Holidays and Copperwork

Irving and I had a really lovely extended Winter break.  We  had our regular classes to attend surrounded by a few excursions, and some interesting extended learning at home, and a trip as a family down to SW Western Australia, to visit Willow and her fiance.

We had our Winter solstice celebration with a fire on the balcony, but sadly no ember baked damper this year, as it had been quite wet overnight, and so having a fire was a last minute decision.  We instead had freshly baked home made bread.

We got some last minute tickets to join our home school group, and headed with them to see the Teracotta Warriors at the WA Museum.  The whole exhibition was amazing, and the presence of the larger warriors  was formidable.

Irving turned 12, and we had a lovely family day celebrating with him, and Willow made him a fabulous birthday cake this year.

Blackforest Birthday Cake

Irving and I learnt about harvesting Aloe Vera, and the need to drain the aloin from the freshly picked leaves to make it edible.  It was fascinating finding the sticky yellow substance had drained out after leaving the leaf to strain.

Leaves Draining

We tested and cleaned out this coffee machine, that we found in the hard waste, and discovered that it works, is missing the tamphead, which should be easy enough to replace, and needs a little attention to the finial on the top.  So that's part of our next jobs to get it functioning again.

DeLonghi coffee machine

There were lots of toasted marshmallows eaten during our stay with Willow, as they have a woodfire stove and the weather was adequately cold for our visit.  When we came back to Perth, it seemed to have finally gotten cold here too!  We had a lovely time visiting Manjimup, Busselton, Pemberton, Northcliffe and exploring the SW in general.  Particularly on our way home, when we kept making spontaneous stops into small towns along the way.

Marshmallows

We headed to Busselton, found some great shops for tea, healthfood, jewellery- buying a few too many things probably, and then headed to a local jetty for Irving to do some fishing with Willow's fiance.

Off to do some fishing

Out on the jetty.

We really loved our visit to the Manjimup Electricity Museum.  In fact I think it's the best Museum that I've been to in a while.  Much better than the WA Museum.  The electrical  tech side is well integrated, given it is about electricity they engage with it really well.  And it was an amusing and pleasant surprise to discover that a lot of the tech was from the old East Perth Power station, which is not too far from where we live.

We got to the Southern Forests Chocolate Company near Pemberton, and had the best chocolate that we've had in WA IMO.  They definitely rival our friend, Steven ter Horst in Adelaide (visit to Steven's shop here).

Out front the Southern Forests Chocolate company

Truffle selection

Arden sadly didn't make the trip with us, as he had a surprise last minute event via airforce cadets, and headed off to a camp for the week.  In fact he had quite an eventful lead up to his week away, as he got his learners permit, and he also got a retail job, working for the chain, City Beach.

Irving and I did quite a bit more copper work over the break, and one of Arden's and Irving's friends has joined us in our latest sessions.

Learning to saw copper.

Circular bowls and experimenting with pickling- using vinegar to keep it kitchen friendly!

Irving's left, mine on the right.

My bowl.

Irving's varying square shaped bowls.

We've been watching a lot of youtube videos to expand our copperwork knowledge, and we found this one particularly interesting and inspiring.  We loved that this man had taken up the traditional method of making and repairing old copper pots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTztlpAcips

https://duparquet.com/coppercare

Irving and I have been reading "The Secret Garden".  Such a great book, and it's still fascinating to remember having discovered that people back then learnt cursive first if they were educated, and that printing may have been tricky.

Irving and I spent quite a bit of time having quiet coffee dates, where we took our current reading and headed out for a coffee with our books.  I've been learning about bicarb soda since finishing reading Portal.  Both books are quite fascinating, and I think Portal is a particularly valuable read on birth, as it explores many of the untalked about aspects of bringing life into the world.

Arden finally finished this Guns'n'Roses jigsaw puzzle.  He was finding the black rather challenging!

We found one of our favourite coffee vans down by our stretch of the river, which was a lovely surprise.  They have fabulous Polish pastries.

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.

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2025

Funny reading this, as it was Irving's birthday yesterday!  Willow came up and stayed with us for it, and baked him a blackforest cake, and we had a lovely day out celebrating his 12th birthday.