The perfect day....

...for a 'hike'.
After the rain of yesterday - the day dawned dry and bright. A trip to the library was in order as I had some books to return. T2 hasn't been on a long walk since she broke her leg last summer. By the time her leg had completely healed and regained it's strength, winter was upon us and it was too cold. I wasn't sure how well she would do. It was awesome. She managed the whole walk, never complained, chattered the whole time.
We walked some of the way on regular residential sidewalks but deviated now and then to the trail paths which were full of Spring life with bird song and plants and rushing water in the streams from the rain.
I decided to take advantage of the forks in the trails by offering her choices of which way we should go next. I emphasized left and right when explaining our options "if we go LEFT, we will go to back home again, if we go RIGHT, we'll head to the library or if we go straight we will go to the High school" She really enjoyed taking charge and deciding which way we needed to go and used the correct left/right after hearing me first. Hopefully a few more 'hikes' and she'll fully grasp the concept.
The weather was perfect but the company was 'perfecter'.

You don't have to be a kid to....

...enjoy puddle jumping! I love the noise as rain boots hit a good puddle with a resounding SPLOSH - the bigger the puddle, the better! It has been raining non stop here today - initially it was raining too hard to go out and enjoy it but once it eased off WAHOOO. T2, K and I were out there donned in rain gear jumping and giggling - fun fun fun. Now back to packing those boxes - groan

HAPPY EARTH DAY!

Our day will be much the same as any other day as I feel that we are pretty kind to the Earth every day. We will take a walk and collect garbage - I'm sure the local High School kids will have left us plenty from their take out lunches grrrr

computer woes

My card reader seems not to be reading cards right now so my pictures will have to remain on my camera.

Yesterday between packing boxes for our house move - T2, K and I enjoyed painting wearing rain boots - dipping our booted feet in trays of paint and walking, jumping and stomping on paper covering the kitchen the floor. The boots made some cool prints!

After a long Winter

This is what it's all about....

T1's project

I finally remembered to take a picture of T1's Pioneer one room school he made for a visual aid to his recent presentation



I think he did a great job : )

Giant chick

Warning - these images may be disturbing to some readers : )



Before we move I need to clean our windows inside and out (why? I have no idea - the new home owners will probably want to do it themselves anyway!). To make this job more worthwhile we decorated one of them with a giant chick for Spring. All you need is washable kid craft paint, a squirt of dish liquid (makes clean up easier) and some willing hands.....







A rare sighting of T1!!









(Tuesday - Window is now clean and shiny and chick free once more)

Wibbly, wobbly egg friends

I'm sure we could have made these more elaborately but we had limited time.

I cut beaks and wings out of craft foam. We used plastic eggs which we weighted with a ball of Play-doh pressed into the base of inside of each one (make sure it is pressed firm). Using regular white craft glue we stuck on the features and tested them out. Sure enough they wobble about and don't fall over!

Letter matching eggs

I drew around an oval cookie cutter to make 26 egg shapes and wrote an upper case letter on the top half and it's matching lower case letter on the bottom, then I cut each egg slightly differently so only the correct letters would match.

After quiet time T2 and K had fun matching the letters. They are very familiar with upper case letters but still confuse some lower case letters so this is great practice for them.

Oops

I got a bit caught up in mindless TV tonight and am now desperate to crawl into bed with a book so looks like my planned activity will have to wait - got to make it first!

T1

I don't talk about T1 much. At 9 years of age he is very uninterested in crafts and stuff like that. After a long day challenging his mind at French Immersion school, he wearily arrives home at 4:15 and wants to relax in his preferred way. This usually involves catching up on his favourite shows on Discovery/Discovery kids (how it's made/Myth busters/anything involving transportation/science/technology) or some times on the computer either www.lego.com, flight simulator,John Deer drive green, 18 wheels of steel, assorted Tycoon games or building lego or reading.

This week he needed to do a presentation at school. He doesn't like to present to the class at all. His teachers know of his social/attention difficulties and they do cut him some slack. With this particular presentation, we decided to try a different approach. Instead of having the focus on him talking, we thought something visual would take the pressure off him and give him something to prompt him with the verbal part. The subject was Pioneer one room schools so last weekend, with our help, T1 built a model of a one room school. He did his presentation yesterday and apparently all the kids in his class were eager to check it out up close when he was done which game him a huge confidence boost. It was so nice to see him so involved in a creative project when I know that typically wouldn't hold his interest or attention.

