Hallo and Sawubona!!

Welcome to South Africa!! Today we took off our imaginary hats and mitts to take a trip to South Africa for an African Safari (who wouldn't want to do that for real?!?) We learned some Afrikaans and Zulu Language words Hallo and Sawubona mean hello!. The kids were very excited we made "binoculars" to find the animals with! It was Steven's day for circle and craft and he did a fine job. I think it semi makes up for his blunder the other day. Lets see a show of hands from people that have made Campbell vegetable soup before?!? Pretty much everyone? Well lets all remind Steven that you don't just dump the can into a pot and heat it up! But that you have to add a can of water as well! Poor kids were forced to eat soup with no broth! B really enjoyed it though! HA HA Aww poor Steven, never a dull moment for him here at Krafts & Kids.
Here are some pictures of the kids enjoying some watermelon yesterday afternoon. M & S had a contest to see who could eat more pieces, despite our numerous reminders its not a contest. Each managed to down 10 pieces. I foresaw multiple trips to the washroom for both of them LOL. They are mostly water after all!

BRR its cold!......

or at least in our imaginations!! Today on our trip around the world we went to Antarctica! The kids sometimes seem like they don't understand we are pretending this all, and other times they seem right into it. Unfortunately none of the kids brought in the empty 2L plastic pop bottle for our craft, a penguin, so I put in a national geographic movie about penguins, until it got a bit gory, and then put on March of the Penguins, one of my favorite movies, I LOVE watching that. the kids were quite excited to see the "real happy feet" . it was cute watching them mesmerized by what they were seeing on the TV! It always amazes me how much the kids soak in as they were able to talk along with the national geographic movie about all the ice melting and the penguins losing their place to live. Of course their solution was that the penguins should just swim to another country. Gotta love child logic! I love these clips from the movie!
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Feels more Final

Well today Donny and I took S, M and D up to see the new house and the back yard was unlocked so we took a look in the back. D especially right away started running around playing! And then we got the kids to take pictures of us with the sold sign! it was really exciting! I can't wait to move, although I am not looking forward to all the work.
We didn't get any pictures Friday or Today, but C started at Krafts & Kids and we are enjoying our Trip around the world. we put it on hold last week as there were only 3 kids. So today we visited Venezuela and made homemade clay pottery. hopefully they will eventually dry out. They have been sitting out the required 4 hours and still not close to being dry. We hope to paint them tomorrow before flying off to our next destination!

Totally unrelated to daycare... BUT

Pictures of our new house! We hit a snag today with the mortgage people, but that seems to be ironed out. Hopefully. so here are pictures we took today at our inspection. Tell me what you think!

First two are the back yard and deck

This is the Daycare Bathroom

This is the carpeted room in the daycare, the first window is looking West, the second, East

The main room, 1st picture facing east, then west


The stairs into the daycare, and view from the stairs


My favorite part of the house, the brick face arch, and another view of the kitchen

Rainy Day Fun

I know most of you might think, how can a rainy day be fun?! But trust me, it can be! We were supposed to go to the splash pad today, but it rained, so we just played out in the rain! The kids loved it. and then I got out my stash of umbrellas and the entire neighborhood of kids was parading around with umbrellas. And then I remembered that two of the kids have rubber boots and rain coats here. so that made it even more fun. They are always asking to wear their rubber boots! It was fun! Here are some pictures to prove it!
What is your favorite thing to do on a rainy day?

Strange Week

Well today we only had three friends and thats how it will be all week I was told its OK to post even if I don't have any pictures, so that's what I am doing today. I started training at my new part time job tonight.... its so weird all these young kids and then there is me! But its OK "uncle Sam" or whatever the Canadian equivalent is, will be happy I am finally paying them some cash! A challenge to all of you, go through a day without saying "OK"! we are not allowed to say that on the phone whatsoever to the people we survey, how crazy is that!??!
We found out today financing is complete, the house is ours!! i cant wait for our inspection/walk through on Thursday! I will take pictures that day and hopefully post some of the daycare area!

