tired

At approximately nine pm on the last four evenings I have opened the laptop, logged in and stared blankly at the screen. I have admirable intentions to blog more regularly this year but by evening I am exhausted. We all are. We are in the fifth week of holidays with exactly one week left and I am ready to go back to the routine of school and work and kinder. There is lots to blog about but no energy to blog it. We have crafted, baked, museumed, ridden, coloured-in, walked, libraried, gardened, reorganised, driven, played, swum, shopped, read, painted - the list goes on. No wonder we are all knackered by evening time. As for the blog, I have very good intentions. Routine - I miss it and crave it. I will try to post properly soon and in the meantime I will leave you with a photo of Sam writing Amber a letter and looking completely and utterly exhausted. The holidays are taking their toll. Seven days left.

up, up, and away

We are very glad that Amber and Russell have managed to stay dry in the Brisbane floods. While I have kept the kids away from the news and images of the floods they are aware of them and were worried when they realised that some of the floods were close to our friends. They had the idea of sending Amber a box to "cheer her up" (I will point out here that there was no evidence that Amber needed cheering up). Apparently the perfect Cheer You Up Box has biscuits, pictures and a balloon in it. Packing the balloon in the box proved something of a difficulty, but we got there in the end...

treasures

I have been treasure hunting a bit this holiday and have found quite a few things. The pattern seems to be: see something glorious; examine it closely and fall just a little in love; walk around the rest of the shop; return to look again; determine that it is, in fact, glorious; take a photo of it with my phone; leave shop without buying it. If I spend the next week thinking about it and gazing longingly at the photo, I return to the shop. There is no guarantee that it will still be there. I approach the shop with a sense of turmoil and dread, but this may be part of my sadistic process. Mostly the item is still there. Sometimes it has gone. The true heart-in-mouth moments are when it is still in the shop but has been moved and takes some time to rediscover. This bizarre ritual is mostly about limiting impulse purchases with a dash of making myself suffer just a bit for spending money (that said, rarely is the sum of money substantial).

I love this abacus, I left it in the shop for two weeks as it was relatively expensive at $35. The vintage treasure Gods were smiling at me as it was still there - and I love it. It looks perfect with my knitting needles and wooden flash cards. Definitely worth the process.

eeek

I am rethinking with the layout of my blog. At the moment it can not be described as pretty but blogger has encountered a fatal error in the layout, template, settings thingy. This has led me to the realisation that I have not made a back up of the blog for over a year. So now I am going to do that before the next fatal error means my blog disappears never to be found. This will take a little bit of time, some frowning and a lot of frustration.

If I manage to emerge from the back up process unscathed I will be back to fix up this funky layout. If you are reading this and border text is green amidst a murky grey and the date is brown - please realise I have not lost all sense of good design; it is merely an indication that the computer has bested me for tonight. I will return to fix things tomorrow.

Update - the backup/export process was, as advertised, remarkably easy. The green, grey and brown is gone. I am playing with the my banner photo so it may change a couple of times in the next few days while I try things on and twirl around in front the blogosphere mirror before I make a final decision.

today in the garden it's all primary colours

Red - the choice between strawberries and ripening truss tomatoes came down to the fact that the kids were eating the bright red berries faster than I could photograph them. 

Yellow - Rudbeckia Maxima. The tallest of these is over 6 foot. They are lovely with their droopy petals and fat and fuzzy "centres" (it is doubtful that is the botanical term).

 

and Blue - Echinops with their spike globes are one of my favourites every summer.

to wii or not to wii...

This is the question. I am asked it at least once a week. Sometimes I am asked once a day. As various school friends have turned six and been gifted one I am asked more often. As adults talk about their "Wii Age" (a Wii-fit thing, I know because Helen Mirren told me in the ad) in front of him, I am asked it. Tonight we have been at the house of friends and they have a brand new, just received for Christmas, Nintendo Wii. They also have two children, both younger than mine, and there is the rub. Child A is only 5 and he has a Wii. His brother is 2 and a half and he has a Wii. Sam is already 6 and a quarter. Can you see the injustice? Can you? Apparently it is as clear as day.

