Leading up to Dec 30

We have been having a nice time since Christmas. On the 26th, we were invited over to our friends' house for supper and Fina had a lovely time as always with their kids.  The 27th was dad's birthday and we went to the city for church and we brought home pizzas for his birthday. We had also made a cheesecake for him.  She also got out to play for a while.

For those of you who know Fina, you will know that a bag quickly becomes something else. After dad opened his gift, she cut out the bottom of the gift bag and became his very own little present!

On the 27th, I was also able to give Fina her belated Christmas gift.  This crocheted mermaid tail lapghan I made for her this fall. The pattern is here. The youtube video she has linked in her pattern is not only helpful, but necessary!

On the 28th, we went to visit one of our friends and got in some outdoor play time. On the 29th we had our outdoor playgroup and we got to go into the forest again. We were able to go over the temporarily fixed bridge with some of our companions.  No pics of the forest, but here is the intricate snow piles in the Museum's parking lot. The kids had fun playing there for a bit.

After playgroup, Fina and one of her little friends, K, were not ready to go in, so they went to play in K's backyard (she lives right across the street from us) and they had the best time ever, playing til after it was dark. K's mom said they were playing house and so many other imaginative games.

Canoe-sled? Look how happy they are!!!

On the 30th we went out to a giant snow pile in town with dad. Fina had fun, though she did get a few bumps along the way. It was pretty hard snow, quite packed down, with rough icy chunks! Someone had also made a little ramp at the bottom of it. Look how she flies right over it!

We went to the city for dinner at some of our friends' house (dad's professor colleagues and their wives were there) and Fina did so well with their large dog (who usually freaks her out!), but she was petting him etc. She also had a great conversation with the English professor about The Chronicles of Narnia, her preferred reading order and the merits of the movies and of the BBC version. I mean, she is just a kid, but it is always heartwarming seeing her be able to hold some semblance of an intelligent conversation with adults. One that doesn't revolve around kids' commercialism.

She has been doing some episodes of yoga, every once in a while.

We have been reading from this book of Norwegian Fairy Tales, on loan to us from our friend L.  A Time for Trolls: Fairy Tales from Norway told by P.C. Asbjörnsen and Jörgen Moe. We have read the first five chapters. Fina is really into it. I overheard her narrating the tale "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" to dad the other day.   I also heard her telling dad about "The Cock and the Hen in the Hazelwood" which goes like "Petruccio" an italian fairy tale / nursery rhyme, where the story keeps repeating and getting larger (like "The House that Jack Built" in English).  She got a lot of it in her narration. The last and largest iteration of the story is:

"Dear charcoal burner, give me charcoal to give to the smith, who will give me an axe to give to the woodcutter, who will give me wood to give to the bakeress, who will give me a bannock to give to the thresher, who will give me corn to give to the sow, who will give me bristles to give to the shoemaker, who will give me shoes to give to the Virgin Mary, who will give me ribbons of red gold to give to the lime-tree, who will give me leaves to give to the spring, who will give me water to give to Hickety, my dear hen, who is fighting for her life in the hazelwood."

 It is very fun to read aloud! We will continue reading it. There are 13 tales in all.

Leading up to December 25

On Tuesday morning, we read The Tempest for Kids by Lois Burdett in the "Shakespeare can be fun" series. We had picked it up years ago at the St Vital Centre Used Book Sale in Winnipeg. Burdett is (was) an elementary school teacher in Stratford, Ontario. She retells the story in rhyming couplets. The pages are filled with drawings and comments by her students. It is very cute. I'm on the look out for other Shakespeare plays by her. A fun addition to our Nesbitt retelling. She sat spellbound through the nearly 60 minutes it took me to read it to her.

We are almost finished reading Pinocchio. Two more chapters to go.  Fina is really enjoying it. So am I. (Terrible, that I had never read the original. Though we are Italian, and have heard many of these stories from my mom. We never read it. Though I feel like we did a watch a live-action movie in Italian. I'll have to ask my mom about it!)

