Now for something different but exciting!

I am a random blogger as you all know by now!
So, when real life is busy my blogging slows down:)

We've been busy celebrating lots of birthdays both in the family and with friends. What is it about February that we have SO many birthdays! anyway....to the exciting news....

I have a dear friend Helen who homeschools her two lovely girls Madeline and Charlotte. I've known Helen for a few years now and Rebekah and her two girls get on like a house on fire!






















In 2011 we didn't get to see them as much as we would have liked as they were busy preparing for their First Lego League tournament. They were competing in a group of three which included a friend of theirs - Jaye. We arranged to catch up with them when the NSW tournament was over. Alas, they WON that and became busier preparing for the Australian tournament. And yep, you guessed it, they won that one too!
Rebekah is now proud to say she knows some local celebrities:)
They named themselves the Kookagumjoeys.

Now to the 'different' part of my post:
They are travelling to Germany in May - June this year to take part in the European championships. And as you can imagine this is no mean feat - trying to raise all that money for the family to travel over there.

So, I asked Helen if I could post something about them on my blog to get the word out as they are looking for sponsors and are doing all sorts of fund raising activities to raise the money they need, including a raffle.

This is what Helen had to say:

"The KookaGumJoeys are three home schooled girls who won the FIRST LEGO League National
tournament in December last year. They will now represent Australia at the
Open European Championship in Germany, in June.

They are trying to raise approximately $30,000 through
donations and sponsorship to get them to Germany. They would be
incredibly grateful to anyone who could offer them support of any kind.

They are currently running a raffle with some amazing prizes (1st prize is a
LEGO Mindstorms NXT Set worth $500). If you would like to purchase
tickets or find out more please check out their website: www.kookagumjoeys.com"

So, if you are able to spread the word or know of anyone that could sponsor them, they would greatly appreciate it. I know I would:)

Thanks! And I am glad I managed to squeeze at least one more blog post into February, (albeit on the 29th) increasing the grand total of posts
for 2012 to 2 ! :0)

Hello 2012

I've been on holidays with Ron and Rebekah visiting Ron's family down in Victoria (a neighbouring state - for my non-Aussie readers). We had a wonderful holiday. It was a very 'social' holiday for us, a bit different to most others we normally have as we spent all our holidays with in-laws and friends. Normally we spend at least a week a two of our holidays just by ourselves but this time it didn't work out that way. Nevertheless it was still lovely and nice to have a break from our normal daily routines and spend Christmas with my in-laws. They are truly a great bunch of people!
Rebekah got to have loads of fun with her cousins on Ron's side and spent lots of time with her grandparents. I'm sure these memories will hold a special place in her heart as she grows up.

I didn't really know my grandparents at all as they all passed away when I was a baby / very young child. After having Rebekah I've come to realise what a special relationship it truly is and she is so blessed to have wonderful grandparents on both sides of the family.

We started back 'school' the week after we got back which was about three weeks ago as we don't follow the school terms.

I have also been busy de-cluttering since we got back. I find coming back from holidays a great time to de-clutter, clean and re-organise in general.
While on holidays, we (Ron and I) usually spend time assessing the past year and talking about the year ahead and what we would like to see change / happen over the coming year. This time was no exception, so we've come back with some good thoughts and ideas which we'll try to implement by the grace of God.

One thing I've already implemented is doing our laundry and some general house cleaning at night. This has helped me be more relaxed in the mornings while we have been doing school work. I felt like I needed to focus more on Rebekah and her work in the mornings without being distracted. It's amazing how this small and simple adjustment has already improved the quality of our school time.

During December our church did a series of teaching on finances and we've been working on some of those things we learned that we need to put in place one of them being saving 10% of our income. We worked out that we only save about 5% of our income but we are endeavouring to change that this year and so we spent some time reviewing the family budget and have come up with some good plans to increase our savings!

Over the last year or so I've gotten to make a lovely friend who homeschools and who lives very close to us. We have decided to do monthly nature walks together this year which I'm really looking forward to. Nature walks and study are fun times for us and I think Rebekah would enjoy it even more with other kids around. We didn't get to do it as much last year and I'm hoping that 2012 will see an improvement here!

I've been also busy catching up with my mum who also got back from her trip to India just before we got back to Sydney. She was away for about 8 months so we've had a lot to catch up on and it's been lovely for both of us and also lovely for Rebekah to spend time with her maternal grandparents.

I'll be visiting your blogs very soon, if I haven't already. In the meantime, here's some pictures from our trip:

Rebekah insisted on taking her three favourite stuffed toys this trip:


Tuppy (puppy) on the far left, Cordie (Corduroy named after that famous picture book character) and last but definitely not the least and the one she is holding is Jakie (named Jacob though I always insisted it was a girl, Rebekah thought it was a boy, maybe secret inner desire to have a little baby brother?). Taken at a motel in Albury:





















She has a sense of humour! This was taken outside a historic courthouse at Seymour near Melbourne:






















Panning for gold at Sovereign Hill, Ballarat:




















Rebekah got to sail for the first time which was very exciting and she absolutely fell in love with it:




















Fishing, Rebekah got her first fishing rod and I can see lots of fishing time with daddy up ahead:
























Werribee Mansion (near Melbourne), a historic old house with amazing gardens. They had a few fun things for the kids to get involved in as you'll see below:






















Rebekah having a try at how they did the laundry in the old homestead:





















Playing 'croquet'























and hopscotch with 'Aunt Sally' in the background ( a game where you try to knock the heads off the poles and apparently they were all political figures, some things haven't changed in Australia, we still like knocking our pollies don't we!)






















and lastly, on the Monet bridge at Jugiong a few hours south of Sydney on our way back home. My blog header currently has her at the same spot last time we went down that way about a year ago:






















p.s: Confession time - I've had this in draft format for about two weeks! :) I'll be around to yours soon, I'm sorry I've not been a good blog follower for the past couple of weeks!