All the best pictures

We have slowly been amassing many pictures and videos and never getting around to putting them on the blog.  I told myself I would write frequent small posts with just a few videos and pictures on each one (because large ones are so much work they never get done), but alas...that didn't happen.  So here is an encyclopedia of pictures.

Pictures from my phone:

some of baby Ada's first solids

Baby Ada's new toy.

A favorite nap spot

New chariot....That's right...we comfortably fit four kids

Baby Ada tries lettuce

Cousin Tommy visits....sorry about the red eye

Charlie and our very own bread bear

The kids bread bear designs

winter caves at the river

The secret tunnel to the conservation area

The drained conservation area lake.  The mud was so thick we got stuck.

muddy

Pictures from the good camera:

Baby Ada loves winter

Before

After

Max preparing for snow ball attack

Injury of the year.  Face, meet sidewalk.

Ninja moves 1

Ninja moves 2

Ninja moves 3

Visit to the aquarium

Our home school science group recently went on a field trip to the Toronto aquarium.  The kids absolutely loved the experience.  I have to admit, I found it pretty cool myself.  My favorite creature was the octopus and the colour changing jellyfish.  They had a lot of tanks where you could pet different animals, including a tank where you could pet a shark (albeit a small one)!  The kids favorite part of the aquarium was a glass crawling tunnel suspended in the middle of the shark tank (see video).  We spend a long time there.  Even Ada loved it.  They also had an adult version (see bottom picture) where you ride a moving side walk through a tunnel in the aquarium.

It was especially fun watching Ada at the aquarium.  She loved all the sights and tried desperately to eat every type of marine animal she found.  Fortunately, the glass was in the way, a fact she found very perplexing.

Ada couldn't figure out why she couldn't touch the jelly fish.

Colour changing jelly fish

Kid tunnel suspended in an aquarium

A more adult friendly tunnel through the aquarium

Ada's new moves

Here it is!  Ada is finally crawling.  Although her technique is more crawling with her arms and just dragging her lower half behind, but whatever works.  (Sorry about the camera angle.)

Ada has actually been moving for a few weeks now.  She was moving on her bum with some strange method that involved getting one leg behind her and pushing her self along.  It was terribly slow, but it got her to what she wanted.

Ada also sits, rolls, goes from sitting to her tummy and back again and stands holding on to furniture.  She is just starting to walk while you hold her hands, but has not figured out that she can walk holding onto furniture.

She continues to be sunny and wonderfully easy to look after.  She gives big smiles to anyone who will play with her.  She especially loves babies and will instantly zero in on any baby in the room and begin "talking" to it.   Her "talking" consists mostly of saying "da da da da", but she also does say "ma" and "ta" on occasion as well as a large variety of loud grunt noises.

Farmer Brown, by Darwyn

The other day Darwyn drew a picture of "Farmer Brown", the subject of a Calvin and Hobbes strip she saw.  I love it.  It's surprisingly detailed compared to her other art.

The person is Farmer Brown, of course.  (Observe the huge belly button.)  He's about to light his gas stove; he's striking a match held in his left hand.  Outside his house we see a derailed freight train (left) and an air plane about to crash (right).  The foreground is grey sidewalk.

Here's the original comic that inspired Darwyn's art:

The kids love Calvin and Hobbes, and I am very, very happy to read it to them.  Darwyn especially likes the story about the snow goons.

One big heart and lots of paper valentines

Darwyn has been beside herself with excitement about valentine's day.  In mid January she saw valentine's at the dollar store and that was the beginning of the end.  For the past month she has busied herself making valentines at home, at preschool, in library programs, with Jose.  She amassed so many valentines for her family and friends that she needed her own large bin in her bedroom to store them all.  Not only that, we needed to figure out how she was going to deliver all her love notes...we decided to host a valentine's day party.

The party was simple.  We were going to make valentine mail boxes at the party and the kids would deliver their valentine's to their friends.  Darwyn insisted that we also needed to decorate cupcakes....a signature event at all our parties.  Darwyn asked me every day for the week preceding the party if today was "valentine's day".  Finally, the party day arrived.  Dar painstakingly helped me set out all the materials for decorating boxes.  She also helped clean and prepare the food.  She dished out candies for cupcake decorating, organized veggies on a veggie tray, and helped me rip the bread to go with the spinach dip (the later she did while telling me in great detail everything she didn't like about pumpernickle bread).

Finally her guests arrived.  The party was a smashing success,  Dar had all her valentine's in a nice pink gift bag half as tall as is and she dutifully delivered them to everyone's mailbox.  Of course, she had made so many that all of the other children had delivered all their valentines and read all the one's they had received, before she was half done giving hers out.  But she loved it just the same.  When Darwyn was done everyone's box was overflowing with her  homemade valentines.  She's a small girl with one big heart!

First time on ice skates

We finally got Max and Darwyn out to an ice rink to try out the ice skates they got for xmas.  Both kids were enthusiastic and persistent and not at all discouraged by how hard it is to learn to skate.  We skated only for a short time, which was perfect for our first outing.  I suspect that Greta and I will eventually need to get ice skates of our own so we can do some real skating with the kids.