We also read through a short book of poetry we had gotten from the library. The old standards are all in there.

Fina and dad are continuing to make their way through The Chronicles of Narnia again.

Fina finger-knitted herself a little snake, giving him sticker eyes. Very cute.

On Tuesday afternoon, we  had our outdoor playgroup. And, drum roll please, we FINALLY got into the forest. Fina was thrilled to the highest heights! (She had asked for "getting into the forest" as a Christmas gift. The creek was finally frozen. See my December 22 post!)

She is smiling so hard her face looks like it is going to explode!!!

A magical land indeed. Fina is the one on the left.

Another mom and I went down to see if the creek was frozen. When we had assessed that it was, we came back to the group (they were sledding on the hill) and I called to the kids that it was frozen. Fina and her gang just ran over and jumped down the bank of the creek and ran right into the forest all on their own, before any of us moms had a chance to gather our stuff and go in there. It was so nice to see and hear them from this side of the creek, running and laughing and throwing themselves into it.  What a moment of pure joy and bliss!  We will be heading there again today I'm sure.

After supper on Tuesday, Fina and I went for an hour jaunt through town. I have no pics to show, but there was this lovely, fluffy, giant-flakes type of snow. It wasn't windy, so the flakes were floating and swirling down gently. It was like being in a movie. Just lovely. We stopped by the town Nativity scene twice. Fina had to clear the snow from baby Jesus' face.

On Wednesday morning at 7:40, Fina is outside in the dark with a flashlight looking for my loaf pan that she had put out on Tuesday night for catching snow for tire sur la neige. She can't find it, it has been buried in the new snow!

(It is now Saturday morning, and we have yet to find that loaf pan. Oh my...)

Dad read the last two chapters of Pinocchio to Fina. I had to read them myself, as I had read the entire book with her. It was a great ending.

Thursday was Christmas eve. We had a busy day in the city. As you might recall, Fina was chosen to be the lion in the nativity scene at our church. We left before 9 for rehearsal at 10. Church was at 4. Fina was a great lion and the whole thing was excellent!

Here she is, hiding, waiting to be called out to the nativity scene (rehearsal - though she hid herself very well during the actual presentation!).  During the homily (when this living nativity scene took place) our pastor brought the lion out last and made the point that with Jesus, even the most ferocious animal will be tamed and the lion will be friends with the lamb.

These pics are all during the rehearsal. We will hopefully get some pics of the actual presentation. The archive ministry photographers / videographers were out in full force.

We went to Ikea in between rehearsal and Christmas eve mass for lunch. We also picked up a few gifts for ourselves there.  When we came home, Fina set up and decorated our tree and we opened our presents.

Yes, that is a very sparsely decorated tree. 

I suspect she will continue to add to it over the Christmas season!

Here are their IKEA clocks (so Fina can use it to tell time!) 

and the 4-in-1 wooden board game set we bought there for dad.

Friday was Christmas day. We read "The Christmas Kitten" in James Herriot's Treasury for Children. That chapter isn't scheduled in the AO list. Many people read it at Christmas. It was cute. We made pizzelle, coloured and regular.

I made ricotta pies, with the secret Greco recipe, and with my homemade ricotta.

And I finished up the manicotti (my mom's recipe) for our Christmas meal.  We had a surprise visit from our friends who took Fina to the park to play for a little while, which was great.

Fina also played the piano for a bit, asking dad to transcribe what she was playing. Which he diligently did (well, -ish. He transcribed something!) It was quite the thing. Here is a little video clip of it, to add to your festive cheer. The funniest thing is that after she would play her phrase, she would then hum it, in her Fina-fashion. Just hilarious! And this is the typical Fina "I love to look at myself in the reflection of our uber-shiny piano" look!

What do you think? Our little composer in the making!!!

We spent the rest of the day playing games, including Ludo and Checkers from dad's new 4-in-1 wooden game set. We also played Disney Monopoly. It was the best monopoly game Fina has accomplished.

