A spring in my step

Sept is nearly halfway gone, and I’m not in the mindset yet! I woke at 2.45am with my brain ready to 'partay' through my huge list of ‘to do’ stuff! Fortunately, things always seem so much better when the sun is up, even with the sleep deprivation! And I believe I heard the first 2 birds Down Under, wake up this morning – they sounded rather sleepy at just after 3am and it took them quite some time to really get those chirrupy noises working well…glad it’s not just me that has problems with coherent conversation before the morning coffee!

And as has become our wont, today was another full day. Both E&L delivered their speeches, passed some exams, and took their full Tuesday in their stride. K made himself useful by saving some lives. And I finally managed to grab a moment (& some motivation!) to get myself back into the books…..

But it was such a stunning Spring Day that everything was sweet. Have to say it again – I LOVE SPRING! I love the transformation from dark mornings and early evenings, to the light, fresh, sunny mornings and longer evenings. I love the promise of summer; the heady scent of blossom, the perfusion of colour everywhere, the lush green-ness of the fields, the warmth with the cool, and the cool with warmth. I love the foretaste of early summer fruits, and the expectation of BBQ’s and time at the beach. And I love the new life! So here are some Spring photos of the lambs enjoying their first season of life. (And I'm still on my old camera...expecting the newbie any day now!)

A family of shutterbugs

Well, it would seem, we are having a rash of ‘new camera syndrome’ in our family! Today, E is SO excited. Why, you may ask?

- It could have been that he got a placing in a significant ‘invitation only’ music scholarship competition yesterday. He played 3 pieces in his piano recital and got a huge applause from the appreciative audience. The standard of this particular competition is so high, that to expect a placing/ranking would be downright presumptuous!
- Or, it could have been that not only did E get a placing, but he actually got 2nd place! The adjudicator emphasised that he had difficulty deciding between the 1st and 2nd placegetters, and eventually decided on the basis that the 1st placegetter had slightly more difficult pieces. Since E would’ve probably been the youngest competitor there, it wasn’t too surprising. We were all just so thrilled anyway – E played beautifully. Unfortunately, no recordings allowed.
- Or maybe, it was very generous prize money that got awarded with the scholarship…

- Or the satisfaction of having achieved one's best...
- Or even, the celebration of a day out with the grandies to recognise both our boys’ hard work and achievements this year…

The truth is, that E is so excited because today, he is the proud owner of a new camera – his VERY FIRST CAMERA - researched, considered, waited for (the right bargains), and bought with his prize winnings and some saved pocket money! Everything else has paled by comparison. He keeps saying that he can’t believe he now owns his OWN camera! L even suggested that E might well be in heaven! (A definite encouragement not to give kids everything they ask for, but to allow them to work hard and save for things they would like – they value things so much more!).

Anyway, E has really enjoyed playing around with all the different functions on his new ‘toy’! These photos were taken today off his camera. Enjoy!

Church this morning.

Fact or Fantasy?

This was my favourite moment at school today.

We were going through some work together - the whole class - when we came to this question: "Fact, or fantasy? The fairy flew through the window."

First, we needed to establish the difference between fact and fantasy.

Got it.

The next issue was whether the fairy sentence was fact or fantasy.

Fantasy. Good.

Then I asked the fateful question.

"Grade threes, what is it about this sentence that makes it fantasy?"

Sweet but bewildered boy put up his hand.

This was an event - I had to call on him.

"Sweet but bewildered boy, can you tell us? What is it about this sentence that makes it fantasy?"

SBBB answered, "Fairies can't fly through windows."

I think I managed to hide my laughter.

Southern Ange, I'm so excited for your new camera! I think you should bring it to the Great, Soon-to be White North for its christening. We need to take some photos together again.

xox

I just HAD to tell you...

I had just sat down to lunch today, whilst contemplating my study and more navel gazing,

WHEN…..
my Dearest phoned to say that he was on his way over, to whisk me out ‘somewhere’! Gobbling lunch at speed is never a pretty sight, and I was thankful for the privacy of my own home!

True to his word, within a few minutes, my Dearest arrived home on his trusty steed (mountain bike!) and off we drove (in a car, not on a bike built for two) into the wild blue yonder.