I know there are a lot of advantages to having a Wii thingy. One was obvious tonight - the absent child. I had a lovely time being entertained by friends without children. Entire conversations were had without an "excuse me". Three courses were eaten and children were nowhere to be seen. Apparently my host fed the children and they ate their dinner. I wouldn't know, there were mostly empty plates brought down from the playroom as evidence, but I saw nothing as I saw no children.

I don't actually know what they did tonight. I trust these friends and know them well - there is no soft porn in the loo, no poison within reach, no Liberal Party policy leaflets to read. They were out of sight and perfectly safe. My children are either too young or too daft to get up to any stealthy mischief (don't get too jealous - they are quite able to get into a lot of mischief, it is the stealth aspect they have yet to conquer). I was confident that even though I couldn't hear or see them, all was dandy and fine. As far as I could tell there was no chance of arguments because there was very little personal interaction going on, of any kind, and there is the disadvantage.

We go to this house a lot. We always have fun. We share food and drink and the adults manage to be entertained and entertaining, albeit with a sense that interruption from children is imminent. For it is a noisy house; a house with a lovely and loud Irishwoman Mum and a calm and comical Englishman Dad. Child A and Child B are boy children who are loud and raucous and fast and take up a lot of space in a room. They are, in fact, just a little bit intimidating to my two in all the right ways.

When we arrive there is a period of aural adjustment, for this house is very, very loud. I liken it to getting into a car that you have exited when your favourite song was playing on the radio. You have cranked up the volume loud enough to sing along yet not hear your own voice, pulled into the driveway, waited for the final chorus, then turned it off, grabbed your shopping bags and headed into the house. Two hours later you get back in the car, turn the key and your head is blown off. So we normally arrive, I turn off my hearing aid (for the benefit of some readers of this blog - I mean an actual, not metaphoric, hearing aid - worn in my left ear) and within a period of ten minutes we have all adjusted to the volume.

Initially Sam and Milly hover for a while, they are unsure what to do. There just seems to be too much child based fun going on. It is an alternate universe, and while they love the look of it, they are suspicious. They wear expressions that show they suspect that someone is surely about to get into trouble for this inside running, furniture clambouring, top of the voice yelling, toy waving business. Don't get me wrong - this is not a house without rules, there are expectations of sharing and respect and kindness. It is not kid anarchy. But it is loud and the play is fever pitched and in the eyes of my kids - heaps of fun and a just little bit dangerous. They love it.

Tonight, we were greeting at the door. I turned off my hearing aid. We walked in and Sam and Milly were taken upstairs to see the new Wii thingy. Milly came back down a few times, played with some toys, went to the toilet, asked for a drink. Sam stayed up there for three hours. I went to him after my first drink, he was happily driving a car around a race track. I went back downstairs and had dinner. Later I went back and he was happily driving a different car around a different race track. I went back downstairs and had dessert. At some point I had to turn my hearing aid back on. I gave him a ten minute warning that we were leaving. Ten minutes later I walked up the stairs muttering those oh-so-motherly of words: "Let's clean up before we go" and stopped mid sentence. There was no mess (admittedly an advantage of the Wii thingy). They had not played with any other toys.

We came home, he wants one. It is a misery that he doesn't have one. He wants me to "seriously think" about letting him have one. He is willing to wait until next Christmas. He suggested that if he had one he wouldn't have to go to friends' houses to play one and we would "save petrol as we would stay at home all the time" (I neither kid nor embellish this point of argument !?!). He told me he had HEAPS of fun. That it was hard when he started but he got better at it. He admitted that it might be boring if that was all you ever did but he was at school all day anyway so that wouldn't happen. I asked all the pointed questions, trying to work him round to the fact that this visit had none of the hooplah, ringmaster, circus wonder about it. No craziness or managed chaos. No running around screaming as he chased the bad guys. No hide and seek in the parent's bedroom (seriously - they don't mind). No laughing so hard he couldn't breathe and had to stop to take air into his lungs. Trust me, I asked all the right questions. He dodged and weaved and would not admit it was less of an "experience". In short, he was not sucked in. And neither was I. We will not be wii-ing just yet.

