June 15-20

Sunday was Father’s Day and a down day for the family… the 16th/Monday our Anniversary. You can see the pictures from the dinner out HERE at the end of the rather extensive Wedding etc blog post!

We did put the kids to work on Monday the 16th cleaning their room and the bathroom.

Which was topped by mail from Gammie… more Legos from the Mixels series she is collecting for them! Thank you Gammie! I got them out of the package and I swear you blinked and they were built!

On Tuesday we were home all alone with Daddy gone to gaming and Nana and Baba in Mexico so we had a junk food dinner with movies and snuggle time.

Don’t forget mid afternoon end of movie dance time!!

On Wednesday we took advantage of the many updates of the Art for Kids site (link on right).

And Gavin finished the first of his 5 projected chapter books for the summer Pizza Hut reading program. Not bad!!! For this book he did a chapter by chapter summary. On the next book he is reading the whole thing and then telling the story to us all in brief

We managed a lovely park visit/Geocache. While our speed at hunting has lessened every time we DO go has been full of excitement and avid hunters.

We left the travel bug and took the handmade dolly

On Thursday Miss Echo revisited her mail with vigor. She is also well into making special pictures she then has me write down what is what and send off.

We printed off some maple leaves from Activity Village (link on right look up Canada) and cut them out. Then each of the kids recorded something they like or remembered about Canada to put on our paper for our Canada Day learning. It is fun to remind ourselves of some of our past enjoyments that are so thoroughly tied to location.

Miss Echo got her chance with the PS3… she is starting to line up the buttons with actions a little more now but there is always some sort of boogie across the floor that goes with her playing. Interpretive dance gaming I think!

She is such a little card.

Of course a local series of garage sales had us out hunting bargains. That is our usual summer plan… hunt for helpful bargains!

By Friday it was back to school.

We are doing a special science report on a Canadian animal. One of the twins did the Moose and the other the Canadian Goose. I am working on them using resources independently to answer their questions with me going over them after to check them for spelling and actually answering the question.

Since we ended up misplacing the plug for last year’s pool and we had yet to make it to Sam’s Club to replace it a sunny afternoon with a good solid morning of classes earned us time with the sprinkler. It took a bit of trial and error to figure out the correct setting on the one usually used for watering the garden but we managed and out came the swimsuits, smiles and giggles. Winter is certainly becoming a cold memory for everyone.

After fun in the sun the girls pulled out the newest garage sale find and played Strawberry Shortcake. Some pieces are missing but 3 of the 4 girls are complete and they made do anyway. For 50 cents it they are pleased as punch.

We had a butterfly to examine…

And visitors to play with – Renee, Chris, Nathan, Jeffrey and Evan all came by to say hello, have dinner put up a light. The one over the sink had been down to one bulb for ages and with it burning out so quickly with each replacement Nana and Baba had bought a new one that needed installing. Ken even had time to make fresh chocolate chip cookies.

Jeffrey

Checking out the onions that grew themselves from last year

Bubbles!

Men at work

Evan and Echo

The best way to end the week, company for dinner and playmates for the kids. So many happy memories.

I swear I intend to catch up but we really followed through on our pledge to make every day count in May as much as possible. Living in the moment and finding the amazing in every second!!!

May 12-17

We are very blessed with our main penpal… Gammie has become instrumental in our writing and letter practice. We get more letters some months than we can almost keep up with but every one is answered! This newest installment came not only with letters but with a rainy day (and we have had a few) fun craft using pom poms.

She has added a new incentive for our school work… sending the girls their own work pages to mail back to her. Echo calls it doing her mail and I am happy to say she was VERY interested in doing it. We actually budgeted in curriculum overview books for the kids this month which includes one for her that she will start later in June or July.

There was also a new card game … whack a mole in card form?? The kids LOVED it!

Geocaching is going to be life changing for this family! Now even and every day trip to the store could be expanded to include a treasure hunt as well! We quickly are doing up all the local (walking distance) ones.

And on these outings we are finding more and more examples of winter being truly done and gone. After such a horrible winter each and every little indication is so AMAZING!!

Tuesday Trinity was teaching Echo how to concentrate on her pages…

Zander finished ANOTHER journal. Each book has higher expectations of the writer. This newest book means he has to have a title for every entry, the date and around 7 sentences! Anything to get the creative writing juices flowing! Well done Zander!

