Blackberries and cows in the backyard... almost

It is really quite cool having a farm almost next door. The kids have discovered much to their delight, that the field is full of wild blackberry bushes. They want to go on an almost daily visit to pick the newly blackened blackberries. We could hear the cows mooing from the backyard so I took the kids over to see them, and they were not as close as I thought... a few paddocks over, but the kids still had fun looking at them through their binoculars. I love it because it reminds me of the trips to the woods we would take when I was younger growing up in Barnsley... and the blackberry picking and blackberry pies and blackberry jam my mum would make from the collection.

 The view from our front garden

 The girls looking at the cows

 Anna-Maria posing for the camera

 Ella-Rose following suit

 Little Lily trying to see whats going on too

 Four kids having fun

Picking and tasting blackberries... yum!

As for Narnia, we are 3 chapters away from finishing 'Voyage of the Dawn Treader'. I can't believe I didn't read these when I was a kid. There are some really great values in there - in addition to the awesome adventures of course.

The shopping trip - what a disaster. I had wanted to get a freezer before Tane went away so I could fill it up and not have to take all the kids shopping for a big shop... or even not at all. However we were pretty busy and that ended up not happening. So today we were running pretty short on supplies... we were down to our last carrot after morning tea... you know you're low when the kids have to have carrots for tutti fruiti time.
At first Joshua and Joseph decide to have some kind of crazy wrestling match in the supermarket. Talk about  embarrassing. However I managed to distract them by sending them on search and find missions to various regions of the supermarket looking for items on our list. Phew survived after an hour and a half... with poor Lily intact, but it is impossible to have her and Ella-Rose in the same shopping trolley. Ella just wants to bite, scratch and basically terrorise her sister.

In the evening after dinner, we had our family home evening and planted our winter garden. Joseph chose brussel sprouts (or little soccer balls - as he calls them), Anna-Maria chose cauliflower - her favourite thing for dinner, Josh chose broccoli and I got pak choy, spinach and leeks. Unfortunately as the older kids were transplanting their seedlings, Ella-Rose decided to pull all the leek seedling out... so only a very small fraction of them were planted in the garden. Also mental note to myself... to make this garden work we need to get a soak hose tomorrow - the gardern is so dry, even despite multiple trips to the tap with buckets, it remains as dry as ever.

Ella-Rose: Has been practising counting. We have a funny game she likes to play on the trampoline. She jumps and we count to 10 and then splat - she splats onto the trampoline, has a giggle and then gets back onto her feet to start again. She is learning her colours by gardening. She is learning not to pick the green tomatoes but to wait until they are orange. We have some strange orange tomato variety. They are simply delicious and taste almost a cross between a tomato and an apricot if that is even possible.

Joshua: Is reading 'Call of the Wild'. Although he only needed to read 1 chapter today... he of course became immersed and didn't come up for air until I suggested we go outside to look at the cows. He really likes animals, so is also reading a book all about horses, the different breeds, purposes and how to look after a horse.... He also likes to look at the horses available on Trademe... and is dropping hints to me such as 'we need a paddock to put a horse in'.

Joseph: Is enjoying practising the piano and committing his pieces to memory. He played 'Set' with Anna-Maria. It is a really great game for pattern spotting, he was teaching Anna-Maria how to identify a set. She was initially frustrated, but in the end she managed to put a few good sets together. His homeschool goals consisted of 'lots of PE every day'. So today that consisted of lots and lots of bouncing on the trampoline.

Anna-Maria: Is the most motivated child. She wrote in her journal, practised her spelling words and played 'Set". She also had a really unfortunate accident today :(  She was bouncing on the trampoline and moved back too far. As she came down she landed with each leg astride the bar and then fell onto the floor. Poor thing. She was beside herself, but after spending an hour in bed - doing paired reading with Joseph (Hansel and Gretel, & Bubbles) she was back to her normal self. She was happy because we put her new curtains up in her room. And I was happy to because they are much thicker and make the room much darker and hence it hopefully will be easier to convince the girls it really is bedtime even though the sun is still shining outside.

Lily: Had her first taste of solids today. She seemed to really enjoy it after the first 2 tsps of wondering what on earth is this new stuff. She had pear and banana with baby rice. She is also really enjoying trying to grab hanging toys and she is smiling and chuckling a lot.

Beach fun!

Yesterday was a stunner of a day... and being a public holiday we went to the beach. We went to Raglan for a Stake activity. Anna-Maria was so surprised to see black sand "I have never seen back sand before!"

