My valentines

E made us a pretty one that didn't scan well at all due to it's 3-D nature. (and i'm just too tired to take a picture, so this is all you get LOL).  She spent a long time on it, and I just love it.

H is starting to draw quite a bit now, and her valentine is a picture of me and her in the rain with our umbrellas.

Z made my favorite one of the year.  Definitely a card from a boy (although not much can beat his 'man with a his head that fell off' card when he was 3 years old).  This is a pirate valentine, with me and him in our respective pirate ships.  So cute!

The twins also made some valentines for our two priests and the choir director at church who hands out suckers after mass every sunday.  

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! I'm off to sleep for an early bed, trying to not get strep throat again. I just finished my 3rd round of antibiotics yesterday and am praying it doesn't come back this time.

Golden Valentine's day!!

While not the most romantic valentines day I have ever spent, this certainly ranked as one of my favorites. We spent the day as a family, enjoying chocolates and flowers from daddy, valentine making, mass, a scrumptious brunch at home and Olympic watching all afternoon.

The kids are such a delight to me.  It has been fun to watch them get excited over the Olympics and cheer for our Canadian athletes. They were THRILLED to see a Canadian get a GOLD medal tonight in men's moguls.  It is our first Gold in our home country.  I could see how proud the kids were when he won.  While the canadians were racing, I even saw Z cross himself and say a prayer that we would win.

We are also having fun keeping track of who is winning the most medals on a big wall-chart beside our tv.

GO Canada!!

opening ceremonies

While watching the opening ceremonies for the Olympics last night, our eldest son (age 6) got really excited when Mongolia was coming into the stadium:


"MOM! They are going to have Pope as a figure skater!!"


My husband and I get this very amusing image of our dignified little, 82 year old Pope on ice skates twirling to his favorite Mozart....


"Uh, I think the announcer said they have a 'HOPE" in their figure skater for a medal, honey".


Later on, while trying to guess who was going to light the cauldron at the end, we couldn't help joking that it would be very cool if His Holiness Pope Benedict skated in with the torch in his hand and did a triple jump in the air to light the cauldron before he landed. .... the conversation quickly became very silly with talk of flying fire-breathing hippos and other silly elementary school humor.


Needless to say, if you saw the opening ceremonies too, they were pretty disappointed in the actual lighting of the cauldron.  (although the lady singing the olympic hymn almost made up for it).


Dear world: Canada isn't really as crazy and unorganized as we appear on international television!

painting again

We're still waiting for spring to come, craving warmer weather, sunshine and afternoons spent outside in the fresh air.

To keep little people occupied during the long winter days, we often turn to painting.  Last weekend I was at a wonderful whole-sale art store here in Calgary (Cactus). They have great prices and pretty much everything we need for the art curriculum that the big kids are working through.  (By the way, we love this program (Artistic Pursuits), and I would enjoy it even if the kids weren't homeschooling, just for an after school/weekend project).

Anyways, here's what the kids came up with today.  (E and Z were inspired by the Innos Biffi books that we've been reading... the other kids are just having fun!)

Here is their work: