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?!

Complete

This is my first complete still life from the Thursday night (into the wee hours of the morning - who can resist talking endlessly about history and politics?!) Art Class I've been attending for about two or three months.

My teacher is a hands off, guide if you need it mentor, so I'm super excited by what I've drawn!!!

Give me a year and I wonder how far I'll have come?

Let it Snow?!

Thank goodness it's nearing bedtime! The sweet lil puppy dog we're taking care of for my cous' whilst she's off enjoying those European delights, is spending most of the night barking at everything that we can't see or hear. After two nights of it, Mr E is thinking the dog may have a death wish but I really think that's just the sleep deprivation talking. Poor bloke even had a tumble stumble down some stairs at work. Fortunately it was stealthy and he only bruised his arm and nothing else. And that'll need to heal quick smart because we have what's called a 'Senjo' on the Sunny Coast this weekend.

Basically a Senjo is grading for our belts for Zen Do Kai and as he's been helping out another girl for the past six months in prep for her black belt red tip something or other, I'm not sure, he really needs to be able to partner her well and be able to perform his best for his, I think, brown belt. I'm pretty proud of him. Two years ago he'd only dabbled here and there briefly in martial arts but he's found a place that he likes to train and has involved us all as well.

Kookaburra is going from his yellow to orange belt and myself, white to yellow. Kookaburra's concentration and commitment is so obvious when he's training that my little heart just swells with pride. Kangaroo has only been going for a short amount of time so he won't be grading this time but his Kyoshi handled it so well regarding his not grading this time that Kangaroo is happily excited about his grading for the next time it comes around.

What else? It's been such a long time since writing anything substantial in my blog that I'm kind of stuck on the details of life and rarely get round to reflecting. Some time soon I hope. I do enjoy my blog but sometimes I feel like there is just way too much to put down and at other times there ain't nothing at all interesting to say!

Mr E's Mumma is staying with us during the weeks and returning home to Brisbane on the weekend whilst she's looking for a place to rent which is incredibly hard to do 'cause she works fulltime and the real estate agents are closed when she's not at work. It's been a month now and I hope they're able to find something soon for two reasons. Mr E's Dad really misses his wifey and the other, well, I have to admit that the impact it's having on Kookaburra who is sleeping on double thick camp mattresses on his brothers bedroom floor is not getting the best night sleep and is waking up looking ragged so consequently the flu we had back in September keeps rearing it's ugly head because the poor kid has never fully recovered from it.

So I have two tired little boys trying to contend with a very tired Mum and Dad and who still do their lesson work and keep up with our busy lives. I cannot wait until the Christmas hol's when all the extra curricula activities come to a momentary standstill out of respect for our sanity. In the meantime I'm teaching our boys to be helpful and that when it comes to chores and jobs our attitude is that even though it may be assigned to someone as their job, if we can see that the job needs doing or that the family member could do with a hand we get in their and help because we are family and we care for each other. Acts of kindness! We're also getting through our lessons quite well. Today the focus was on finishing some of yesterdays SOTW writing and then we were into our FIAR which is just plain enjoyable. At the moment our book is Katy and the Big Snow. We've focused on the weather, the water cycle, how the wind is formed, the characteristic of determination and the use of personification in literature and art. Now that we're nearing the end of the unit we can indulge in a fun game and project. This is easy as and loads of fun for two little boys. First we bought a two dollar plain, white shower curtain then gave them both a permanent black marker each (this is definitely an outdoors activity!!!!)

and we drew a compass rose in one corner and discussed the North East South West and the inbetweeners of North-East and so on until I was sure my boys understood.

They then drew roads and built the necessary infrastructure for a city out of mega blocks, like the Police Department, Fire Brigade, Council Depot, Schools and shops, electric company and so on.

Once this was all ready they got out their little cars and planes and then let it snow!!!! Shaving cream snow!!!!!




They dug their way out of disaster which did get very slippery and resulted in sliding and silliness. Kookaburra was quite serious about the 'job' of bulldozing a clearing through the city like Katy did but little Kangaroo thought the texture of the shaving cream was a scream and just wanted to play.


He tried throwing great globules of the stuff at his brother only to find his 'snowball' stuck to his little hand.

For ages he just picked up handfuls and would clap his hands together to see the shaving cream fly off into hundreds of little puffs into the air. He really had a wonderful time, as did Kookaburra who joined in with the merriment and as I took my inexhaustible supply of photos I reflected on how incredibly lucky I am and how much I want to hold my boys so close and love them up.

SOTW Volume 1 Round 2

The past few days has seen us reintroducing Story of the World Volume One for Kangaroo's Prep/ Grade One history program. Kookaburra is loving doing it again too, fortunately!

Here we are right at chapter one, wondering what makes history. It's pretty simple stuff really. We read the section designated in the Story of the World Activity Guide and then Kangaroo narrates to me while I record his thoughts into the free two day a week lapbook we're using. Combined this with some great ideas from the self proclaimed OCD Story of the World using Mumma at The Chronicle of the Earth Blog and I might stand a chance of finishing this program with my boys and they getting so much more out of it this time.

This has been a hectic year. We've had so many opportunities to be involved in the community in various ways that I'm so glad and immensely appreciative of, but I find myself feeling very relieved to be saying goodbye this week to our latest 'job', a nearly three term stint as volunteers and visitors to one of the local private schools Art class on Fridays. I'm glad because this will aid my attempt to stem the flow of lost time in our home. I've also clamped down pretty tight on visitors and outings in the mornings and do not answer the phone, the calls go straight to messages so if it really is important I'll catch it. Every week we have several great reasons to be out and about and although I really miss catching up with friends and having my boys play with their children I've found that as Kookaburra is getting older I need to be very committed to my priorities. For us, for various reasons, homeschooling does take up a lot of our time and if I let a few hours slip through my fingers in the morning (read that as, this week my washing machine is in pieces so we'll have to make time to get the washing done at our local laundromat. But hey! We can at least enjoy some reading together!) inevitably our afternoons are sacrificed.

Today I managed fine. We had swimming lessons first thing this morning and got our language arts and math done before lunch so in the arvo we enjoyed A Dirty Dig. I buried some household items like tools, pencils, pot, toy car etc things that symbolise our present society into our sandpit and armed with trowels and paintbrushes my little archaeologists carefully excavated the site.


We also got some inspiration on how to exactly carry this out from here.




Kookaburra sifted the sand to find any stray artifacts.


Meet Elvis. We're babysitting him for two weeks whilst my cousin is on holidays with her family in France. Lucky girl :) he's a Dutch barge dog whom apparently has no idea how to play... Well, Minna and Thor have sorted that out and after two days, Elvis is running around chasing the kong right along with them. I think he'll be fine!



Kangaroo gently brushes away the sand from his treasure. A silver serving dish therefor, he concludes, that these people were rich!


Kookaburra and Kangaroo happily pose for a picture after their successful dig before taking their final bagged items upstairs where they reflected on the culture that left behind these buried remains, another narration for Kangaroo and some writing for Kookaburra. We also used this table to record our findings.

Thank goodness for the internet and clever blogging homeschool Mummas! A quick check on my some of my favourite bloggers for inspiration on how to approach each chapter of SOTW and I know that this program will keep on being interesting again for my boys a second time round and it leaves me with less head scratching for ideas and more time for being with them.