January 20-21

It was hard to do it but on the 20th Ken and I had to make the drive to send Karyn back to Canada. I don’t think Trinity really understood what that meant. She really was thinking Karyn would just be back soon.

Missing Aunty Karyn

After dropping off Karyn really the rest of the day was resting and sleeping for yours truly. We stayed up late the night before (of course). It is so unreal, saying good bye again with no set date to visit each other again. BUT the visit was amazing and that is what counts!

Relaxing with Daddy

TV time

Monday had a slow start due to the ending of our visit. BUT we got our feet under us and worked our buns off to do our best with our school work. What to start with? Well… Art for Kids has always been an inspiration for us! This time we had THREE pictures to draw… the roses from before, an adorable penguin and a spider! Zander did all 3 on one page and then wrote a story with me about the picture (I will share that in another entry eventually I am sure). 

Gavin with two of 3

His spider on a rather amazing web

The three in one

The Lincoln Logs (I know, so classically AMERICAN) appeared on the floor for some intense family building, from instructions… but with some alteration of the roof! We had to liquidate ours when we moved so having a Nana and Baba set to visit with is great.

House

We made a family favourite for lunch – pita pizzas, just using tortillas instead of our usual pita. 

Pizza time!

As a SUPER special treat to make up for the lack of Aunty Karyn I busted out some Smarties of the Canadian kind to share with everyone! YUM!

YUM

We have made a great start with our Chinese New Year… of course starting with the traditional story about the great race to the Jade Emperor. My main resource for this year’s festivities is Activity Village. It is the year of the SNAKE! I have already contacted Xinny to get the characters to use for it and am looking forward to a couple snake crafts as well as our usual library books, colouring pages and time together talking about China! This year we are going much more stories and together time and less the country itself. 

Proudly coloured… with markers!

So life is trundling along with our new countdown to seeing Ted and Sean!!! After all these visits are done we are going to be one mopey family!

Pretty in plaid

January 14-15

How to spend a Monday with a friend with a license and absolutely no familiarity with Minnesota??? Why go shopping of course, and NOT at a single place… we had to meander and travel and risk getting lost (though we didn’t). We started at one of the smaller malls and the Macs counter – too cool! And then really explored the mall… after lunch… INDIAN FOOD!

Yum

We tried out Torrid for Karyn and hit the jackpot…

Sorry this one is not the best quality… took with my sad little phone

In fact, we visited as many stores as we could, including Toys R Us (an independent store) and another clothing store Karyn was interested in.

We had Noodles & Company for supper when we realized that leaving when we were going to would have meant sitting in rush hour traffic…

NOODLES

And then we were off across the road to another mall and MORE shopping. We figured out that we were out over 7 hours!! Not bad!!!

PURCHASES!

Tuesday marked the beginning of Ken’s training for his job… which meant he was gone for his 12:30- 6 ish day leaving us home. With 7 hours of shopping behind us we just settled in and taught the children… well sort of, I woke up with ZERO voice after a week of sore throats so that did take out some of what I could do easily. Abbreviated day or not, I think we had fun! 

Dressed up and on his way

Emanuel and Echo spent their time together making Emanuel’s dinosaur bone poster to go over his bed! The stickers are supposed to glow in the dark and do slightly. I got to place some stickers too! It was so much fun! 

Ready for posting on the wall

The boys took turn reading to their new victim… I mean Aunty Karyn. She was thoroughly impressed by their improvement in the last six months (talk about a pat on the back for Mommy!).

Zander reading

We had to break for lunch… and some outside time. It was actually a rather nice day. All FOUR of the bigger kids went out in the sun, and drug Karyn out with them for a bit!

Out in the sun

Gavin has been taking advantage of his new portable easel and the cd that came with it and already created a rather… interesting… art piece! I think his tastes are MUCH more violent than mine!

Art by Gavin

Karyn brought the kids some Dollarama craft supplies so I let the little ones loose on them for the rest of their time to glue and play and generally make a relatively contained mess.

Crafting round table

I also finished the slippers Trinity DEMANDED Karyn have in the colour Trinity said they needed to be! This also triggered interest in ALL 3 boys… so more work for me!

ORANGE

Yup, we had our Karyn and a ton of fun too!

I think we wore her out!

January 12-13

Now what is there to talk about… hmm… how about… KARYN coming to visit? You read me right… we have our first visitor from Canada since our big move last year to Minnesota! Ken and I picked her up at the airport Saturday evening.

Picking up Karyn

Can you believe this is where Ken asked me to marry him??? updated and fancier but YUP

We took her right out to dinner at Matt’s where they do something called a Jucy Lucy. It is a hamburger with melted cheese IN THE MIDDLE! The bar that serves this is certainly not the most pretty and does not have the best service but the food was good and the portions generous.

Eating out

The kids were already in bed by the time we got home so we had to wait to say hello and give them the items Karyn brought down with her. Including CHOCOLATE for yours truly!!! Oh and socks! Gotta love socks!

Sunday was excitement personified. The kids were over the moon to see Karyn really WAS here… we even had a fashion show thanks to two adorable dresses sent to us by Aunty Esther.

With frog (there is a dolly dress to go with this one)

This is actually Echo’s dress, but Esther was unable to find a tiny one so instead Trinity is wearing and then handing down as usual

As Ken is starting his training this week Nana, Karyn, Ken and I went out for some pre work shopping at Kohl’s… Karyn bought the cutest shoes… sadly I was thwarted in my shoe hunt by a lack of my size being available. I have hopes that if we come across OTHER Kohl’s this week I may just be able to get the pair I liked though!

Karyn’s pretty new shoes;

After seeing Ken off with his bag of clothes we went down the parking lot to one of my favourite stores – Target! That left us the evening to hang out and give the kids the chance to get all caught up with Karyn. 

Those pj’s ended up being 3.00 a pair!

Karyn had a few items mailed here as well… including these awesome socks!

Awesome!

It has been almost 6 months since we last saw Karyn… this week is going to rock! 

Brushing Aunty’s hair