and daddy out hunting. The kids love having them over. Echo and Evan are best friends and the twins and Nathan are always off playing leaving the rest of us to enjoy wee Jeffrey.

Sunday was Sunday school and probably one of our last chances for shorts and pretty jackets. Where has the season gone??

We set the kids to work prepping our garden fresh carrots as well. I love how our canning and freezing have become a family activity.

Our big excitement for Monday was a visit over at Aunty Judy’s and Uncle Jim’s… or as the kids call it – Robbie’s house! Any excuse is a good one for a visit and this time our visit was based on Emanuel selling his wreaths for Scouts. He has done quite well doing so. So many lovely friends and family willing to help us out with our first real experience with fund raising.

Add in school and such to our week and that is the end of September! Our October is shaping up to be a month of Halloween learning. Lapbooks, stories and crafting I plan. So be sure to check up while I recount that… hopefully in a more TIMELY manner!!! I simply MUST get the blog up to date!

August 18-24

The girls are over the moon with their mini fashion shows. We are so spoiled that Gammie can and does send us so many outfits.

In celebration of Jeff being here AND he and Daddy being busy in the sub basement we had an outside lunch on the front stoop.

Right after that I realized that We had missed a rather special LARGE present that had been mailed previously from Texas. I think she got the most excited opening this one. The way it was rigged up the large caterpillar sort of popped out for her. Instant favourite.

That evening we had special plans. Jeff headed out with Chris for beers and visiting and the rest of us were off to Aunty Judy and Uncle Jim’s for a special family celebration of Echo’s 4th birthday complete with a cake made especially for her by Uncle Jim! He works for the Pilsbury company and makes an AMAZING cake!

I really can’t think of a place the kids get more excited about visiting than “Robbie’s House” and he wasn’t even there that visit!

In the morning the kids pitched in and worked on Echo’s birthday present from Jim and Judy – a Barbie lego set! With a little blue pool.

We continued our learning… mostly shark related…

And then we paid each of the kids and extra dollar of allowance to spend the week pulling weeds! What an efficient crew we had out there from the biggest to the smallest.

And the guys continued their gaming… interspersed with cleaning out of the sub basement. This all went SUPER well until they were at the tail end and found… a leak. Sigh. I am so proud of Ken for jumping in an working so hard to create space and organization in our world. This new and improved healthy Kenny is AMAZING.

We had company on Wednesday, well additional company. Robbie and Alicia came over for dinner and gaming. The kids are in love with these two, rightfully so. And it is doubly amazing that they can enjoy boardgames with us.

I found a spare moment and finished up a special wallet for my Renaissance Festival outfit. It will loop around my handle so that I won’t lose my ID etc. I love it, I altered a basic billfold style wallet pattern to fit what I needed and there you go – no lost nothings when I go out this year!

There was time for playing outside AND checking out the garden with our guests.

All this while Ken and Jeff made us dinner – Curry and a yummy sort of pudding pie. SPOILED US!!!

On the 21st you can check back and see our Treasure Box we got in the mail from Grandma and Grandpa Mike HERE. We evened that day out with Munchkin (game) and time outside.

All the weed pulling led us to tweezers and patience as we removed burrs that attacked everyone pretty equally.

The kids have been loving another adult in the house. Especially one that knows all about Canada. Eases the homesickness a little, just like Grandma’s Canadian Treasure Box.

What a week!!!

Really… can we keep Jeff forever? Because Ken has been so positive and the kids and I have enjoyed the company so much! We had all of Saturday and half of Sunday to enjoy with him and some lovely weather.

But then it was time to say good bye! Definitely a hard one… I don’t think anyone who visits us down here really realizes how much their visits and packages mean to us. A taste, touch, sound of home… thank you so much everyone for remembering us!

April 28-30

After a wonderful birthday for our very own Trinity it was time to return to the regular school week… around the carnage that is new presents without a home in our livingroom/homeschool area of course! Sadly Echo’s prolonged nap the day before heralded her curling up to sleep in Baba’s chair for portions of the day… thankfully the cold seems to be relatively mild!

It was an exciting day for our officially 6 yr old… she started her GRADE ONE MATH BOOK! (seriously she said that in full capital letters I swear!).

She also wanted to share one of her two birthday shirts… this is her favourite she says!

The Goldie Bloxs are a great hit with the kids. This was a kickstarter I wanted to try ages ago. A whole series of engineering toys geared at girls!!!

We had more Treasure Island to read…

More stories to enjoy and interesting facts to find and share.

On Tuesday the twins worked on simple animal reports. I am hoping we will find time to do more of these over the summer. I am working on getting the boys to read through things on their own and try and pick out the points of interest themselves… we are still getting rather mixed results.

Miss  Trinity agreed to model the illustration we did for our Texas  themed book. Learning about where Gammie is and where Aunty Holly and Cousin Jimmie came from has been something the kids have been dying to do!

Another chapter filled with pirates…

Wednesday was swimming lessons… but first Emanuel and I had to work on his dinosaur dome growing kit. We took it VERY seriously and drew up our blueprint for planting first before getting our hands dirty in the soil. I am really hoping it grows nicely but just the experience of planning it all out was so much fun! Maybe we will design some imaginary parks together!!

Now back to swimming lessons… this time we took the whole family. The girls, Ken and myself were the boys’ cheering squad and wow did we have a lot to cheer about. The boys are all really progressing.

After swimming lessons we had a special visit over at Aunty Judy and Uncle Jim’s to visit with them and Robbie for a while. Any chance to see the critters and spend time with family right? Added bonus, they had left over scout car supplies since due to other kids not being able to make it Emanuel’s 4th place winner made it into the top 3 to go onto the next level of races!! Score!

And thus ends April! Wow! Onto May and hopefully (soon) catching the blog up in time for summer!! Maybe?