I know my children are not composing business plans and setting up lemonade stalls to raise money for charity, nor are they building model cities and roleplaying being UN ambassadors while they solve the pretend world's problems. They do in fact, drive me to distraction telling me they are bored. But I ignore that. They tell me they are still bored and I ignore that as well. Then they find something to do. Today Sam caught four bugs in his "Bug Vacuum" then drew pictures of them and pretended to be a scientist. Emily took her baby on a walk through the "park" (back garden) then had a picnic. They also (in no particular order): yelled at each other, sat on each other, watched some tv, made an almighty mess in their bedrooms that still has not been cleared and went to the toilet without flushing - twice. I know that if this Wii thingy came into our house something would have to go. I know that it would be the bug catcher and the picnic in the park. Then what I would have in my life are children who yell at each other, sit on each other, watch tv, make mess in their bedrooms, don't flush the toilet and Wii. And what would be the point of that?

letterbox delight

A party invitation. In an envelope. With a stamp. How exciting. It is a long time since we received a real, hold in your hand, invitation. Weddings notwithstanding, most invitations are phone calls or emails or even texts. It was lovely to receive it. It is a 50th, with a swing band and fancy dress "inspired by, but not a slave to, The Great Gatsby". I have some ideas brewing.

And, in my humble opinion I think if you want to have a fancy dress party this is great wording for the invitation, it lets people dress up to whatever degree they wish. Or not at all, if they wish.

Miss Emily

It should be no surprise that Emily has been playing teachers every spare moment she gets - she comes from a teacher mother and not one, but two, teacher grandmothers. Recently we set up the whiteboard and she is enthralled with her new teaching tool. She writes her name at the top of the board and things tend to freeform from there. In this photo she is teaching a reading lesson. She reads the story to the assembled class (any from a selection of: teddies, barbies, her brother & mother, her imaginary friends Charlie and Anna). Then she will illustrate the story as she talks to the class. Can you see her caterpillar and apple? In-depth discussion ensues, topics vary from character (Why is he so greedy?) to plot (I get tummy aches when I eat too much as well) to social context (Why doesn't the Caterpillar eat pasta?). Interestingly Sam's comment at the end of the lesson was "I think that book is just to help little kids learn the days of the week" Milly's rebuttal "No - it's to help them count". So some deconstruction of text is taking place. Regardless, Miss Emily is quite the formidable teacher.

pas de deux

There had been lots of dancing happening these holidays. The kids have a few genres they request depending on their mood (Rock, Pop and Ballet seem to sum things up). This shot was taken while we were staying in Adelaide over Christmas.

eggs

We arrived home from our holiday to a bare pantry, an empty fridge and no eggs. We assumed the housesitter had taken our suggestion that she take any offerings from the chickens home to her family. After a few days it became apparent that our three chickens were no longer laying. Did they miss us? Was the 43 degree heat too much? Sadly, off I went to the shops and bought (actually paid money for!) a dozen eggs.

On Saturday I went further into their territory and made my wonderful discovery. Apparently the girls are laying in their perch area and not the nest. Suddenly we have 18 eggs. Baking will be on the agenda in the next few days.

christmas 2010 ...part 1

Somehow my blog posting has become so erratic that I have not posted about our Christmas at all. I will update the blog more regularly now we are home and starting to establish something of a routine for the holidays. As for Christmas, the most logical place to start is with decorations, I will try not to dwell on the fact that I took them down two days ago.

 

As we were in Adelaide this year the decorations were low key. I spent a couple of nights making garlands from titles of Christmas Carols. They are impossible to photograph but did look gorgeous strung across the room.

But my favourite part of Christmas was adding to my collection of vintage mercury glass decorations. This year I was on the prowl through op. (thrift) shops from the start of November. I found quite a few to add to my collection. I have amassed a huge bundle of plain glass balls but it is the more detailed baubles and shapes that I love. I found this little bird in one shop and then his partner in another.