Holidays

 The term 3 holidays here were very busy this time.  My brother turned up on his way from Asia back to Adelaide, and stayed for a while.  I had my home education report to organise for my moderator, we went to the Royal Perth show, and Arden was off to an Airforce Cadets camp for the second week.

Particularly the camp made things a bit complicated, as I needed to discuss aspects of the report writing with Arden.  So week one was busy getting prepped, with lots of reviewing our year, both via my planning and my notes on our calendar and pulling all of that together.  I was feeling a bit stressed out about it this time, as I had a new moderator again, and I had lost last years calendar, and some of my notes.  I did *eventually* find them all!

We went to the Show with the whole family, Willow had come up from the South- West, and my brother was here, and we had a fairly full day out at the show.  We went to see the racing ducks, and the alpacas in particular (Willow, Arden and Irving had done an alpaca handling course, so they were very keen for this).  We visited the dairy pavillion, watched the woodchopping, went on some rides, and got some showbags, and watched some of the stadium performances, including the fireworks.  The finale for the night, was Arden and I  heading onto the slingshot.  I wasn't particularly keen, but it was quite magical being shot towards the sky with the moon as our target!  We were a bit lucky with that aspect.

We also headed North to visit some friends who live out of the city, and Arden got a second outing to the show with one of his homeschool friends.

Irving got into filming and photographing the showrides, after we dropped Arden off.

I managed to catch up with some crafts, and repairs, in the second  week of the holidays.  This time I did some fabric dying, and refreshed some faded clothing of both mine and Willow's.

Arden got back mid-afternoon from his Airforce cadets camp, and we had a bit of a quiet afternoon before heading out to the Fire Garden festival at Government house.  It was visually spectacular, but a little hot!  Especially since we hadn't had many hot days yet, when it was on.

Time Flying

Somehow  with all the things that have been happening recently, I've totally managed to neglect blogging.  Our holidays flew by, and saw us doing lots of different activities and catching up with friends, as well as lodging Willow's application for WAAPA, and me being a bit unwell;totally lost my voice for a bit.

In the lead up to our holidays,  Irving, Damien and I managed to have a little adventure in the lift at Perth Train Station.  The lift went down, and the doors did not open.  For a few months Irving, had been wondering about the telephone button in the lift.  He now knows what it does, and every time we go past the lift, he comments, "I don't like stuck in lift".

Waiting to be freed from the lift.

Arden making sandwiches for dinner, with Damien's help.

We headed out to see ballet WA, just before the break; Damien took everyone bar Irving to see Radio and Juliet, and I took everyone (again bar Irving) to see Romeo and Juliet.  Radio and Juliet received mixed reviews (Damien loved it) whilst everyone loved Romeo and Juliet.  Willow in particular said that she's a fan of classical ballet.  Whilst everyone was out seeing Radio, Irving and I made chocolate coated pretzels, to have with icecream and peanut butter; was delicious!  I'm never eating shop choc coated pretzels again, they're much nicer freshly made and crispy!

Gabriel and I came across this cute little cafe on the way home from basketball, just before break time.  We loved their sign, and that they offer polite conversation (we both had one).

We headed to the Royal Perth show, for the second time.  We spent the first part of the day, wandering through the animals, machinery and looking at the crafts.  The second part of the day, we bought show bags, went on the rides, and watched the fireworks.  (After all the yelling I did near the sideshow, with my cold, I lost my voice.

We loved this vintage motor bike.

Goats!

We pulled out everyone's bikes to fix them up, and discovered that our selection of tyres was very unhelpful.  Need to visit the bike shop!  Hasn't happened yet.  :/  Though Irving has totally gotten into riding his balance bike.

Arden and Irving and myself, stopping for a swing.

Journeys

Officially it's school holidays here, but we're working on, this time, since Damien was made redundant a while ago, and whilst having started a new job, has not received his first pay.  It didn't seem worth having holidays yet, so we'll be starting ours mid- Nov which will make for a nice long Summer.

Last week saw us head down to Fremantle for a puppet show at Spare Parts Puppet theatre.  This time they were doing Shaun Tan's book "Tales From Outer Suburbia".  We own and love this book, and it was well worth seeing.  They cleverly made a model size suburbia, which they would zoom into, to tell us the various stories of suburbia.  We had a bit of a wander around Freo, whilst we were there, visiting our favourite book shop and getting fish and chips.  Arden was excited about buying his own fish and chips, as he recently started busking the harmonica, and has been doing quite well at it.