And she was full of questions about how it became black.

Ella-Rose was initially cold in the water so spent some of the afternoon snuggled up in my jacket.

Later on in the afternoon we couldn't pull her out of the water, she loved it.

The boys and Tane waited for high tide so they could jump off the bridge. Josh and Tane jumped a few times but Joseph thought he would wait till next time - (because by then he would be taller and the drop would therefore be less - according to him). But he still enjoyed hanging on the edge of the bridge with his Dad as and still felt pretty brave about that.

Joshua also had fun creating a sand dam on the beach to prevent water from high-tide returning back to the estuary.

I know it looks like they are playing in mud, but it is black sand honest!

I tried to keep little Lily in the shade as much as possible, but that didn't stop her from smiling a lot. But it is so difficult to catch her smiles on camera. She smiles, I point the camera, she thinks I've gone and stops smiling... and this just repeats itself over and over till I have about a hundred half smiling photos. So here are the best ones.

She is such a little cutie... and seems so much older than she was when she was born nearly 4 months ago.

After exhausting ourselves silly and working up a big appetite... we got wind of a rumour that there was a tsunami warning due to an earthquake in the Solomon Islands. Well, we had been at the beach for about 6 hours and our rumbling tummies were craving some junk food, so it was time to depart. But of course we had to take a detour to Manu Bay so Tane could goggle at the surf. After a while I asked him whether he wanted to come home with is or hitch a ride home... I think he got the message, as he was getting hungry too.

I think you could say, a good time was had by all.

Sunday Kung Fu!

In our home the Sabbath day is a special day being the Lord's day and we try to teach this to our children. We encourage them to choose activities which help them grow closer to their families and to Jesus Christ. The following conversation was over heard today.

Joseph - "Do you want to play Kung Fu?"
Anna-Maria - "Yes, but everyone in the Kung Fu class has to be in the true church because today is           Sunday."

Today was Lily's blessing - performed by her Daddy and assisted by Grandpa and Uncle David (Brother Morris). Lily is such a cutie. Tane left us again for 3 more weeks of training in the territorials in Waiouru. I think he is in for another 3 weeks of PAIN!! Better him than me... motherhood is certainly makes me tired and grumpy at times but is not associated with that level of PAIN.

Tane took the boys for a hike up to the Pinnacles. It took them 5 hours to get up to the hut. The boys were so proud of themselves to have made it... and their Dad was even prouder of them. They had a great father-son outing and Tane had lots of opportunities to teach them skills and tips he learnt during his army training.

They slept at the camp that night and walked down the following day. They were so wasted the following day, but they really loved it. Joshua keeps saying how much he is going to miss his Dad and I think it is mostly because of the great bonding time they had together.

Hand-Clapping Games

Today I showed Anna-Maria some of the hand-clapping games we used to play at playtime at school.
We played 'Miss Mary Mack' and 'Under the Bramble Bushes'. We also did 'A sailor went to sea, sea, sea'. She really enjoyed it and picked the up very quickly. I wanted to show her these games so she had some less boisterous games she could play while we are at social gatherings and there may not be much space to run around. It seems sad to me to see a bunch of kids huddled round a computer while one or two are engaged in playing, when they could be doing so many more things with their time.

Ella also had a great time trying to join in and we taught her how to do  pat-a-cake.

Resources
Funclapping is a cool website that has videos of children doing the clapping game so you can learn the tunes as well as the actions.

Winnie the Pooh performance

Anna-Maria performed at the theatre last night. They did so well. This time Anna-Maria lip-synced the words as she was supposed to instead of repeating them after the fact.
Joseph was Christopher Robin and Anna-Maria was Tigger. They both did really well, but I think Joseph was a bit bamboozled by being on stage in front of an audience.

The recital started at 5.30pm and went on till 9pm with a 10 minute break in the middle. I thought the kids would not want to stay that long (there were 55 dances), but they stayed it out until 8.40pm when Anna-Maria finally started to get tired. Joseph was very excited watching the other performances, often bouncing up and down in his seat. The only one who did get tired was Joshua, who wanted to go home at 7pm, but I suspect more than anything he just wanted to read his books (He is ready the 5th Harry Potter book, the second time round).

Here are a few pics of them moments before they went onstage.

Awards and bombs

Anna-Maria is at the stage where she is taking everything in and asking lots of questions ...
what does accurate mean?
 what does mercy mean?
what does appreciate mean?

