July 6-9

Friday marked the beginning of TWO adventures… We coordinated with Karyn AND Esther to work everything out relatively smoothly. We drove from the Bleau’s in the morning stopping off at Karyn’s work to collect her keys and say hello… oh and drop off two owls for Lauralee and Victoria! From there it was time to drop off the female portion of our little family at Karyn’s apartment in time to terrorize the cat and tidy the rooms. 

With Esther running behind schedule (as per usual) even with a quick stop off at Dollarama for a few necessities (ie. toothpaste for Trinity) we had enough time to get the dishes mostly done and carpet vacuumed before she appeared for a quick snuggle and visit. 

SNUGGLES

 That marked the beginning of the boys’ adventure – Aunty Esther collected them at Kristen and Fydo’s where Ken was finishing up with our sort  through and helping with some furniture movement into their now almost completely finished basement and they were off to the city for THEIR holiday from US!! 

In the meantime the girls and I sat back and enjoyed the quiet that is Karyn’s apartment and waited on Karyn finishing work. Now how to spend the evening? Well with girly things including doing HAIR…

Note the pro action with Echo

And blowing bubbles.

Bubbles

And apparently eating cereal with unicorns!!!!

Snack time with Unicorns

The next day it was time to enjoy our day to the fullest. I had received something rather special in the mail thanks to Karyn… a birthday card from my Dad and StepMom with spending cash. Karyn’s bank was open so we were able to change it over to Canadian and it was  time to head to the mall and get to the serious business of shopping!! But before that a special homemade breakfast by Karyn – raspberry pancakes, fresh bacon from the Farmer’s Market and Pepsi… cuz we rock that way!

Pre breakfast sunshine

Note the sheep inclusion

Breaky

Let’s see… we started at the MACS counter where I purchased a brand new foundation with some extra sponges. 

Dressed to impress

Then there was the Body Shop (of which there are TWO in Minnesota… I checked! One in Mall of America and the other at the airport??) with its clearance items and a lovely 3.00 lip colour. We wandered some more just to see what there was to see and then headed over to Winners where Trinity got a special shirt – Hello Kitty of course – for being such a well behaved girl. 

You can see the shirt here

I waffled over a maxi dress that after checking out Old Navy with no success I returned to purchase along with a new pair of sunglasses (finally, that morning my old ones just sort of popped apart after years of use and abuse!)… 

Shoe break

Don’t forget lunch! A mall lunch of anything we felt like… Trinity had frozen yogurt and I got myself some Umi Sushi Express. Don’t forget our traditional poutine which was Karyn’s meal of choice. 

Lunch at the food court

We were SUPPOSED to have dinner with the guys as Ted and Sean came up to help Ken search through his Magic cards for the ones he plans on selling (seriously we downsized EVERYTHING). BUT they got all jumbled in their meal choices so we gave up on waiting and ordered in another favourite! Indian Flame Indian Food!!!!! SOOOO good!

Supper

After some more time on the balcony enjoying the sunny day the girls went to bed and we settled down for another special treat – Blue Eyes tea and cherries. Remember Blue Eyes from the Library High tea? Well I was able to pick some up from the source for the event and bring it to share with Karyn. And it was worth it! Combine the lovely tea and fresh fruit with HEDGEHOG time and silly movies – Spice Girls AND the Beatles movie… and our day was… AWESOME! 

Tea

Kitty

And hedgehogs oh my

Sunday morning was a little more stressful with a tired and hot baby and a cranky little girl. The weather has held out at warm for so long everyone just feels sticky. So we sent the girls along to Ken that afternoon and took a couple hours of together time which included finishing laundry AND going to DQ for food and ice cream. 

Ted and Trinity’s new sweater

Sean and Kristen

We ended up at Kristen and Fydo’s for some more visiting… Sean and Ted had already left but got to play with the girls some… and then it was time to say good bye, head back to Karyn’s for the stuff we left there and head back to town. WITHOUT the boys! As, until Sunday evening they were at Esther’s and then that evening gone over to see their cousin Jimmie. So not only did we see MORE people, do MORE things but we did it with TWO kids!! CRAZY!!!!!

Just the girls, note Trinity is ASLEEP!

And that was my weekend… WOW! 

Oh and a special thanks to Kristen who snapped this one one night this weekend!!

I love listening to the boys chat lately. With Zander downstairs being tutored on space and Gavin up here with his sewing they have things to share with each other. Today was no different… With the changing of the month we had a lovely large piece of paper from our January desk calendar page. So we flipped it over and they set to work after lunch on creating a masterpiece. I understand that stars are HOT, the sun is the biggest AND Zander does NOT want to go into space. 

Space, rocket and all

We are working hard on our math this year. Gavin spent some time helping Zander as he seems to catch on slightly faster, but they are both showing progression. I am especially impressed by the reading progress, I hope that for our reading week this year each of the boys will read their siblings a story themselves.We are finally feeling like they are getting a firm basic understanding of those things most important for further learning. 

