We Love Lego!

Like all of you, I am sure, we all love Lego in this household (who could not?). Some of us are more infatuated with it than others, but I think we all share a deep appreciation! Here are a couple of Lego projects that recently were built in our home! (These projects were not from kits by the way, they were out of the fertile imagination of the children!!)

Tim's shield: It even had a little handle on the back to hold it with!







Emmi's polar bear.

She called it "Pole-y", and a feature of Poley was that he could sit on top of doors easily. He had a mini-figure rider.


This is a good exercise for me, sometimes when we are picking up the Lego AGAIN (!!!!) I start to wonder why we keep it around, but looking over the pictures, it seems worthwhile!

Composer Night

We are part of a homeschool group called Jubal Cottage School. We are a group that trains children in the arts for the glory of God, specifically by teaching them skills that may help them as they participate in the local church. Jubal had a Composer Night last week. Children were invited to prepare a project on a composer, with a display board, and a presentation. We decided to join in and picked Mozart!

Did you know Mozart's favourite colour was red? Or that he was small for his age? We didn't until we did our project! Emmi and Tim prepared the display together, which included a written report, a picture, a lump of salt crystal from Salzburg (thanks Grandma!!), some CD's, some piano music and my clarinet (Mozart wrote some great clarinet music!). It looked pretty good!

Tim gave an introduction to Mozart, and then Emmi played a piece she has been working on for a while, Mozart's Minuet in F.

After all the presentations, we went to look at the displays, and enjoy some dessert.

Emmi and Tim enjoyed preparing their display, and I think Tim enjoyed his time at the microphone, but Emmi wasn't so keen on playing her piece! However it was great for her to be able to practice playing in front of people (you always need to know your piece much better than you think you do!!) and playing on a grand piano!

It was also a wonderful experience to see what their peers had prepared, and to be inspired by others' playing, perhaps Emmi may be as good as some of them one day! And to encourage the others who are at an earlier level than she is now. Here Emmi and Tim explore the "Liszt Museum" that one family prepared inside a refrigerator box! Too cool!!

She's a Winner!

It was Grand Prix at our last AWANA meeting! It had been scheduled earlier in the year, then had to be moved because of a snowstorm, so at long last, the AWANA clubbers got to race their cars! For those of you who don't know, the Grand Prix is when children in the AWANA club get to make a car and race it! Emmi decided to make a car this year that was in the novelty ("Unique" at this church) division, which is, cars that aren't really cars.

Emmi's car was a tea trolley. She painted it white, then glued white lace on the sides, and glued (I did this gluing actually with the hot glue gun, but I placed the things EXACTLY where she showed me!!) a little teapot, cup and saucer and milk pitcher on the trolley. I cut down some sugar cubes to size, she then picked the best ones (Pip was very pleased to eat the rejects!!) and glued them on the trolley! It looked pretty good! She added white paint in the milk pitcher, and then a piece of tape with brown paint from the spout of the teapot so it looked like it was pouring into the cup!

Here is a sequence of the racing. The cars are handed up to a leader who places them on the track, then he releases a lever and all the cars race down the track to the end, where the nervous builders look on! Emmi's trolley was not very fast, it finished second once, but last in its heats the other times.



However, speed isn't everything at the Grand Prix! Emmi won first place in the Unique division! The other winners were a bumble-bee car and a feather-y creation! Emmi was pretty pleased with her trophy, and I think a good time was had by all!

Daily Living Around Here

"And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him." Colossians 3:17

More fun with Grandparents!

We also had some fun with Granny and Granddad recently! We went bowling! It was the first time the Marshwiggles had been bowling, and we had a great time! We tried 10 pin bowling, because it was close to our house and convenient.

All the adults bowled on one lane, and next to us the children bowled on their lane. They had the gutter-guards up so they had a much better chance of knocking down some pins. The balls (of course) were very heavy, so they tended to use the push-from-between-legs techniques, and even so, a couple of Pip's balls got stranded mid-way down the lane and had to be rescued by helpful bowling staff.


Here are Granny and Emmi preparing to bowl, Emmi has a child-sized 6 lb ball, and Granny a "light weight" adult ball - only 9 lbs! It still felt pretty heavy!!



Tim is preparing to bowl, while Ben and Granddad look on.



And the winners.... in the children's lane Pip had the highest score! And I managed the best in the adult lane! I think everyone was suprised by the results! Some pizza at one of our favourite restaurants finished off a great evening!

Fun with Grandparents!

On Valentine's Day we had a visit from some of the people we love the most - Grandma and Grandpa! And one of the best things to do with people you love is .... read! Ben's reading is coming along, and he was very excited to be able to read to Grandma a "real library book"!



Grandpa then got a turn reading, and poor Grandpa! Tim asked him to read a Tintin book, and so Grandpa did - he read the whole thing!! Those of you who know Tintin, know they are long, with lots of little word balloons. We didn't time him, but I think he spent over an hour on the couch with Tim and Ben (Pip didn't have the stamina). Then Tim appeared with another Tintin book! But this time Grandpa said no! One a day is more than enough!

What is this man doing in my kitchen?

I found him in the kitchen one evening - valiantly attacking the Kleenex box. The next day he was gone...

Life with little boys!! On Saturday I found a knight in my boot as I tried to put it on (a different knight). And I regularly find little cars lined up here and there, under a book case, on the lines on the carpet, etc. It can be a lot of fun here!