Another chapter of Treasure Island later…

And later in the day we made another trek out into the parks of Minnesota to find more Geocaching locations. This time we took Echo and while she and Mommy did not venture into the wooded area we did enjoy our walk. And met a nice puppy.

Wednesday was full of paper work.

Osprey

With the boys in the pool in the evening. I am not sure when we will sign them up for the next series of sessions but man are they improving. We honestly  cannot afford the large number of sports a lot of kids are in right now but what we do do seems to be so appreciated lately that I feel like as long as we keep taking advantage of what we can afford and maybe create our own opportunities we will do just fine!

On Thursday we were indoors and watching BBC nature shows. The kids made a lovely poster after.

The boys assembled some amazing Texas mini lapbooks. The links to these will be in my Texas Resource entry at the end of May.

More Wild Kratts…

Roadrunner

And reading…

And a Dirty Jobs about mosquitoes (I had to share Gavin’s picture… that is one HAPPY insect).

Emanuel learned about South Africa as well.

On Friday since everyone BUT the kids and I were out and about I snuck out with Ken and brought them home CHOCOLATE DONUTS! Yup we miss our Tim Hortons!!!

And I mean we REALLY love the geocaching. I would totally suggest it to any family (or person for that matter) that wants something to do that is really on your own terms. We have downloaded an app for our smart phone but you can get a GPS unit (we want one one day). We have been picking an area that has multiple caches to find and do our best to get them all. We have our own special bag of things we need (that is still evolving and I will share the total list in the future I promise) and try to keep the kids as involved as possible.

Nature was out full force as well. Amazingly enough all this was close to Sam’s (ok so we combined a  good trip Geocaching with shopping…). A Saturday well done.

Spring has sprung full force here… and this is our best year yet for taking advantage of it!

April 7-9

Sometimes it is fun to curl up under a blanket and watch shows together.

Especially when we have a Wild Kratts to enjoy. That third season is finally out. New animals!!!

Kangaroos!

We had a fun spring/Easter themed book to read and draw a picture from.

And Miss Echo took a dress up break. She is definitely our princess of the day.

The kids did a venn diagram comparing what we know about Jesus and the Easter Bunny to see what sort of celebrations and such corresponded… things like bright colours and family together time of course.

Emanuel and Daddy snuck out to get spiffy… brand new haircuts! Though the lady did go shorter than we usually like with our curly haired boy.

That left the twins to follow suit with showing off their buzz cuts thanks to Daddy!

That evening we sat down and built our next science kit… a solar car. Sadly the next day when we tried it out it was not very willing to drive. Ken figures some tweaking is required. So I brought out the tiny solar grasshopper we got last year on a steal.

On Tuesday we gave a new method of egg dying a spin… Volcano eggs. You mix the dye (liquid) with baking soda using a bit of water, spread it on the eggs like paint and then add vinegar and watch the fizz. We used our plastic eggs that we picked up at Walmart though the results were not brilliant. I need to check into different dyes and the like for next year. The fizzing did please all! Who doesn’t love a good volcano activity?? We found our original instructions on Toddler Approved HERE.

Emanuel has started earning arrow points for Scouts. One of the ones they are doing with the den is a puzzle. They each have a part of it to assemble on their own and bring in a couple weeks to the meeting! Exciting!

We had a lovely sunny day to enjoy and a trip to Sam’s to take so photos first in the sunshine and then off we went.

Of course after that we had to enjoy just a little more sunshine in the backyard… it is a bit of a mucky mess but we managed.

We have been talking about the religious roots of Easter lately. The kids are starting to grasp the full life of Jesus now and it is interesting to see and hear how that impacts what they figure THEY should do – be kind, share His story, share…

We had planned to do family photos but with the snow still apparent I settled for some cute ones with the girls.

Echo then played in the sun room while the kids took their recess and played out in the backyard. It truly is starting to look like spring… so far.

Emanuel had his big wheel out…

The grass in our dish is starting to grow…

And we even found time for another chapter of Treasure Island…

An Easter themed storytime…

And a Wild Kratts!

Hermit Crabs!

Spring is here at least for the moment and we are trying to face every moment with a smile and our best intentions. New life, new start, new us!

Even a touch of green outside!