Weekly Report 2008:1

This has been our last week of Summer Holidays, because although the official school year doesn't start in Australia until February, I want to take advantage of Jeff's last few weeks at home to move smoothly (I hope!) into our homeschooling schedule. Through the holidays I've kept up our Read Alouds and we've been doing Circle Time (Bible Story, Family Prayer, Memory Verses and Singing) for the past month. The plan is to start back into reading and penmanship next week, add mathematics the week after that, stay steady for a week, then add in geography and science the week before Jeff goes back to Theological College for the last year of his MDiv.

Jeff's been away at Inters Camp, so we've spent lots of time enjoying new Christmas toys and just mooching around. I did a big shop before Jeff left for camp so I've only taken all four kids to the shops once, and that was to buy something Jeff needed at camp. Amazingly, I've kept up with daily Circle Time, and only missed two days of Thomas the Tank Engine stories.

We're reading one of the original Thomas books each night; each book has four short stories, and each book features a different engine. Today we read about how Toby the Tram Engine came to Sodor, which is a sweet tale of rescue from a fate worse than death (in train engine terms) - he was No Longer Useful on his home line, until the Fat Controller found a place for him, helping Thomas. Joshua really loves these train stories. I know a lot of young boys do - certainly most of Joshua's friends fall into this category. For me, I just love having my big boy crawl up into my lap for a cuddle together as we read.

Yesterday we picked up Anna's godfather D, who was in Perth (from Darwin - meanwhile his wife M and two daughters were dealing with a small cyclone last night) also to speak at a conference, coincidentally. We took D with us to Inters camp for a swim and chat with Jeff, sharing the communal dinner and then listening to Jeff speak before I took D back to the YWAM base and my weary children home.

Some photos of Anna and "Uncle D":
* Joshua and Samuel were a hit with the campers:
(There's that thumb and ear thing happening again.)

Abi enjoying D's mobile phone:
And the highlight of our visit was our beloved Daddy:* D makes Jeff look fascinating, doesn't he?It was wonderful to see D again after two years, to catch up on news of eachother's families, and to let Anna get to know her godfather a little bit more.

* I've worked out how to blur a selection of an image in Adobe Photoshop, so I've done that with the campers faces. Keeping anonymity but, I hope, not making the pics look too odd.