Coming to a Close and New Beginnings

 We had quite a busy finish to the year, and a very exciting start to 2026  From our very full holidays we had a fairly full term- with incidental events appearing and classes to get to.  We started off with our moderator in the first week,which went well, and that was us again til next  October. 

We finished off some English studies using Beowulf and Stephen Fry's "The Ode Less Travelled".  Interestingly Irving really got into doing the poetry, and it was really helpful that Stephen Fry had time limits for all the exercises.  It seemed to help him from getting overwhelmed, as he put all his attention into being quick!  He enjoyed finally getting to hear Beowulf, as the older kids have all talked about the story, and we have a boardgame version of it.

We moved on to the end of the Roman Empire, and interestingly Irving didn't find it as interesting as the older kids.  He was much more interested in Ancient Greece.  We also started reading 1434 to complement the topic, which worked nicely as it has a lot of discussion about where did various knowledge come from, and encouraged us to look more deeply into history.

We also read "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" this term, and Irving really enjoyed Jules Verne's writing style and his creativity with science, and how he explored and expanded on the ideas of his era.

We put in some artwork into the Darlington Arts Festival.  Irving, Gabriel and I put a piece in each, with Irving deciding to submit one of his copperwork pieces from this year.

Irving's bowl up close.

Irving's bowl on exhibition.

We had continued to make open back rings in various styles during the remainder of the last term including using rouge to polish them by hand.  We had not done this with any of our earlier pieces and Irving decided that he was going to prioritise that for his exhibition piece.

                                  

Gabriel's butterfly- above the
 exhibition sign

His piece up close

This reminded me of the first time we did an art exhibition.  We had homeschool friends in Adelaide, who ran a cafe, and they invited all the kids in the community to exhibit their work in their cafe.  That was Gabriel's first time exhibiting.  He was probably about 8.

My turtle

My abstract watercolour piece.

Since then I've been working on boats, whilst Irving has been learning to sail.

We finished our coppermaking off for the year with some engraving.  Including engraving rings....I seem to have neglected to photograph Irving's engraving.

in the vinegar pickle

  


We head to the Perth Gem and Mineral show- Irving was very interested in the Rubies.

We bought a guitar making kit a few years ago for Damien to work on with Gabriel, but for various reasons he never got around to it.  One of the things he wanted done was a pattern on the neck of the guitar- since Irving and I have done a bunch of woodwork in recent years I have made a start on it.

We've been working on Perspective drawing.  This book is really fabulous for explaining how to.

Working on perspective drawing together.

The homeschool Christmas market was a great success again, and Irving was starting to get the hang of running a stall and thinking about what sells and how he needed to manage it.  This year he was selling plants, and pendants (left over stock from last year) and his new addition was home made Scottish Tablet (it's like a crumbly fudge).  

We're back at nippers for another Summer season.

We cleaned up and unwanted delonghi kettle- it was starting to look rusted inside and we suspected it was scale build up from Perth's iron heavy water.  Turned out we were right, after a lot of descaling- it cleaned up nicely and we now have a lovely new kettle.

Just because I really liked the latte art, and I think I've found my new favourite drink- hot black sesame latte.

Our final home ed excursion for the year was to the fisheries department.  We learnt a lot and Irving had an interesting time doing his first dissection.

Working on lego models.

Finishing off the year and beginning eventually too we had a couple of birthday highlights.  First of all Arden turned 18......and around the same week finished his Diploma in Aviation Management and finished off airforce cadets.  It was a very eventful week or so for him!  So he had an eventful 18th by starting the day with skydiving.

Here he is landing after his dive

Whilst we were off at Jurien Bay we stopped at the beach for a swim.

the water was lovely

Final stop for the day was Lancelin, where we all went sandboarding.  We'd meant to do this before, and it kept getting delayed.  We had a lot of fun and I'd definitely go again!

And the final birthday news is that there is a new member of our family!  Willow and her fiance, have welcomed their first child....she was meant to arrive in December, but made us all wait out for almost the very end of New Year's day.  Her name is Aurelia, and everyone is very excited about her arrival!  Although there might be some people feeling that they are a bit young to be uncles!

Summertime

 I seem to begin every year meaning to post our activities more regularly, and this year seems to have ended up the same.  Partly because, we have been very busy, and partly because now that I only have Irving left to home educate, I am trying to take advantage of having some small amount of time to myself again.  Amusingly Arden is very insistant that he is *still* home educated, but he isn't in that system any longer, but is busy off at TAFE, studying for his Diploma in Aviation Management.

We started off the year with a week of sailing, with Irving doing tackers 2, and he got a last minute offer to do Vacswim too, and so we also did a week of that.  It was lovely being out on the beach daily again.

We headed out to a lovely local Italian restaurant, Maruzella's for my birthday, where I got a complimentary birthday drink.  :)

We headed out to Northbridge to watch the 2025 Ausroad Cycling Nationals.

Trying out the new train line- heading out to Whiteman park.

Walking back to catch the train.

Irving doing some lego building, basing his design off a model in a recently purchased book.

Some of my recent paintings.  I haven't done a lot of painting this year- I've been busy doing some crafts again, and doing a bit more reading.

Fishes, Family, Learning

There has been a mixture of interesting things going on around here, over the last month or so, with the last couple of weeks being holiday time.  The last couple of weeks of term 3 we had quite a few outings, and Damien had just finished a contract, so he was at home a bit to help out, before starting his new job.

A rare moment of just Irving and I hanging out; so we made a fabuland lego village.  (Willow was at uni, and Gabriel and Arden had gone to basketball class with Damien.)

Gabriel and Arden did another first aid class, and refreshed and built on the skills that they had learnt previously.  I have been meaning to enrol Willow and Gabriel into a first aid certificate, now that they are both older, and especially because we live almost adjacent to red cross.  Hopefully we can get to that next year!

I arranged an education session for Gabriel and some other home educated students with UN Youth, which proved to be quite interesting.  It had been a bit chaotic to organise (as sometimes happens) so it was quite a relief to get there on the day, and have everyone turn up, and it all go to plan.

On the way home after the UN talk, Gabriel and I head to Koko Blacks for a relaxing drink and chat.

We also had a couple of performance outings- everyone but Willow went to see Spare Parts Puppet theatre perform Shaun Tan's "Rules of Summer" and then Willow, Gabriel and I went to see WA Ballet perform "the Great Gatsby".  Both of these were my favourite performances by these groups.  "Rules of Summer" was very interactive, and "The Great Gatsby" expressed the interplay of relationships through dance in what I felt was an interesting manner, compared to the very traditional ballets.

Hard waste time was on around here again, so we went for a bit of an explore to see what we could find.  Arden and I came across this vintage sewing machine, seems to need a bit of love, so we're now taking a look at sewing machine repair.

On the sewing theme, I made Gabriel some trousers recently, and he has almost finished putting the markings on his pieces,so that he can sew himself some corduroy pants.

I added some embellishments to this old skirt, that I had sitting around in the cupboard, after taking in the waist (it was a modern hipster waist).

I am currently working on some bags, with the view to try selling some.

Arden has been really enjoying photography, and I recently saw someone mention that they really enjoyed being in the MOSAIC project, so we all went out and took photos, of what we were doing on Sat 23rd around Perth.  Arden got to share my and Damien's cameras.  Here are a few of his and my pics.

Arden's photos

My pics.

Our first week of holidays was very quiet, and we had a few outings over the second week.  Gabriel headed off to basketball training most of the second week, and he and Arden also took a fishing class, down on the Swan River.  Irving and I went exploring around Mosman Park, and visited the toy shop and fabric shop, amongst other things.  I had been hoping to mostly wander along the river with him, but it turned out to be really windy, and far too cold for him, so we stayed away from the river bank. 

This week sees Willow mostly off uni, she had a week off at the beginning of the break, and went back last week, and has this week off again, so that has been interesting.  Arden, Gabriel and I are starting our last term activities tomorrow, we were all feeling a bit under the weather today, so we took the day off basketball training.

I've ordered a loom for Arden to do some more weaving projects this term, and we will be doing some more cooking amongst other things...hopefully finish reading "the Never Ending Story"  soon, and the current "Little House" book that we are reading together.

Gabriel has been a little disorganised this past term, and Damien spent a bit of time helping him to come up with a way that he could better keep track of what he's done and has to do, and it looks like he's mostly on track now.  We've been discussing ideas and plans for him for next year, but he doesn't have a concrete direction he'd like to go, so I am imagining that next year might be filled with some variety.

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2025

Irving off to fish down South.

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