Home again safely, praise be to God!

Holiday pics coming soon.

Caravanning from Perth to Adelaide & back

We are presently somewhere between Kimba and Kyancutta on our way back home. Our last few days in Adelaide didn't quite go as planned since I had yet another (!) anaphylactic reaction that took me to hospital when I sat with the rest of the family as they ate dinner at the Adelaide Central Markets on Fri night; and everyone except Sam (cross fingers) has had gastro in the last three days. But we are on our way back home, and having just finished reading Corrie ten Boom's autobiographical book The Hiding Place, I am feeling much more like celebrating God's grace to me and mine than wanting to whine over the 2500km to go!

A week at the beach

With Granny, Gramps, Uncle, Auntie and cousin Jonathan.

Spotting crabs:
Clambering over rocks:
Sunset on the first day:
Swimming on the second afternoon:We swam every day but Granny wasn't always there to take photos. Each day the waves grew, which gave the kids an opportunity gradually to become familiar with the joy of being tossed by breakers onto the shore as each day made for bigger crashes.

A bike ride on the foreshore:
Water fight on the back lawn of the rental house:
Ganging up against Jeff:

Christmas vist with Grandpa

Grandpa (Jeff's Dad) arrived for a visit on Boxing Day, and stayed until New Year's Eve. Uncle Andrew, Auntie Kim and cousin Jonathan spent a few nights with us as well.[Sam took the photo above.]
We took Grandpa to the local shops to see the kids smile their biggest smiles ever while they each had a go on FlyMotion.
We showed him our expertise with the family Christmas gift of Nerf guns (last year it was water guns - there seems to be a theme here that might have something to do with Jeff, the ex-army officer, choosing the presents).
We went for a sunset picnic to King's Park and then had barefoot races on the soft grass at dusk.
We flew a kite in the park next to our house

and even had a kick of the footy.
A busy, beautiful Christmas visit.

11 books to read aloud to the kids in 2011

1. Pannikin and Pinta by Colin Thiele
Already read this one - it was short!

2. Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
Finished! 8/2/11

Anna was very excited when I told her we had bought the Mary Poppins Omnibus rather than just borrowing it from the library, so it is ours to keep and read over and over again!

3. Mary Poppins Comes Back by P.L. Travers
Finished! 1/3/11

4. Mary Poppins Opens the Door by P.L. Travers
Finished! 13/3/11

5. Mary Poppins in the Park by P.L. Travers
Finished! 19/4/11

6. Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane by P.L. Travers
Finished! 15/4/11

7. Mary Poppins and the House Next Door by P.L. Travers

8. Atticus the Storyteller's 100 Greek Myths by Lucy Coats, illus by Anthony Lewis

9. The Aesop for Children illus by Milo Winter

10. The Complete Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault

11. The Search for Delicious by Natalie Babbitt

11 books to read (or finish reading) in 2011

1. Confessions by Augustine
I'm actually three-quarters of the way through this at the moment. But since I started reading it with my friend Shelley way back in June 2010, I want to commit to finishing it this year.
Finished! 31/1/11

2. King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard
Finished! 6/1/11

3. The Travels by Marco Polo
Finished! 26/4/11

4. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
Again, I have only a few chapters to read to complete this book, but I think I started reading it at the end of 2009, so I'd like to get back to it and through it finally.
Finished! 12/1/11

5. Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus by D.A. Carson
Finished! 28/5/11

6. Desiring God by John Piper

7. The American Patriot's Almanac by William J. Bennett and John T.E. Cribb
This was my Christmas gift from Amy who has discovered Jeff and my woeful lack of knowledge of the history of the United States.

8. The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
Finished! 23/1/11

9. The books of Deeanne Gist
I'm counting them all as one since they will each take me only a day or so to read.
A Bride Most Begrudging
The Measure of a Lady
Courting Trouble
Deep in the Heart of Trouble
A Bride in the Bargain
Beguiled (With J Mark Bertrand)
Maid to Match
Finished! 20/4/11

(and as a contrast to the former)

10. Le Morte D'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, complete and unabridged
It took my brother Daryl several years to get through this and he car pools for an hour each way to his work site, so it is quite conceivable that I might not get through it this year. But I'm determined to get started on it, at least.

