A Lesson in Geography

More pictures to get back into the groove of blogging ...

Watching the Olympic Opening Ceremonies while trying to find each country on our big floor map.  The smaller the country, it seemed, the less time we had to find it on the map!  Guess the we had better brush up on our geography.

A Trip to Gaspereau Valley Fibres, Snakes, and a Clean Floors

Sound like an odd combination?  They are all related, I promise.

Gaspereau Valley Fibres has long been on my list of places to visit, but this week I finally made it -- and what a treat it was!  It is a beautiful, rustic space filled with lots of wool and yarn.  I wish that I had remembered to bring my camera to show you all how warm and lovely the space is, but I guess that you will just have to check it out for yourself!  The kids and I were warmly greeted, warned about the wonderful wood stove, and offered assistance.  After walking around for a bit, I asked for some help in picking out some yarn for my next knitting project.  I foolishly forgot to bring the pattern with me (I'm not sure if that has more to do with me being a new knitter, or just trying to get out of the house with 4 kids), but the staff person took me over to her computer, told me all about Ravelry, found the pattern that I had picked out, then was able to help me pick out the right kind of yarn for my project -- she was really great.  Meanwhile, the boys had been eying the wool, so they each picked a piece out of a basket of end pieces (she even stopped to show the boys how to break off a piece so that it was just the size that they wanted) for a project to be determined later -- Aidan said that he wanted to make a coat for his pet, hmmmm...

The next challenge was to figure out what to do with the wool -- I have only taken 2 classes in wet felting, so my skills and knowledge are somewhat limited.  Aidan's plan to make a coat seemed overly ambitious, so I Googled "wet felt animals" and found some simple instructions for a snake.  Sounded easy enough, so with Laurel down for a nap, the boys and I got to work.  I took the non slip mats out from under our rug (in my class we had used bubble wrap, but I didn't have any, so this would have to do) and laid them on the table with our other supplies (I'm not going to give a step by step of what we did, because that would imply that I had some idea of what I was doing and really we were winging it!).  The boys did really well at putting their snakes together (although, in retrospect, we wished that we had picked some different colours so that we could have had more defined stripes), but we did get a little carried away with the soap -- oops!  After a lot of rolling we had 4 great looking felted snakes and 3 very pleased boys. 

Well, after all this fun, the table was covered with bubbles, LOTS of bubbles.  And it just so happened that the floor in the dining room was particularly dirty.  So, I did the only logical thing ... I pushed all of the water and bubbles onto the floor (there really was no other option, right?  That's what I thought).  Well, you'd be surprised at the commotion that this caused in our house -- socks flying off feet, boys arguing over who would have the first turn cleaning the floor ... it really was quite a sight (just call me Tom Sawyer!).

So there you have it, a wonderful visit to Gaspereau Valley Fibres, felted snakes, and a clean floor.  I told you they were all related (I can't believe that you doubted me). 

Recycling Socks

This is our sock pile (*sigh*).  The sad pile of lonely, mate-less socks, socks that have holes that I have no time or desire (translation: I'm too lazy) to fix, and the socks that don't have feet that fit them anymore.  The pile seems to grow and grow and grow (along with my annoyance with it)!  It would be so easy to throw them out, but it seems such a waste.  There must be something that old socks are good for ... but what?

We have tried cutting them up and using them to stuff little cushions (when the boys wanted to learn how to sew) ...

we made a toy for the dog (he really does like it despite the indifference shown in this picture)...

... but we still have quite a pile.

Well, since the arrival of winter, there has been a regular complaint around here when playing outside ... snow getting on wrists because of mittens that don't stay tucked into coat sleeves.  Could my ever-growing, towering pile of socks actually be the solution?  Some years ago, a very experienced mother (now she is a great-grandmother, but not my own) told me how she used to send her kids to school with socks on their arms under their coats and mittens.  At the time, I didn't really see the point, but as I pondered our current challenge, I remembered these wise words and it all made sense.

So I went to our pile of socks and, as I considered how I could tweak (just a little bit) the sage advice I had been given to suit our needs, I pulled out some of the longer socks and started cutting and sewing.

