So today marks out unofficial official start to the twins’ 2nd registered year of homeschooling which we are now calling GRADE 2. Nothing special really… as we HAVE been schooling year round BUT since today is a new start we started with everyone drawing their favourite part of summer. Quite the variety of remembrances. Emanuel drew his time in the hot springs, Zander trips to the park with Nana and Baba and Gavin the completed swing set in our backyard. 

As we start Gr 2 and K!

A close up of the pictures

Emanuel is well into his Kindergarten fun so today wasn’t a big deal to him. BUT he is back to work on his dot-to-dot book, moving from ABC’s to counting. Since the workbook was used a little it has been fun for him to have permission to tear out the pages that he CAN do and for each one write his own name (as some were only completed on one side of the paper). 

Dot-to-dotting while a brother does his math

I am still on the hunt for the school desk for Emanuel. It is the one thing (beyond his workbook) that he has requested for this year that we don’t already have. I made up a Kijiji WANTED ad as there really were NO options in our price range (20.00). So fingers crossed! 

It is sunny days like today that really test the family though… we have 5 VERY stubborn kids after all. Trinity was a basket case all morning for some unknown reason… lots of time outs and explaining to her that NO everyone WON’T clean up those toys she just dumped out, that is HER job… Emanuel is still testing his limits but less and less over time. I am just hoping the twins’ focus eventually moves off of solely math and into more variety. 

Trinity with her picture of people with hats and tummies

We didn’t do a massive amount of work today and focused mainly on doing the twins’ “My All About Me Back to School Book.” There was quite a bit of  fuss over the amount of writing to be done but we managed. Tomorrow we will assemble the whole thing. Sadly I  could not hunt down the file on Currclick to share with everyone BUT check out their site anyway for an amazing variety of schooling products! 

Awaiting assembly

Tomorrow the plan is to get done our Maligne Canyon poster. There is some writing to be done by yours truly to share some of the more wordy facts we learned. I do love a good poster though and our wall is rather lonely with just the VBS masterpiece up there. I have to find a printout that we can either pretty up ourselves or already is colourful of the 12 months to add to our 7 days of the week on the wall as well. 

Now I just need to get my crafting mojo back. A lovely stack of photos are sitting in my crafting corner waiting to be put on papers and I have no ideas that just jump to life. I did manage to coordinate two more 12X12 pages with some contrasting paper so if I can find pictures to suit I am half way there… 

Coordinated papers

Now if only I could get the last of the clutter… well de-cluttered. Time to get back to work… 

Creeping along the furniture

I shall be kind and start with today’s adventure… The long awaited and much talked about GENETIC TEST appointment. Thankfully NOT at the crack of dawn so not nearly the rush Echo’s cardiology session was, as well as not as long of an appointment of itself. 

We got off in good time and headed to the city. The parking wasn’t too difficult but certainly NOT cheap and we did get a little lost walking to the correct building. After all this is all part and parcel of the university so there are lots of buildings and some construction going on. We even got a little misdirected by someone who was confused as to where we were trying to get to. BUT we made it right at 11:30. 

The office was TINY but the wait non existent. They basically took our info and in the time it took to change Echo we were shown into the examination room. There we talked with the nurse, and she took Echo and myself to weigh and measure. I don’t have the numbers but Echo did rather well with it all and didn’t try too hard to dive off of the scale.

Waiting for the doctor

We returned to our little room, gave permission for the intern to come in with the doctor and there they were! Talk about quick! There was lots of talking, sharing history of ourselves, family and kids… tracking how many siblings my mom has… where the cleft lip and palate came from… all old hat for us. The geneticist was an older gentleman who had 4 kids himself and the intern a lovely young lady who Echo allowed total access to! She lay quite still through it all and even gave her a little smile. They measured her feet to compare the two… her arm length… and it all came back – fine. As we have been told all along she is in perfect proportion… for a MUCH younger baby! 

They had nothing to add to the blood work the doctor gave us as a last set and have only added one procedure – a bone growth x-ray. What they do is x-ray the bones in the hand and check where they are growth wise. Apparently (and I need to do more research on this) your skeleton can be younger than your actual age. His answer to things if this is something that has occurred – puberty… so…. 

Basically she is a petite child. Apparently the geneticist is able to find out the why on petite children a whopping 5% of the time! Though he did figure that once Echo’s PDA is dealt with we should see some growth increasing but again the cardiologist said do not expect massive change. Basically we are back to what we said when we started – she is JUST PETITE!!!!! BAH!

The other kiddos

So, Sunday… Well we kept ourselves busy in the heat to be sure! It all started with a pancake breakfast. And then all 5 kids dressed in their Sunday best (as pictured YESTERDAY), the boys with matching shirts (thanks to Nana). This was our first service at what is to become our new home church.

Service was a lovely hour long, though we decided NOT to risk corralling the herd and going up for communion this time round. We did meet the minister before service started… a lovely older man. And after service we met the lady who was in charge of snacks for VBS who remember the boys fondly AND the secretary for the church office who is going to contact our old church (Trinity Lutheran… I know I know) for membership change. It is time to put down some permanent roots in our new community. After all, Sunday School starts on the 11th of September! Where has the time gone? Another lovely thing about our new church – well, apparently there are other homeschooling families AND the family we met in passing who had a boy/girl set of twins (older) were very receptive when they asked our boys where they went to school and were told by Zander that the boys DON’T, they HOMESCHOOL. How proud was mom that they knew the right answer to share! And so proudly he said it!

Sitting pretty

After some time at home and Karyn taking me out with her on her errands (we took advantage of the Michaels’ buy one get one for 1 cent sale on card stock) it was time to pack up and head out to the splash rock and fire pits that are a lovely park here in the city.

