So just recording some bits of family stuff along the way from the last couple of weeks.
Valentines was sweet & simple. I made cupcakes for my family & made little love notes. I snuck them into the big girls school lunch boxes, and had morning tea with Jeff & the 3 littlies at home. Jeff made me a card, handmade, so cute, and bought me lovely flowers. I made Jeff a card & bought him a jumbo pack of apricot delight from the health food store. Its his fave.
We spent the morning doing nothing but lazing around, napping, talking & playing with the kids. We purposefully decided not to do any jobs or run any errands. It was nice. Perfect.
So wgat else has been going on? Oh just a little early morning nail polish & make up session between the twins & Bud.
Lovely painted toes and wrecked carpet. Oh well, the carpet runs through all the bedrooms & my art room & we would have been replacing it when we eventually sell up anyway. It was a bit cute & funny, definitely naughty, but I was unable to get super mad over it. C'est la vie.
Big girls got hair cuts for school going back. Home made hair cuts because I just ran out of time. I straightened it after and they felt very special indeed.
Chelsea had her annual cardiology appointment and she's doing very very well. No anticipated surgery expected throughout her schooling, once an adult & her body is much bigger, we'll see if any of that changes. All good so far so we are celebrating that! How cute is that tiny blood pressure cuff?
The school girls are back into their homework routine. Sunday to Thursday they read their school reader, sometimes 2 or 3 if they are enthusiastic, I also get them to do some free writing, just to practice handwriting, sentence structure etc. And we also do spelling tests. Sometimes we do maths problems & this week we'll be starting a new 100 long sight words list - picking out a few and putting them into sentences. Each night takes about 30-40 minutes.
I'm not sure if that is too much or not but its not beyond them & I have noticed the reinforcement to be worthwhile & the improvement evident. There are some occasions when we are all just too tired and nothing is done but that would probably be once every 3 or 4 weeks.
I could go on & on about homework but I think I'll save that for another day. Its working ok for us right now & the girls are doing nicely at school.
Dinner times are a mixture of stress [usually because I have a small boy hanging onto my leg while I am cooking for 6, not easy], constant reminding of table manners, singing [that would be Georgie], hilarity [thats usually Chels & Bud providing the entertainment], meals that suit all & a bunch of grumpy pantses. 4 of them love tacos. I make myself something else, usually a chicken wrap so I can eat mostly the same stuff. Amelia likes a ham sandwich but with taco stuff on the side. He's an aerial view [yes I stood ON the table] of taco night!
Its been quite warm here lately. On one cooler day, I was going to take Bud out for a bike ride but found I had a flat tire! New bike pump purchased on the weekend so I look forward to getting out this week! Anyway, so instead of riding that nice cool day, we took the kids for a walk down to the river to feed the ducks. Only we had a whole pile of bread and not one duck came. A bit sad.
So we stopped at the park on the way home and they had a little play. Happiness restored.
There has been lots of tidying and messing going on around here. And some more tidying & more messing.... I got so sick of it last week so I pulled every toy out of every box and sorted the whole lot out. I filled 2 garbage bags with broken toys & toys with missing parts. It felt good! Here's Bud giving the place a once over with a toy vacuum.
Just after this photo I went and labelled all the black boxes too so everything is very neatly organised. Must do this upstairs with the great wall of expedit! I also moved the boxes up higher so that the kids need us to help move from one activity to the next. They know the house rules about one activity at a time but they often get too excited and move on and before we know it we have many boxes emptied. So far the cleanup between activities is much easier for them and they are actually doing their tidy up much better.
Random chalk art outside on the paving, by Chelsea. I adore her faces. They actually have great character with that long nose she draws.
As I mentioned, we've had lots of hot weather lately and the kids go a bit stir crazy of they can't burn up energy outside. So last week they brought the skipping ropes inside and we had some jumping activity going on. Until it turned into a big squabble about who's turn was next or something...
On the way home from the city one day, I took the little kids down onto the River Torrens. I definitely want to do this more. What a beautiful city we have. This is the view from the river bank right outside the Adelaide Cricket Oval. It looks over to our city where you can see the Festival Centre, the Convention Centre, Adelaide Casino, Parliament House etc. The Popeye boat was just down stream a bit. We saw people out on the little paddle boats and there were a zillion black swans & ducks around. Fabulous.
Mr Bud is growing rapidly & his language is exploding. He comprehends pretty much everything I say. I can ask him to do things and if in the mood he'll do them. If not, he'll tell me 'no'. Hmmmm, some work to be done! But he's also using 3, sometimes 4 word mini sentences and knows so many words. He has a cute lisp too. I love it. He's starting to call the girls by their proper names more too. Instead of calling Georgie & Charlotte, Yaya and Yaya and calling Mimi & Chelsea, both, Mimi! He is now calling them Yaya, Char Char, Mimi & Chess-eee.
He's also a climber, into everything, very curious & still a little sooky cuddly boy. Right now I think he's teething. A few of us have not been well over the weekend but he's still not any better. But yes, I think it must be some teething as quite a few symptoms match up. Extra extra sooky right now.
As the little ones are becoming more independamnt with their play, I am able to get bits of my graphics work done throughout the day. I am however, brought endless cups of tea by the little people, which is lovely, but it means my work hours end up probably more than is neceassary. Oh well, I'm lucky to be able to work from home & sitting amongst the play, or right in the middle of it!
Mimi has become very interested in writing lately. And every so often has been asking to do homework. Bless her. So I write some words and she copies them. Most of all, she like writing her own name.
The hot days have delivered some beautiful warm evenings & we have taken the kids to the beach for dinner & a paddle. They all love it.
And finally, my dear Uncle Mike, my dads younger brother, passed away recently. It has ben crushing for our whole family, particularly for his 3 chuldren. After the funeral, we had a traditional Irish Wake at The Gov. My dad played in the music session as did my Uncle Tim & many of Uncle Mike's friends. The Gov has a special connection to our family. My grandad, Tim Snr was a well known Irish tin whistle player and a large framed picture of him, hangs on the wall at The Gov. The 3 brothers are very musical and have played traditional Irish music together at all sorts of places over the years but many many times at The Gov. RIP Uncle Mike xoxoxo
Kate xo
