Book Week!

It's happening again! Much later in the year than usual, thanks to the global pandemic situation, but we are excited none the less. 

The girls chose somewhat less famous books and characters this year, but are so stoaked with their costumes. And I, of course, had fun making them come to life. Stay tuned for the costume breakdown!

Random Things

 Here are some things I've been doing lately. Firstly, making a rope net. 

Thanks to the internet and it's never ending resources, I was able to figure out how to tie this. I took down the swings on the swing set and hung this instead. It's hard to see in the photo below, but it works fine, holds my weight and is providing quite the challenge for the kids. 

We've picked a lot of tomatoes. Rachel helps by eating them before I can put them in the bowl. 

She especially likes these bumpy mutant ones. I don't know why.

I've been giving tomatoes away by the punnet for the last week and we still have so many, with more on the bushes ripening every day. So many tomatoes. Time too look up a recipe for chutney maybe? 

I've also been reading my bible. 

To be honest, there has been a bit of a slow down here, and I'm a bit fatigued to still be in the prophets of the Old Testament. But then I look at the Bible when I open it up like this and realise I'm over half way. This waiting to get to Jesus must surely be doing wonders for me somehow. And spending time reading the minor prophets especially, in The Message Translation, has given me a much better understanding for God's character, and what he is really concerned about in life. 

"Do you know what I want? 

I want justice; oceans of it. 

I want fairness; rivers of it. 

That's what I want. That's all I want."

Amos 5:24

Camping 2020

I almost don't want to post about this. The spot we camped at was so perfect that I want no one else to go there, so that we can book it out whenever we like. Alas, I know that would be selfish of me, and so I am sharing this with the world. We went camping, and it was perfect. 

This is probabaly the hightlight of our September holidays actually. We did two nights away with Sophie's friend and his parents, who I took the girls camping with last year. This time, Steve came too! 

We went to a property in Fernvale, so we had the whole place to ourselves. It was so perfect, becuase we were right on the river. It was cool and shady, even in the middle of the day. Our friends brought their cannoe and the water was just warm enough for a swim. 

There were fish in the river, so we tried our luck at hand line fishing, with no success. 

We played DnD with our friends, had campfires and generally lay around. 

Compared to the 14k hike we went on last year, this was so relaxing. To be perfectly honest, we didn't do much at all, and as I'm typing this, I feel like it's not even worth a post. Even getting there was only 40mins drive! We didn't even listen to a whole musical album in the car. But it was refreshing and fabulous, so I want to remember it and I'm posting this anyway. 

I'm surprisingly even more keen for camping again. It's so irrational, but we had a great time. The girls have scored themselves two extra days off school at the end of this term, and I'm wondering if they aren't ready for a solo adventure with me prehaps? 

All the Reading

Reading is really the best way to avoid the world. It was true when I was a kid, and it's true now. Want some escapism? Read a book. Everything turns out all right in the end. So heart warming after reflecting on what is going on in the world. Never do I appreciate books as much as I do in times like these.

The last few months, I've been reading a lot out loud actually. To the girls; mostly to Sophie. After the last post on reading, I did go on to read some Narnia with the girls. I started with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which they both liked, and then I went with The Magician's Nephew. This book is a fair bit slower paced than that most famous of the Narnia Collection, so it was tougher to get through. We also noticed Rachel doesn't quite have the stickability as Sophie does with sitting around listening to chapter books, so I ended up just reading most of it to Sophie.

After that, we did The Horse and His Boy, which I really enjoyed too, and we referred to the map at the start constantly. That's something I've never done before, but was really helpful for Sophie, especially since we'd only read a chapter or two a night and then have to recap before we started again the next night.

After this, I thought we would give Narnia a break. I did some research on books that I thought might be good for Sophie to start reading herself. Even though reading with kids is absolutely my weak spot, and something I will pretty much drop everything else for, I was wanting her to develop her own confidence with longer books too. I ended up purchasing the following books.

Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George
The Kindom of Wrenly; the Lost Stone by Jordan Quinn
Fortunately the Milk by Neil Gaiman
Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

Some of them were a little beyond her, others were a good middle ground for us to take turns reading, and others were spot on. I enjoyed all of them.

