Tag Archive | Valentines

Happy Valentine’s Day!

February 13-14

A VERY Happy Valentine’s Day to you all! We celebrated at home with a special meal etc. But first our Wednesday…

I have to say, Ken having Sean here and wanting to show him some of the beauty of Minnesota (even in the winter) has worked in our educational favour. He decided he wanted to take him up to the Minnehaha falls, but to take all of us would require two chairs. So… Ken and Sean took the 4 kids and I stayed home with the napping Echo to clean up some of the messes that had been bothering me around the house. I always feel so much more in control after cleaning and Echo was kind enough to let me clean up a few problem spots (aka our room). Of course then she was up and demanding BUBBLE GUPPIES (I am soooo tired of that show!).

Informative plaque

So much beauty

With Uncle Sean

More pictures of the falls to follow in a companion post!

Before all the outside excitement we had worksheets (Activity Village and Education.com) to finish – Valentine themed of course, books to read, spelling to practice… the usual.

We made our paper heart chain… And the twins made some white roses to add to our red (and chopstick) display. I do love a pretty centerpiece!

Making the paper chain (Gavin left)

So pretty

I love the roses! Thanks Art for Kids!

We made chicken with the meat rub I actually made up with Ken to give people for Christmas. You can find instructions for how to make it HERE. We made the Tandoori rub for Chicken. (the guys had the weekly gaming night)

YUM

I made a themed lunch for the kids  on Valentine’s Day- strawberry jello with cool whip, chocolate cupcakes with strawberry frosting, Fanta strawberry pop all with curried chicken on rice. Lots of pink and red on that table! Add in the kisses in the bowls (pink, red and white) and our festive decorations and I think we did good.

Festive!

Of course we took some pictures. Trinity had her pretty red dress thanks to Aunty Esther. Echo had TWO outfits, though her main was the new shirt I bought when out shopping with Bree on SALE! They both added in their dressy shoes and tap tap tapped their way around the house all smiles.

Dressed in pink and red

Showing some Valentine’s Day love

The second outfit

Watch for a future filler blog entry with the Valentines Day overflow!

Yours truly tried a new hairstyle – the milk maid braids thanks to the Lizzie Bennet Diaries… specifically the Jane Bennet Twitter feed. The instructions I used can be found HERE. Next time I need to wet down my hair more to facilitate easier braiding AND use some spray afterwards. BUT for a first try for someone who SUCKS at doing her OWN hair… not bad!!! I am just going to have to do it over and over again to perfect it!

Attempt 1

Together

I tried something different with one of the Easter cupcake bags… I am playing around with colours. After all Trinity AND Echo each already have a bag so a second bag has to be different. What do you think? I rather like the effect, almost like a vine around a flower.

I rather like these

I got my own little gift from Ken – a card and a container of chocolates. I gave Ken a card (made by me) and a little box of Jelly Bellys worth Valentine themed words on them.

Our dinner! And my gift!

We had a fun Valentine’s Day themed craft to do as well, we waited until Echo napped and brought out the paints to make Handprint Hearts. I love Activity Village and their easy to find themed areas.

In the paint

The hearts

So quite the enjoyable couple of days!

Echo obsessed with ATTEMPTING to remove Sean’s sock??

This entry was posted on 19/02/2013, in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

So Long, Farewell… Hello… Oh… Good-bye… AGAIN

February 8-9

And… Ted ALMOST gets on his plane and home on schedule. There is weather a coming apparently and it hit Toronto (his stopover) closing down the airport before he could get in the air here in Minnesota. So Ken and Sean dropped him off, got mostly home and had to turn around and come back. This is AFTER they had lunch, shopped a little more AND went to Top Gun in 3D at Imax! That left me and the kids home alone for the bulk of the day. So of course  there was school work to do…

Breakfast with Uncle Ted

Sneaking in an extra night

BOTH boys got 100% on their main words and Gavin even got Reinsch right. I am tossing it on the list but not counting it toward their totals as it IS tricky. So even if they get it right we do it the next week too, memorization!! In celebration of words well done they headed outside to play in the snow.

The tests

It was actually a rather decent day so the kids went out multiple times throughout the day.

The great white outdoors… American version

The poster was an all out success… we all had a hand in it. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed doing the Chinese Characters.

So proud of our work

We also assembled our fireworks. Note the characters on those too… Gavin helped Ken and I with those! You can find the instructions on Activity Village under Chinese New Year crafts (the link for the site is on right).

Gavin and our work

We also spent some time with a paper pack I got on sale at Michaels to make some special Valentines. Sadly the post office has been hard to get to so I have a bit of a stack of mail to add some of these too!

Special Valentines

A Saturday is always a bit slower, except when you add in even MORE company!

