Wordless Wednesday :: We ♥ Hooping



Our next home...on Prince Edward Island!

We haven't found a home yet, but our current house in Ontario is sold. We will be moving out at the end of May. My husband is already living and working on PEI. We are all looking forward to this move and can't wait to be together again under the same roof.

Sandstone Arch - Prince Edward Island - photo from Wikipedia

We are also looking forward to exploring the East Coast of Canada and the Island especially. PEI has so much to offer, history, culture, nature, and so much more. I will try to share our discoveries as much as possible with you on this blog, until then I will be busy packing (but still sharing our favourite books every Monday and whatever else of interest along the way).

2012 Update!

Happy New Year!

Blogging always takes a back seat when life gets really busy, doesn't it? It certainly has for our family, but it is time for an update! I was going to wait until the end of the week but the regular wrap-up post would have been so long, that I decided to do an update post first.

Christmas was wonderful, shared with Nana and Papa at home. We enjoyed a relaxed Christmas day, filled with yummy food, laughter and time together. I managed to make a few Christmas presents and received a beautiful homemade apron from my oldest daughter! She sewed it all in secret and did amazing!

We took time off before Christmas and only a few days after. Right before Christmas, my husband was given an offer of transfer with his work. We had only a couple of days to decide (we said yes), then Christmas came, then we had to get the house ready for sale. It was a very busy time after Christmas for us! We will be relocating from South Western Ontario to Prince Edward Island and we are all looking forward to this new adventure! We will be moving to PEI as soon as we can (my husband will be there at the end of February).

Reading some travel books at the local bookstore!

We started back to our school routine again last week, with only a couple of days of work, but this week is full schedule. Extra curricular activities have resumed and we are focused again, with some interruptions for house showings of course...

Our current read aloud!

Wordless Wednesday :: Fun at the Playground

Cooking with Celeste

Celeste loves to cook with me. Today, she wasn't feel well. She has a cold and is coughing.

She still wanted to help me bake. Sunday for me usually means cooking and baking, I like to make snacks and soups for the week ahead.

As I was getting all the ingredients out for making muffins, she told me she wished she had a little mask to cover her face so she could still bake with me. She then left the room and told me to wait. She came back with a bandana around her face! She wore it the whole time we were cooking this afternoon :)

Nature Study :: At the Beach

We spent an afternoon at the beach on Monday. It was a gorgeous day and we had a great time. We were also able to enjoy a little nature study!

We first noticed the beautiful Eastern Black Swallowtail butterflies. We first saw one flying around on the sand, then a second one came along. These  appear to be both male, since the females have more blue than yellow. They look like they were playing around, but maybe they were fighting? Either way, they were very interesting to observe.

Shortly after we arrived, the female Mallard ducks came. These ducks are obviously used to people and know that people = food. They were not scared of us and came very close, especially while we are having snacks! We noticed that they were making their rounds on the beach, walking around everyone's beach blankets looking for food! We had brought a plain bread bun and some plain low-salt tortilla chips, so we shared a little of those with them. They were more and more friendly after that! They even walked right up on our beach blanket and ate our of our hands. I kept on thinking that we shouldn't feed them this people food, but they were probably picking up worse things on the beach.

It was really interesting to see how each duck had her own personality. Adrienne gave them some names. Some didn't hesitate to come right up to us. One even tried to take a bite out of Andre's apple while he was holding it! Others didn't come as close but still stayed around to get food. They continued walking around the beach, checking out everyone else, but kept coming back to our spot. They also went to the lake to drink and swim. We watched them duck under water. Some children chased them off the beach, so we also saw them flying and landing in the water.

An afternoon at the beach is always fun, playing in the lake and making sand castles. Being able to observe nature made our day even better!

Short Nature Walk

We took advantage of the beautiful sunny day today and took a break from our studies to spend time in the nature area near our house. We have gone for walks in this spot since we moved here. Unfortunately, it might not happen as often now because they are building more houses and tearing apart what used to be a farmer's field.

We did make a point of looking for signs of new plants growing. We saw many dandelions and a few other wild plants. We played in the little stream, making small leaves float down the slow current.