A blessed Christmas season to you, my faithful blog readers!

leading up to December 22

This is what we have been up to over the last few days.

Fina has continued to recite her Shakespeare at random times of her day. She says she wants to learn the next one.

We have been continuing our Jesse tree devotional material. We are well into the seven O Antiphons, and this part is fun for both of us.

A while back, I had serendipitously come across the fact that the Chartres Cathedral (you remember, the one from our artist study of Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot!)

has as one of its stained glass windows this lovely window:

photo credit: https://mikejklug.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/ch-jesse-tree-window.jpg

And guess what this window is? One of the earliest surviving stained glass depictions of the Jesse Tree!!! Please click on this link to see the window, and you can click on each section to zoom in to see a detail of the section and to see the list of who is in it. So wonderful! At the bottom, there is Jesse, with the tree literally stemming from his loins. (Thankfully she took it in stride and didn't ask me why this man had a tree coming out of him!).  The centre then has David, Solomon, a couple of generic Kings of Israel, Solomon, David, Mary and then Christ at the top. Along the two sides, there are a bunch of prophets.

Before we looked at the Jesse Tree window together, I showed her this photo

and I asked her if she knew what this was. She instantly answered "the Chartres Cathedral!" I was so pleased. Artist Study for the win!

We have been having some trouble with her pencil grip, so I have stopped having her do her cursive for a bit. I'm still trying to discern what to do about it.

Yesterday, we did some math. We did chapter 26, which is telling time, starting with the minutes. She did a good job with that and it was fun, so far.  Now, of course, she has asked for a clock as a gift. (We don't actually have an analog clock in our house. We have watches, but not clocks.) I'm thinking we can find a cheap one at Ikea for her.

this table clock for $1

OR

this wall clock for $2.99.

The next math lesson is learning the hours and then putting it all together. We only have 4 lessons left in our Primer book: telling time with hours, with hours and minutes together, and then the last two chapters are an introduction to subtraction. We will start the Alpha book in the new year.  I have said it already here I'm sure, but I am so happy I went back and bought the Primer book. I think it was a great way to start math, and it only took us a few months to complete. I am much more confident myself in moving on to Alpha, which is sort of grade one. I am very happy with Math-U-See!

Fina has also been playing outside a lot! She is overjoyed with the amount of snow we have had.

Yesterday afternoon, she took out her year-round bedroom Christmas lights and put them on our front stairs to make our house look like a "gingerbread house"

My parents live in Hamilton ON, and this is their forecast for Christmas.

Even for southern Ontario, this is UNSEASONABLY warm

This is ours:

I talked to her about our weather and the Hamilton weather. I asked her "Fina, would you have liked to go to nonna and nonno's house for Christmas?" Her answer? "No, there would be no snow. That would be terrible!" And this coming from a girl who loves visiting all her grandparents in Ontario.

We had gone for a walk in town, heading over to the Museum grounds. We went to see if our creek was frozen yet. (Fina and her friends [and their moms!] have been waiting anxiously for the creek to freeze this year, because the ski bridge that usually provides us access into our little forest has been closed due to creek bed erosion. So we can not get into the forest until we can walk across the creek.) As were looking at the still unfrozen creek, Fina said to me "Mom, the thing I want for Christmas is to be able to get into the forest. I wish I could fly and that my friends could fly, so that we could get into it. Once we were in the forest, we could still fly if we wanted to, but we could also walk around and have so many fun adventures in there." With the temps we are getting now, I think it should be soon.

We have our outdoor playgroup there today. Regular school kids are on Christmas break, so we expect a good number of kids today, with their school-aged siblings who we have been missing. It should be a great time. And pretty warm. Minus 3 is just lovely at this time of year. We have had such a mild start to our winter. It really is unfortunate we couldn't get into the forest. But the joyful anticipation, much like Advent is to Christmas, will soon burst forth into celebration!

December 14-18

To my dear and faithful blog followers, I apologize for the lack of posts. We haven't "stopped" for Christmas or anything. We are just going with the flow and squeezing some schooling in when we can.