In family scripture reading we were discussing Matthew 16:27

For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.


We talked about how we will be rewarded when Jesus comes again if we choose the right.


The next day, Anna-Maria said "I can't wait till Jesus comes so I can get my award".




Today I was singing the word "Beautiful Zion built above."


Anna-Maria asks "Why did Zion build a bomb?"

Anna-Maria's first day of school

Anna-Maria started school on Friday... funny day of the week to start, but that's what they did. She was so excited about putting her uniform on and was ready as soon as she got up... and trying to get out the door with lunchbow in bag, and backpack on by 7.30am. When we got to school she could hardly wait to get to her class - she had an extra 30 mins after the boys started school.
When we went into the classroom, she played blocks and did a few puzzles and settled in nicely. She had to find her name, and wear a badge with her name on.

Also Joshua has started trumpet lessons. He was inspired to play the trumpet after watching Elder Groberg on 'The other side of Heaven'. Now all the kids want to learn the trumpet too!

Life in Australia

Beautiful weather, beautiful beaches... We are staying in a beautiful house... right across the road from the kids school.

Price-wise, things seem to cost the same as in NZ, except you get a nicer house for the same price, and if you are earning more, then comparatively things are cheaper... so are for us... and many other kiwis who come over.

One thing we have noticed over here is the standard of education is so much more advanced than NZ.
This has become startlingly obvious in just a few weeks at the difference in schoolwork that Josh was doing in NZ compared with here. Back in NZ he was doing 12 + 4 etc, but here the children in his class... which is a mixed class of children his age and a year younger are doing sums like 572+ 346. They also have done a lot more advanced work telling the time and using money... so Josh (and to a lesser extent Joseph), have a wee bit of catching up to do, but they'll get there soon.

Anna-Maria however will be off to a flying start... she has already got a lot of basic words and maths facts sorted out and she is so excited about starting school in the new year.

I am enjoying my job, but they keep changing my roster. Initially I was working 32 hours a week... but in december they have increased it to 44, and they seem to have rostered me to work every single weekend between October and December. I am going to try and talk them into rostering me sensibly. In the meantime, I have been looking into GP work for when my contract ends, and Tane has a few more weeks to wait for his practicing certificate... He is then going to apply for legal aid status and look for a job...

The kids are enjoying life here. Yesterday they found we have a large lizard living in our garden. I thought it was a snake, but Tane assured me it wasn't. Today straight after school we went to the beach. The kids loved it... Tane tried to teach Josh to surf... then Tane had a surf. Joseph and Anna-Maria played in the whitewash. All the kids dug a series of channels and holes in the sand, which Ella-Rose loved crawling into and sitting in. As we were sitting on the beach I said to Tane it feels like we are on holiday and yet we aren't. It's just the beach is so close we can be there in 5 mins after school is finished. We got home around 5.30pm and would have stayed longer except Ella-Rose's teeth were chattering and she was getting cold.

The girls and I went to Bunnings Warehouse today and bought a spade, compost, and plants (capsicums, red onions, hot chillis, cucumbers, coriander and tomatoes). So tommorrow we have to get out in the garden and finish preparing the vegie patch so we can plant them.

Fun in the Sun...

Believe it or not we took these pics just a few days before we had snow. Crazy weather. It was so beautiful on Saturday it hardly felt like winter. Anna-Maria has "Ralfie" a special soft toy they can take home from Kindy for a day or two.

We put Ella-Rose on the grass for the first time and she had a fun time feeling and tasting it.

It's snowing!!

We've lived here for 4 years now and today was the first time it has snowed in Blenheim. The kids were really excited but Tane and I are really nervous as we are supposed to be driving to Mum and Dad's on Friday and the 2 main routes there are closed.

We are hoping that maybe it will melt by then or at least enough to open the roads... otherwise we might be stranded with no home and nowhere to go...

Here is Anna-Maria excited about the snow. Not enough to settle, but the forecast is snow for another day or so... you never know...

And a few pics of her trying to catch the snow.

You can't even see the snow on the photos but believe me it was there... and it was cold.... still is... outside. We are all toasty warm inside with the heat-pump cranking... The kids are ready for school in their T-shirts and I have to remind them although it's 24 degrees inside, it's 2 degrees outside.

Now just for fun... our hot water is not working... we have no idea why...but on the coldest day... it decides to pack up. Great. The kids will just be having a wash in front of the heat-pump tomorrow. We'd better get that sorted as we're moving in 4 days.