Upendings

Well there must be something in the stars right now; there have been some rather odd things going on around here recently!  Anyway we're coming to the end of our extended winter break, so next week we'll be back into doing English and lots of reading!  Willow will be onto working on her first IT block;she's currently planning it with Damien.  There will be stop, start motion movies, which she's been getting into over the break (there's a Ninjago obsession around here, so that's what they're about!).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAVRlbMlZNg
Then she'll be doing some touch typing and possibly some learning on operating systems.  We're also hoping to arrange some sewing sessions with a homeschool friend, so that she can learn machine sewing.

The break has been hectic and restful all in one, as expected with a newborn.  It's nice to be able to bend in the middle again.  Willow spent the whole two weeks of the official school holidays volunteering:helping with a school holiday group and her Circus school.  Her circus school also did their holiday performance.  Here she is, with a friend, on trapeze.



Damien took everyone to see the tall ships in Fremantle last weekend too, and all had a fabulous time looking around.  The ships were from the Netherlands.

New Arrivals

So I've been a bit absent the last few weeks with posting on here, as baby no 4 arrived peacefully on 24th June.  He was born comfortably in our lounge room and has been name Irving.  So far he's been settling into life well, and is getting lots of attention from all the bigger members of the family.



We got through all the homeschool work that I was hoping to do before Irving's arrival, which was nice; though Willow has a couple of written pieces to finish.  Gabriel and I started work on English and looking at "Beowulf" and Padraic Colum's version of King Arthur. 


This is from Gabriel's last bit of geometry before our break.



This is Willow's last star.



The weekend before Irving's birth was very busy as Gabriel was hoping to get to WASO's performance of "Lord of the Rings", and I'd told him we'd have to see about the baby.  Well Friday came along, and we knew that the WASO performance was almost sold out, and it didn't look like the baby  was coming, so Damien and Gabriel got tickets.  Both of them really enjoyed the performance, and even got photographed for the social pages of the Western Australian!

Anyway after that Gabriel said his weekend would be perfect if Damien and I went out Saturday night, and he and Willow could hang out at home.  Irving still wasn't ready to appear Saturday, so off we went rockabilly dancing. 

Since Irving's arrival, we've mostly been taking things easy.  He was born early Monday morning, and Damien took the kids to our dancing lesson, but otherwise we mostly hung out at home and had some guests pop in.  Now that actual school holidays have started Willow and Gabriel are doing a couple of classes, and Willow is also helping out with her circus school.