These are the Days of Play

Well, it's all been pretty quiet event and action wise on this here south eastern front but my little natives have been anything but quiet and in fact have been a little loopy. The weather has been unseasonably wet but when the rain has ceased for the occasional few moments we have ventured on out and enjoyed the brief snatches of sunshine at the park or otherwise.

After cleaning out our house and shed so thoroughly (I've been on a spring clean and a 'if we haven't used it in x amount of time, pass it on' bend for about two months now, which naturally meant we abstain from thrifting trips for awhile) I thought that we deserved a peek into the Thrift Shops. And 'Oh Wow!' didn't we score :D For less than a twenty we went home with a heaping pile of quality books for mainly Kangaroo to enjoy and also unearthed an amazing array of 'new' dress ups for both Kookaburra and Kangaroo. And haven't their imaginations been on the buzz since.

The little Green cap Kangaroo is wearing in the pic above was from China's Chairman Mai Communist era, complete with the little red star. We explained the little hats origins to which Kangaroo took inspiration and played out going to war for the next few hours. He would sweetly kiss me and say tender goodbyes and walk slowly up the hallway to catch his train but would pause every few steps and lift his tiny hand up slowly for a mournful little wave and make me promises of a safe return before continuing slowly out the door. Such a fun little chap.

But as always Kookaburra returns to his fairly constant building projects. His current project he had pushed to the back of his pile about six months ago but has decided this week to give it another go. He pulled it out again and is so stoked by the new found ease with which he is be able to do this once frustrating task. Hooray for growing older :)

I love this $2 op shop find!!! I was hunting for something like this after we watched The Fox and the Child a few months ago for Kookaburra to carry around his notebook, pens and treasured items in, but the best I had been able to turn up isn't even a scratch on this fair dinkum leather satchel.

It's the sort of thing I imagine a small boy from the forties may have slung over his shoulder on his way off to school.

We read Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain which has inspired some great imaginative play but the sweetest of which was sharing hot cocoas with Christian before venturing back out to sea.

Rarely do I purchase fluffy's or teddy's from op shops but Kangaroo pleaded pitifully for his new friend Christian the Lion and justified and talked me into taking the crazy haired, immediately freshly scrubbed, much loved, dear new friend home. How on earth did he justify? Well, after I said no, he explained clearly and as calmly as Kangaroo possibly can, that this was in fact Christian the Lion. We first met Christian from the famous You tube video and secondly from two great children's books we found consequently because of the video, at our local library. I could then see his connection and so now Christian has come home with us and he happily joins another scrappy looking previously acquired feline named Duma. Together the cats are inseparable from our little mate Kangaroo's side. Except, I should admit, for today's horrified, frenzied, screaming meltdown moment when Minna , our mischievous puppy, pinched Christian and took off with him into the back yard. Christian was safely retrieved but Kangaroo was still admonishing poor little Minna for hours after!

"Changing the Education Paradigms".... What the?!

Sir Ken Robinson has some very interesting things to say about education's current model, it's origin, purpose, it's future and the damage it's creating. This video by RSA is incredibly clever and being a visual learner I'm very grateful for their efforts as I can actually understand the point Sir Ken Robinson is making. Therefor, because I've been suitably primed :D, I'm more able to sit for the entire 55 minute original lecture :), sans animation, and really get it!

Exuberance :D

'joyful enthusiasm;

the emotion of great happiness;

a feeling of excitement;

overflowing with eager enjoyment'


Live and Love our Lives with great Exuberance!!!



I just can't keep quite on Wordless Wednesday :)



For more beautiful pics please visit
Hope, Faith & a whole lotta Love.

Creepy Catches

Cyrtophora moluccensis

or sometimes commonly referred to as the tent spider, (not that we knew that :P so maybe it's not at all that commonly known) is a frequently found creepy catch hanging out in our garden. The common name refers to it's tent like web which is large and 'three dimensional'.

Kookaburra is still catching insects and spiders but at least now he is more likely to catch, draw and release than catch and keep it until it dies a slow painful death.