After measuring the socks so that they would reach almost to the wearer's elbow (that should be long enough to keep out the snow, no matter what they are doing outside!), I sewed the socks right onto the cuff of the mitten.  It was so simple and easy -- but the advice from generations past usually is, isn't it?  The owner of the mittens was so pleased that I quickly had requests to do more.  So I improved 3 more pairs of mittens (with plans to do more, but that was all I had time to do before supper)!

And on the weekend, during our sledding outing, I didn't hear one complaint -- not one! -- about snow getting in under the cuffs.  Hooray!

So, one challenge met, but my sock pile still looms.  I still have the bottom of all those socks, plus the smaller ones that needs a new purpose.  I found this mat which is supposed to be made entirely of socks -- I love the look of it!  But it presents two problems ... the first - our sock pile is much less colourful (some dye would fix that, if I was so inclined, I suppose); and the second problem - I'm not sure that I have enough socks to make it -- now there is something I never thought I would say about old socks!

http://www.crazyasaloom.com/

Today's Lesson: Hanging Doors

One of the jobs left around the house is hanging doors.  One of these doors is a bathroom door which, although I accept that having kids means getting very little privacy, is a luxury I no longer wish to live without.  So, bright and early this morning Roger pulls up in his truck and starts pulling out tools of all shapes and sizes.  Immediately anything that I had planned to do today with the boys went right out the window.  I had lost them to the call of wood, saws, and a very cool nail gun -- should I be worried that they seemed particularly interested in the nail gun?  So "teacher" Roger was watched very carefully and followed up and down the stairs and regaled with stories about their Halloween costumes and anything else that they thought was cool enough to talk about to the guy with all the great "toys".

Then there was a little snag.  It turns out that our old doors -- which I rather liked -- are not square.  Which was fine because it matched the rest of the house, but when they put up the new walls, they (just for kicks, I suppose) made everything square.  This meant that the old doors wouldn't fit without great effort.  A great debate followed about pre-hung doors versus the labour intensive job that it would be to put the old doors back.  In the end we went with pre-hung (oh, well).

When the new doors arrived, Owen was alarmed that they didn't have any door knobs.  Isaac, in his all-knowing voice, reported:  "No Owen, free range doors don't come with knobs!"

Packrats-In-Training

Hanging out at Grampie's for a bit while the work starts on our house. While we are here, we are trying to help him clean out his house a bit in preparation for an eventual move.  The challenge is that my dad's idea of getting rid of things is to give them to my boys -- which the boys think is great.  The pile of stuff the the boys want to keep is getting dangerously close to the size of the pile of stuff the is going out!  Yikes!

Yesterday, while working in the garage, the boys found an old skateboard.  They thought that this was a great find and spent the rest of the day practising.

 Owen getting better -- note the tongue sticking out for added concentration!

 Isaac working on his balance -- the lovely red gloves are also a find from Grampie's house.  The boys said something about them making a great addition to a Star Wars costume (?).

Aidan working on a different move and demonstrating inappropriate footwear for skateboarding -- he learned this lesson the hard way.

Time to stock up on bandaids!

Summer Solstice

Happy summer solstice everyone -- well, everyone in this part of the world!

I really wanted to do something special this year to celebrate the changing of the season.  I looked around for some ideas that were simple, rooted in nature and fun.  Dancing ... maybe, but I've got two left feet, not a pretty sight;  a day at the beach ... possible, but that's on the agenda for tomorrow; chants and meditation ... yeah, that would last about 30 seconds with this bunch.  Then, inspiration -- FIRE!  Of course, what could be better?

Well, I thought, if we're going to have a fire, then we've got to have smores!  And after reading this blog post by my friend Erin (smore-goodness), it sealed the deal on the fire idea.  There was some spontaneous dancing and chanting going on when I shared my plan with the boys.  Needless to say, they were excited.

So we got to work clearing a little spot in the dirt pile in our backyard and gathering some sticks.  Aidan got the enviable job of lighting the fire, which was immediately followed by a quick lesson in fire safety and the properties of fire -- I knew that stint in the fire department would come in handy someday!  Once everyone was properly trained and equipped (stick in hand), they each got to add a piece of wood to our little fire.  I kept looking around to see if any of our neighbours were concerned about the smoke coming from our yard, but the fire trucks didn't show up, so I guess that we didn't set off any alarms.