On the menu… hotdogs (no brainer), fruit, carrots, and SMORES! But first we had to head over to the splash… rock… and well… splash. For some reason though the weather was absolutely HOT the water was FREEZING. Echo did NOT approve, actually neither did Mommy. It was fun to watch the big kids make new friends and splash away. 

Splash Rock

Brrr

Aunty Karyn spent some time splashing it up with Trinity while Kristen and I found some shade.

Splashing with Aunty Karyn

And shade we found, on the hill. There WAS a bench free, but for GOOD reason – ANTS. Echo enjoyed the shade on the hill and Aunty Karyn’s keychain. 

KEYS

After getting our fill of splashing and rocks we moved back over to where Fydo had held down the fort and kept the fire burning.

Fire

The smores were quite impressive… Kristen had biscuits with chocolate already on them and then you add MORE chocolate… makes my mouth water even now.

Smores

After sitting around while the kids played until Echo was done in we all headed to our respective homes… what a great way to spend a VERY sunny Sunday afternoon. We hope to go again in September. 

Smiling in the shade

Oh I didn’t mention the kicker for today – we pulled out my stroller for Echo only to find out that the wheel had melted or warped enough to make it bounce funny. I think the heat shining through the back window of the van while it was pressed against it did it or something like that. BUT it did last over 5 years and through 3 kids… so back onto Kijiji to find another. I have message TWO ads today and have high hopes that something will come through. 40.00 is my limit as I don’t want to dip too far into funds set aside for other items. 

We stopped in at H&W to pick up some much needed (and amazingly priced) produce… the best deal? Bananas at 29 cents a lb. I bought over 11 lbs of bananas for 3.25! And a stop off at Bulk Barn for a few spices and snacks. We have to head back to the city for Alexander den Otter’s birthday beginning of September so I plan on making GOOD lists for those two stores so we are able to take advantage of being there. 

Bananas

Two days in a row that definitely wore out the kids. One with fun the other with travel and excessive amounts of having to sit and be quiet (which they didn’t do very well though other people were tricked into thinking they WERE – thus they ALL got stickers). A stop at the grocery store to get sandwich fixings and then fruit when we got home and at least their tummies were content. 

We have started having a small potty success – Trinity has been peeing before bedtime ON THE POTTY! Of course not OTHER times but with how busy we have been, all the go go go… I am pleased! One step closer to her Hello Kitty undies! 

A success!

Tonight is set to be quiet, and the last night before I begin the preparations to get to the wedding in one relatively busy and somewhat content piece. I have cleaning I want to have done, laundry ALL put away… the kids need to clean the backyard. Any volunteers to help out?

What a face!

Want a peek at how Fat Sheep and company fared in Drumheller? She posted last night with some lovely images right here. It looks like a great time was had by all involved. Drumheller really is a scenic area! She has been quite the blogger these past weeks and we hope the trend will continue. There is lots to catch up on I am told as well as adventures yet to come.

I am still working to figure out what main points we want to cover this year… other than the stuff I don’t feel they have firmly covered… the list is woefully short as of today – dinosaurs, family and family members (then comparing to other families all over the world), astronomy (including all things space)… but then what? We do not have our handy Leisure Pass any more so that does limit us for trips to things like the zoo (but then again we are not in the same city as one any more either). I think my first order of business is to head to the library after the in-laws are gone so that we can get our card and do some sifting through books. Not to mention the plan I have to set up a sort of unofficial open playdate at the local branch for twice a month with the hopes of meeting some new families. I would love some more suggestions from any and all!

Today I figured I would keep the kids as busy as possible… so I printed off some fun sheets for them to work on. The twins did the more complicated dinosaur colour by numbers that used addition and subtraction. These can be found under dinosaurs in the EnchantedLearning site. Again the only site (so far) that I pay a subscription for. Everything I printed off for Emanuel today was off of my new gem – education.com, from the workbooks section kindergarten level. 

Emanuel and some finished work... he did that green page solo pretty much by singing the ABC song and working it out!

We are, of course, back to our workbooks. Gavin is once again focused and ready to finish his grade 1 math book… enough that I had to basically pry him away from it for a break with his sight word book before we BOTH got frustrated. I am glad they are so willing to get back to work though. Emanuel especially was right in there trying his best.

Hard at work

Don’t forget our VBS themed poster… Pandas are tricky things to draw I am told by Emanuel. First the kids made up a bunch of pandas, then we worked on some of the things they remember learning in VBS. I am rather proud of everything they remembered. We only found one of their take home sheets had a slogan we missed! Not bad! And there is room for MORE pandas if they want.

The boys and their poster

A few more ads up on Kijiji. Make sure you check them out if you are local to me! I am downsizing some of our books… our reading tastes have changed AND the space is needed for newer volumes. In the case of some of Ken’s that are not yet up – he has gone over to digital. BUT I figure whatever I can get for them can go to new things… the kids are always needing SOMETHING! And Kijiji came to the rescue with one of the twins anyway. 2.00 for a pair of rainboots. Now we just need to get size 11’s for Gavin and we are set for the fall! 

Only 2.00!

I have found a new British mystery series to watch on Netflix… Campion. I would totally recommend it if you are interested in such shows as Nero Wolf or Poirot… the acting is great and there is a lovely bit of comedy. Very British. Each episode on Netflix is actually two parts. Oh and did I mention the main actor was the 5th Doctor on Doctor Who?

I am still taking minutes here and there to work on the stocking. I would LOVE to have it all done – stitching wise – by the end of this month. There is still a thank you gift to do up, and some other minor things on the list but this is the big one for the year really!

To date

And now it is time to get back to said stitching, as well as some cookies dough making, cleaning and Kijiji ad creating… enough with the blogging, on with the real work! 

Smile!