Sambo and Valentines Day

It has been a drizzly, indoor sort of day. We have continued to enjoy our reading of Jim Elliot book together. Josh read a bit and I read a bit and we made our way through a chapter discussing the challenges Jim faced deciding where to focus his life and where to serve the Lord. He was very passionate about sharing the gospel and used as many opportunities as he could. He also had missions constantly at the back of his mind - ie. at one stage his brother and sister-in-law asked if he could help build their house and he was keen, knowing that building skills might later help him in his mission work...

In the afternoon we headed to a Bunnings craft activity. My friend, Susan, kindly organised this activity with the staff at Bunnings. They were happy to cater for some home schooling families and so the first session today was related to Valentines Day.

My brother, Sam is here with us for a couple of days. He came down to attend a work conference. The conference is now finished so he is having a couple of days with us - much to the special delight of the boys! Joshua waited out by the gate to see him arrive. When he did arrive, Joshua heroically offered to carry his luggage and then ended up falling over from the weight of it as he was trying to load it onto his bike.... I was inside and happened to glance out the window. Honestly it was quite commical!

My Time (well kind of)

Today I went up to Owen's ECIP for my first session of 'My Time' which is a government initiative to help parents of Special needs kids to learn some skills/talk to other parents, etc. A couple of teacher Aides mind the children during this time. I really enjoyed it, we had some help making and laminating little pictures to help us communicate with our kids. They use a program called "boardmaker" which has little simbols/pictures of various things like household routines (brushing teeth, etc.) I made a little strip of pictures to put in the car to help Owen when we go out. I find it quite a challenge just getting him into the car. He tends to just wander and get distracted on a toy on the floor of the car, etc.

Joshua took along his school work and complete with some classical Chopin music on a little MP4 player (he calls Chopin "Cho-pin") he managed to write out his spelling words, do a tad of maths and even joined in for a little bit of outdoor play and singing a frog song!

The Exodus

Today David read the Bible acount of the Israelites, the plagues and their eventual exodus from Egypt. Amazing how many conditions Pharoh put on them - the command from God was that they ALL leave, including little ones, cattle, etc. Pharoh at one stage says they can go but must leave their cattle. Another time he tells them that the Men can go but they must leave their wives (now what Men wouldn't come back to their wives and little ones??) It was also a test for Moses to see if he would really follow God's instruction right down to taking their cattle along too. While David read quite a few chapters from Exodus at the breakfast table I could just picture the people of Israel as they awaited the day they would finally leave. What a day it must have been. I have been thinking about it all day. The Lord's loved Israel and wanted her to worship Him without the bondage of slavery to the Egyptians...

Not quite Sizzling in Sizzler

Well over the weekend we went to Joshua's awards night run by ACA. Last year Joshua did his homeschooling through Australian Christian Academy. Parents who planned to come along to the Awards night were asked to write what awards they would like their child to receive. Joshua received his award for 'Friendliness and improvement in neatness". Cousin Timmy was there too and was very excited to be getting his certificate for completing his preschool program.

Today we had fun in English writing a letter to the Queen! I decided to demonstrate a formal letter to the Queen apologising for sneezing on her royal caviar! Joshua wrote a letter apologising for breaking a precious vase in her palace. Deary me, the poor Queen has had a rough week!

Ahh, have a look at our "Take N Go" take away restaurant stage II. I cut out a rectange, Joshua traced around them (alternating so as to make our building "strong") and we painted them together. Keep a look out for stage 3 coming up!

We also celebrated Dad's birthday by taking him to Sizzler tonight. It was nice to be all together again (though we missed Mum, of course!) The poor kids began to get quite chilly in the air con. and so eventually we packed up the shivering bodies and headed home.

Grandma, Grandpa and Grampy all in the one day

Ian and Emilia returned today from their visit in the USA with Stephen and Beth. It is so good to have them back again! We have all been missing them. Even Owen has been looking out the window from time to time and if a car pulled into our driveway he would call out "Manma!" only to be disappointed. But not today! All his dreams have come true.

and

We also had Grampy here with us today too! Dad came down to Brissy to go to a funeral and decided to drop in and say hello! Well Joshua and Owen were quite excited (Rosa was still coming to terms with who this Grampy really is). Joshua even managed to talk Grampy into helping him build his new model aeroplane. Joshua now proudly displays it on his desk. Only, for some unknown reason we only seem to have one propeller... We searched high and low but to no avail!.... never mind... it sure was nice having Grampy around to help put it together! He tells me it is a Lockheed 10 Electra (hmm... whatever that means to a somewhat aviation illiterate Mum!)

