Christmas 2010: We hope you had a great day!

Our beautiful Monika after the festivities Christmas night, all tucked in bed surrounded by Tinkerbell bedding!

We love Christmas here, I just wonder how to paganise it!!! Will celebrate Yule at the proper time next year... but for now: A very happy Monika with Dora doll, Tinkerbell dolls and bedding!

A happy whole family with Nerf Guns and an ammo box full of fun foam bullets.

Labyrinth with a Silvermist doll, she also got a 14 pixel camera, and a Twilight Doona/Duvet cover.

Boys will get into their toys and make such messes~!

Above is the children on Christmas Eve, all excited for the big man in red to terrorise neighbourhoods everywhere!

Labyrinth's Doonah above, and below the boys have a new decor to their room: Dinosaurs!!

On Christmas Eve we had my parents around for honey and herb glazed ham, (made by me - it was absolutely gorgeous thank you Matt Moran!), salad and new taties. Mum brought pav with home grown berries for dessert! For brekkie the children enjoyed gluten free lolli... I mean choc chip cookie cereal for breakfast (so sweet and soo sooo bad!) For lunch we had the ham, a roast turkey, and roasted lamb on the bbq. I got witchy stuff like books, candles, incense and wooden boxes for Christmas, while Andrew got lots of models... We had a great Christmas, I hope you all enjoyed Christmas too - but best of all the happiness the children all enjoyed was the best! OH! This was our first year of getting up before the children this year, YAY for us!!

~BOO~

Its Halloween ~ Trick or Treat?

Oh, we do love our Scaries in this family, and what better time of year to get your freak on than Halloween! This Halloween wasn't about parties though, we had a quiet one as all of our other ideas fizzed out, unfortunately. Not to be perturbed, we decided to go Trick Or Treating, and have ourselves our Pizza night and a little party too. I haven't been wonderful lately as I've had more and more headaches and pain. I'll put that in the other blog. Teeth are wonderfully painful at times.

So here we have our Princess Monika first up, she's our resident fairy, Labyrinth wanted to be a witch, Dante is the swamp monster again, Raven is Batman and Kai our resident zombie, and there they are all together just before we went Trick Or Treating. It was indeed surprising how well that went, lots of people were impressed by them dressing up, one woman who had no treats gave them money~ how that made them pleased!

The second last picture is them over the 'loot' as they called it. There is quite a bit of Gluten Free there, so Raven was indeed happy. The last is of their pizzas. Raven ate the most I've ever, ever seen him eat, hell he ate more that I did that night (and he was in pain thought he was going to be sick after). His appetite is certainly improved greatly since going GF. And no, they didn't get to eat all that, they ate two little lollies and one big one, and we'll spread it out as far as we can.

We had a wonderful time, everyone enjoyed themselves, and Diego soundtrack in German is so Rammstein !! We let them watch Halloween goodness all night after that, and had some spooky dancing after. Q.

There be dragons in these here parts...and Elmer too.

Above Monika is enjoying Elmer in the Snow with Mummy - pure joy.

These are the pictures of dragons the children drew today. To help them have a really good go at it (instead of just slacking off about it) I was naughty and made it into a bit of a competition. Basically what I wanted from them was to push themselves just a little bit, and these were the results. Andrew and I decided that Kai above won the little competition. I was going to give him and all the runners up (ie the rest of the children a chupa chub each) and the winner, Kai, to recieve a chupa chub and some time on the PS3. He shows his generous heart by sharing his time playing a multi player game with all the children. I was so pleased it worked out well and everybody was really happy, so I didn't get the guilts up about making it competitive - even though in this particular case the end did indeed justify the means - everyone ended up happy.

So next runner up was Raven, he did a good effort but in drawing but lost his edge when it came to putting time into colouring it, Labyrinth next, with her very colourful and creative nose diving dragon, and Dante who usually leads the way didn't seem to have his heart in it at all, unfortunately.

Motivating them has been challenging of late. They do their standard lessons mostly happily, they just don't like doing extras (which they view the myth lessons to be). We will be doing clay dragons on Thursday, with any luck the weather will be beautiful tomorrow and we'll be spending some of the day with fellow homeschoolers in a park.