I'll try to add a picture later of his finished school.

A fun day

While T1 was at school, T2 and I worked our way through the stack of games and puzzles in the playroom cupboard. I am ashamed to admit that many of them had not been played with in months and some T2 had never played with as they had been forgotten by me. So, we matched, we joined, we figured out and we had fun. Tonight I plan on working on a little matching game of my own to try with her after school tomorrow.....

No such luck

Peanut/tree nut allergy still present. Oh well, could be living with worse

Fingers crossed

Tomorrow T2 has an appointment with her allergist to have her allergies retested. How wonderful it would be if her peanut and tree nut allergy had miraculously ceased to exist and we would no longer live in fear of her coming into contact with nuts - even contact with someone who ate a peanut product hours before brings on a reaction. I miss nuts but I'd miss her more.....

Finishing the yarn eggs

separate the balloon from the yarn



pop the balloon and pull it out

Yarn eggs

It's been a long time since I last made yarn eggs - hmmm probably about 10 years so I figured it was about time I made them again with T2's help (we'll see if T1 wants to have a go when he gets home from school in a few minutes!). It's easy but messy and the results are cool.

Here are my supplies. I watered down the glue - probably similar quantities of each. I added glitter but it's not necessary. Balloons (look carefully and you may see a clue as to where we live!!), yarn, scissors, paintbrush and somewhere to hang them to dry.









I am eager for the glue to dry so we can pop the balloons and remove them.....

A sure sign

We have lived in this house for almost 5 years and every Spring two ducks, one male, one female, have come to hang out during the day for several weeks. Each year we have fed them, provided water to drink and splash about in and loyally they return. The male always waits until the female has finished eating before he starts and he's very protective of her - issuing warning quacks should one of us get too close. The best times have been when Mr Duck sits on our porch or patio quacking loudly for food and once even 'knocked' on the door repeatedly with his beak - seriously! Each evening they waddle across the street and through the houses across the road to the creek, returning the following morning. I love it - they are so cute and fun to watch. About 3 weeks ago they came by for the first time this year and have been back a few times on mild days - today being one of those days

Mrs Duck:



Mr Duck:



I'll miss them when we move - along with Tippy the squirrel (it has a white tipped tail) and the 'SquipMunk' - I am sure it's half squirrel and half chipmunk. I hope we have some fun wild life at the new house...

Spring tree

Yesterday we gathered pine cones and twigs when we went for a walk before meeting T1 from his school bus stop. It was a glorious sunny day - T2 even found it warm enough to stretch out on the sidewalk and check out the clouds - not typical of this time of year where we live. It's hard to consider we might be done with snow and layers of cold weather clothes when we are often still shoveling the white stuff in March and sometimes April!

I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the things we collected and this afternoon we set to work. I had planned we would work on our activity when K was here but she had to stay home with a fever today but I knew T2 would not be able to wait until we next see her on Thursday. We'll work on it some more when she's next here.

















It's not finished yet - we'll be adding a few more things to our Spring tree over the next little while : )

By the way - anyone know why Blogger will no longer let me centre my photos?

Spring fun

Pine cones, twigs, paint and ribbon are ready and waiting on the table. Tomorrow is going to be fun!

Mud, mud, glorious mud

Yesterday was the perfect day for making mud pies, mud soup and just getting muddy!!

This week...

...has been a haze of cleaning and tidying the house, house showings and more cleaning and tidying of the house, plus a few kid appointments, toss in my need to surrender to anemia and sit or nap and fun seems to seriously lacking right now. I do still have a stack of paper plates awaiting transformation - maybe tomorrow......

paper plates 4

Today we decided to make a lion's face







We'll add some details with markers when the paint is dry.

Paper plates 3

Paper plate piggy. T2 wanted to give the pig a body too

Paper plates day 2

I very rarely buy paper plates but I did find a few in the back of the cupboard, left over from when we renovated the kitchen a couple of years ago. Today T2, her friend K and I made paper plate fish







Here's mine : )



Here's T2's