Our 'Staycation' Part 1

So  I guess it was a couple weeks ago now that Josh had a whole week off and we decided to try out that new fangled idea of a 'staycation' Well let me tell you, I was absolutely exhausted by the end of the week, my house was a complete disaster, and I was in desperate need of a vacation even though technically we had just finished one!! But we have over 1000 pictures, tons of memories and I quite simply wouldn't trade any of the awesome time that we had together as a family for an expensive, all-inclusive, tropical, relaxing vacation.........ok I'd seriously consider it, but all in all it was fantastic.

The whole vacation started on Sunday April 30th and after going to church in the morning we needed to head on into the big ol' city of St. Catharines to pick up my dear Auntie's lovely camera that she was generously letting us borrow to document our week together. After picking up said camera (while my aunt stuffed my children full of junk and presents) we headed on over to Value Village (please insert French accent here to make it sound exotic) to pick up a few things. I really wanted to have a puzzle that the kids and I could work on for the week and thought we could pick one up fairly cheap second hand. Josh and I had aimed on eliminating the TV for his time off (for the most part) and both the girls and I love doing puzzles.  However, over the winter our puzzle selection grew kind of thin (as we finished off a bunch) and we were in the mood for something new and Springy.

Perfectly Springy feeling:)

One for each member of our family blessed with more than enough clothes

We were also looking for some cute pillowcases that we could make into dresses for little girls around the world. A friend of mine from highschool is a partner in a fabulous little organization that makes and inspires people to make beautiful pillowcase dresses that are delivered to girls in countries across the world. Please check out her link http://sewgorgeous.org/ or like them on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/kdawnt12 My girls and I have been itching to make, find supplies, or help out for a long while now but being a single income, single vehicle family has made it challenging to find the time and supplies to do this. So we decided that while Josh was off we would try to dedicate some of our time, energy and resources to accomplish this. Here are the pillowcases we found (finished dress pics to come at a later date:)

After Value Village we proceeded to FreshCo. a grocery store that we had never been to before. I really liked it and went on to spend a fortune on the freshest, most wonderful ingredients possible as I planned on doing a lot of cooking and baking!! Actually, to be honest the prices were fairly reasonable I'm just not used to shopping without price matching and couponing and with Josh and the three girls along I wasn't even about to mention that. We also bought super healthy food (which sadly is always more expensive), we're really trying to work healthier options into our diet, and thus slowly eliminate the not-so-healthy food we love. It feels much better than completely cutting things out. I'm hoping that by increasing the good stuff there will just naturally be less room for the bad stuff and that the girls (and Josh) really won't feel like its a big change all at once.

 We started to use the borrowed camera that very afternoon as we came home to this:

through the screen door shot

getting used to using the camera

through the window

finally outside (kids stole my good colander!!) but the rabbit hears me and in .5 seconds he runs away

We finished off our very first whole day together with a really nice dinner at my in-laws. Not having to cook was a fabulous way to start off our week together:) Stay tuned for the next segment titled....(wait for it) 'Our Staycation Part 2 - In which we teach the children how to play 'Pit'....

Reviving the Blog

I love facebook. Anyone else out there love facebook?? I've always got something to say, something I want to share or some comment that needs expressing. However, I've slowly come to the realization that everyone probably does not want to hear every minute detail of my life, my cooking, my homeschool, my children etc...so in honour of that I've decided to revive this old blog. That not only provides me with an outlet in which I can share most every old thought, detail, idea rattling around in my brain but it will also ensure that I don't unwittingly torture anyone who doesn't want to be exposed to my kind of crazyness. So, I guess if you are here and reading this then I will take it as a complement and continue on with posting about the silly, fun, adventurous things that myself and my family do.


'Staycation'
So in anticipation of Josh's eight days off starting in ohhh about two hours, and our very first attempt at a 'staycation' the girls and I have vacuumed, cleaned every bathroom in the house, are almost done every last piece of laundry and are making out our list of things we would like to do and accomplish while he is home with us. Our one 'big' (expensive) outing is going to be going to the Ontario Science Centre www.ontariosciencecetre.ca on Thursday with my parents and both of my brothers. As a child my parents took us to the Science Centre once a year almost every year and it is one of those places that I absolutely love visiting.

Also planning on doing a little cooking, baking, crafting and we are also in the process of planning a 'volunteer activity' not quite sure what this is going to look like yet but the SickKids hospital and Ronald McDonald House have been placed heavily on our hearts since my friend Brenda's little guy, Gaven, has been diagnosed with cancer. You can check him out here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gaven-Michael-Weyers/267455696651558

So if you have any fabulous ideas for this 'staycation' or any words of wisdom, please let us know! We want this week to be fun, successful and most of all a great time together as a family.

The Death of our Beloved Fish

Our fish is currently at this very moment dying a slow death. This is truly terrible as she has been sick for the last couple of days and our big vicious algae eater has sensed this weakness and is actually eating her alive as I type. My kids are horrified, I'm horrified, I'm sure the other fish in the tank is horrified but we have searched high and low and cannot find our fish net anywhere in this silly house. Now I would like to claim that I am some sort of wonderwoman supermom but in reality I'm a basket case when it comes to these things, definitely a little green in the face, so my brave, darling, animal loving, McKayla is using an old plastic tub to scoop 'Orangey' out and provide her  with a more fitting death via the good ol' porcelain sink (aka 'the toilet'). I still have not yet ascertained what plans she has for our nasty, cannibalistic, scum sucking algae eater named 'Tiger'.