Backtracking a bit, I thought I might add in Sunday. Sunday was fantastic, we went to the local fair in Blackman's Bay to be with some friends. It was a nice hot day too. We didn't really want to spend a heap of money on the one train ride or the jumping castle, it would have cost $15 for all the children to have a bounce for ten or so minutes. Not bleeding likely. But we did fill a bag with toys for $5 - building duplo blocks, a complete wooden Thomas the Tank Engine puzzle, and a soft toy each, a box of Yowie bugs cost $2 and a large stack of books for $4. Was very pleased. Then we spent some time with our lovely friends Jess and Jade, and their children Jaz and Theo. We had a great time chatting, and her mother and psuedo sis in law Charlotte was there too for a while with their son Noah - I haven't seen Charlotte in years, same with Jess' mum. Also tried out SingStar which is a positive for Christmas.

Still haven't decided on housing options yet. Can't seem to think how we could make this space work with seven, five of which are growing at a phenomenal rate. Raven is now Gluten Free, which I'll have to update the Quasior's Recovery From Silly Yaks soon to explain all that. That is all for now, Q.

Some cute Art

But first... Monika's naughties!

Raven's House and he's really developmentally jumped! He now draws eyes and includes pupils. He draws fingers/finger nails. What a huge happy surprise!

This is Kai's house, its like a lift the flap picture showing yard/house and inside the house.

And this is Dante's house.

And here we have Labyrinth's impression of Monika and her house below.

Please excuse the formatting. Blogger seems to be doing some strange things.

They are interested in houses at the moment because we are working towards maybe building a green house on a block of land sometime in the next year... if only we could find someone who would lend a pensioner some money!

Christmas Insanity!

Hope everyone had a wonderful christmas! We did, care of a bit of assistance from Kevin 07....

naturally the children think Santa had a lot to do with it *)

The big day was so big for Monika she didn't open up all of her presents for 3 days! Very emotional about the whole experience.

SO what did Santa bring to the little Harris angels?

Labyrinth and Dante: Littlest Pet Shop (ever since they discovered it they have loved it and now have begun to play together again. Labyrinth got a walkman and Dante got a Hovercraft!

Kai: A RC Tank! A Schliech El Elephante....

Raven and Monika: Blocks to share.... the Diego and Dora variety (so they'll play together really well.

They all got bikes, a Beanie Bear each too. When I say bikes, I mean real good bikes, real brakes and real tyres for the three biggest, Raven got a Dora trike and Monika got a ride on Dora Plus mum and dad got bikes and bike trailer that Raven and Monika can ride in when we go for bike rides. They got DVDs/Blu-Rays and a game bringing us to the next point...

Santa (argh hem... Rudd) also brought us a PS3 and a PS2 (as these PS3s don't play PS2s anymore.)

We've all rather enjoyed LittleBIGPlanet very much! Raven did complete a game of Dora before getting some hang of the controller (its still too big for his little hands) but he loves to try anyway!

Stupidly, I can't play many 3D environment games as it makes me middle ear go nuts and makes me puke. But I can play LBP! YAY!

The big day also involved my sister, her boyfriend and their baby, my parents and a homeless guy round for a turkey (full turkey) and roast pork christmas lunch (there was salad and desert, too of course). None of that christmas cake/pudding for me though.... YUK! I don't like dried fruit at all.... and I can't eat cream anymore.... I really can't touch Dairy anymore. I stick with Rice Moolk and goats/sheeps cheeses and soy ice-cream... what I really really really miss though is yogurt. Greek Yogurt Company yogurt. The BEST yogurt on earth, I swear to you. It was rather rushed, I was half asleep but I enjoyed it immensely.. I only wished for a few more items for christmas I didn't get... a shed for the new bikes, a raised garden bed!

Desert for me was fresh raspberries curtesy of my Mum's garden, there was a mountain of it!

Well, I'll post more of our last month tomorrow, just briefly.... I know its a cop out, but hey, this is predominately a home school journal!