Ugghhh

Wednesday and Thursday are just a kind of blurr in my memory. I was feeling quite rotten due to a case of mastitis and so set Josh some school work he could do without much help from Mum. I put Rosa down for an early morning nap and Owen in my room with toys to play with and they were all really good. Joshua got quite a lot of work done, Rosa had an extra long nap and Owen fell asleep on the bed beside me.

Joshua brought me flowers he picked from the garden to cheer me up. He constantly offered to bring me drinks of water and even sat and stroked my hair! I did manage to slowly scuffle around by the afternoon but was very thankful for leftovers in the fridge to feed the family for dinner!

Little neice Julia had her 5th birthday today! Happy Birthday Julia!

A birthday girl, a keyboard lesson and a case of Mastitis

Well our sweet little Rosa turns one today! Unbelievable. I have spent some time reflecting on my pregnancy and birth and ahh - it is so good to have our little one here with us. She is crawling everywhere at quite a pace. We put her on our bed, as is our tradition after her feed each morning so she can enjoy some time alone with Dad and Mum before the boys get up. She just soaks up this time and loves 'landing' on Dad and Mum and getting tummy blows. This morning the boys were just so keen to come and join us. We gave in a bit and let them gatecrash our bedroom so we could give Rosa her birthday cuddles all together! Joshua sometimes comments (usually after getting an elbow in his ribs) that Dad and Mum's bed just isn't big enough!

Joshua has a new keyboard teacher this year. I was initially a bit disappointed about this as he has had a few changes of teachers... Kristy is very sweet though and Joshua doesn't seem phased by the change.

I decided to give Rosa a late feed tonight as we ended up giving her an early night. After giving Rosa some 'mother's nectar' I ended up getting severe shakes and to cut a long story short Mastitis set in and poor Dave ended up calling up the hospital just to ask their advice. We decided to see how it went... (in retrospect should have dealt with it early on). Ugghhh - never quite had mastitis to that level before....

Lessons from the Garden

Today we took our school work along to another medical appointment at the Royal. I was quite pleased that it didn't take nearly as long as expected so that we could continue our day here at home.

We have had rain off and on but only in little drizzles. I am so thankful when I look outside to see how beautiful and green everything is becoming. We finished our art lesson (making aerodynamic /non aerodynamic planes by using foam shapes) and decided to try and fit in a little gardening while the sun was out. It was really lovely. Joshua's little garden is growing really well (as were the weeds:) We dug the weeds out together while Owen and Rosa had their afternoon naps. It took some encouragement to help Joshua persevere with those nasty weeds... We had a great discussion though on how our lives can become full of weeds and how the Lord wants us to come to Him so that he can help us remove those things that clutter and get in the way of His love for us. How easily I can get tangled in the weeds of worldly stuff and even the daily stuff of life rather than bathe in His love.

Josh and I began decorating our cubby house under the stairs. We made the cardboard wall there some months ago from bike boxes with trap doors to the boys specifications (ie. Dad and Mum can't easily climb in!). After we were given some nice big architectural paper from some friends we decided to glue them to the front and eventually decorate it. So today we did just that. We discussed what sort of a dwelling it should be and Joshua declared it a take-away shop. He thought we should call it "Take N' Go!" We looked up some children's books to get some ideas for decorating. The story page above was our inspiration. We decided to take a before and after photo too... So keep watching for updates!

To the World of Books

Having yesterday and today just with two has made for a fairly quiet day. Joshua did well on his spelling test and maths quiz, so after a bit more school work I decided we might venture to the library and borrow some books about aviation (much easier to manage with just two - still trying to work out where to put all our books when I take all three kids!?). Joshua was quite thrilled about that - and we came home with quite a pile.

Our friend, Krissy from Church came around this afternoon and so the kids had a great time running around. She stayed the night and spent most of Saturday here too. We had hoped to take her out when we went out shopping and then remembered we didn't have enough seats in the car...

Well it has been off to Prep. for Owen! We asked him if he was keen to go to ECIP again and he just kept repeating "Yeah" (in a real American accent too :) We all had lots of cuddles, admired Owen in his glasses and walked him off to Prep. He has just two days there each week where he gets a bit of extra help from a Speech Therapist and Physio. He seems to really enjoy going and often comes home singing and bouncing around. I have had Owen in my thoughts and prayers today as he starts a new year there. I sometimes wonder how much he interacts and I pray silently that he will be able to one day tell me in some simple way his thoughts and feelings. For now, our job is just to love him and pray for his speech to progress. But then he is so easy to love and enjoys a good cuddle!

At home we spent some afternoon time doing Science. Here is Joshua's glider experiment for you to enjoy: