What have we been up to?

I haven’t had much spare time recently to keep the blog updated, so I thought I would sit down and let you all know the types of things we have been up to lately.

The boys have been in school now for just over a month and the general consensus is that school is cool!  It is such a relief that they both love it.  I did have my reservations about sending Reuben as he is so young and his year is non compulsory anyway, but he loves it and is, for want of a better word, thriving!  He loves being around so many people all day and after getting over the tiredness he is now the last one standing at home and still dancing round the house when everyone else is knackered!  His lessons are a lot less like play than I would like them to be at his age, but he loves the way they are teaching letters and is now always pointing out letters everywhere we go and he seems to be having loads of fun, so that’s great.

Rowan’s class is a lot more formal, lot’s of handwriting practice and repeat after me stuff, but again he is loving it.  He does tend to daydream a bit in class (you never would believe it, would you?!), but he is getting his work done, enjoying himself, making friends and (my favourite) coming out of school really animated and enthusiastic telling us what he did today.

It is so lovely to see them both full of enthusiasm for the things they are doing in school.

It’s a lovely school and both Tristan and I are very happy we chose this area and school.  It’s very laid back and relaxed, they have lots of fun but also get the work done.

So what else are we doing,

Well Tris is working most of the time 5 days a week, but we are still in the wet season, so that means if it’s raining they don’t work, but if it’s mega bad and trees are down then they are called out to do emergency stuff.  He is working today, but hasn’t for a few days as it’s been proper chucking it down!

I think he is enjoying it, they are still clearing up after the storms we had 5 weeks ago, he’s been working in the rainforest and all over the coast.

I am keeping myself busy.  I am a dinner lady at the school tuck shop, it’s a lot different than an English dinner lady, but still making loads of rubbish food to feed the kids.  Once I am settled in a bit more I may try to offer some revolutionary ideas to de junk the kitchen, but at the mo I am just trying to fit in and not be the pain in the arse hippy!

I am also volunteering in both boys classrooms, which is great.  In Reuben’s room I help with whatever activity they are doing, it changes every week.  In Rowan’s class I am helping with reading, which I love.  I get to help a few of the children that are struggling with reading and I am really enjoying watching how much they come on each week. I am also trying to put into practice ideas I have been reading about when talking to the kids.  It is so rewarding to see a child respond to positive remarks when maybe they haven’t been doing so well, it really motivates them and helps them to see they are doing well.

So other than school and work and the festival we haven’t been up to much recently.  It has been pooey weather a lot of the time, so when we have a nice day on a weekend everyone is out and about.  We have been out for bike rides, to the beach and parks.

We are all hoping now that this week is the last of the ‘big wet’ as everyone is fed up with it.  It’s just so crazy a couple of months ago it was a drought and soooo hot, everyone was praying for rain.  Now the dams are so full they are being released, the rivers are overflowing and the beaches are being pounded by mega high tides.  So yes, we are over with the rain now and just want some sun back!

Actually the sun is shining at the mo and I can hear the kids playing at break time at school (which is great, as when it’s raining they have to have break time in their class rooms), but we have just had a massive downpour and I can guarantee that it will start to pour in about 30 minutes as I have to get on my bike to pick up the kids.

The boys are loving their bikes at the mo, the first question they ask when we say we are going somewhere is, “Can we ride?”  If they can they will not go any other way, even to school in the pouring rain, although we live so close that it is quicker to ride bikes than drive, find somewhere to park and then walk into school, and you get just as wet as you have to park so far away. We have been called mad, but it makes sense to us, maybe because we are British!

Rowan has been a bit poorly lately, his poor immune system is taking a battering at school, he is not used to the whole school/nursery bug thing and it has knocked him about a bit.  He got a cold within the first week and it has not shifted.  We actually had quite a scare last week with him, he was looking and feeling really bad so he had the day of school and we went to the doctors.  The GP thought he had meningitis!  He didn’t and to cut a long story short he rested at home for the days, I gave him some homeopathy, he took himself off to bed and woke up 12 hours later feeling and looking  much better.  Very scary, but all over with very quickly.  The GP has also said he is not asthmatic.  He asked a few questions to which the answers were all no and he said if he even had very mild asthma at least one answer would be yes and also when we took him the other day (I thought he had had an asthma attack) the GP said his breathing was lovely no signs of a wheeze or any asthma at all, and he hasn’t used his puffer at all since moving here(except that night last week).  So all good on that front.

Well I have written a lot more than I thought I would.  That’s what happens when I am home on my own for most of the day, I get a bit carried away!!

Anyway here are some photos from over the last few weeks……………

The boys have been finding different effects on my phone camera! A very weird shot of Reuben

A lovely shot of Rowan

Rowan took this one.  This ice cream van comes past our house every so often.  We never have any cash when it does go past, but they are just so chuffed that it actually goes past that a photo will do.

A rare sunny day on the beach

Rowan has got into making fruit punch for him and Reuben

The boys have both signed up for after school cricket.  It is absolute chaos, 20 boys aged between 4 and 9 and 1 teacher, but they have fun!

Rowan was very proud of his award and even prouder of his student of the week picture in his classroom.

another cricket shot

Reuben got to bring home his class teddy bear for an overnight visit to our house.  He was very excited

Poorly boy :( 

Festival Fun

Last weekend we took the day off school and work and headed out bush to a trance festival.  We had been looking forward to it for a long time, we got our tickets before Christmas as we saw it advertised, it was our kind of festival - not commercial, local and cheap.  So very excited on Friday morning we woke up to realise that the forecast of 4 days of rain had come true :(

We packed up and headed inland through flooded roads and serious rain, we almost turned back and had all lost enthusiasm, but we carried on.
When you head inland from where we live you hit a mountain range, the roads go up and around and through the mountains and then down the other side.  The rain at the top of the range was incredible, then as we followed the road down the other side the rain started to ease and by the time we got to the site the rain had pretty much stopped.  So we set up, had some lunch, the boys made friends straight away, then we headed over the camping area into the main festival site.

The actual site was quite small, it probably took 10 minutes to walk from one end to the other if you just walked, but there was so much to look at it actually took much longer.  The kids area, was a great bamboo geodesic dome, full of arts and craft materials and a fun filled program of workshops for the whole weekend.  There were a couple more domes with a weekend of workshops and talks planned.  They had put a lot of attention into the visual side of the festival and there were UV art installations all over the site, there was a spinning buddah wearing sunglasses, a UV water fountain, a giant remote controlled smoke breathing butterfly and amongst other things over sized toadstools.  The boys loved these things, especially the toadstools and the butterfly.
There were stalls selling food from all around the world, clothes stalls and a juggling stall which had a basket of devil sticks, juggling balls, poi's and hula hoops to play with.

There were 2 stages, the pyramid stage and earth pod.  The pyramid stage started up in the evening and did not stop, the bass was booming and could be heard across the whole site.  It was only electronic music on this stage, apart from a few performances on the Saturday night. They had an official opening ceremony from a group of local aboriginal people playing the didgeredoo and dancing, which was really great to see - important for the boys to see too.  We also watched a fire show which was pretty awesome, some crazy fire twirling and swirling.  Even a ninja guy doing a kind of kung fuey dance with a sword on fire - needless to say, the boys LOVED this!

The whole weekend was great, everyone had an awesome time.  Tris and I got to have a good dance, Rowan loved the workshops and Reuben loved the playdough and painting.
The kids workshops were great, Rowan did yoga, coconut leaf weaving and they both joined in an amazing workshop called sonic stomp.  It was run by a home ed family who make electronic music and have devised this workshop to help kids understand music and the different frequencies.  They played the bass part of a tune and got the kids doing a stomping kind of dance, then got them to do a dance for the mid range part of the tune and then a crazy dance for the treble.  then they played a tune and got the kids to do their chosen dances to each bit of the tune, listening out for when the frequency changed, which ended in all 3 frequencies and lots of crazy jumping around.  They also got to have a go on a microphone which turned their voices into a robot voice and a couple of other electronic noisy things.  They loved it.
On the last night they had a UV kids disco, complete with UV body paint for them to decorate themselves.

The only downside of the weekend was Reuben saw a dwarf man and thought he was the scariest thing ever.  Tris later met this man and thought it would be a good idea to introduce them - it wasn't, Reuben ran away screaming in fear, oops.  I didn't know what to say really, but we both felt really bad for the man, he was really friendly too.

On the whole though the weekend was great, we all felt refreshed (albeit knackered too!) and it was really nice to spend a long weekend together.  It did start to rain on Monday but not too much, that is until we crossed that range again and it was still pounding down, in fact it had not stopped all weekend.  It is crazy how different the weather can be in such a small area.

Anyway here are the photos from the weekend, the camera ran out of battery half way through, so we only have photos up till Saturday night.............

Our well stocked fridge full of festival essentials!

