A week that seemed like a month...

Raven's picture of Eric, that's after a family vote we decided to call our kitten.

Above: Our primary and secondary colour lesson. Below: cute Kai!

Dante's birthday on the 19th - below is the RC Smasher Destroyer, one of his favourite presents...

Above is Dante's Transformer - it transforms into a tank. Below Labyrinth and Monika all dessed up and read to go to a birthday party.

So this week there was 3 birthday parties involving our children, and one birthday - Dantes! We've also been very busy doing a whole lot more. I'll begin with the parties first. Monika's lovely fairy friend turned 3 and had a tea party at Kingston Beach. Unfortunately Monika was unable to enjoy herself too much as she has been suffering even worse of late with her diahhrea. I'll be blogging about that in my other blog. That and the lovely early autumn warmth had us leaving early. I only took the time out to go put my free spotlight $10 voucher to good use - I brought choc making moulds for Easter this year because of all the allergy/intolerance in the children means it's safer to make our own - and hopefully cheaper too... and to exchange some clothes for Labyrinth. Monika slept a lot in our travels and over the next couple of days enjoyed hydrolyte icy poles.

Next party was for thier cousin George (My sister Tania's lad) who was turning 4 - a HJs pirate party. There isn't a single food on their menu that's GF, so master Raven had a LegsNBreast chicken and chips meal - but they managed to contaminate it and got him and me sick for the evening/next day. Never going back there! But at the time it was a good evening for them, and I reaquainted with many mormon people including my brother and sister-in-law, whom I never see because I don't believe in it anymore - and purely business when it comes to Michael's Mob... how enlightening and such a sense of freedom I have that I'm definately not giving up now. But it was nice to see them. George has grown tall and thin!

Friday, the day of birth for two cousins, Dante and Micheal's son Rueben. Ironic in a way as I had two friends who were inseperable long ago in a past life by those names. Dante was born 12.5 hours before! Anway, it was a day of shinanigans. Firstly the timing was off with appointments for me to take back and get another sleep apnoea machine, put off so much we couldn't get a parking spot near the pool on the domain so we went to Glenorchy Pool, it was booked out by a high school.... so we gave him his first present, the RC ship pictured above. He had a great time playing with that until a change over of batteries and lack of connection seen Andrew diving into the highly polluted water to retrive said ship only to rip a sizably deep gash into the sole of his foot. It bled for a long long time and so we went straight home to lunch and phoning around Doctors... so it was a huge boring wait before being seen and being told that it couldn't be stitched with a high likelihood of infection, most of the gunk taken out, script in hand and off to Rueben's Mini-Golf party. Dante over ate on the sweets and made himself ill, he came home to Kai who was also under the weather with high temps and a sore neck (a few moments of menigitous concern - but then his temp fell as quickly as it came. Cupcakes were his birthday cake of choice with underwater animal lollies. He felt a little sad and ripped off, but he'll have an unbirthday to make up for it later. As with all birthday traditions the birthday boy gave a small gift to each sibling - it really does work as an antidote to sibling rivalry! This is what was given:

Labyrinth - A new dress Kai - A model tank Raven - Transformer ship Monika - a Littlest Pet Shop Monkey Plushie (he had his eyes on that gift for weeks! Monika and her Monkeys!)

So some of the lessons we've squeezed in are: The primary and secondary colours, and how to make them, making and decorating cupcakes, gardening, McDonalds math (it's pretty good for free), singing, parts of speech, 3 lessons of Japanese, a lesson of Spanish, Monster's We Met Documentary, some new books, reading aloud/chapter books, PE, forming an argument, and drawing.

Fun...without the sun!

Whoever said you can't have fun without the sun?
I went to peg the clothes on the line this morning, in the vain hope it may not rain :) to find my eldest three really enjoying their play. They were pretending to take on the roles in Go Diego Go, using english and spanish, and enjoying themselves immensely! Under a bleak and sunless sky, the kind that permeates a day of wind, cold and rain - bleached and muted colours. I was quite pleasantly surprised to find they were very happily enjoying themselves, and learning at the same time (Dante was Diego, and they were in the south pole with penguins). How cute is that?

Other breakthroughs: *Raven is toilet training! YAY! We have a tradition, with the first wee on potty they recieve a gift. Raven is Dora the Explorer mad, so he chose a Dora heart shaped bowl. He has succuessfully been three times now, and only one accident, so far so good. That was Thursday his first.
*Kai is getting along with reading, very slowly but he is reading and so excited to be reading. Dante is cruising, well into second grade. Labyrinth is very nearly finished the first grade review (under a week she has completed the review course - which is very nearly the whole course). Raven is learning to speak Spanish, as is everyone in the family. We are also teaching German and Japanese.
*A sister of mine is pregnant, and a brother is moving into a 2 storey 5 bedroom home, and already was buying a large home.
*Monika is very nearly crawling. She is just over 5 months. She can say a few words clearly enough for Andrew and I to understand.
*Our neighbours from hell have moved out. We can only hope the people who move in will be decent!!!

On Thursday we did the spectrum of reading, writing, spelling and maths. On Friday was just reading. I want to be doing reading daily so they don't slip behind. They are keen. I've also told THEAC we are teaching Kai this year, so they'll be adding him and coming to visit soon. Before we had 2 years dispensation...

Enjoying life without our beloved sun, Q.