Summer Holidays- finally here

In my preferred Summer routine- we take December off, starting just before Arden's birthday, January off and all of February.  Starting back into some routine with paid classes in Feb, but waiting til March, when usually the worst of the hot weather is over, to do some planned learning at home.  This year continued in the same manner, however my one free day to sit and do some at home jobs, and keep up with my hobbies, was filled up visiting a friend in hospital, and thus this blog has been neglected for the beginning of this year.

Finally life is settling back into our usual routine, and I have found some time to update some of our learning this past year.

This year there was an around the City exhibition of decorated dolphins (to raise money for the Children's hospital I believe), so Arden, Irving and I went out to try and see them all.  In the end, we just missed one.

We managed to get out and about to quite a few Fringe and Festival shows this year.  Some of our highlights- we seeing Movin Melvin Brown, and trying tapdancing in his tap class. (I'm planning to get his DVD so we can continue, as it was a lot of fun.  )

Arden and Irving did a pirate adventure in Applecross at the pirate playground, and also in the Perth Cultural centre.  The story telling and role play was a lot of fun for all the kids.

Stopping off at South Perth on the way home.

Arden and I dancing some rockabilly.

Having a bit of fun at the Courtyard Sessions, after dancing.

Walking home after an education session with Noel Nannup, on the story of the land, at Lake Monger. (This was one of my favourite outings at the Festival this year- the whirling dervish performance, White Spirit, was the other).

Hanging out with Willow and Gabriel in Northbridge Piazza with a very fuzzy Totoro, waiting for Princess Mononoke to start, in the Studio Ghibli Festival.

Willow spent quite a bit of time at Fringe this year, doing flyering, and helping to promote shows this year.  She also went to see Club Swizzle with Damien which apparently was very entertaining.  We all loved the Showman's fair area of the Fringe this year, and we spent just a bit too much of our time there eating stroopwaffles.  In the end we loved them so much, that they gave us the recipe and the machine!

Our regular Burn's night event (since living in Scotland) involves whisky for the adults and poetry reading.

A quiet coffee moment with the little people.

Arden and Irving's beading.

Irving and I did some wandering around Daglish, after visiting a shop there, and we found these cute crossing signs.

Skateboarding

A rainy afternoon

So time for a teddy bears' picnic.

Library stop

Visiting Pompeii at Fremantle.  This was the second time that I have seen this exhibition, and the one thing that I missed this time, was the crystals.  Last time I didn't have a proper chance to look through the crystals (and I was hoping to do that this time) but there was very few, except in the dress-ups at the end.

 Some of the sewing projects that I've been working on.

A quilted skirt

Pillowcase for Damien

Transforming my old jeans, into a skirt.

Red velvet skirt for Willow's Christmas present this year.

Performance Central 2

Our Saturday evening;PIAF's opening event- HOME!

We were all pleased to be part of the Home opening.  The performance was the first I've seen where it felt like Australia celebrated it's Aboriginal story, good and bad, and all the other cultures that now call this place home.  It felt like perhaps we are starting to get it, that the Aboriginal people are as important as every other culture in this land. 

We also attended Lil Bizarro at the Fringe last weekend, which we loved!  All the performers were engaging and entertaining and did something a bit different from the usual circus show.

Damien and Willow both received offers for the Chorus of Iolanthe.  Reahearsals starting in March, which is great as it means that Willow can get to most of this terms musicianship classes.

Tonight we are off to the Get Lost Maze, most likely our last Fringe outing for this year.

Performance Central

This week has seen quite a bit of performance happening. 

Thursday last week, Irving and I were out in the city, when we were the lucky recipients of some tickets to see "William the Great" at Fringeworld.  So four of us headed out to their evening show, and it was fabulous!  There was a good variety of circus, and an amusing storyline that flowed well throughout the show.  Willow was pleasantly surprised to discover that Felix Pouliot, who taught her some chinese pole last year was in it.

Over the weekend Arden was invited to be a paperboy and busk harmonica in the Streetside festival in Northbridge.  From about 12noon til 5pm Arden walked up and down William st waving papers (from 1924!) yelling "paper!paper!" and various other headlines from the 1924 news.  Such as "Horse bolts down James St! Lands in Lorry!"  We did a little bit of research to help him out,which involved watching some old footage of paper boys, and then he got dressed up for the day.  He absolutely loved it and is apparently sorry that it's not possible to actually be a paper boy in this era.

Damien and Willow both auditioned for Gilbert and Sullivan's production of "Iolanthe" for this year, over the weekend.  Whilst they were out doing that Irving and I went for a walk around Elizabeth Quay, which wasn't overly pleasant, as there is *very* little shade there, the water playground wasn't working and it was an extremely hot day (42C), so I think in future we'll avoid visiting there in the heat.

This week we've been getting our lanterns ready for PIAF festival, with the rehearsal happening tonight for tomorrow's opening.  Arden isn't old enough to be in the official procession, but Willow and Gabriel will be in it, and all our lanterns will be hung up.  (Irving made one too with my help.)

Our lanterns looking ready. (They are coloured on the inside, so that they were glow beautifully!)

Irving working on his oil pastels, on a spare lantern.

This is the promo for the opening tomorrow night.

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.

-

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.