11. The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons
My friend Shelley has been telling me about this book for a year now, so I'm finally going to read it.
Finished! 1/4/11
Also Finished! The Bridge to Holy Cross and The Summer Garden 8/4/11

This is probably against the spirit of this 11 books in 2011 thing ... but I'm going to add
12. All the Harry Potter Books by JK Rowling
Finished! 9/3/11

11 goals for 2011

1. Love and worship God more, more of the time.

2. (er... this one is a secret between me and my husband)

3. Help Sam settle into Childcare two days a week... somehow!
26/05/11 Jeff and I talked to Sam a lot about this and he is doing really well with this now. He still says "I hate childcare" on the mornings before I take him, but we pray together as we walk to the room, and he almost always is happy and quickly settles when we arrive. There is no more crying or tantrums, just the occasional crossed arms and frown - which is a huge improvement. So what was the solution? We bribed Sam with a McDs icecream cone each afternoon after we collected him if we heard from his carers that he had settled well that day. Now we're down to just an icecream on Friday if he settled well into childcare on Tue and Fri and into BSF Bible Study on Wed morning.

4. Be diligent in supervising Abigail's Grade 1 homework as she learns to read and write.

5. Encourage Anna as she learns the self-discipline required for gentleness with others - and learn along with her.

6. Support Joshua to being more self-controlled emotionally - and improve in this myself.

7. Start and finish a digital scrapbook for our holiday to England and Singapore five years ago.

8. Make time and put in effort to complete the book I have begun writing and submit it for publication.

9. Learn the basics of Biblical Greek from Jeff, as he revises and refreshes his own skills.

10. Spend more time outdoors on my bike and in the pool and park so I can lose 10kg.

11. Do a good job mentoring and discipling the young Sunday School teachers who will be meeting with me weekly for Bible Study and Sunday School planning this year.

Music to my Mothering Ears

Me: "So Joshua, what fun things are you looking forward to doing while you have your sleepover with L?"

Joshua: "Well, we mostly have fun reading books together."

Remember Lemmings? GliderPRO? Tetris?

In the search for fun, challenging, non-nasty computer games for Joshua to play, I thought today of Lemmings.According to Lemmings Universe, "Lemmings is a puzzle game in which the goal is to guide a certain number of Lemmings to the exit on each level. The Lemmings enter the level through one or more hatches somewhere on the level. They can be assigned skill that are used to help them get to the exit."

Originally an Amiga game, a version of Lemmings was given to me free with my first Apple Mac, when I bought it straight out of Uni. Unfortunately, I don't have the CDs for it now. But I found an online version here. This javascript version (it plays in a web browser window) only has 10 levels in each of the four ratings (Fun, Tricky, Taxing and Mayhem), rather than the original 30 for each, so the jump in skill level between level 10 in Fun to level 1 in Tricky (etc) could be a challenge. But Joshua managed, with my help, to get through the 10 levels of Fun, and I enjoyed it even more than he did, I'm sure.

Another favourite of mine from the free games that came with my Apple Mac was a paper plane game called GliderPRO where I had to fly the paper plane through a complex series of rooms in buildings, never letting the plane fall to the ground.You can download it for free from the author John Calhoun, here. That game was an enjoyable challenge for me through my first year of working as a teacher and beyond. And it didn't involve teaching maths to teenagers, which was not such an enjoyable challenge of those times. I think Joshua will enjoy this one as well, but he may have to fight me for the computer to get at it!

Now I'm off to play an online version - unfortunately not a clone for the original Tetris:How well I remember the hours spent playing Tetris on the uni computers when I should have been writing code for my programming classes!