Tris at our camp

Rowan doing yoga

yoga

Tris and Rowan deciding wether to do the bush craft workshop

Rowan having his face painted

and then Reubens turn

amazing face painting

you can just see the remote controlled giant butterfly in the background

more amazing face painting

2 cheekies by the UV water fountain

2 little pixies

the dry and dusty main drag

a cool swing that they just had to have a go on whenever they passed it

the main pyramid stage

me at the camp

The aboriginal ceremony - Reuben took this photo

the fire show

more fire twirling

Rowan loves school

Last week Rowan got an award at school parade (assembly) for settling in to his new school so well.  He was really proud to go up in front of everyone and get his certificate.

School is going so well for him.  He spent the whole of the school holidays worried about going to school as he thought he didn't like it and he thought he would miss being at home and miss me.
On the first morning he realised that he had made friends last year and they were happy to see him too.  He has a lovely teacher and they are doing proper work (his words), even science!
On Thursday night Rowan declared at home that he loves school and it is the best thing he has done in his whole life!
What a statement!  Part of me was gutted, after all the effort I had put into the last 6 and half years! ;) But most of me was so happy for him.  To home educate Rowan for the first year of his school life and take things at his own pace and let him find his interests and confidence was the best thing for him, now he is happy to go to school and really does love it :) 

Reuben is also enjoying his time in school, we are still going to see how he goes with the tiredness.  He has made a friend that is equally as silly as he is so that has cheered him up.

They are both also doing after school cricket now.  Rowan woke up this morning saying only one more sleep till cricket day! The boy is so eager to learn and be a part of the whole school thing it's great. (he isn't too chuffed that he has to have a couple of days off to go to a festival in a few weeks though!)

Waterfalls

Since arriving here rowan has wanted to go and see some waterfalls up in the hinterland, but as it's been so dry we thought they wouldn't be very impressive.  So after all the rain we have had we decided to go and have a look last weekend.

We went to Gardeners Falls, which is near Maleny (our favourite little hinterland town - lush ice cream and the nicest coffee ever!).  We got there quite early and there were only a couple of families there.  The river was flowing quite fast, dropping over a few little cascades, the falls getting slightly bigger at each drop.  The river flowed into a large pool then pounded off the edge in an amazing waterfall.  the boys have never seen a big waterfall before, it wasn't actually that big, but it was loud and impressive.  We have been told there were rope swings that you could jump into the pool from.  Both the boys were looking forward to doing this.  When we saw the swings Tristan and I just looked at each other and shook our heads.  The first one was about a 15m drop from the swing into the very deep fast flowing water and the 2nd was a lot lower but you had to clear tree roots and the banks of the river before you dropped into the fast river!
Both boys were still determined to do it.  We then watched a couple of teenage boys do the 1st swing, to which Rowans face dropped and he said 'No way hose!', Reuben however said 'it's my go now!'.
Reuben was not very impressed at being told he wasn't allowed to go on them, so his next request was to slide down the actual falls!
We decided to move back further up river to where the cascades were falling and the danger was less!

We spent a good couple of hours splashing around in the little falls, we slid down one small one and the force of the water was immense.  Rowan loved playing in the pools and climbing up the falls.  Reuben wants to go again, next time with something to slide down the falls on!

Tris decided that he just had to have a go at jumping off the top of the big falls, so we all went to watch him play, the boys were very impressed with their Daddy ;)

snack time

Adventurer Rowan crossing the river!

natural jacuzzi

This is not Tris but thats the jump

the falls look tiny in this photo

Imagine That

Tristan and I constantly worry about the boys screen time, thinking they spend too much time watching TV or playing video games, but then quite often I catch the two of them fully engrossed in some amazing imaginative play.

Today is a really rainy day, so we raided the recycling box and used up some shiny book covering that Rowan needed for his school books and they now have a rocket each which has kept the entertained for a good hour so far.

The other morning they were engrossed in a lego hotel game, which consisted of a few lego men and an empty cardboard box, the whole morning was spent playing this, each with their own character, Rowan is always Leon in these games?!  Not sure where Leon has come from

The other day in the park, they had finished playing bike dodgeball (a Rowan invented game) and headed into the play park where they played a game of secret agent tuck shop – Rowan was Mega Meteor and Reuben was Awesome Eagle – This again kept them happy and entertained for another hour, until it was too hot and we had to go home.

So I think our fears are unfounded, yes they enjoy the TV and video games, but what child (and a lot of adults too) doesn’t, but it hasn’t ruined their imaginations that’s for sure!  To be honest it would take a lot to destroy Rowan’s imagination, he is still as random and out there as ever!

Junk model spaceships

Secret agent tuck shop in full swing