Waiting for the fire to die down, supplies at the ready, was the hardest part.  Especially since they didn't really seem to get the fact that it was the coals that we wanted.

When they could wait no longer, the marshmallows were speared, carefully toasted (or in some cases, burned!), then sandwiched between graham crackers and chocolate.  Mmmmmmmm ...

A very sweet summer solstice celebration!

An Old Radio

We returned home after our last trip to my dad's house with an old radio -- his idea of downsizing is to "gift" things to his grandsons who love anything that came from Grampie's house!  We quickly determined that the tape player didn't work -- which was followed by an explanation of what a tape was -- and after fiddling with the radio, discovered that it didn't work very well either.  Hmmmm ... into the garbage it goes, unless ....

I recently came across a reference to a book entitled:  50 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do by Gever Tulley.  Well, that lead me to Tulley's TED talk entitled : 5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do (to view the entire talk click here).  Wow, some of those things would really be pushing my comfort level, but I can see how they would be empowering to kids.  I wonder what the other 45 things are?  Anyway, one of the suggestions was to let your children take apart an appliance.  The example given was a dishwasher, but I am rather attached to my dishwasher and, although it could probably use a little tweaking, I am not ready to set my boys upon it yet.  But it did make me think of the old radio.  We were going to throw it out anyway ... what would be the harm, I thought, in letting them take it apart.

So today, with rain pouring down outside, was the day.  They seemed a little taken aback by my idea -- shocked even.  "What?! You want us to use these tools to take the radio apart?"  Hmm, I must need to work on my communication skills because I thought that my instructions were pretty clear.  But once they got over their initial shock and got into it -- it didn't take too long -- they had a great time.  I had to bit my tongue a few times, so as not to make too many suggestions to "their" project, but I did get the old "righty, tighty; lefty, loosey" lesson in -- now if only they could consistently tell their right from their left.  Oh well, they figured it out.

 They spent hours at the table taking things apart, looking them all over and in some cases putting them back together.  Their biggest discovery was that there are magnets in the speakers!  They were so excited that they began to stick everything that they could to the speaker and then proceeded to stick it to the fridge, the washing machine and anything else that they could find that was metal.

It turned out to be one of the best rainy day activities that we have done in a long time.  Aidan has declared himself an expert and would now like to build his own radio!

Tomorrow's lesson:  Don't take things apart without permission!

Gentlemen

We have a new book at our house.  It's called "50 Things Every Young Gentleman Should Know" and I'm excited to read it with the boys.

Maybe it's my old fashioned-ness that makes this book appeal to me, but I like the idea of teaching my boys to be gentlemen.  Published in 2006 -- despite the Emily Post feel of the name -- "50 Things Every Young Gentleman Should Know" contains short chapters on basic subjects like: saying please and thank you and making an apology, along with more challenging issues like: dealing with foods you don't like, meeting people with physical challenges and, my personal favourite, putting down the toilet seat.  It easily and clearly explains what you should do, what you should NOT do, and why.  It seems like a good beginning.

Well, this is what the boys looked like today -- maybe we'll start tomorrow.

They don't look much like gentlemen -- gentlemen of the sea, maybe.  I'm sure that they remembered to say thank you when they stole the treasure, asked politely before comandeering another ship and didn't rudely stare at other pirates' wooden legs so that their mother would be proud.  Pirates can be polite, right?

Things That Make Me Happy # 8

Strolling around the Internet one day, I came across a blog post entitled "100 Things That Make Me Happy".  What a great idea, I thought as I scanned the list, so Fridays are now dedicated to things that make me happy!

Things That Make Me Happy!
# 8 The Hooligans

 

We went for a walk this afternoon and this is what the hooligans looked like.  They were holding up their pant legs and proudly explained that they were wearing "shorts" -- they didn't get this from my side of the family.   They did this all the way down the street until, that is, a car came along.  Then they would quickly drop their pants -- wait, let me rephrase that -- drop their pant legs until the car had passed.  I guess that they didn't want anyone to see their ... knees ... unshaven legs ... ghostly white legs ... I don't know.  Anyway, they were quite a sight and it made me laugh.  Thought that you might want a laugh too.  Happy Friday!