To cut a long, juicy story short, I am now the very excited, soon-to-be awaiting delivery) owner of a new camera!!! OH YES!
My trusty old Canon has been wobbling along on its last legs (exacerbated by chronic overuse and probably also from being dropped from a great height). And for the last year or so, I had been researching cameras that would suit our needs best.

Well, today, my Dearest decided that he wanted to do a spontaneous ‘Something Special'!
Flowers? Chocolates? or Camera?......Flowers? Chocolates? or Camera?.....

Hmmmm….

Leica lenses (alrighty!), 18x Optical Zoom: 27mm–486mm (mmmhmm!) , 10.1 megapixels, 2.7” LCD, mega OIS, and a ton of super intelligent techno features!

YUM, YUM, YUM !!!!

Take a moment

I relish the opportunity to sit and chat with friends over a cuppa.

It’s not necessarily always the setting, nor the length of time, nor even the quality of the brew (though all these things do help!)….but it is the grabbing of ‘a moment’ in a busy world, just to connect….however brief, whatever the mood, no matter the topic(s), regardless of who or how.

The world is a better place for these moments!

"Has she put that camera away yet?!"

Thanks Dad!

Swooshing thru Saturday

I love Saturdays. And I love Spring.
So waking up on a bright Saturday morning in Spring, is just wonderful! The birds are singing, and the flowers are all bursting forth in our garden (amongst the weeds, which are also bursting forth!). But the best Saturdays are the ones when you don’t feel pressured to have to go out ANYWHERE! These Saturdays are just the best!

This morning, we have moseyed about doing our various tasks. The washing is fresh, clean, and drying happily in the sunshine. The boys have gotten on to their chores and leftover work from the week before…..not even any grumbles….yet! In fact, E even got quite excited about a speech he is preparing for the upcoming Speech competitions! Long may the glorious, motivating weather continue!
The dishdrawers have been cleared, the shoe rack tidied, the garbage taken out and sorted, there are fresh freesias (love the scent!) in the house, and the cards have been made for Fathers Day tomorrow.

The Man about the House has been busy….oh, so busy, clearing and tidying up our horrendously cluttered spare room, ready for our next set of guests. He has vacuumed and dusted and sorted and cleaned and rearranged, filed, and tidied (and is available for hire at an exorbitant price!). The best thing, is that he discovered (and has been busily cleaning) a whole stash of shoes I’d forgotten about, including my beloved boots from the Great White North….(that's our lawn you can see sprouting madly in the background! Ahem..so the grass needs cutting...).

L astounded us by practicing his guitar and then his piano for over 3 hours, getting ready for his upcoming piano exams – not bad concentration for one so young. E also has piano exams this week, and was about midway through his turn on the piano. Violin, guitar, and maths all done! Hooray.
The boys have now gone to run some errands, and to enjoy the great outdoors on this beautiful day. The 2 smaller ones have their annual cross country meet this week, and all three have gone to “conquer the mountain” together.

I'm enjoying a piece of homemade Russian fudge and thinking it would've been so nice to have been able to pop over and share it with you. Might've gone well with that Merlot...

September

September is always a wistfully beautiful month. Although it's still officially summer until the 21st, there's something different in the air that says the end is near. As soon as school starts (and even sooner), the nights are cooler and even the hottest days feel... tangy.
When I go out in the morning to leave for school, the car is covered with condensation and as I drive down the hill, mist blankets the low ground. I stopped one morning to drink in the view and to try to capture the moment.
I think it's so odd that spring Down Under has officially begun, while we are still in summer for a couple of weeks longer. I wonder why that is?

I've been in intense school mode this first week back; it's nice to sit down and have a quiet Friday evening at home. I'm blogging tonight in order to avoid taking up a pile of school work I dragged in with me. Procrastination! The glass of merlot I had with my tomato and onion salad went down very nicely, and I'm enjoying my favorite CBC jazz program (Tonic). Life is good!

A Fun Evening

We had our school community barbeque this evening; a wonderful way to bring families together at the beginning of the year.