We have had a good week here! (She has been often reciting her three passages from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. When we are walking through town, or just whenever we think about it!)

You already saw that on Monday, we ended up getting called to work at the library.

On Tuesday, we got to spend a good chunk of time at our outdoor playgroup, and it was great fun.

Fina is in purple. This is our favourite sledding hill in town.

Here she is climbing a bush with her friend.

Then, we got a tonne of snow. Wednesday and Thursday saw treacherous driving conditions. School for kids was cancelled on Thursday.

On Wednesday, we had our friends E and A visit us for the day. It was lovely. A is only 3 and Fina has a fair bit of work to do with the be a better sharer with a 3 year old.  She does ok (mainly) with more similar aged friends, but she was expecting little A to give her turns. Seriously!?!?

Cutest (and very deep down) snow angel ever.

Skiing on a sled.

Our neighbour buried her in the snow up to her waist (sitting, obviously).

Then we had some impromptu friends over to give their mom a hand while taking a University exam. K and C were here all evening and they all had a lot of fun together.

On Thursday, it was still snowing and visibility wasn't great, so dad stayed home to do some marking. Fina played outside for a long while, as our parking lot snow pile grew and grew.

Out came the balaclava, for the first real time this winter.

Her and I went for a walk to check out our creek (still not frozen. The minus double digits that we have now should help that process along!) and had a nice picnic of hot chocolate and mandarins. No pics available. It feels like we are living in a Christmas card scene. The snow was just everywhere. The evergreens are covered. It is just lovely.

This pic will give you a bit of perspective of the size of our parking lot snow pile. Great fun to be had there, until they care it away (which, I'm assuming, will be soon!)

On Friday, Fina played outside again for a long time, mainly on her own (as her good friend K who lives across the street was busy and couldn't come join her. The two of them have such fun times playing together in the snow in our yard! One day, I would love to record even just the audio of their imaginative play times. They often end up creating this whole Narnian universe, where princess are becoming queens, etc. Just incredible!).

As the sun was setting around 3:50 (the sun is set at 4:30 right now in this part of the world) we had this lovely vista.

The spot on the right is the setting sun. The bright spot on the left is a sundog. I didn't get a pic of the sundog to the right of the sun, because it was a blocked view, blocked by houses and trees.

My pics do not do it justice. For those of you non-Manitobans, here is a definition of sun dogs. I had never seen ones like this, though. You could actually see the who rainbow in each sun dog. It was incredible. I'm sorry my pic doesn't show the spectrum of colours at all.

On Thursday, December 17, we started the "O Antiphons" section of the Jesse tree.  It is so incredible.  The O Antiphons are 7 antiphons from the Magnificat. They conclude advent. They come from the Medieval church.

• December 17: O Sapientia (O Wisdom)
• December 18: O Adonai (O Lord)
• December 19: O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse)
• December 20: O Clavis David (O Key of David)
• December 21: O Oriens (O Dayspring)
• December 22: O Rex Gentium (O King of the nations)
• December 23: O Emmanuel (O With Us is God)

When you spell them backwards, you get ERO CRAS. Which is Latin for  "tomorrow, I will come." Though there seems to be a lot of scholarly debate about whether this was intended, or just serendipitous afterthought by moderns. I think it is cool!

The advent hymn "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" has 7 verses, one verse for each of these. So we have been singing the appropriate verse each day. We also have another hymn called "Maranatha, Lord Messiah" by Kathy Powell that also has the 7 verses, one to match each O Antiphon. Maranatha means "O Lord, Come." It is a lovely hymn, and we have been singing the appropriate verse each day as well. So powerful.

So, that is our week in review. Our next math item is learning to tell time. I'm sure that will provide some interesting blog material!

December 15, AO year 1, week 10

We did our advent devotional and our Jesse tree. We also did the section on Advent (session 10) in our catechism book (as well as the section on All Saints' Day - I somehow missed it!).

Fina has been chosen to play the lion in our church's Living Nativity Scene on Christmas eve. She is VERY excited!