Picture Books

After talking about the library the other day, I thought that it might be interesting to ask the boys what their favourite picture books were.  They went upstairs and, after dismissing a few choices and then defining "picture book", they came back with these choices.

Isaac chose "Arthur Flips" by Marc Brown.  We have a few from this series and, although I know that he likes them, his choice surprised me.  When I asked him what he like best about the book, he looked at me like I had two heads and said:  "It's about pancakes!"  I guess that there is nothing else that needs to be said.

(Yes, the gap in Isaac's mouth is bigger.  He was back to the dentist last week to have another tooth pulled -- ouch!, but did great.  He now calls himself Bugs Bunny and keeps asking me "What's up doc?")

Aidan's choice, which also surprised me, was "Is Your Mama A Llama?" by Deborah Guarino.  All he wanted to talk about was the ending, (attention -- spoiler alert!) where the baby llama finds his mother and snuggles.  He summed it up by saying:  "It's a happy book."

Owen's choice was "Donald Duck's Toy Sailboat" -- again, not what I expected (you would think that I would learn to expect the unexpected, but I guess that I am a slow learner!).  His plot summery goes something like this:  "It's a funny book.  The guys (chipmunks) go to the tree in a boat.  I am the black nose guy."  Which was followed by great debate over which chipmunk has the black nose.

After all these unexpected choices, I decided to search for some of the books that I thought that they were going to choose.

"Two by Two", by Barbara Reid, I had pretty much memorized at one point because I had read it so often when Isaac was little.  We love the illustrations too.

Okay, "The Squeaky Door" by Margaret Read MacDonald is one that I really thought that someone would pick.  I really like it, so I guess it can be my pick.  The boys love the part where Grandma kisses the pig (yuck!) and I love the part when Grandma (not Grandpa) gets out her tool box to fix ... I don't want to give away the ending, you'll just have to read the book to find out what needs fixing (besides the door, you bunch of smarty pants!).

When Dada was asked about a favourite, he suggested "Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel" by Virginia Lee Burton.  He remembered enjoying this book as a child and once the book came out, we had a couple more votes for this book too.  It's about construction, so of course it's going to be popular!

Here are a couple more older books in our collection that have been popular over the years with more than one generation.

The last book that I will share with you is "Pajama Time" by Sandra Boyton.  Actually, anything by Sandra Boyton is popular in our house, but I think that this one is still the favourite.  It makes going to bed look like fun and anything that makes bed time easier gets a thumbs up from me!  

Happy Reading!

Snow Day

Another Thursday and another load of snow -- Mother Nature seems to have something against Thursdays!  Our regular Thursday morning plans were cancelled which left plenty of time for some shovelling and outside play for all.  

The boys love to shovel -- at least they do now, just wait until they get older when it will not be optional.  They each have a shovel -- although when they forget to pick them up (which is often), they get buried in the new snow and then it's "America's Funniest Video" just waiting to happen!  Dada (grudgingly, I'm sure) usually leaves them a spot to do.  This morning, after moving the vehicles out of the way, but before the boys could get out to do their part, our neighbour thoughtfully came along with his truck and plowed the whole driveway -- Yipee!  But, the boys were disappointed until, that is, they realized that shovelling would not have left such a large pile at the end of the driveway to play and dig in -- can you say snow fort?

The white of the snow always makes our house look dirty.  I guess that I'll have to add "clean the house" to the to-do list in the Spring.  And why Owen feels the need to shovel the road, I'm not really sure.  I guess that with the driveway all done, he still had energy to burn -- oh, to have that kind of energy again!

The neighbours have a much bigger pile of snow in their yard, the boys discovered.  Great for bum sliding, hiding behind and just some good old climbing around.  They should sleep well tonight!

Hangin' with Sue

Meet Sue, Sue the T. Rex that is.  Sue is the largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton in the world; and she is the newest exhibit at the Museum of Natural History in Halifax.

It really is an impressive sight.  The boys were all super excited and were not disappointed.  There was plenty to see, lots to learn, and interactive elements which threw the whole "keep your hands to yourself" lecture right out the window.  Oh well, this was better.  A great exhibit for kids of all ages.  I could spout out all kinds of dinosaur facts for you, but that would ruin all the fun.  Who knew I was so interested in dinosaurs? 

Help!  Aidan's been eaten by a dinosaur!