Merry Christmas 2012

2012 School Photos

Nollie - Grade 1

 

 

 Luca - Kindergarten

 

 

Waverly - 2 years old

 

 

 

 Finley - 3 months old

  

The whole crew

Finley Alec Buchan

Hard to believe this little guy has been with us more than two months.

Finley Alec Buchan was born May 30, 2012 at 4am.  An 8lb 8oz baby BOY.

There are hardly any has any photos taken of him.

Any that are taken look like this

or this

or this

 

The poor guy is in trouble.  His sisters have already had jewelry on him.

We are all loving this new addition to our family.

Happy 6th Birthday Nollie

Nollie loves creating things.  The words that come out of her mouth most often are “Can I draw?”  She goes through stacks of paper drawing every day.

If she is not drawing you often see her holding her camera, preferring to take videos over sill photos.

Nollie has lots of ideas and doesn’t accept that something can not be done.

Nollie loves listening to stories.  She loves to eat with her hands

and if you get her outside she will explore for hours

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This year Nollie lost her first (and second) tooth

Started Kindergarten

Continued Swim Club and joined Soccer and Sparks

and grew her bangs out.

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Baby Nollie

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

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Happy Birthday Nollie!

Tower in the Kitchen

Sitting at the table with my girls I spontaneously started building a pyramid out of the three plastic cups in front of me.  When I saw the girls were interested I jumped up and grabbed the rest of the stack from the cupboard.  The girls had fun putting together a cup pyramid. 

Next they had to try the same thing with bowls.

Soon after the plates came out too

and towers were being built.

Such concentration.

Plastic Egg Necklace

Do you have any new plastic eggs that are still attached together.  If you do, you can try making a plastic egg necklace.

As Nollie was playing with the bucket of new eggs today I challenged her to connect them into a necklace. I got my standard Nollie response that she was not interested in my suggestion and so I let it go. A couple minutes later she came by to show me the necklace she made.

Use Frozen Berries to Cool Hot Oatmeal

Oatmeal is a popular breakfast in our house,  I probably make it at least once a week.  Since I am up early, I can start the oatmeal and have it ready by the time everyone else starts rolling out of bed.

Often times the oatmeal is still too hot when everyone is ready to eat so we like to mix in some frozen berries.   It’s an easy way to cool off the oatmeal and add some fruit to our breakfast.

Frozen berries on hot oatmeal works for me!

How do you eat your oatmeal?

Shaving Cream Play

What do you do when its the first day after spring break and the kids are not quite into “school”?

You bring out a bottle of shaving cream of course!

I’ve been wanting to bring shaving cream out as sensory play activity for quite some time.  I even bought some shaving cream especially for the purpose of play. 

So when my suggested school activity turned into a complete meltdown I decided to stop for snack time, mostly to give myself time to cool down.  After we had snack I  asked “"do you guys want to do something messy?”  Their eyes immediately lit up and they started making suggestions as to what sort of messy activity we should do.  I suggested shaving cream.  They were unsure at first, but went with it. 

We got out their trays and I asked them to take their shirts off.  I gave them each a squirt of shaving cream and let them muck around.

After a couple of minutes I added two colours of food colouring to each tray for them to mix in.

Wavy spent a lot of time just watching her sisters and not touching.

but eventually she dove in too.

My job in the whole process was to keep spraying more shaving cream and gather the requested tools.  We used spoons, rolling pins, plastic containers and even a little glitter.

When I saw this happening…

… I asked if she really wanted to do that.  When she said yes, I stripped them down and we moved it to the bathtub where they covered themselves in shaving cream from head to toe. 

When they were finished we just showered it all away.  Their time in the tub also gave me a chance to clean up the kitchen so we were ready for lunch by the time they came out, sparkling clean.

Really, a much better way to spend the morning.

Project Simplify – Craft Room and Computer

The final week on Simple Mom’s Project Simplify was a choose your own adventure.  I picked my sewing area in the basement.

I haven't done alot of sewing lately, probably because the sewing area has become a dumping ground for everything that doesn't have a home.  The majority of the stuff from Waverly's closet last week just got transferred here as well as some toys and books that I removed from the downstairs homeschool/play area.  That is on top of the regular junk that needed to be put away.

I managed to get all the surfaces cleaned off.  There is actually a space for me to sew if I feel so inclined.

Before

 After

My fabric collection was out of control and although some was organized much of it was in random piles and puking out of boxes.  Curt laughed at me one night as I took it all out and refolded each piece telling me that it wasn't any less just because it was folded pretty.  I did manage to get rid of a bag of it as rags and another bag to the thrift store and some just went in the trash.  I can't believe that what used to take up the whole shelving unit now only takes up two shelves.  The other shelves were freed up for craft supplies.

Before

 After

By no means am I done the basement sewing area yet I still have this pile...

 

and this pile.

 

 however progress was made.

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My computer also got a clean out this week, although not planned.  I spent most of the week fighting a virus on our computer and in the end did a clean install of windows.  Thankfully we didn't lose anything in the process and it appears that we are virus free so far.   I'm still a little nervous about the virus since it is one that tries to access your passwords and secure information (ie. banking).  I had to change all my passwords and now keep an eye on all my accounts more closely than usual.

A clean instal is something we do about once a year anyway on our computer and it was due.

Would you look at that beautiful clean desktop.

So there is your reminder to back up all your computer files and pictures and make sure your antivirus software is up to date.  Do it!  Now!