Port Stanley..... Finally

Ok so it took me 5 days to go through about 200 pictures from our extremelly fun day to Port Stanley on Thursday the 12th and I finally got sick of touching up and all that, so the final pictures could be nicer, I just wasn't going to touch up another photo. And because there are so many, I made a slide show. I played around with a lot of photos and put them in to. I saw this contest I could enter with pictures of kids on the beach, which one do you like the best? Let me know what you think of the slide show, its a bit long, sorry about that!

Here just push play!


let me know what you think!

Fishy Fun

Today we took the kids off on an adventure to get more fish for our struggling aquarium in the playroom. we are still learning the ins and outs of fish care and so unfortunately this is our third time replenishing. Thankfully we found a nice man at a local pet store who was willing to sit with us and talk to us about care and cleaning of the water. So hopefully these fish will benefit from this education. So we got the kids and off to the aquarium store. I arrive to realize, me of all people forgot her camera!! how that happened I don't know! thankfully my cell phone takes photos, so here are some of the moments caught on film. Steven met up with us late today and brought his digit, camera, but I haven't gotten those pictures yet. And of course when he got there the fun was dying out. I will say this, kids never cease to help me find humour in the day. There was this one HUGE orange fish and we anxiously showed the kids and A yells out... "THAT'S ENORMOUS!" he is three!! lol I love kids!

Busy Week, Big News!

Well I am ashamed to say that I haven't posted in a week! time sure does fly! I had sat down at the computer a couple of times to get something down, but I had no pictures, and I just didn't feel right posting without pictures. and then on Thursday we went to the beach and to ride a train, so we took about 200 pictures, that took me three + days to go through. And then our biggest news. We have been working on things in order to find a house for quite some time now. We needed to get some other finances in order etc. This past week I printed out a bunch of potential houses and Donny and I drove around looking at neighbourhoods. Then Saturday we met with a Realtor and his assistant and saw 5 houses. OMG!! I can't believe how some houses in the same price range can vary so much! One house is a complete dump with probably 100 grand in upgrades needed, then the same price is already done up and quite nice. But then we saw it, our perfect house! The house we knew just had to be ours. The Realtors assistant actually found it, and we just had to put in an offer. after a couple of haggling points, our offer was accepted!!! including a stainless steel fridge and stove! I have always wanted stainless steel! and it has a completely separate area for the daycare. A built in "granny suite". its perfect!
I am going to see if I can get some pictures off the mls website to show you. And tomorrow I will post pictures from our trip last week.

All Packed and Ready to Go!

Today we got ourselves ready for our "trip around the world". I think the kids actually think we are going somewhere though. I guess its hard for them to understand its "imaginary" hopefully tomorrow when we visit our first country they will get the idea :) So today we cut out pictures of clothing and made suitcases and glued the clothes inside. and then we made the all important passport. The kids coloured them and then we took "official" passport photos, which means no smiling. That is extremely difficult for some kids. Standing still staring at a camera is hard enough! But here are some pictures of the finished product. Each country we visit, we will add to the passport! Stayed tuned each day to see where we go next!

Back to Reality!

I am sad to say that my vacation is over. Not that I didn't miss the kids, but the sleeping in part will dearly be missed! Steven and I have been quite busy planning for the next few weeks as we take the kids on "a trip around the world". Very exciting and hopefully fun for all the kids. Tomorrow we start off with packing our suitcases and getting our passports! FUN FUN! I thought since I don't have any daycare pictures from the last week, I would post a few of our vacation! We went up to Sudbury to visit my dad and then camped at a provincial park named Chutes. We took the Chi-Cheemon ferry back from Manitoulin island. Very fun indeed!

Cant wait to get the summer activities started!

Getting ready to get in the boat. Donny's first ever boat ride.

Took a boat ride with my dad to "five fingers rapids" soo beautiful even on a cloudy day

View from the Beach, pictures just don't do it justice

Sudbury Nickle, went for the day into town, saw the big nickle, went into the mines, fun fun!

On the ferry coming back, it was cold and with Pheobe we were only allowed on one deck, but we made do! Would love to do it again someday when its warmer.

What were your holidays like?