2014

We've had a reasonably laid back Summer- as well as one can when there is a baby in the house anyway!  We've mostly spent our time near home, and have been a bit poor at catching up with friends.  My mother-in-law came to visit, which was pleasant.  We had a few birthdays- Arden was 6 in December.  I made a lovely soaked grain mango cake with self lighting candles!

Willow turned 14 in Januarly- her cake was accidentally made out of oat flour, which I'd bought for oat cakes, and used in error; it was surprisingly tasty!  Damien and I are both now 40, and we had an interesting science experiment, by sharing our birthday cake with a friend, and attempting to light 125 candles for all our birthdays: this is what it looked like.

Sadly we were unable to light all 125, but some towards the middle melted quite impressively, was fun all the same!  We have one birthday left for the Summer- Gabriel will be turning 12 in a week, and after that we will have our first non summer baby birthday, but not until June.

I was rather slow with my homeschool planning for this year, due to Irving's presence.  Normally I do it right at the end of the year, but I didn't start til January this time.  Grade one was fairly straight forward to plan, as was grade seven (Gabriel will be doing a very similar selection of topics as Willow did in Grade 7, but is doing computing as his subject choice for the year.) and grade 9 was a little interesting in that it's a bit more open ended so that Willow can have more time for natural learning this year.  Plus I'm looking at her being a bit more that direction with maths this time, so that she can regain a bit of fun with it.  Asides for geometry, she hadn't really been keen on it last year.  She's also doing history from an artistic perspective.  Gabriel will be starting trumpet this year,  and also started jujutsu last week and Arden had his first circus lesson, where he felt happy and confident to be there,so that was great.  He says that he'd like to do jujutsu too, but I'd like to see how circus progresses first I think.

We're off to a few shows for Fringe and Festival season here.  Last night was the Festival opening, down near the Swan river, and the show was quite brilliant.  Tonight, Damien and Willow, have headed off to see "Not by Bread Alone" which is a deaf-bliind baking production.  They were also interested in the Blackout restaurant, but that had sadly sold out.  Arden and I are off to a mime performance, called Ilo.  We've also bought some tickets to see Adam Hall perform Beyonce at the Fringe, and Willow will be taking Gabriel to a Fringe circus show.

Anyway our homeschool work starts again in a week.  I'm looking forward to seeing how we go again this year.  Will be interesting to have two children doing most of their work independantly.

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2025

Gabriel didn't end up doing trumpet lessons, every time we tried to organise a teacher or a class something went wrong, and so it drifted away.  He still has his trumpet that we bought for him to learn on.  Willow and Gabriel both did jujutsu til 16, and Arden finished at 15, although he started younger.  Irving's done a couple of terms of jujutsu during covid, and we are considering starting him again soon.  We were still doing circus classes regularly at this stage, and these continued for a couple more years, until we had a falling out with the circus school.

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.

Counting Down

Another busy week has drawn to a close, before our last week of planned school work.  Basketball training finished on Friday, but we've planned an outing for Gabriel and Arden to go and see the Perth Wildcats, so they're quite excited about that.

Some of our homeschool friends from basketball, were in a drama group this year, so we went to see their production tonight.  There were two groups, up to 10 performed in 'Tiddalick the Frog', and over 10s performed a play called 'Backstage'.  Both were well performed, and it was lovely to see a homeschool play so well put together.

Willow has been continuing to work on chemistry, finishing off with combustion last week, and moving onto acids and bases and the limecycle this week.  Acids and bases has involved doing quite a bit of litmus testing and seeing what items are acid or alkali using a cabbage litmus.

This week also saw Willow achieve stilt- walking.  One of her friends was holding her hand and said 'I reckon you can do this' and just let go- and so Willow found herself standing and walking and doing ok!

Gabriel has been progressing nicely through his socks- almost halfway through the first one now- and whilst I would have liked him to be finished by now, I can see an improvement in his focus and dexterity in knitting so we'll just keep plodding along at it.  I've been continuing on making a doll for Arden, and she just needs to have her head sewn on now.

Gabriel has also been keeping some silk worms, thanks to our friends at City Farm.  The moths all made their way out of their cocoons last week.

So looking forward to being done with our organised work next week- there have just been a few too many things happening recently, and it will be nice to spend a quieter week come December.