Abigail's First Day of Away-School

Abi joined Joshua and Anna at their away school today. It was a busy day for me, since Jeff flew down to Albany to be with his mum and step-dad for a few days, as Ron is sick in hospital. It was also a work day for me, so I was glad I'd asked our babysitter to arrive a bit earlier than usual. We managed to only be 5 minutes late for the school assembly. There was lots of excitement as it is the children's first day in the new school buildings that have been being built on site for the last three terms. The classrooms looked very tidy and crisp, and Abi looked very neat and crisp as well, at the beginning of the day.At the end of the day it was another matter - she was tired, disappointed about a few expectations not being met, and quite upset over (of all things) the fact that she had to leave her hat in the classroom and not bring it home overnight.Wednesday and Thursday saw a gradual improvement in her response to school, as she grew used to the routine and the way things work at school. The best thing from my point of view was having her tell me at the end of Thursday's school day that "You can invite those two girls with the black hair and the ... um ... blond hair to my birthday." Incidentally, Abi's birthday isn't until next May. That was Abi-code for "They are my friends."

PS And I enjoyed my time alone with Sam on Wednesday and Thursday as well.

Pets

Sam: I would like a dog pet.
Dad: Sorry, our landlord says we can't have dogs here. What about a pet tiger?
Sam: No. Tigers are too scary.
Dad: What about a pet snake, a long snake?
Sam: Nope. Snakes are too scary.
Dad: What about a spider, a really big black spider?
Sam: Nope.
Dad: What about a pet elephant?
Sam: No. ... They sit on little boys.
Dad: They sit on little boys, do they? Well, what about a pet camel?
Sam. No. Camels live in the desert.

Family Adventure to Scarborough Beach

Making the best of the beautiful Spring sunshine, we headed to the blue and white expanse of Scarborough Beach this morning.We thought we might only be there for a short time, but the kids were having so much fun we decided to stay a little longer than we'd planned.

I loved taking the kids into the water one at a time for a dip, and having a bit of a paddle myself as well.Anna was the bravest and spent the most time out with me.The others were too busy having fun with the sand.Even Anna and I succumbed to after a while.
We were home for a late lunch of mini franks and salad in front of the TV watching the grand final* (that's AFL, for my non-Aussie friends). It was a draw, so they'll have a rematch next week. How anticlimactic! Something about this reminds me of a certain election...

*Er... and for those who know me personally and find it hard to believe I would watch AFL even for a grand final, I will admit that I didn't actually watch it. I went into another room and read a book - Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins - but I did have a quite snigger when I heard the final buzzer go and knew there was a draw. My big bro will be pleased, or at the very least satisfied. In his words from an email a few days ago, "Collingwood vs St Kilda - I can't think of anything less appealing (other than maybe Collingwood vs Port Adelaide). St Kilda have no appeal, due to their tediously boring gameplan and the complete unlikeability of their players (most notably Stephen Milne)... Collingwood are.... Collingwood. The only thing better than seeing Collingwood lose a GF by 100 points is seeing them lose a GF by 1 point. Meh.. I'm just going to have to blank out the AFL 2010 season from my memory banks. It never happened." Well, Joshua enjoyed watching it, having been prepped for the experience by watching a few games when his Grandad was here recently.

Boxing Kangaroos

Granny shot this video from her kitchen window:

Aah... Spring is here!

I love Spring.

I think Spring is my favourite season in the south. It reminds me of the Dry season in Darwin.

Here are five things I like about Spring:
(1) Finding a pansy flowering between the pavers in our back yard:
(2) Finding a gigantic ladybird enjoying Abigail's flannel sheets on the washing line:
(3) The kids using lots of energy riding their bikes and scooting their scooters and swinging on the swings ... etc ... so at night they sleep well and soundly:
(4) The sun rising early enough that there is time for the kids to read or draw at the breakfast table before we have to leave for school or church:(But not rising so early that we are woken before 6am by children who are cheerfully and loudly awake, declaring, "Sun's up, Mummy!".)

(5) Mostly, I like Spring because I can hang out the washing on the line and get it dry without:
(a) worrying that it will be rained on before I get an entire load hung up (as in the Winter); or
(b) getting so hot hanging it on the line that I need to wash myself when I'm done (as in the Summer).
My fourth load for today is currently drying on the line. The rest are already picked in, folded and put away. Now I'm off to hang out the fifth load.