How is it possible?

For the time to fly so quickly??

We were happily enjoying a home day today, and we still didn't get everything we wanted to do done and the girls just went off to bed!

We started our morning reading a couple chapters of our current read aloud in bed, and lasted until the tummy rumbling from Tara was audible to all. After a very unexciting breakfast (low on the groceries --again!) we planned our day to involve library, groceries and Halloween house decorating. Before we even made it downstairs from tooth brushing and bed making, the girls had jumped into an invisible ink project.

Finally we headed out to pick up our remaining decorating needs, and returned home for lunch. After convincing the girls that we should have lunch first, we headed to the front porch to start decorating. Before I knew it, the girls were outside making chalk drawings all over the side walk. I managed to engage them again in time to fill ghost and pumpkin bags with leaves for hanging in our front tree. Aislinn then tramped off with my scissors to do some "trimming" around the yard. I finally managed to get the lights and remaining decor up, in time to find them happily digging in the back garden covered in dirt.

Watching the time I reminded them will still needed to get to the library and groceries before Aislinn had sparks (5 p.m.)

We managed to head out to the library at 3:00, where the girls got immersed in a Thomas computer game that was up on the kids library computer. By 4, after both girls had a lengthy go, we organized our books and made our leave. Doing a quick tour of the grocery store, as we were already getting short on time, we arrived home to receive a message that sparks had been cancelled. I got dinner made while the girls read their library books, and gave Jeff a hand prepping the roof for the fore casted rain. Back inside, the girls spent a few minutes watching ballet performances on YouTube that a friend had emailed to us (Thanks!!) and we proceeded to our sink bath routine (which was seriously required --after the garden digging.) By the time both girls were bathed and in pj's, it was 9, and we hadn't even gotten back to our invisible ink pictures to reveal them!

So really... where does the time go?

Updates... favorite pics from the summer (long!)

Dancing at the Multicultural festival (Tara's turn)











Releasing our painted lady butterflies

Aislinn's Bee picture for the beekeeper.








Close-up of the bees at a field trip to a university run bee farm





Tara at Canada's Wonderland








Face painting at a local restaurant. (Free on Thursday nights!)





















Pics of the kids at the zoo. (I have some great pics of the animals that I will have to put up some time too.

Shots from the beach. (Camping late July.)

Crocs left by the wayside.

Roller coaster at Ribfest,



Fun nose shot at a summer family get together.

Tara feeding the goats at the zoo where we celebrated her 4th birthday with family and friends.

Hiking in the hills

Last Tuesday, taking advantage of the beautiful weather, we spent the afternoon hiking with friends.

We had done a similar length hike last year in the same location and it was amazing to see the difference in the kids speed and stamina -- as usual, a good reminder that my speed and stamina is not what it should be :)

Building co-op

One of the mom's of a family we are close friends with organized a building co-op that is to run once a month with some families in our local home school group. She had invited us, and at first I wasn't sure about whether it was something we should try to fit into our schedule, but after attending the first event, I have decided it is! It was such a nice group of families, and even having so many kids in one space, the atmosphere felt calm and relaxed. The girls stayed relatively nearby, but jumped into the offered activities at once. Spread around the area were all kids of building toys: straws and connectors, duplo, magnetix, a marble run, clickits, wooden blocks, etc. and the kids were able to move among them trying out new material and new building partners.

Some outdoor play time was available as well, and the girls enjoyed participating in parachute games and running around in the yard.

Next month is Lego, and we are really looking forward to it.

The weekend...

Well, the renovations continue, and so far we have spent every evening after Jeff gets home and all day on the weekends working on something.

So for yesterday and today, we spent our time working on plumbing (Jeff), putting up the play center, finishing the front garden, mowing the lawn, caulking the garage roof, and keeping the girls entertained.

Before _______________________________________________________________ After

It's definitely not all we have planned for the front, but for this fall, it's a start. Someday, the porch will be extended, the house will have shutters, the new shingles will be on, a new bay window, a new front to the garage and maybe a finish of some kind over the brick. But for today, I am pleased.

Pictures of the play center will come, but it was too dark by the time we finished.

Science

This year, we are hoping to enjoy science by trying out multiple experiments on different topics. We choose colour as our first attempt, and the girls worked toward answering questions like "Why is the sky blue", "Is black really black?" and Colour changing milk." Ok, the last one was mostly just fun, and to be honest I have no idea what they came away with, but they had a great time.
In the process of our Why is the sky blue experiment, Aislinn did give a great rendition of how the earth turns around the sun creating night and day on earth which if nothing else was worth hearing -- as she was able to articulate the process so incredibly well!
The experiment itself consisted of shining light through water mixed with a tiny amount of milk (atmosphere) to see which colour is filtered first. In this case - Blue (yeah it worked!) and then seeing how the colour slowly turned yellow, the orange the farther away from the light = sunset.
(Hard to get pictures and stay in the moment!)