Our time spent in nature is important to us, the fresh air, the sunshine and our time together. We love it!

Screen Free Week is Coming!

This used to be called "TV-free Week", but since 2010 the name changed to "Scree-free Week". The idea is to have a week without any screens entertaining us. No TV, video games, movies, computers, itouch, etc... This year, Screen-Free Week is from Monday April 18 to Sunday April 24.

Our family is participating this year. We have all agreed to allow 3 minutes to check our e-mail daily, since our Air Cadets need to check that week's newsletter in this manner. We also don't want to worry about missing any important messages related to work, extra-curricular activities, or homeschool field trips. Three minutes a day is plenty to quickly check new e-mails and take care of them. The rest of the week will be scree-free completely.

This blog will have Book Sharing Monday post automatically published on the Monday (I will write it on the Sunday before). I will be late writing our weekly wrap-up post, it won't be written or posted until the following Monday or Tuesday.

There are so many activities a family can do that doesn't involve a screen. If the weather permits, we are planning on enjoying the outdoors a lot. Biking, walking, planning and working on our garden, chalking on our driveway, etc.. Inside, we have lots of things we enjoy doing together or seperately as well: painting, reading, playing board games or cards, playing with dolls, legos, and more. It will also be a regular school week for us.

You can find many ideas for scree-free activities by googling. Here are a few links I found interesting:

Kids' Activities for Screen-Free Week

Resources to Inspire Your Screen-Free Week (great book list!)

Get Ready for Screen-Free Week: 30 Great Ideas and Printables

Ideas that I came across that inspired me (in no particular order or organization!):

• start a vegetable, herb, or wildflower garden
• play with marbles
• set up a basket of drawing supplies and paper and rotate each day (1 day markers+thick paper, next watercolour+paint paper cut in an interesting shape, crayon+colouring pages)
• start a book reading marathon
• sort through toys and donate unwanted ones 
• start a large puzzle together
• start an Earth Day project
• sew something together 
• make friendship bracelets
• play hide and seek (still one of my kids' favourites, especially at night!)
• go bowling
• cook together

There are so many ideas! Let me know if you are participating in Screen Free Week too by leaving a comment to this post and share some of your ideas for activities too!

Wordless Wednesday :: Happy 12th Birthday, Andre!!

Introducing...Sophie Nausicaa

A few Christmas photos are needed to introduce our new furry family member! We have adopted a new cat and named her Sophie Nausicaa. She is about four months old and comes from the local humane society. My husband set up the adoption and arranged for Santa to deliver her on Christmas morning. The children had no idea that a new kitty was coming, I did, but I had no idea that Santa was bringing her! What a wonderful surprise!

Adrienne's cat Clara was the first of our pets to meet Sophie. She really wasn't sure about this young one coming onto her turf at first, but now they are friends, chasing each other through the house every evening. 
Our dog has adjusted really well too, and was never worried about her. He just saw her as a play friend. Sophie isn't scared of Orion, unlike Clara. It's funny to see the difference between the two cats.
Her name, Sophie Nausicaa, was voted on. When she first came to us, she was called Sunny. We came up together with these two names from Studio Ghibli movies. We couldn't decide between the two, so we kept both! Sophie is one of the main characters from Howl's Moving Castle, and Nausicaa is the name of the princess in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

Dear Santa...

Happy Halloween!

We had another great Halloween here, a bit chilly and windy, but still a lot of fun! This year, we all went out together trick-or-treating.
This year, we had Celeste as a witch with a slightly green face, Andre as Harry Potter, and Adrienne as a corpse bride. I like to go along with them and dress up a little, this year I did a quick skeleton face..
We hope everyone had a great Happy Halloween!

Medieval Village and Street Fair

We went to a street fair this weekend in the city that included a medieval village as well. It was great! The medieval village part had a lot to see and do, crafts, costumes to try on, and weapons to hold! Andre loved the weapons tent and we all learned more about them.

We also spent a lot of time at the street fair, watching a couple of street performers, and even participating in one for Celeste and I. We saw BMX guys jumping ramps and doing tricks. A new Canadian centre had a show with several artists, our favourite was a traditional chinese dancer. There was even free food!