The police came, courtesy of Phil. (Yay, Phil!!) Kids got to sit on their motorcycles and ask all the typical questions, like, "Do you have a gun?"

And Tim Horton's Community Cruiser was there to give out free coffee and doughnuts. A Canadian institution! The police made sure they got their doughnuts.

The Checkerboard Guy showed up to entertain us with amazing antics.

A good time was had by all!

Wish you were there.

Off he Goes!

School started yesterday and the teacher is tired!
I have a lovely class this year (so far - the honeymoon period is always deceiving!!) and things are looking good.
I had my administration day today; my favorite moment was watching a tiny little kindy boy running all the way up the hall, hand stuck down in the back of his pants, shouting, "I gotta go potty!" I think he has some growing up to do...
Another boy doing some growing up - I took Little Bear out to his Bible college last night. The big moving day. He had meticulously packed all his most important belongings to take along. He had:
3 guitars (1 acoustic, 1 electric, 1 bass)
2 amps (1 electric, 1 bass - "They're not the same, Mum.")
computer
set of Midnight Special DVDs to feed his love for 70's music
some clothes
and some other stuff
All the most important things. Except for toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant, school supplies... and who knows what else! It's a good thing he's coming home on the weekend.
We met one of the other new students. He had just flown in from the Netherlands that day. I bet he remembered his toothpaste.
Little Joe wrote on Facebook that he will miss his brother. And so will we!

1st of September!

It is officially the first day of SPRING! Hoooray!! My favourite season of the year. And what a beautiful day it is Down Under. Sun, blue skies, a little something in the air....blossoms, birds, freshness, greenery, new lambs (actually, I haven't seen any new lambs yet...I just happen to know that around about now, the fields will suddenly be dotted with little white dots next to the big white fluffy ones! Paddock Dandruff!)

~~+~~

The Lemon tree in our garden is still trying to get rid of its winter fruit in preparation for Spring. We have frozen lemon juice in the freezer, homemade lemon honey/curd/butter in the fridge, and a freshly baked lemon krummeltorte in the pantry.

YUM!

Someone once said that if you are hosting dessert, you only need to make 2 desserts to cover all bases

- something with chocolate in it, and something lemony!

~~+~~

I'm glad for the nice day to help the 'disposition'! Have come away from the mandatory weekend course intensive feeling shattered. Learnt lots, participated in zillions of tests and inventories, discovered lots of interesting things, enjoyed my fellow classmates, ate lots, drank lots of coffee, and am now ready for some 'space' to revitalise! That patch of warm sunlight looks just perfect in fact...

When things seem overwhelming...

“Where shall we begin?

Begin with the heart,

for the spring of life arises from the heart

and from there it runs in a circular manner.”

- Eckhart

As my boys enjoy the predicted dry, sunny, and Spring-like weather this weekend, I will spend 2 full days doing some enforced navel-gazing. Not something that I think Kiwis do very well. Still, it promises to be a very interactive time with this bunch of highly gregarious students, whom I suspect, are unafraid to share their varied collections of navel-fluff!

What a day!

What an absolute cracker of a day!

Here is a pic, hot off the press...literally.

Spring has SPRUNG....

The grass iz RIZ...

I now know where

The birdies IS !

Mini Olympics Medal Ceremony (complete with victory dias)! The kids had SO much fun...

Another assignment in...but no rest for the wicked - weekend intensive this weekend. Sigh - stuck inside, with a forecast of gorgeous weather, trying to sift through the sawdust...

Staff Retreat

It is always a wonderful thing to go off on our staff retreat, just before the real chaos of students assaults our sparkly clean school. We reconnect after the summer break and turn our focus back on the large goals of teaching. And, of course, we have fun! The staff headed out to Loon Lake on Monday morning (I'm guessing that there must be at least 30 Loon Lakes scattered throughout Canada!) and stayed at a wonderful conference centre out in the forest. Ellen, Kerri, and I went off on a "walk" that ended up taking us all around the lake for two hours of hiking up, down, and over fallen rainforest logs. We felt so very victorious when we finally trudged back to the lodge!

Off They Go

Once again, it's the most wonderful time of the year for my boys.

Summer camp!

