One Massive Weekend - A Time for Family

I'd been thinking recently about our family. Not just our happy foursome but our extended clan. After all, we are cousins, Aunt, Uncle, sister, son, brother in law, and daughter. Our nieces and nephew are very important to us and often we find the weeks slip by without spending quality time with them so to prevent this from snowballing into we never did anything with our nieces and nephew I've scheduled Friday afternoons as being 'our time'. My boys and I walk to school, wait for the cousins to finish school for the day and we walk the long walk (about half an hour) home together. Together we might stop for hot chips or an icecream or check out the second hand bookstore - I'm helping Princess Calamity grow her book collection - for any interesting finds. We slowly walk home chatting and catching up and poking around, collecting odds and ends and observing our world (as well as learning how to get to my house on foot). It's a bit of a ways so when we get home the kiddos need a rest to wind down from their day at school and from their long walk. Once they're ready though, it's on.

We Bake.

Marble Muffins this week!

Make miniature gardens in eggshells from cotton wall and cress seeds. Hopefully Princess Cupcake will leave cutting her own hair and stick to giving the egg a trim when the cress grows :D.

Build obstacle courses.

We go all out on our equipment here! Salvaged pallets are used to build climbing frames, secured with rope to prevent them from collapsing and an old water barrel to balance roll upon. These kids inner core muscles are going to be so strong if they keep that up!

Creating an art project too is another thing we try to cram in. This was so simple but they all enjoyed it. Pick two paint colours and put some generous dollops inside a ziplock bag with a little glitter and then send the children outside to see how well they can manipulate the paint through the plastic to make a 'new' colour.

But the number one reason for my making Friday afternoons an important extended family time is so that each week we are creating positive memories and through this ritual we establish strong ties and connections with each other. I want them all the children to know that they are worthy of our time and effort. We're growing our relationships purposely with them so hopefully, in time, if they ever need us - for anything! - they already know they are loved and cared for and we are there for them, no matter what it is.

This week Mr E's Mumma had a special visitor.... Mr E's Dad :) Aww shucks. They miss each other being apart as they are during the week and GD drove up to spend the weekend. It had been his birthday during the week so we needed to make a yummy Mud cake to celebrate!

Early Saturday morning my men and I packed up for Senjo (grading) on the Sunshine Coast for Zen Do Kai.

Congrats goes to Kookaburra who has ascended the ranks from yellow belt to orange and to my martial arts hero Mr E on being graded successfully as a new green belt. As for myself, I am now a yellow belt. Hoorah, means I now know my punches and a few other basics but still not enough to beat Mr E when we're playing around.

And Sunday. Beautiful, sunshiny, happy Sunday.

We went bushwalking with our in in-house insect and plant expert who gently caught this lizard within about two minutes of pulling up at the reserve.

So many magnificent colours and interesting things to see.



Lots of different types of termite mounds today.



and iron ore to collect from the road base on the tracks.

Spending my time in the native bushland with my family would be hands down one of my favourite ways to spend a day.

What about you? Did you have a crazy weekend too?!

baby it's cold outside

so we mixed up a fresh batch of playdough and set out the play kitchen and let Kangaroo and his little friend bake up a storm.

Fancy a smartie cookie :) Does your eye twitch too when the kids start making 'rainbow' creations with fresh dough? Mine does and I just have to look a way :P!

A great evening of collaging with friends. I particularly love our little home Kookaburra added down the very bottom.

Super cute!

And an at least three hour game of bottoms glued to seats for Earthopoly with cheeky Kookaburra claiming king, who needs to learn some grace when winning! His joyous squealing and crazy cackling, whilst hilarious, is just a little bit naughty.

We had such a great afternoon and evening spent with friends playing games and sharing dessert for dinner too. Piles of pancakes drowning in berry sauce and ice cream. Yum!

I know I said I'd get around to posting those pics of Beautiful Byron Bay (sorry sis!) but I loved our arvo and tonight I'm actually going to sit and watch a movie with my gorgeous Mr E. A perfect way to round out our Sunday. No planning tonight, just me and Mr E and the box.

Now it's getting Difficult

Last nights rehearsal was late.

Kookaburra went to bed extremely late.

Nearly 11pm.

Ridiculous!

It will be the same again tomorrow night and Friday night. There is rehearsal for the musical scheduled for Sunday and then the three nights again next week - Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Then we jump into the two weeks of solid rehearsal of every evening. Right now, looking down the barrel of crazy late nights with my nine year old son I'm asking myself why we decided to commit to such an intense activity. Well, and I say this with a very tired sigh, I believe in exposure and opportunity through and through. It's my policy I suppose. Get us out there experiencing real life and real people and I guess real difficulties and the huge joys of real life. When we're done I'll rein us back in for a bit. Cushion us for a while and hide out at home once more finding a good rhythm again. We are going to need it desperately.

