January 24-25

Well we survived our post Aunty Karyn visit week. I don’t know that we accomplished too much that is interesting to others on Thursday but we had fun together and that counts for a lot.

Blocks!

Trinity and Echo worked on their educational games on the iPad… sharing is getting easier and easier for the girls and electronics.

Hard at work TOGETHER

I tried something slightly different with the kids and their birth year animals… we copied out each mini booklet from Activity Village and their Zodiac books… then, like the official year of the snake one HERE… I had each of the kids come up with one nice trait about each of their siblings. We wrote them down along with mine and Ken’s. We even did Echo’s (not pictured)… there was the perfect number of pages for each kid (except Echo who we had to put Daddy’s on my page too). It was a great way to consider positive elements about their siblings and still do something with a Chinese New Year theme… though I had to explain multiple times that “they play Lego with me” is NOT a trait!

What year are you?? Check the chart at Activity Village!!!

With a little regular daily learning and some cuddly time with Cabbage Patch dolly and a bean bag chair… well we did rather well!

So comfy

Friday was supposed to be a library book day but our branch apparently does not open until noon and we were out around 11. Oops! But we did make it to Target to get supplies for our visit to the Novak’s on Saturday. We are now ready to get our read on for Chinese New Year! 

But first – for our Friday dinosaur fun we drug out the Melissa & Doug stamp set… Trinity, Zander and Emanuel made the best pictures! 

Dino-riffic

It is an overnighter with the cousins here as well. I love when the kids get along and play… though 7 IS louder than 5 I can tell you!

Picture these 4 over a decade from now, replace sippies of juice with beer bottles.

Supper

Gotta end the evening with a movie right??

They did NOT watch Barbie… just the promo!

Of course we did MORE than that… Gavin got a 100% on his spelling test, Zander only one wrong… Lego time continued for Gavin and Zander made a birthday card for his god-mommy. All in all, the day was good!

Thumbs up

And so we end the week. WHAT A WEEK! Yesterday was a bit of a slow go, but we managed to work on our workbooks and enjoy each other’s company… oh and make DRAGONS! This is a fun craft made out of cut out hands. You can find the instructions HERE. They recently added some new dragon crafts so hopefully with a run to Dollarama this weekend we can make another one before the girls and I head out for our 4 day retreat at Cousin Veronika’s!

The boys' dragons... they cut EVERYTHING themselves!

Trinity's

We are working hard on our math and our reading. Today we tried something new. This time the boys came up with 3 sentences each and then had to write them down, without my copying them first. I sat down with each of the twins alone and we sounded out words together and talked about WHY certain words were written the way they are. There was some frustration but some successes too! Gavin had the topic of our family and Zander was to write 3 sentence describing himself. Then they picked their favourite sentence and drew a matching picture. I am so proud of them, writing is NOT their favourite activity but they persevered. We forgot all about taking a picture of them so will have to share that tomorrow!

We have two books on China and Chinese New Year out from the library right now. The kids love the bright colours on the covers and the dragons. We also read the story of the Zodiak from the Activity Village site. You can find it HERE. I always seem to end up at Activity Village for our special occasion activities and crafts!!

books!

The twins were in charge of sugar cookie creation today. I premade the dough, cleaned up the blue table, had them wash their hands and go at it. Only having to man the oven is so much easier than doing it all myself!

Cookie time, Emanuel joined after his quiet time and the 3 of them worked through the entire batch of dough.

Cookies

I have a link to share with you all. The site is called Babysitters and not only helps you find sitters in your area (if you are in the US) but also have some interesting blog entries on dealing with having sitters, parenting, etc. I have not taken too close of a look at the site yet but was able to find listings for my in-laws’ area AND read a couple interesting blog posts. THIS is the one they sent me to link. I would love to hear from anyone who has used this service OR hear your opinions post reading it after following my link. Yesterday night was a girls’ night out! Karyn, Kristen and I went to our favourite Indian restaurant and ate until we were completely full and then went back to Kristen’s for some visiting. She lives like a block or so from the restaurant! I even got to leave Echo at home as we decided that another trip in the carseat would be a bit much after Wednesday’s saga.

Appetizer

Mains

Ken has spent much of his phoning time working on getting the van fixed… AGAIN! Canadian Tire here in town has consented to fix the coolant system if that is what wrong and were a little embarrassed that less than a month later we are already calling back with a concern in the same area. Seriously FOUR TIMES! 

It seems like we cannot get away from the medical this month. Next week is Zander’s eye appointment, then the following week my bloodwork AND another appointment for Ken (he is changing a doctor that was back home to a local one) and then the next week is Echo and my check ups… Maybe February will have a move of focus AWAY from the medical for a while? Would be nice! But, so far everyone is coming back healthy!

Breakfast together (Echo needs a matching chair... and to learn to sit down!)

I have spent some time on Tinker Bell today but not much… I am almost done the first Tink, well the stitching portion and will share an image when that is done. It feels good to cross stitch again!

And tonight Ken and I finally get some alone time together… today was a rather good day – groceries were procured in the limping van, Canadian Tire contacted, appointments made, work completed, children educated, fed and loved… we even got to see Chris and Chris on their way to their new (closer) living situation. Tomorrow Ken will  be gone for a chunk of the day to help them out and I will be flying solo but we have another dragon to glitter up, a backyard to enjoy and of course our library books to read through. We have turned this week around, at least somewhat I think. And that is the trend that WILL continue! 

Some days I wonder if her names should not have included JOY as one of them...