The second experiment they tried, was seeing what colour come out of markers when you let water draw up though them. See pics above. The girls greatly enjoyed this one, and at least got to watch if black is really black on you-tube as black was the only marker of that style I did not have!


And the last one, for fun, was playing with food colouring in milk and seeing how it reacted with a drop of soap. The girls quickly moved to full out mixing, but we did enjoy the marbling effect while it lasted!

I was hoping to acquire a couple of prism's as well, but didn't have the chance to locate any soon enough. We will look forward to revisiting colour when I do gets my hands on some-- and you never know -- I may find out how much they did absorb in the future.

First field trip of the year!

I postponed our official start of homeschooling this year to correspond with our first scheduled field trip with friends to the apple orchard. We had a great day! The weather was perfect for a fall day, and the girls enjoyed both the physical activity and the time with their friends. I myself am blown away by the comparison to last year. It's little things really, like their Independence on the gigantic slides, the infrequent trips to the bathroom, their increased strength in carrying bags of apples. compared to this time last year, they have already grown and developed so much! Especially Tara... she is no longer my baby- in that sense. I guess she would have already been spending her days away from me had we not chosen to home school. It just seems to have happened so fast. :)

Ok, enough of my gushy moment! The girls enjoyed all aspects of the orchard, from picking ( and tasting) the apples, to the petting farm, rope swing, hayride, and tepee trail.

Chapter 1 -The House.

As this will be an ongoing post as things around our new house change literally -daily -- I decided to block it into chapters.

So, many still ask us how we got around to buying a house so out of the blue, and to be honest, I am not quite sure! I think it started by spying a half burned down house on an mls listing that sparked our interest in major renovation projects -- which I have been desperately missing since selling our first house.

After realizing that a half missing house is maybe not the particularly best place to raise children, we moved on, but turned our eye north to the surrounding communities. We first fell upon a small house and set on course to throw in an offer, but looking back now, it luckily sold before we could grab it.

Well, then there was no turning back. We had come too close, so our agent turned our eye to a very rundown opportunity which had been sitting for sale for many months while the listing agent tried to convince us it wasn't worth buying!

We now call it home!! Nothing like the feeling of a dare - lol.

Here are some of the original pics. Prior to our taking possession!! (Not for the faint of heart!)

Future instalments will hopefully be more inspiring, but for now, we are enjoying home ownership once again. With a little TLC (ok a lot) we hope our 135 year old home will once again be a feature of the neighbourhood.

And --regardless of its quirks, it already feel so much like home!

We are back!!

After a very long sebatical... I have finally notched out some time for journalling our lives on our blog once again.

After a highly enjoyable but extremely hectic spring and summer, we are settling back into our homeschooling groove for 2008-2009. --Official this week :)

There is of course, so much to catch up on! Fabulous field trips, vacationing with friends, a new house and a new community!

I hope in the next week or two to look back on the past few months and blog about some of the highlights.
I hadn't realized how important this blog is too me, not only for letting our friends and family have a glimpse into our daily life, but for me to look back and enjoy again and again the wonderful moments I get to have as the girls explore their world and draw me into it with them.

Dinner with the monks

(Or "monkeys" as they have been fondly termed.)

The girls were more in awe of them when they wore their red robes and travelled in a group of ten, but they still look in wonderment to these two men who barely speak their language but will sit down to a "picnic", and swing and hug them at a moment's notice.

Tsultrim and Lungtok also cooked dinner for us as the tradition (since Aunt Kristel's departure to China) has become mo mo's - which involves group effort in the actual creation of as it takes about 2 hours.


Tsultrim and Lungtok have mo mo's down to an art form. Jeff is catching up quickly, and mine well... maybe you can pick them out! :)

We also had a great time watching them fight over their first chance to use a power tool. Unfortunately their first introduction was a chainsaw as they helped Jeff and my Dad cut down a 30 foot tree in the yard. Luckily everyone still had all their appendages at the end of the afternoon.

Grandpa's Birthday present

When Jeff suggested making a collage as a birthday card for Grandpa, the girls were right on it. They decided on making Grandpa's truck.
After researching online, printing and transferring the truck image to cardboard, they were ready to go.

Finding orange in magazines proved easier than we first thought and the girls glued happily with some help from Dad in finding headlights and tires.

After adding their almost memorized "Happy Birthday" they were completed with drawings of themselves and Grandpa in the front seat.
A fun card! but it did make us an hour late! :)