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!).

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.

Returning

It's been a very long time since I've posted on this blog, but since I'm now starting another blog on making money, I decided to reconnect to this one and make more of an effort.

We moved house and are now living on top of a hill! But still very near to Adelaide. The move was a bit mad, but it has been worth it- living in North Adelaide is much more community orientated than Unley. It has been nice to find somewhere to live in Adelaide, that I like, since our return from Europe. I had been struggling a bit to appreciate the place since returning. And recently another market has opened, the community market at Grange is lovely, and a great place to spend this time of the year at, if one heads to the beach too.


We've had quite a busy year with our homeschooling activities, and amazingly it's heading towards the end. We've nearly finished class 4 and class 2. Our craft activities have been all quite successful. We all made fabulous wooden swords, and I am feeling much more confident in our ability to do woodcarving. Willow has nearly finished knitting one sock (with second to follow next year). Hopefully she may finish the sock now rather than reading my post! ;) But perhaps she's too busy giggling. So in the course of Willow knitting socks, I also have learnt to knit socks and am currently up to my third pair- one for each child.

Gabriel learnt to purl this year, and next year will see his first real knitting project. Quite an exciting step forward! Our final selection of craft for the year is cross stitch, which is being enjoyed by all presently.

Activity wise has seen lots of interesting things happen here. We've started our own Waldorf Co-op, which meets fortnightly, and is looking for a few more people but establishing itself gradually. Willow went for a sail on the One and All, which was fabulous apparently and took a year to occur. It was a beautiful mild day for it, which was great considering the last cancellation was due to excessively hot weather. Willow and Gabriel can both swim reasonably well now, after 6months worth of lessons with Ken Richter, who is an amazing swimming teacher and currently everyone is back to Young Adelaide Voices for singing- with the Pageant coming up soon. There is not quite as much excitement as last year about the Pageant singing performance, but everyone is still looking forward to it.





We also headed to Melbourne for a holiday and had a great time. Our first holiday away since returning to Adelaide. We flew with Tiger airways and whilst the flight was fine, the terminus in Melbourne was quite amusing. It was basically a gigantic padlocked carport. Very odd indeed. We had a few eating destinations requested by the kids, which we headed to. One was Wagamama, we ate there regularly in Glasgow, and Fifteen. The guys had been watching Jamie at Home and decided it would be good to go to his restaurant in Australia. We all had a bar meal. It was really good, and has inspired Willow and Gabriel with their cooking.

And now it looks like Summer is here, so things are starting to wind down and yet get busier at the same time. Lots of fun end of year Christmassy things to happen!