Mother's Day

 Mother's Day this year. . .

 the tradition of the kids making a hanging basket . . .

the tradition of the kids making Oma and Grandma gifts (and the visits with them) . . .

the tradition of getting a beautiful hand-made card from the kids (with super adorable letters inside!) . . .

the tradition of the K necklace (not shown) . . .

 and the tradition of releasing salmon fry into the creek . . .

 I love my family . . .

God has blessed me richly!

Star of Wonder. . .

This past week we had a snow day, which would have been perfect, except that my princess also decided to come down with a nasty flu bug that same day! Lucky for us, it was only one of those 24 hour things and so far no one else has caught it. Not a pleasant way to start a blog entry, I know, but I needed to give you background for this one. The day I stayed home with her was supposed to be a Christmas craft day with my students. The snow day was supposed to be a day that we would do some art for a Christmas Pageant Chapel my primary cuties were doing. So, suddenly I had two days of art activities that I had to cram into a day that I wasn't able to be there!

The sub plans were all there--crazy art explanations and all--but of course, there were those projects that I knew just could not happen! I've been on the TOC list before so I know what a TOC needs to put up with, and I just wanted to be kind to her--and I wanted a star ornament that would be all that I envisioned it to be! So I ditched the old idea and came up with something new.

And then, not even knowing if it would work for little kids or not, the princess (and her partner in crime) and I gave it a try at home. If you say the words art or craft, the princess perks up pretty quickly!

So. . .first we made a Star of David out of Popsicle sticks. You can Google how to do it, or you can glue together two triangles and then place those on top of each other with more glue.

Once that was dry, we painted. (Unfortunately for the Royal Sick-o, all my glitter was at school, so hers was straight paint--maybe we will add some sparkles soon). Her little follower thought black was a pretty cool star colour. I tried, but how do you argue with someone who says, "Shh-shh. Mommy, I do good" ? You don't--you let the star be black. Maybe we need to add some glitter to his too!

While that dried, we traced a 5 point star pattern on scrapbooking paper (mine here came from the ActivityVillage website). The other side has musical notes on it that the princess and Mr. Black-star traced in yellow and orange for star colours.

Then a hole-punch, some raffia ribbon and a loop to hang it on the tree.

Easy enough?

The finished star craft

So, here it is: hanging alongside out mudded walls--not my best photo op. Oh well.

The cute creators

And here are my cute little sick kids, proudly showing off their creativity!

 

The good news: when I went back to school on Christmas Chapel day, the stars were already hung behind our stage for ALL the moms, dads, grandparents, family, and friends to see. . .

and they looked great!

Hooray for easy, last-minute crafts!

Gingerbread to-day

Happy Christmas . . .well, it was in Ethiopia and the Ukraine yesterday, right?

In keeping with all these late Christmas posts, this is what we did today! Yep, we made gingerbread men 2 weeks after Christmas!

Didn't they turn out fabulous?

Here are the fine artists--so serious about this fun activity!

 Yep, it was lots of fun!

 Happy family fun this new year!

Halloween Weekend

This weekend we did all of our "Halloween Stuff" (for lack of a better way to say it all!)

The local library had a program for kids--they could come dressed up, but their stuffie also had to have a costume! Very cute idea! So my kids picked their "costumes" for the kids, got on google for its help in printables, and enlisted the help of Oma for making a tutu for the fairy stuffie.

My Spiderman with his bat-dog.

 My fairy princess with her fairy princess Ruthie-Lynn

 The kids listening to some stories at the Library. They also got to play some games, make a mask, and collect a treat!

 Later in the evening the grown-ups went to a pumpkin carving get-together with our small group. . . here was my food contribution. Chocolate and creepy-crawlies! Yum!

(See below for the {small} pumpkin the hubby created!)

 The next day was pumpkin carving day with the kiddos.

 Daddy and Princess A making their scary pumpkin face

 E designed his own this year and needed some help learning how to get it on the pumpkin "the way Daddy does it."

 E hard at work. . . and Princess A there for the photo!

E's pumpkin 

 Princess A's pumpkin

 Then came the actual day! Here is our chauffeur, in true pumpkin-day style!

 Here are our fearless trick-or-treaters!

A fairy princess, a fisherman (minus the hat that was just too annoying to keep on for him!) and Spiderman.

We visited Grandma and Grandpa Al's neighborhood, where we saw our cousins too. . .

 . . . and then met up with some of our friends to tour Opa and Oma's neighborhood, where we saw our other cousins, too!

 And here is our "pumpkin-magic" for the evening.

Happy Halloween to you all!

Family Fall Fun

Around Thanksgiving, my sister and her family came out to visit. There were a few sunny days, so we took a little trip to a local "farm." We left the youngest kids with Oma and Opa, and then all of us big kids enjoyed the sights, sounds and smells of Willowview Farms. I love the cutesy-country feel of this place! They have great decorations for Fall and the Country Store--oh my! Loved it!

 It was quite a sunny day, and it seemed like all the photo opportunities were facing the sun! So here are the kiddos, squinting as I forced them to stand for a picture!

 My adorable niece! She loved seeing all the pumpkins.

 And my adorable kiddos!

 Walking through the big pumpkins, and trying to move them. We were not successful at that, but it was fun to try.

 And many more pumpkins to choose from. Too many actually!

I loved this little "How Tall This Fall?" height measure! If only the sun were shining the other direction and I could get a decent picture. . .oh well, maybe another time. Or to create one of my own somewhere. . . (to my hubby's horror!) 

 Our favourite animal of the day. . .little piggies!

 A picture in one of the pumpkin patches. . .those are big pumpkins!

 And a picture in the corn field. . .the kids had never walked in between row of corn before, so that was kind of exciting for them!

 Oh course there was the apple orchard, the play area, the animals, the candy sticks and pie. . .so much to do and enjoy there!

{And the bees! Who can get away from the bees this year!}

And so much fun to do it all with family!

So long Fall Fun Day!



Airplanes. . .

A highlight of the summer for us has been the airshow.

We were very lucky this year and my daughter won (well, her name was drawn to win) a colouring contest that got her a family pass to the show. Maybe is was random, or maybe it was the excessive pink and purple used to colour the photos of these old fighter air crafts. Who knows?!?

The family (some of us) also went to the airshow thanks to the wonderful berry farmers who let some lawn chairs be set up on the edge of the property for a few hours. :)

 Here is E's (and one of Princess A's) collection for the airshow. He spent some time on the website researching the air crafts he would see and wanted to be sure that he could make up his own airshow at home based on what he had read and what he saw.

 Checking things out. . .

 Gotta love kids and binoculars!

 See Princess A eating? I think she really goes along for the snacks.

 Here is one of the photos they got from the fields of the snowbirds. Not too bad. . .

But then, back to the actual airshow. Dad hadn't been there last year to look at the museum, so we took him along this time! Here we are checking out some of the army vehicles.

 Here are the kids trying to fly one of the HUGE ones (this is a US one--there were more of those and they were bigger.)

 Not a bad shot, I think. Especially when you are trying to take a picture right beside two people who have the big, specialized Nikons and Cannons with all the bells and whistles. This is the result of a cute little point and shoot!

 Here is some of the family in one of the big ones again.

 This is how Princess A enjoyed the airshow. . .although I don't think Dad minded too much either.

 My cutie!

 My other one! Sporting his Airshow T-shirt. . .

 And another shot from the show. . .it was a fun afternoon.