All year long, they look forward to the last week of summer vacation, when they can go off to the annual Foursquare Church youth camp, so that they can come home at the end and moan about how boring life at home is. And it really is!

This year's theme is Bible characters. Last year's was pirates (Llttle Joe was a treasure chest and won a prize) and past themes have been Disney, super heroes, and "what I want to be when I grow up". Little Joe is going as a spy in Canaan (with grapes) and Little Bear is Adam. After the fruit, not before. I sewed many leaves onto his shorts.

Before the boys left, I made them go outside (into the rain) for some photos. I had considerable leverage, after spending an hour and a half making the Adam shorts, so Little Bear was most cooperative! Although they aren't as cute at this age as Little E in his bear costume, I loved this shot of them.

And now, a week without children! (kind of wasted on me this week, as I'll be intensely preparing for school...)

If you go down to the woods today...

Well, the little bears at this end of the world, have begun another week in the wide, wild world of school.

We have recently discovered a stash of old photos of the boys, and hence the run of photos from days gone by. We've all enjoyed looking at them - they are SO cute!!! We forget all too quickly.

These pics are of E. He had to go as a bear to a birthday party. Being the sweet, thoughtful kid that he was, he decided that he wanted to visit the Paediatric Cardiac ward in his bear outfit to give out stickers to the sick kids there. He thought that the sick kids would like to see a 'real live bear'! And they did!

Being ensconced with a ton of paper and my computer, churning out wise words by the thousands for my next assignment...I have no deep and insightful words to spare. This is the extent of it!

Pride and Spelling

The countdown to class is on!
After four days back in school, I went today to the annual spelling workshop. I think that this is my seventh time. As I compel the other teachers to attend every third year, I figure that I'd better show up, myself. Even after going so many times, I always like to think about those predictible spelling rules. There's something wonderful about language! Did you know that there are five reasons why a word might end with a silent final E? Or that I and O may say their long sound when followed by two consonants? It's heady stuff, I tell you!
However delightful spelling may be, sitting from 9am to 5pm makes for a tiring day, especially when followed by an hour-long freeway free-for-all. I arrived home rather fatigued and ready for some relief. After digging in the garden for half an hour, I came in for a favorite movie: Pride and Prejudice.

At this moment, Elizabeth and the hateful Caroline Bingley are "taking a turn around the room", while Mr. Darcy states that his "good opinion, once lost, is lost forever." Sigh. Pure pleasure!

A blast from the past...

Couldn't resist this one! Insight beyond his years...

L : “Good friends know where all your best hiding places are!”

Return to Routine

Sigh.

It's kind of over. Although we don't have students until Sept. 2, I have returned to school and am already wallowing in papers and unfinished jobs. And I haven't even started on my classroom, yet! Oh, well. At least there is still a little bit of flexibility in my schedule!

Little Joe is at camp, in charge of a cabin full of 9 year old boys. Gulp! Little Bear is in his last week of work, looking forward to youth camp next week, and then Bible College for the year. He will be taking a music program, which thrills him no end! And Big Bear is frantically trying to complete as much as possible in his last week of holidays.

If you have ever visited Nienie's blog (there's a link on the right), you will be saddened to hear that she and her husband were seriously injured in a small plane crash on the weekend and are badly burned. I've never met her, but as a blog reader, I feel like I know her - from a distance. Don't you think that the internet makes the world much smaller?? It's interesting to start thinking about the relationships that happen because of it, while at the same time it creates distance between people. Fascinating.

The weather has gone to grey and gloomy with rain; it's nice to remember where we were a week ago - with our friends, Barbera and Andrew at their cottage on Deka Lake. Peaceful and beautiful.

On Boys and Hollow Legs...

My legs are hollow,
And so’s my tum!
I love to eat
Food cooked by Mum.

I eat my vegies,
I eat my spuds,
I eat my meat,
I love my puds!

Sweets or savouries,
Fruits are fine;
I’ll eat anything,
And choc’s divine!

There seems no end
To food that’s nice;
I’ll have some pasta…
Please, more rice…

I eat all day
And sleep all night
I start again
At morning’s light.

I think I’m growing,
I think, it’s…up!
I think I’m just
A healthy pup!