Good Fish

Bad Fish

The Busyness

In this day and age everyone is just so busy. Some days it feels like you wake, fly through the day and count down the time until you get to go back to bed. Well at least that's what it has felt like in this house lately. The girls and I have been super busy getting back into the swing of things and finding a good pattern to our days. We haven't got it mastered yet, it still needs a little tweaking here and there, but overall I would say it's pretty consistent.

The Schoolroom - 3 weeks in!

7:00am - 8:00am - the girls wake up, climb into my bed and pester me until I finally get up...this usually takes at least an hour

8:00am - 9:00am - we scrounge around for breakfast, usually ending up with a bowl of cereal, although for the past three days we have been on a pancake binge and I have made regular pancakes, buttermilk pancakes and blueberry pancakes to the delight of the whole family (even the dog)

9:00am - 10:30am - now depending on what day of the week it is we either start our school day at home or at Grandma's while mom heads off to work for an hour

10:30am - 12:00 - by this time, one of us has had at least one meltdown (I wish I could say that it was only the children and never me) and we are in desperate need of lunch. Thankfully though by this time of the day we have usually managed to cover most of our core subjects: math, grammar, reading, spelling and Bible work.

The girls 'LOVE' toad in hole for lunch

12:00pm - 1:00pm - lunch, dishes, a good cry, laundry, sweeping, a bit of tidying up and then comes my favourite part of the day..............







1:00pm - 2:00pm - QUIET TIME! Except for Wednesdays when I work again for an hour in the afternoon, everyone in the house has an hour of quiet time in their rooms. I took this idea from 'The Well-Trained Mind' by Susan Wise Bauer and it has truly been amazing. The girls usually end up in one room listening to an audiobook, (currently they are working their way through the Chronicles of Narnia) while quietly playing lego or dolls. I usually start dinner, sit on Facebook catch up on some reading, or do some much needed chores, like washing the floor or giving the basement a good vacuum after the kids have been in the sensory bin.

2:00pm - 3:00pm - The girls come out of quiet time really revitalized and we are usually able to hit 2 more subjects. We cycle through science, geography, history and memory work or more intensive reading.

The makings of a volcano

Our volcano erupting!

Emerson proudly showing off the necklace she made

None of this is perfect...my schoolroom currently has more acrylic paint on the floor from a lapse in supervision (also known as a bathroom break), yellow peas (current sensory bin) are everywhere, as well as thousands of beads since the girls have been making bracelets and necklaces like crazy.

More acrylic paint on my carpet!

Just Another Manic Monday...except it's Tuesday

Based on last nights sick and crying children, today our 'schooling' looked like this:

'Watching' books on a Read-Along DVD

Looking through this old book of birds and writing down our favourite ones

We also baked this delicious dessert!



Plus we somehow managed to fit in a Bible story, do our devotions and each girl had a math lesson. Some days are better than others...not quite sure where this one falls.

The blueberry crumb cake recipe can be found at:

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2010/07/blueberry-crumb-cake/

Camping

The girls and I went camping on Friday night with some other lovely families from the homeschooling group we belong to. What a wonderful, crazy, difficult thing it is to camp with three young children for one night. Josh was quite busy working and umping a baseball tournament and despite my better judgement I decided to go ahead and camp without him.

One night worth of camping gear: minus the fishing rods and tackle box

We were sooo loaded up the girls could hardly move!

I really love the idea of camping. Setting up the tent, roasting hot dogs and marshmellows, singing campfire songs and visiting with friends. The reality is that I don't know anything about camping so I was very thankful for a dear friend helping me set up the tent, another friend who lent me the sticks for roasting, another friend who brought a much needed coffee on Saturday morning etc., etc....the list could go on and on of all the ways that I was thankful. However, even with all these fabulous people I have decided that camping really isn't for me. At all. Ever. Never again. End of Story.......I might change my mind in a year from now and only if Josh is available but I hope no one is holding their breath. (Because I'm not)

On a side note the girls had a GREAT time catching all sorts of critters; frogs, toads and snakes. In the end that made it worth all the effort...heartache...back pain...sleepless night...ok I'm done complaining (as McKayla reminds me of Phil. 2:14-15)

Back to School

So it's back to school again here in the Wall house. If you didn't already know, we are one of those 'weird' homeschooling families...okay so I don't really think we're 'weird' but for a lot of people homeschooling is a little out of the ordinary. On Monday Josh and I managed to clean up and reorganize the schoolroom/basement and get everything pretty much in order for the week.

School area - still have to empty the basket of books

 
Our first couple days getting back to the grindstone have been surprisingly fantastic. The two older girls have been working really hard and have been quite enthusiastic about getting back into a routine. Em, has proven to be a little bit of a challenge (no real surprise there) since she is very interested in doing exactly what the other girls are doing. However, we have come up with some fun ideas to keep her entertained and busy while we work on our core subjects. 




This salt sensory box has been a real lifesaver. Em has loved to mix and pour and generally make a gigantic mess all over the floor! We used coarse salt to fill it which has made it really easy to vacuum up at the end of the day.