It also happened to be the weekend before the AFL grand final, and Fremantle happened to be in it, so it was covered with purple and white in spots.  This was one of our favourites.

 

This is Gabriel's geometry drawing from last week- an octagon spiral.

 This was from Willow experimenting during geometry.  This week she's moved on to loci.

A previous picture from geometry, beautifully finished.

This weeks painting with Arden.  We were working on "I", and making the fillings for our words using it.  Mill was our word for our painting.
This one is mine.

This is Arden's.

Willow headed down to the show with some friends this week, and had a fabulous time.  Apparently she only spent $3.50, as they had a lot of vouchers for rides, etc.  Mostly she'd really wanted to see the horses.  The weather was beautiful for it, but will be back to rainy tomorrow (I like the rain, but it's been nice to have some warm days again!).  Finally Damien and I took a class in four beat blues, which we are now teaching Gabriel, Willow can already do it quite well.

We've also booked Willow flights to Adelaide- she's saved enough for the first leg of her trip to a homeschool camp at the end of the year.  Now she just needs the second half!  Gabriel's also keen to visit Adelaide, and is saving for a trip to visit family next year.

Etc, etc, etc.

We have had such a fabulous holiday break- getting out and seeing more of Perth. We finally visited the Art Gallery and museum- we'd been around the cultural precinct a few times, but not to any of the galleries. We wandered around all the museum displays but the crystal and historic displays were the ones that were most appreciated. I also loved the section that used to be part of the library, it was very beautiful with it's spiral staircases up to the bookcases.

The art gallery has a visiting exhibit from the Victoria and Albert museum (which is closed til 2014 apparently). There was some stunning pieces in there, and I particularly liked the guitar on display, which was covered in engraved mother of purl, tortoiseshell and ivory. There were some amazing religious items too, like a tiny prayer book covered in emeralds. The art gallery was also holding a lego building session, in white lego blocks, to promote the exhibit. The kids really enjoyed that, and there were some fabulous models.

We also headed to the Royal show, which we found quite similar to Adelaide's but different too. There was significantly less in the craft entries, which we found interesting, since we usually enter that Adelaide show, and will likely put entries in the Perth show next year. We loved the way that there is a ferris wheel right in the arena, and the way the arena felt much more prominent- we felt this was due to it's central placing. There were some great historic displays, and we all enjoyed watching a telegram being sent and received, and the blacksmiths hard at work. We finished the evening with the fireworks, which were the best I'd seen in quite a while.

The kid's circus teacher had a show on during the holidays too, so we attended that, as well as hanging round for a circus class. We also got to Northbridge Piazza a couple of times,for the movie sessions there. We really enjoyed watching the movie, but felt it was better on a weekday, when there was less people heading out to the pubs and clubs in Northbridge. Other than that we headed out to another Organic shop, which was a fun outing, but in terms of servicing our needs for food, its selection was rather limited. And finally over this last weekend Willow and Gabriel and Damien got out to a talk about Wedge-tail Eagles- which they all enjoyed, and Arden and I discovered that there was an aeroplane show on whilst we were there, so we all went back for a look the following day. It was a great break, and I felt really refreshed for getting back into some more structured work today- particularly after making some yummy food yesterday, such as scotch eggs.

The kids also did lots of playing and creating, with Willow designing and knitting me a purse, Gabriel making lots of maps, and Arden getting involved with lots of cooking, but I suspect one of the highlights for them would have been discovering some really good toy shops!


Plus I almost forgot we visited the beach finally- Cottesloe- and found these cute tiles to lead us there from the train.

-

2025

Interesting to see that Arden and I were off watching an aeroplane show back then.  His interest in Aviation has grown and grown over the years.  When he was 11 and he used to go to an aviation history club once a month, I would tell people that he really like planes.  This was too strong in his opinion- but I think it would be fair to say that it is completely true now!

Some posts on Arden's aviation experience to date.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2023/07/2023.html

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2023/08/term-1.html

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2017/03/beach-weather.html

Arden and Aviation at TAFE.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2023/10/first-day-of-school.html

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2024/11/first-half-of-year.html

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2025/06/summertime.html