I'm assuming there is some deep theological significance to there being a lion in the play. Like the eschatological lion who will lie down with the lamb.

We have our outdoor play group today, so no school work for us.

December 14, AO year 1, week 10

On Sunday morning, Fina (basically) learned the second passage from Ken Ludwig's book, Teach Your Children Shakespeare.  Also from "A Midsummer Night's Dream." It is a passage that Puck says in Act III, scene 2.  It is incredible how quickly she can memorize and recite a passage.

Captain of our fairy band,
Helena is here at hand,
And the youth, mistook by me,
Pleading for a lover’s fee.
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!

We also learned this short bonus passage of Puck's. The author says to use it whenever we are in a hurry! Fina learned it right away as well.

I go, I go, look how I go,
Swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow.

While I am at it, I should provide you with the text of the first passage she memorized from Act II, scene 1 of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet muskroses, and with eglantine.
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight.
And there the snake throws her enameled skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.
And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes
And make her full of hateful fantasies.

A great shout-out goes to our friend L., who introduced us to this book. Fina loves learning Shakespeare.  She asked to learn the second passage. She is also really enjoying the retold stories from Shakespeare we have read. She has told me that she asked her little friend K if she had ever heard of Shakespeare. Poor K answered no. (She is only 5, of course! But they share this love of Narnia, so I guess Fina thought K would be familiar with all good literature!) so Fina recited the "I know a bank..." passage to her. And told her all about the story. So wonderful!

She says she wants to teach something at our next co-op meeting. She wants to teach her friends how to draw a Chi-Rho.  Ha! But she is worried that the moms will laugh. Which is so strange because E and L have done nothing but make her feel comfortable. All the adults she knows have done the same. She has never suffered ridicule from adults, at least adults unrelated to her. We will see if she does it. I told her it would be nice.

Before breakfast this morning, we received a desperate cry for help from our kindly local librarian. So, I rushed around like a whirlwind preparing this and that in order to arrive at the library by 9. We were only a couple of minutes late.

The drop-off bin was jam packed! So Fina spent an hour emptying it and then checking in the books at the circulation desk. She loves that!

We did get do the entire chapter of math, chapter 25, the area of rectangles, by skip counting.
She sat and flipped through books for a good long while. She also combined her Math-U-See blocks with the Rush Hour game and played with all of that.

We got to the park on my lunch break for about 45 minutes.

An exceedingly light day for school. I had hoped to do some cursive, but the library was so busy in the morning, we just didn't get to it.

Our kind friends J and J came to pick Fina up at 2:45 to take her to the park for some more play time while I finished up at the library. So that was great!

That is it for today. We have our outdoor playgroup tomorrow afternoon, which is always fun.

December 11, AO year 1, week 10

We have been playing a lot of Go Fish lately. Fina wanted to make up her own version, whereby instead of fishing for a number, you fish for a suit (hearts, or diamonds or whatever). Well, she realized after one game that that was not as exciting. And we were left with two cards each, with no matching suit (13 cards of each suit). She did not want to play that way again. Deductive reasoning?  Ha!

Yesterday we FINALLY got some good snow and, yes, you guessed it, Fina FINALLY got to do her "tire sur la neige!" She was beyond ecstatic!

Is that a happy face, or what???

For those of you that are interested in the recipe. You get a bowl or tray and let the snow fill it. Pack it down a bit. We keep the bowl outside until we are ready to use it. Inside, bring some maple syrup and a little bit of butter to a very low boil. Allow the syrup to reduce a bit. Then, pour the warm liquid onto the snow in little strips. Get a popsicle stick (or anything like that) and stick it on one end of the strip. Allow the snow to cool the syrup down for a minute or so. Then you roll it up. And voilà, maple taffy! The poor kid has tried three times at least to gather enough snow.

Today, we hope to get out and build some snowmen. The snow was so wonderful yesterday, nice and sticky. That rarely happens here in Manitoba. Fina got to play with some of her friends and they made giant boulders of snow. It packed together so easily. (Sorry, I did not get any photos of their play time.)

