Well Well Well… December… Christmas, New Years, hilariously enough writing this at the end of Karyn’s visit when she ALSO visited here in December last year. TIMELY…. And then I got even further behind when summer kicked my bum… so NOW I will get December up and hang my head in shame.

Of course there are the basic first to think of memories… Christmas, including Christmas pageant at the church…

Trinity as Mary

Gavin the shepherd

Echo the sheep

My 2 Kings

New Years (at home and quiet with Karyn)… Visiting Santa… fun in the snow… homeschooling, of course… but beyond that I really did have to go to the images. Funny how some months you are like YAH I remember that, and others I really do need visual cues to trigger memories.

At Santa

Skype calls with family…

We did not have nearly as much snow as the year previous to the kids’ great disgust. But every time there was any sort of snowfall they were out there mucking around in it. Thank goodness Echo is finally able to maneuver ALONE and UNASSISTED out there.

Now let’s see… we had a SECOND Santa visit at our local YMCA. We love it there (even more so after this summer where we basically spent most of our weekday mornings there). It was great fun to take a pictures as a family this time.

We also went with the Schwartz family down the road to a neigbourhood that enters (and it seems WINS) the Christmas decoration competition every year. This year there was one house where you could walk around back in the their yard and get close up to the display you could only see from the road otherwise. 

We had Christmas with the Schwartz family of course (yearly tradition!).

Not the best picture but it was great fun.

Trinity and I made a Trinity doll for Aunty Karyn to take home, she matched from the top of her head to the tip of her shoes. Not bad? My pattern was an amalgamation of Princess patterns by Kristen’s Kords.

We made pirogi with Nana and Baba. 

Went out for Indian food while Karyn was here.

Shopped at Mall of America (because we girls are gluttons for punishment).

Open presents…

Ate giant Reese peanut butter cups.

We snuck in some learning too… a few workbook completions and reading and the larger unit I linked to the resources for above.

And of course take a surplus of pictures! Enjoy my flash WAAAAAYY back!

Annnnddddd now we are onto October… and October of 2015 was a doozy. Not only did we have Halloween to contend with (and 5 costumes of which were all somewhat handmade), but a very important wedding. It is not every day you get to be in a THEMED wedding in a park for a friend who is more a sister to you than pretty much anyone on the planet. AND see her looking gorgeous and feel rather pretty yourself to boot. HERE

Halloween this year was the year of all handmade… each and every costume had at least a touch of our personal handy work on it. HERE.

Echo and zombie (?) Alex

October is also Ken’s birthday and Canadian Thanksgiving… both of which we celebrate.

There is the usual, swim lessons at the YMCA thanks to Nana and Baba… and Home Depot…

Homeschool, of course… when are we not learning something new…

October just happens to be the month when the trees in our backyard look their finest. And then when the ground looks its most amazing. I could not resist a full on photo shoot of everyone and everything. You can see the rest of the leaf pictures HERE.

We really had a crafty and active month.

Spiderwebs

As well as some time with games indoors…

Working on our spelling

With company as well…

Evan

Jeffrey!

Fun with Scouts…

And Sunday School of course!

I have to admit, I love October more when we are in Minnesota… the colours here are so… amazing!!!

 Top it off with random images and what a great month!

Well, that snuck up on me! Quite the number! And here I am, starting the next thousand posts with crafting and creativity. Appropriate, no?

This week is a rainbow week (well, week plus a few days), but with a difference. I decided, being the multi tasker I am, to have my secondary activity vary along with my colour changes. So I started with Monday and that beautiful bright red. What better to pair with that then catching up on some excellent murder mysteries in ANIME form. I had two full mysteries to enjoy with one being two double length episodes from the new year. Case Closed is one of my favourites (though I am still confused as to the reasoning behind the de-aging of the main character’s body as a long term plot twist). It is on its 20th year! And while I have only watched what has been posted on Crunchyroll (seriously worth the monthly subscription for an anime addict like me) I would love to get my hands on the beginning of this series… or the manga it was based on (in English of course) and dig in!

Tuesday brought on orange, with it being the focal colour of this piece I figured I would sit back and enjoy some music while I did my three rows. Spotify is an app I newly loaded to the iPad when I wanted to listen to music while I read in the tub. I use the free portion of the app and go with Evening Chill. Suitably relaxing which seemed to go well with the brightness of the orange.

For yellow I paired it up with a newer family favourite movie – Home, and my very best cuddly movie watcher Miss Echo. We can’t help but smile our way through this movie. Echo has her favourite parts when she simply cannot help but narrate along. Sitting together on the bed while I added this bright colour was so lovely.

Green is, of course, a special colour. In honour of the Kelly our Kelly green represents I went with a hefty dose of nostalgia with a continuation of my Murder She Wrote marathon. Something familiar and comforting with a bit of excitement and humour. Perfect…

And then… we got hit with the plague! For goodness sake, we homeschool so are not constantly surrounded by kids, but apparently the combination of basically living at the YMCA on three different occasions a week and Sunday School was enough to put us over. And I refuse to work on such a special project when I am under the weather… that is when mistakes are made! So instead I puttered… recuperated and lost a prep week for schooling. Oh, well! So I figure, it has been too long between posts and I need to share some colour now that our snow seems to be FINALLY melting… so I am going to post this as it is. Red through Green!

I promise a colourful rest of March. I need to kick it up a notch as I certainly do not want to be working away on this way into June if I plan to make the fair! I hope enjoyed my 2001 post! In the meantime here are some of the completions from the past couple weeks! 

A no roll flower I tested out! So awesome, Sick Lil Monkeys!

Awesome how the back works out.

Double Ruffle Blanket!

Baby booties from a book sent by a friend

Cupcake blanket!!! My first new classroom only completion!