Visits to national parks stating quite clearly

'Take nothing but photos
and
leave nothing but foot prints'

has left enough of an impression to change his Arthropodological habits.

Thanks to Find A Spider Guide for the great and helpful information and for the crystal clear photo of this beautifully marked , female tent spider.

Who's been hanging out in your garden recently?

Getting Back On Track

Sometimes I just can't get started.

I want to lounge around, have endless cuppas and facebook whilst googling and pretend like I'm achieving something.

Then occasionally I do find something worthy of further thought.

Awake before five yesterday morning so a walk to the corner shop for the milk and paper led us to a garage sale a few blocks away and in return for the early morning effort we spent about twelve dollars and received about half a dozen 'new' costumes. The early bird gets the Worm ;)

Something to kick start me.

To inspire me, to really make me desire to be a better mother - to love, care and discipline, to love my home more by caring for it properly, try a little harder with the Homeschooling, to truly be a more considerate wife and to really want to make time to grow myself.

Now, you see, we can't be a half hearted leopard. To truly play the part we have to be one all over, even right to end of your finger tips.

Have you met Anne Elliot?

So far I'm really enjoying what she has to say and am focusing on her Foundations of Life Long Learning List. I'm spending some time examining myself and being truthful over problems in our little lives and what are proactive, structural changes I can make to help support my family as we grow together.

And truly, being organised and beginning with making a to do list and following through with it, flexibly of course and really stopping to be with our boys and enjoying their company, has made a massive difference to our weekend. I have caught up on lots of jobs and am keen to keep everything ship shape. I'm stopping Kangaroo as he slips in a last word when being 'spoken' too and giving real consequences and boundaries for negative behaviour from our boys. I'm also not feeling as flustered and so am finding I'm not raising my voice (rarely :) and am actually sounding logical when explaining what the problem is (counting to twenty before I speak is working like a gem too). I'm also watching for idle hands (all round :P), because whilst it's wonderful to have our children growing up in so much freedom, too much freedom leads to poor character traits.

so..

You reap what you sew,

and

If it's Meant to be it's up too me.

Now I've just got to make time to read beyond just Part One!!! I'll put it on my list :D

The Key Word was Places

and so please, pah- lezze!!!!!! I beg of you to grin and bear my photo log from last weekend :D Our little visit to the castle was not the point of our trip away but it was actually to see Mr E's grading for Martial Arts.

Zen Do Kai - Blue Belt

and Muay Thai - Blue Singlet

So my Fantastic Mr E has increasingly become more lethal weapon over the past year or so and it is awesome to see him enjoying and striving towards a goal and working hard and being dedicated to achieve it. Nice one Babe ;)

And just to counter all that hard work I got to introduce my darling Mr E and little company to the decadent and indulgent Max Brenner. A cafe, I guess it would be called ?, devoted entirely to the love of chocolate with an extensive menu offering an array of sugary concoctions to sweeten our day. We ordered divine hot chocolates and delightful milkshakes,

The wait was almost too much to bear for our little Kangaroo. To see our hot drinks served but not the main saw him almost dissolve into a storm of tears and at the very least his bottom lip expanded into a big, fat pout. He flashed us the saddest face whilst emitting strange cranky growls of frustration. Yep, that's our Kangaroo - a torrent of emotions!

but the piece de resistance was the Chocolate Fondue Towers served with tempting, red ripe strawberries, delicious banana bites, fluffy marshmallows and chunks of freshly baked banana bread all cut perfectly to size for dipping inelegantly (or maybe that was just me :P) into the chocolate fondue and covering it thickly with rich, sweet, oh heavenly sweet choc-O-lat! Oh dear, getting a tad too excited there, best settle down :P!

Way too delicious to just look at :D

Bye, Bye Num Nums!

So after we came down from our sugar high we zipped to our hotel , eyed the bed greedily for a denied kindy nap and quickly dressed ourselves for the Belle of the Balls Birthday Party.

Princess Sparkles is now 18!!!!

