Fortnightly Update 21st December 2014

Josh as JosephOur family is enjoying this Christmas season. We are currently on holiday in Tasmania where my extended family lives. It is our first Christmas back to Tasmania for 10 years so it is special. The kids are loving connecting with their cousins and I am enjoying catching up with my siblings and dad. Staying at an elderly relative’s unit means that there are not the usual activities you have around home. The first day, we heard “I’m bored” a number of times. We then listed some options for when they have nothing to do. We didn’t want to just resort to tv and DVD usage too much. As I sit here typing this, the kids have ridden their bikes (we brought their bikes with us on the ferry plus a number of boards games) around to the cemetery to find my mum’s headstone and then around to visit one lot of cousins.

We are finding it very quiet, peaceful and safe here in this small town. Matey (nearly 9) rode his bike to the other side of town on his own this morning where I was at the local market. Our kids have spent a lot of time catching up with cousins, riding motorbikes and 4-wheelers, having an outside fire at night, and playing 40:40 and hide and seek. The kids have loved spending time on their cousins farm.

Nativity thank you: We printed off a thank you for people who have a nativity set in their front garden and/or Christmas lighting show. The thank you says how our family loves seeing the nativity displays the best and we thank them for including this in their display. We then put the thank you’s in the letterboxes of those houses with the nativity display. Matey is really enjoying doing this.

Christmas Lights: Our family loves looking at Christmas lights. We have a fantastic sound and light show along the foreshore at Frankston. The other night we stopped for the 30 minute show. I love hearing the kids sounds of delight and fascination. This helps to create memories. A bonus of being in Tasmania is that there are a whole lot of Christmas lights in areas that are new to us.

Josh as Joseph 1Christmas Production: Both Princess (11) and Matey were in our church’s Christmas Production. They were involved in street dancing to the song “What a Glorious Night” and Princess also was involved with a contemporary dance to “Hey Moon”. The costumes were fantastic. There were four performances over the weekend. Combined with the time for makeup and hair preparation, it felt like the whole weekend was taken up with the production. The kids loved the experience and all of us parents were very proud of their performances. It is a very professional performance and a great experience for the kids. It has been a huge time commitment with all the rehearsals and it is great to have it finished.

printer breakdown photoDismantling a Printer: Our Printer recently needed a new drum which was going to cost more than the price of a new printer. Matey enjoyed dismantling it to find out what the inner workings were like. This is a great way of inspiring future engineers. I highly recommend you allowing and even encouraging your children to explore and take apart broken appliances and even try to put them back together again.

Thank you for being part of the readership of my blog this year. I wish you all a memorable and meaningful Christmas and a peaceful and restful New Year. ENJOY!!

2 thoughts on “Fortnightly Update 21st December 2014

  1. Kaidee

    Hi Jane,
    Thanks so much for sharing much wisdom over the past year. I look forward to gleaning more from you in 2015!

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