Life is so laughable and I'm really here forever as it's student. I spent three long evenings last week poring over materials and planning meticulously what I and my boys would like achieved this week and mapping it out and preparing right down to the the materials organised neatly in their baskets. I shouldn't have. I should have known. In my heart I did, but my dumb old head was in denial. The truth of our situation is that we need to take a break from our lessons. More than anything my boys and I and Dada over this busy time, we are going to need to connect richly and as much as we can.

We need siesta's!

And our great books.

And lots of crafting.

The Native's want to keep going with their lapbooks and I'll try to continue with their book studies , but everything else can happen naturally. And it really does, if I'm willing to let it - which is so very difficult for this brain washed old school girl.


So what has happened today was a fine lesson in doing too much - and it's fall out. The too much wasn't from planned lessons either, it came simply from failing to relax and replacing our lessons with busyness. Late this arvo I was spectacularly Bad! It still amazes me how I can still be rabbiting on at my little boys while a little part of me has stepped aside to watch the car wreck I'm inflicting upon us. But, I'll leave it there because my lesson has been learnt, my apologies made, tears wiped! And instead I'll move on to dwell on the great because the rest truly was.

This morning was brilliant! Relaxed and fun. So very natural and wonderfully happy. I should have kept on as I had begun and we would have been fine. Apart from their jobs and breakfast I let our boys do as they please while I figured out what to do with us - which obviously means clicking on the latest blog posts of crafty peeps. The Magic Onions latest post was about making an Easter Basket from felt. I sigh. I've been wanting to felt forever but it just isn't in my budget. But Marvelous Donni suggests using an old pure wool or cashmere sweater for felting and gave great simple instructions which sounded completely doable. Lacking such an item immediately on hand my boys and I, Kookaburra was particularly inspired by this project, headed to the op shops in search of such items. We wandered for a while in the thrift shop to no avail until Joy! as we headed upstairs our eyes alighted on a high shelf full of PURE WOOL BLANKETS - $1!!!!!! We're yet to begin the felting as we still need golf balls for the process, but it makes complete sense that felting old wool blankets is a frugal alternative and will open up this wonderful craft to us (me!).


The thing is though, I just need to reclaim those wool blankets :)




I'm a big fan of A Magical Childhood. So during my inspiration clicking this morning I popped over there for some fresh ideas on how to make today magical. Well number 2 was a great option:

'2. Let each child pick out something brand new to try at the grocery store. Look in the international foods and produce section for particularly fun and unique items.'


Too easy!


Hello Marble Marmor Dan Cake from Norway!

My boys incredulously stood there in the prepackaged baking ailse with lopsided grins across their faces asking if they really could choose this and eat it - numbers, preservatives and sugar laden horror :D! And Mumma said 'Yes' :D! It's nice to relax a little.

Today we had a stand still memorable moment.

Standing in the dairy aisle playing a clapping game I played as a school girl, with my little sons.

Did you play this too?

A sailor went to sea, sea, sea
(clap your own hands, clap right hands together, clap your own hands, clap left hands together, clap your own hands, clap your hands and your partners together straight on three times)
To see what he could see, see, see,
But all that he could see, see, see,
Was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea.



I found this chant and clap game in my great library find Let's Play - Traditional Games of Childhood. A beautiful book with easy and quick ideas for simple play.

Okay, so I'm learning, as always, that less is more. Quality versus quantity. For now I need to let a few things go so we can enjoy this special time while we get to be a part of something awesome.

We have a little saying we call to each other as we leave our home for work or play:

Nice Words, Gentle Hands, and Shining Face (be happy!)

I think this may be a wise mantra for me to bring into our home with a good focus on me as well as for my children :)

Creating

We have had a container filled with shells sitting on top of the piano for months now. We have sorted and played with them. They have been used to decorate mud creations and adorn fairy gardens. But with them in our container we really couldn't see them and love them all the time so when I came across a post from LJ at With My Own Two Hands, I knew what we needed to do.

Kangaroo has been disappearing with our camera lately and this is one of his clicked images. Both our boys love taking photos and they have both taken an interest in my blogging so by combining the two they are now talking about creating their own blogs to journal their lego creations and the fun things they get up too. If they're still talking about it next month I'll help them make it happen. I think it would be a great place for them to learn to express themselves and help them develop a sense of progress - 'I have come from there, I am here now and soon I can see where I will be' :)