Best buddies

Teaching Quinn to play Skylanders

Bree and I worked together to create, from scratch, fortune cookies!

Finger burning perfection

I love it when Echo gets a chance to hang out with her American God Mommy! It was too bad Scott was busy. 

Snuggles

We actually had Steven here as well, he brought Quinn over and then Bree picked him up. So we had a full house! Of course the men were more… boring and thus no pictures… but the kids kept us entertained!

About the same size!

We finally got Bree and Quinn to open their gifts from Christmas! I promise pictures of Quinn in his scarf later!

Opening presents

So we had company coming and going… Now we are slowly slipping into real life – soon Sean will head home too and then… Ken goes OUT to work and it is just the 5 of us! Can we do it??? 

Why so serious???

One Month Into the Year

January 31- February 2

We have completed our first month of the new year and so did Gavin’s work on his Lego land. With Emanuel’s help it was quite the creation!

Quite the metropolis

Lots of activity

Spooky section

Gavin’s turtle (too large for the city)

Ken and Ted took a ride out to The Source, a gaming store to peruse the merchandise and to pick me up some oversized dice for the kids. While they did I finally got to see Frankenweenie! I saw ParaNorman back on New Years so I am catching up on my animations nicely!

Dice

I am so proud that the boys BOTH made their reading goals yet again! I am so glad I can help them find a love of reading at such a young age.

We had our next book to share Happy Chinese New Year, Kai Lan! We had the corresponding episode on the video we got from the library… Celebrate with Kai-Lan.

Gavin and our book

There is a definite benefit to subscribing to a site’s feed. Art for Kids sent out a terrific 10 monster how  to draw book to all the people subscribed to them. I am going to have to sit down and hole punch and put all these amazing instructions into a binder all organized and ready for the boys to use whenever they want!

Wacky monster pictures

Talk about excitement for our almost birthday boy! Baba took Emanuel and myself to get Emanuel’s hair cut before his birthday party! It is like he grew up years as the hair came off… in looks anyway! Can you believe he is 7 on the 3rd??

So smooth

Of course the kids opted to spend even MORE time sitting with Uncle Ted. They just can’t get enough of him!

Quality time

Trinity roped him into playing Skylanders with her as well! They work so well together!

Skylanders!

Friday was a bit of a ruffled day. The kids do not function well with Ken working at home right now. It has been bitterly cold so they cannot burn off energy outside, plus there is the knowledge Ken is there and not available. That and the need to be quiet so he can work makes them all owly. So to take a bit of the edge off we made our Chinese lanterns for our Chinese New Year. You can follow our instructions on Activity Village HERE. I added to the activity by bringing out the markers and letting them colour the paper if they wanted.

Working on lanterns

 

Lanterns

This was our last day with Ken home actually. Come Monday he is supposed to have his own desk at one of the three buildings. I am hoping that him being out of the house will help Echo deal with less time with Daddy.

Time with Uncle Ted while Daddy works

Emanuel finally got around to colouring in his Mammoth pictures that Gammie sent him to go along with his interest in elephants! He does love a good elephant or prehistoric animal!

One colourful Mammoth

With dinosaurs on the mind we completed our smaller puzzle. One Emanuel got for Christmas!

PUZZLE

Our book from the day was a National Geographic one – Celebrate Chinese New Year. The kids love the images in this one.

Zander and our book

I have to say having Ted here is so much fun. Like back home, the guys are cracking jokes, talking shop and generally hanging out. I have missed that here. We don’t see much of the guys here which is a huge change from how things were up in Alberta.

Relaxing

As the first Saturday of the month it was also the Home Depot free craft day. The boys made little mail boxes for Valentines. Painted and everything!

Painted and everything

When Ken, his dad and the boys returned Ted, Ken and I ran out to finish some shopping – I needed cardstock for the kids’ schooling and Ted needed to do some present shopping. Target is so much fun.

After shopping EMANUEL snagged Ted to play Skylanders (he will be pro by the time he goes home!).

Gaming in comfort

He also made Ted a special picture to take home for his fridge in Alberta.

Art for the fridge

It really was an Emanuel creative day. If it wasn’t Home Depot it was drawing or making something interesting out of blocks.

This is a storekeeper with his till and table

I am glad to see that something I created is being used too – the kids had a tea party with the set I made Trinity for Christmas.

Tea anyone?

Saturday meant trying to get everything ready for the party on Sunday. There is something so comforting about having Ken and Ted together to help out. I feel so lucky that January and February has given us a taste of the people we have been missing. Saying good bye later is never easy BUT the visit makes it all worth it!

If only the fairie could magic up a way for them to stay longer… or forever!