Math math math

More Lego creations appeared this afternoon as well… and Emanuel and I worked on his workbook. We are trying to work on the sounds words start with as well as continue practicing his printing, he has not been a very willing student lately though. Tomorrow is a pretty big day for Emanuel actually – he turns 6!! 

Dinosaur family courtesy of Emanuel

Train, tracks and dinos

Echo has decided that walking IS rather enjoyable AND gets attention so has been doing it more and more. Ken was right, she is absolutely adorable walking around and being so tiny. 

We have a houseguest for a while. Sean had an accident at work and broke his foot so he weathered the drive here last night and has parked himself in our basement for the weekend. Echo was overjoyed as she woke up late last night and spent a lovely hour or more watching cartoons with her favourite uncle. 

Snuggles

I finished my first hair things of the year. Valentine’s theme of course. The ribbon was wired (well the heart ribbon) which is a bit different from my norm, but I have enough left to try one more bow out and then be done the roll. It felt good to get creating for my own family again! On top of that I found a pair of red toddler socks so I can make an owl for a friend. I just need to hunt down the picture of the face I used on the other red sock owls to reproduce. 

Trinity's is on the left of course

And now I have the evening to myself. Hard to believe my baby boy is 6 tomorrow, followed quickly on Sunday by the twins turning 8! It is an even year for the Reinsch-Johnson family, by the end of the year we will be 8,8,6,4, and 2. My babies are growing up!

The littlest of our babies

Possum or Opossum is the word of the day today… we decided to do a search online and find everything we could find on possums. There was actually a bit to learn, some cute (and educational) YouTube videos AND some worksheets I was able to download and print out… don’t worry I plan on sharing! We got MOST of what I wanted to do (pre-assembly) today leaving just the working on our new terminology and assembly for tomorrow. Zander drew his own picture with a possum in it… and a rabbit and a bird with worms… he worked really hard on it and it shows!! Now links and videos…

Virginia Opossum mini documentary… and a good EnchantedLearning info page… though you do need to be a member to use that one I think. Seriously I think the subscription to them is WELL worth it! And then there is the Ringtailed Possum page there as well. We read through the pages and talked about the new words and enjoyed looking up images of each type. If you want to go more the Australian route there is more to find on that as well… But first, fun facts about Opossums that includes a word search, some true and false trivia, jokes, facts and colouring can be found here. 

Baby possums ARE cute… the kids were adamant on that one! Want to see an adorable picture of one? Then you just have to click here.

7 baby possums that were rescued… did you know that babies leave their mother within like 4 months of birth! AND the average lifespan of one in the wild is 1-3 years! Here is the wiki page about Opossums. 

Zander and his possum picture... the possum is the grey creature on the left, next to the grey bunny!

I found some colouring pages the kids enjoyed as well. What about a different breed of possums? The Sugar Glider. Gavin liked this one. Oh yes and back to the Australia centred info… here is a great page for that! If you need a page for writing about them and then illustrating going to our UK favourite and get THIS page. Or do their mini booklet.

We read THIScute poem, did the question sheet (as a family) and then wrote our OWN favourite animal poems. A good first attempt for the boys I think!!!

Boys' poems

Oh and for tomorrow we are taking bits out of this lapbook and making up the rest of our info. Just writing out bits and pieces of interest and then ASSEMBLY! So I hope this gets anyone else going who is doing possums or interested in them! It was a bit of a search for information… and I did have to go through some not so nice videos on YouTube to find ones I liked for the kids! Oh this one made the kids laugh and laugh!!!

Now let’s see, the list of new words that we are working on learning that go with this… marsupial, nocturnal (not new but they still forget it), herbivore, prehensile, omnivore, predator and hind (as in hind foot). I am sure there are more but these are some that stand out! I will post up our finished lapbook as soon as it is done and link it BACK to this entry but hopefully all this information will make the job of learning about possums/opossums more enjoyable for someone else! 

Gavin is determined to design his OWN cross stitch… so today we worked together on something new. He made the cherry all on his own and I helped him with the handle on his watering pot. It was a bit tricky a we played around with it on another piece of graph paper before transferring it to where his cherry was. I am so proud of him for wanting to go with this and try and really be involved in something I enjoy so much!

Cherry and a watering can

I have managed to sneak out with Karyn to Dollarama today to purchase… MORE SOCKS!!! I am trying something new… I am going to try and sell my spare sock owls. I am starting slow with a Facebook page you can check out called It’s a Hoot! If you cannot see that I put up information on my deviantArt pageabout it as well! My goal is to make the money to pay for Ken’s Christmas present really, and have an excuse to make more sock owls! I put the striped ones at 10.00 plus shipping costs… I have no idea if that is a price people are willing to pay or not but hey, it is worth a go right? 

New socks!

I have been working on a new cross stitch pattern – one of our own designs, but I can’t share it here until AFTER Christmas as it is a gift. I should be able to finish Anna’s stocking soon though and THAT I can share. Cross stitching has not been the priority but I am working on refocusing at least a little bit of my spare time.

So we started with Opossums/Possums and ended with owls… we have had continued potty success with the only oops in a naptime pull up! So life is good… busy, loud and chaotic (so the norm)… but good!

In her red, white and blues today