Daddy got to sleep in which is a true sign of love around here.  The children made him a cute hand-print t-shirt of "daddy's wild animals".  We then went to Sunnyside for lunch of palatschinken and marillenknödel with our bubble. It was Matthew’s first time in a car since the beginning of the pandemic restrictions 90 days ago!

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It was Theo's birthday! Uncle Chris was helping Brendan build a new bed for Elizabeth now that we can get together again, so he and Erika were at Clemow when it was time for the birthday zoom. I had cleverly made two cakes for Uncle Chris' birthday and set one aside so we were all ready to go!

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It's the last day of spring and the first day of summer holidays so we thought we'd better finally have our long anticipated "spring tea party" before it was too late for the second year in a row.

We invited Erika and Maria to come over with their bathing suits and we pumped up two of our paddling pools.

Then we brought out our tea. We had dolmades, cheese and regular gf buns, chopped veggies, a cheese platter, a meat platter, cake, cookies and of course tea. I made a fruity tea (cranberry orange), Earl grey and Mint.

It's 36.7C outside in the shade according to our garage, so the pool and shade was quite appreciated. I put all the food out on ice packs.

Michael splashed around, ate and then curled up and went to sleep on the porch just like a little cat. He's been pretending to be a cat rather a lot lately so I'm not sure this wasn't deliberate.

Auntie Yukiko and Grandma came by as well, so after a quick "swim" Brendan and I went back inside to do some actual work while the partying continued on outside.

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Last week of school! We declared Friday a holiday and will give the kids a whole week off before starting up our summer homeschool. Well, off except for summer journalling and physical exercise because it would never do to be TOO lax.

Elizabeth had mostly completed all assigned work so when I found out about a magic class offered by CPF Ontario I asked her if she'd like to do it. She spent an hour learning some magic tricks in french and she had a really great time. They are going to repeat these every week for the next few weeks! Most of the rest of her week was spent working on her Rube Goldberg machine, though she did go for a fairly ambitious bike ride with Grandma, Erika and Auntie Yukiko. She's decided she likes biking after all and they want to ride to Aylmer Marina sometime this summer.

Matthew and I did a loop down across the new footbridge and back across Pretoria bridge, while Amelia tried taking her two wheeler down to the end of the block and back. Matthew wants to go on his own adventure with Grandma sometime soon.

Karate started up some in-person classes for tournament team. Elizabeth and Erika have been walking home to Erika's after class and hanging out there which is extremely popular.

Matthew and Elizabeth did some more JJK art, which turned out to be water colour painting. Of course Amelia wanted to join in too! Michael wasn't particularly into art this week, unless you count snipping Amelia with scissors. Related: Michael is not allowed to use scissors unsupervised...

Matthew didn't otherwise have much in the way of schoolwork to complete. He made a father's day craft and enjoyed reading a story about a siege in a castle complete with secret passage and a pet pig. He's always building forts and other things and recently got interested in how to make concrete and bricks. He tried making a brick out of mud so it will be interesting to see how that turns out. More concerning was his idea that if matches aren't allowed as part of his continuing quest to make fire maybe he could make his own. Luckily we do not live on or near a sulfur mine, but I did amuse myself by suggesting he look for smelly rocks.

Amelia didn't have too much in the way of real school this week, though we did manage to join the last combined class of the year after missing the last small group and she also made the father's day craft suggested by her teachers. We also tried to join the little party to celebrate the end of the school but there were insurmountable technical problems so it kind of fizzled out. She didn't mind because we were playing board games while waiting. There were a few games and puzzles this week. We also watched the end of year videos later as we got them by email. Amelia had submitted a piano piece as a "talent to show" and got a nice encouraging note from her teacher :)

Amelia and Michael's zoom with Grandir Ensemble did the pepper experiment. Amelia was explaining she already did it at school but I kind of liked the Grandir Ensemble tie-in better; they were using the pepper as germs and had the kids put their fingers in without soap to show how the germs stick to you. Then when you put the soap on your fingers the "germs" flee! Michael thought this was quite amusing.

Everyone did some weeding this week; some more enthusiastically than others. It was a VERY hot week, but we still managed to have fun outdoors. Michael discovered the hose. I suspect his siblings will be sorry they taught him how to spray him long before he is tired of doing so...

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Auntie Heather was excited about turning 48 as it's the last time that she will have one digit be the double of the other for a while.

She organized a potluck dinner of the same foods in each different virtual location and then we had a zoom dinner together.

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