The one time tiny little girl who was our teeny, little flower girl at our wedding eleven years ago has grown into this beautiful woman. I'm hoping and praying that she'll keep her feet firmly rooted to the ground and works hard to rock our little world with the amazing things she'll do. Can't wait to watch her story unfold.

So one more skip and a jump before we headed on home to our poor, abandoned Little House.

Please meet the tallest building in the southern hemisphere and the twentieth tallest in the world.

The week before our trip away my boys were watching the ABC Schools Shows and the feature was on buildings. After much excited discussion we decided a trip to the top of this building was a must to reinforce all the lovely concepts they had learned during the program.

I cannot adequately express just how buzzed I was to have Mr E along for one of our excursions!!! It was hugely exciting for me to see him offer up to our boys his knowledge and answer their ga-trillion questions.

Quite a view. Our car is on the next block and it was just a speck of blue. We were behind enormous floor to ceiling glass windows which was fantastic because not only did we feel (mostly!) safe about being up so high but it was the only way we'd be getting any of my family up there :D Bunch of scaredy cat chickens that we are, or is it that we like our own skins intact?! and at a safe ground level :P!

Yep, 77 storey's high! And the elevator travels from the ground floor to that seventy-seventh floor in a mind-boggling, ear popping 45 seconds or less!!!

Imagine hauling yourself out there to tighten a loose bolt!

Spectacular!

My brave comrades and I.

I guess once we came back down to ground level, Kangaroo must have had a difficult time readjusting and just felt he needed to be above the crowd and where better than on Mighty Dad's shoulders - the absolute best seat in the house.

Oh the Places You'll Go

Remember last Friday's post that Mr E and I were taking our restless, little natives away for the weekend? Well here are some photos of our visit to a 'real' castle! (A tourist attraction but as far as Kookaburra and Kangaroo were concerned it was pretty darn real :D

Kangaroo was bouncing off the walls excited to go and everyone we met oohed and ahhed over his little costume. Which of course made him chattier then ever! We even had other tourists encouraging their children to pose for photo's with Kangaroo like he was a part of the attraction :D

Entrance to the castle held a humorous, little warning :)

Kookaburra and Kangaroo pointed and chatted their hearts out. I'm a wee bit guilty of being glad to leave in the end :P - I was thoroughly exhausted from all the questions!!!

Real Knights Armour and of course Kangaroo was fascinated and wanted to know all about their weaponry. How on earth do I shift his focus from weapons?! His play continuously involves weapons of some description - guns, knives, swords, bombs etc, etc. Even though I try to distract him and if I think hard enough I know the theme is not constant and rarely malicious or directed at other children, I feel mostly that my efforts to discourage such play is in fact futile. We read so much history and inadvertently we are reading tales of battles, armies conquering, stories of survival - we love our hero tales - that for better or worse Kangaroo is playing out what his mind is being fed. So to balance this theme out I try to consciously include character type books so as to feed his mind with another type of food.

Remember the television show 'Xena: Warrior Princess'? Well this is the real throne from the set! Pretty cool for me as I watched the show during my twenties (I think) but I was the only one really excited to see it.

I want one of these!!!!
Somewhere I can hide out :D

So, so many steps.
Up and down and around and around.

Play acting in the Dungeon!

What a view.

Our ever cautious Kookaburra struggled to ascend the last remaining few staircases, whilst Kangaroo was hurrying on ahead out of sight.

Like chalk and cheese our boys.

I'm pretty darn proud of my Kookaburra for getting as far up as he did. Kookaburra has a very healthy fear of heights which frustrated him nearly to tears during this excursion. He battled indecisively to go as far as he did and he was so disappointed when he found he couldn't make it to the very top of the final turret.

Exploring.

The castle housed an enormous doll collection which we could have hung out in for hours reading everything and admiring it all. The doll that left the biggest impression was one made entirely from sugar and stood about a hand high. Fascinated by the concept, Kangaroo and Kookaburra were still talking about it a few days later.

When it was time to go, I was glad to see I wasn't the only one absolutely exhausted. Our poor little showman needed his beauty sleep :) because there is always a new audience waiting unawares at wherever our next stop may be!