Of course, drivers don't like this kind of weather. It is very wet and slushy. I often think that Manitobans would not be able to handle Ontario weather. They would go through the same (well, similar) shock we Ontarians go through coming here!

And, at church, there was a call for kids to take part in a nativity scene for Christmas eve. I told Fina about the email I had received and she right away said that she wants to be in it (I was shocked. She is usually very shy and wary to participate in things like this!). She wants to be either Mary, an angel, or a lion. We have to be prepared to provide our own costume. The kids aren't going to be speaking or anything. They will just be forming the scene as our Pastor incorporates them into his homily. So, they have asked for volunteers and will be picking the children randomly next week. We are going to borrow a lion costume from our friend S, who was a lion for Halloween. We have the Elsa costume that Mrs K made for Fina for last year's Halloween, which would be great for Mary. And we have the large, alternate flower girl dress Fina had for zia Aia's wedding (we had kind of forgotten about that dress. She can wear it for Christmas this year, and as often as she can while she still fits in it) and we are getting a pair of angel wings from some friends here in town. So, she is ready for the three parts. Chances are she won't get any of them. But I was pleased at how willing she was to take part in it!

And dad had our car assessed by the insurance company, and the damage isn't worse than we had feared. It is just the back end of the car that needs repairing and the insurance company even waives our deductible because we were not at fault. So that is all great news! And none of us have lasting physical effects from the collision, so we are so grateful.

**********
So, today we started with our morning prayer and our advent devotional, including our next Jesse tree ornament. We listened to some Brahms as well.

For those of you asking to see our advent wreath, here it is. We are still on the search for pink tapers to match our purple ones, but for this year, we have used a white candle with pink fabric on it.

We read through the two Aesop Fables for this week. She narrated them well.

We finished reading Hudson. We spent a lot of time with the globe, the map and the atlas, learning to find Hudson Bay, the Hudson Strait and the Hudson River. We also took the opportunity to review the continents. She knows all of their names and their locations too.

We read chapter 8 of Paddle to the Sea and we did some more map work to go along with that. Fina is enjoying that story.

I had her recite all the poems she knows from A Child's Garden of Verses. She recited: Rain, Singing, The Cow, Happy Thought, Time to Rise, Fairy Bread and the first four stanzas of Night and Day.  I read the last two poems to her from the end of the book. We will now be moving on to poetry from When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six from Winnie the Pooh.

Fina then proceeded to recite Oberon's speech from Act 2 Scene 1 of A Midsummer Night's Dream. She basically knows the whole thing. She recited it a bunch of times. She is replacing "throws her enamell'd skin" with "sheds." She feels she knows better than Shakespeare in terms of word choice! "Mom, a snake sheds his skin, he doesn't throw it!"

I actually didn't realize she knew the speech this well.

AO year 1, week 10

We did our morning prayer. We were unable to hold our second co-op meeting, due to illness in one of the families. Even with only three families, it is going to be tricky to find a week where EVERYONE is healthy!

We started with artist study. This is our final painting by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, "Mur.". She did better with it today, she was less stressed. I asked her to just look at it and then narrate it to me, just like she does with readings. And I reminded her that narrating never stresses her out, so not to worry, and just tell me whatever she remembers.

We took a look at lower case print letters. Before we start reading, I figured she had better learn to recognize these. She knows how to write upper case print, and now cursive. We never learned lower case print. A good thing about waiting this long to introduce it, she learned them all in about 3 minutes.  Just to recognize them, not to actually form them herself.

We caught up on yesterday's Jesse tree, and today's, as well as our advent devotional for both days.

We worked on some Christmas cards that need to go into the mail for our long-distance family members.

And we listened to a whole lot of Brahms and sang a few advent hymns.

December 9, AO year 1 week 9

Yesterday's outdoor play group went very well. Such lovely weather we are having, for December in Manitoba!