We started with Tuesdays at the Castle, which was good for me to read to her, but the story line turned out to be a little political. I can see Sophie liking it in a another three or four years, so not a bad investment, just a little early. We made it half way before we moved on to The Kingdom of Wrenly which was spot on for Sophie. Chapters with pictures, easy to follow story with no scary bad guys, but enough trouble to keep you interested. This is a great book for introducing young readers to fantasy they can read themselves. We loved it.

Fortunately the Milk was next up, and a pretty great tale, even if the time travel was a bit much for a seven year old to follow along with. I've put Ella Enchanted on the shelf for now, because I think it will fall in the same realm as Tuesdays at the Castle. Sophie is keen for it though, so maybe soon.

The next thing we started was Tashi. The Tashi books are short stories with illustrations written by an Australian author. My wonderful Godmother had given Sophie a set and we picked up another at the lifeline bookfest earlier in the year. They are full of mythical creatures, dragons, ghosts and demons, as well as your typical "bad guys"; the evil Baron, the wicked Lord, the witch in the forest. Tashi always comes out on top though, through some clever trick or kindness.

Each Tashi book has two stories in it, so we've read 24 Tashi stories all up. Plus one that Rachel spontaneously brought home from the Library at school (the week before we started actually!) These were shorter, so I was reading them to both girls most days, and they couldn't get enough.

As far as what I've been reading, a new street library opened up near us, on our daily walk to school route. Oh, how I love our community. I picked up The Book Thief by Markus Zusack and The Airman by Eion Colfer. Both of these were great reads.

One of my day care families lent me a book called Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings. I was about a third of the way through before I realised it was an Australian Gothic novel. Not my usual choice for reading, but by then I was committed, so I kept going. It was easy to read, and fairly short, but not something I'll be pick up again.

Then I was graciously allowed to borrow the first five books of the Wings of Fire series by one of the kids at our church. For me, not really the intended audience, they are snack reading I guess. Easy, light, but delicious. The world building and description of each type of Dragon is really well thought out and believable. My only complaint is that at times, they dragons act like humans (raising their "talons" to show they are harmless!) but I don't think I'd have noticed as a 12 year old, and given that I'm not the intended audience, I can let it slide.

Now I'm not sure what will be next. I suppose with the girls it's time to go back to Narnia and read the fourth instalment. Given that I'm starting my last term of Family Day Care this week, maybe I won't have as much time to read for a while anyway. Such a shame. Some days, reading is life.

Tuckshop Mural

This is in no way my creation, but I spent a lot of hours over the holidays working on it, so it feels like I should get to share it with the masses. 

I've signed up to be the Secretary of the school P&C this year. Actually, I didn't sign up until July, when they really didn't have any other takers for the job. It was a learning curve and pretty full on at the start, but I feel like I'm hitting my stride a bit more now and am actually starting to enjoy the role. 

One of the things I love to see and be a part of, is stuff getting done. This is one of those things. Sometimes with a volunteer organisation, things take a long time to happen. Lots of back and forth in the discussion phase, time waiting for people to put their hand up and take ownership of projects, the seemingly desperate search for volunteers to pull it all together in the end. Painful. 

This project was quite the opposite. At our August meeting, when we were all rejoicing that our school tuckshop, which had been closed for over six months was at last up and running again with a new convenor, someone remarked offhandedly; "Wouldn't it be nice to paint the outside of the tuckshop a bit? It's a bit dreary. Maybe we could put a mural up?" 

That night, one of our parents said she'd love to do it. The next day, she'd spoken to our local real estate agent and the local Bunnings for funding, had organised another mum who was a graphic designer to do the designs, and had the go ahead from the school admin. Winning. 

There was a little bit of a wait, while we organised the final colours and paint selection, but in the last week of school, the area was cleaned, the gear and paint picked up and we were good to go. Painting happened over the two weeks of the school holidays, most days with at least three or four volunteers painting for anywhere between three to seven hours. It was a huge effort. 

And so worth it. It looks amazing. I wish I had more before shots because it's really transformed the area completely. It's the centre of the school, but you can see different sections of the murals from the road and other areas around the school. Amazing. 

I'm so stoaked that I was a part of it. Sure, it did mean that I didn't get quite as much time as I would usually with the girls over the holidays, but it's not something I'll be doing every holidays, and now they can come to school and be so excited about something their mum helped to create. That's pretty special.