January Follow Up

The last portion of last year seemed to be one step forward and two steps back!  December was filled with some interesting events, and some of them just ended upside down.

Our "Class Dismissed" screening never happened due to a mix up-looking into rescheduling that.  Arden's birthday was on a weekend that was cold and wet, which is unusual for here, and so resulted in all our plans being rearranged.  On the whole he took it well- as he was very much looking forward to his first Christmas pageant that day.  Instead we had a late night movie run with "Back to the Future part 2 and 3".

Willow and Gabriel performed in "Clowns vs Ninjas" with their circus school, and that was fabulous!  All the people involved pulled the show together into a really amusing and entertaining performance.  Willow had hurt her foot the night before, and still managed some of her parts, which I imagine was a great relief to all involved. 

We also had our home ed review and received our exemption for another 12months, and Willow auditioned for WAAPA, and was told that she had missed out this time around.  She's feeling philosophical about the whole thing, and is looking at it as a learning opportunity for applying this year.

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2025

We didn't continue with circus after the next year, I seem to recall, so Arden didn't get to perform in the Christmas pageant.

When we visited WAAPA on their open day, Willow was told that it was unlikely she would get offered a place at 16, as the voice continues to develop as people mature.  We decided that it was worth going through the process anyway as it would help her to understand what to expect.

She was also lucky enough to be going there monthly to listen to lectures, as she was offered the opportunity on the Open Day.  So from about mid year 10, she would go down once a month and listen to some of the lectures.

Singing in the Heat

Summer has returned here with a vengeance, and deserted us again. And I hope it will stay in the pleasant range of weather for a while, rather than being excessively hot again. It would be even better if it could be a pleasant summer this year. Had enough after 46degrees earlier in the year.

So Willow and Gabriel had their choir singing in the Pageant again this year, right in the middle of the heat. Fortunately it wasn't over 40 and so not too awful. Arden and I had seats in the VIP stand, and a great view of the pageant. We were quite lucky. Damien's boss offered them to us the night before the pageant.

There was a brief respite from the heat when we caught up with our Waldorf co-op. One of the mum's organise making dragonflies out of beads it was a great activity. Everyone here has been keen to do more craft activities with beads now.

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!