Dad had the car assessed by our insurance and the damage is reparable. I am so pleased there wasn't more extensive, frame damage.  We are all feeling fine, which is wonderful.

This morning, I read "The Tempest" from Nesbit's Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare. Fina was able to narrate it to me. I did not know the story.

Fina and I finished listening to the Little House on the Prairie audiobook. Fina followed along with our novel.

I read chapters 21-23 of our current free-read, Pinocchio.

We did some math. 24 C-F. Making 10. She is doing fine with this. I happened to look at the Instruction Manual for this chapter as Fina was doing her work, and they have a cool activity called "racing to 100" where you fill a hundred block with different ways of making 10. She did it and then she read all the statements she had created to me. "1+9=10, 7+3+10." It was a fun activity.  I am glad I happened upon it.

Fina then wanted to build some mosaics on her hundred block, so she did that.

We have been keeping up with our Jesse tree and advent devotionals. And lots of outdoor time and lots of random stuff at home (crafts, playing, dressing up, this and that!)

Hopefully tomorrow we will be having our second homeschooling co-op meeting (if everyone manages to stay healthy). It should be fun!

December 7

Hello faithful blog followers.

After our car collision on Thursday evening, we haven't done much schooling since, as you can imagine. My neck and shoulders were sore, but I am feeling much better. Back to normal, I'd say. Fina isn't traumatized. She wasn't scared to get back into the car, so that was great. Dad is ok too. Not exciting, but we are grateful things weren't worse.

On Friday, we had a fun outdoor playtime with some friends in their backyard. The weather is so warm and lovely here right now. This is not regular December weather in MB.

On Saturday, we went with some other friends to St Malo beach to play. Fina was so pleased to see the "lake" was frozen over.  It was a gorgeous day.

In the evening, we headed back to the university for a Christmas musical celebration put on by the music department. The Winnipeg Brass Quintet was also there (WSO brass players, I believe). They were wonderful as always. Fina and I enjoyed it (dad was involved in reading some of the Bible passages, so he was up on stage). Though we have listened to a fair amount of classical music, I guess we have never listened to any opera. There was a mezzo-soprano soloist who sang a couple of pieces. The first one was in German. Fina leaned over and whispered "what is she saying? I can't understand it." So I told her it was in German. Further on in the programme, this same mezzo-soprano sang again. "Mom, I still can't understand it!" I told her it was in English. She made a disgusted face at me and said "why does she have to sing so loud? It doesn't sound good at all!"  Hillarious. Goodness knows, the operatic voice takes some getting used to. Some of us will never acquire the taste for it. I believe Fina will fall into that category. (As an aside, she has been listening to a lot of Adele right now. And loving that. So, Adele's crooning voice, or a very harsh operatic voice... You be the judge!)  All in all, Fina did really well. We didn't get home until 10:30pm.

On Sunday, we headed to Winnipeg for church etc, and Fina and I spent a couple of hours at one of our favourite places, Bois des Esprits, in the south end of the city. Just lovely!

The Seine River (no, not the one in Paris! The one in Winnipeg!) was mainly frozen over. Fina was so pleased to see that. There were some still moving water parts, but it was much more frozen than our Joubert Creek in town. Strange. The Seine is much wider, but it must be shallower and maybe less flow-y!

We have been keeping up with our Jesse tree and our advent devotionals. Last night, Fina and I played a few roungds of Go Fish with some cute Disney cards we found.

Today, we are heading to dad's school again (shocking, I know!) for a Christmas party for the Moms and Tots group. In the afternoon, we plan on heading back out to the forest area there. It is supposed to climb up to plus 5 this afternoon, so we will take advantage of that while dad teaches until late in the afternoon.

And tomorrow, we have our outdoor play group. And Wednesday we have a Christmas banquet at dad's school. And Thursday we have our homeschooling co-op (if everyone is healthy again!) and Friday we are going to our friend's house to decorate Christmas cookies. Considering we have no family within 2500kms and have very little Christmas commitments, we are pretty busy right now!!!

So, all different kinds of learning and experiencing over the last few days!