Oh no! She's growing up!!!

My lovely beautiful precious daughter has of today got her first "wobbly" tooth!
She was in tears with the pain this morning (after biting into some apple) until I explained that it was all part of growing up and reminded her of what Ron would say if he was home "that will toughen you up":) This brought some momentary relief and back came the tears. So....quick thinking mum said we'd better call daddy at work to tell him the "exciting" news coz she's growing up into a "big" girl and this is what happens as you grow up. A bit of the tooth fairy might have been thrown in there for good measure to:) Well, those two things seemed to fortunately end her tears and we got to share it with daddy at work. Ron asked her how she first realised her tooth was wobbly and she said "well, I was wobbling my tongue in my mouth and then my tongue felt my tooth and the tooth felt all wobbly"...so that's how she discovered it!
As far as co-incidences go, she actually picked out her "tooth fairy" book for me to read to her this morning (before the discovery)!!
Also, she had planned on writing a letter to her best friend Ava. So, we incorporated our experience of the day into her letter to Ava and here it is:



















Amy, if you are reading this, Ava should receive her first snail mail from Rebekah tomorrow.
I love snail mail, don't you all? I want Rebekah to experience the pleasure of writing and receiving a "proper" letter and hopefully by introducing this early on in her life, she won't get too "high tech" to write a "proper" letter when she grows up:) or am I hoping in vain? :)

Washing machines and weevils!

As you may or may not know, we had a very long.....holiday and got back a couple of weeks ago.
We usually find a few not so nice surprises when we come back from a loooong holiday!
I recall that one year, we remembered that we had read earlier to turn off all power points before you embark on a holiday, which we dutifully did! We are such sticklers for safety etc! we switched off all the power points in the house before we left feeling so good about ourselves! Well, on our return we were greeted by a nasty surprise when we opened our fridge! Yes, in our zeal, we even turned off the switch for the fridge:) We have never done that one ever again!

Well, this time, besides being welcomed by a musty smell in the house, I found our washing maching didn't want to wash our clothes anymore after the first load and we found some heebie jeebies in the pantry a few days later when I went to get some flour out! We found some weevils....aaaaahhhh!
As my beautiful dd would say, "I've never ever come across that in my WHOLE life before"!! (and she is just 5, well almost 6:))

Needles to say, I had a busy weekend, cleaning out our pantry! It now greets us with the aroma of tea tree oil when you open it...you see thanks to almighty google, tea tree oil and bay leaf are deterrents apparently...I'll have to see if that works and if you're interested I'll get back to you on it:)
As for the washing machine, google came in handy again and I worked out it's the cold water valve thing-y that's not working! So, while we wait for it to get fixed, I'm back to the old days, manually filling up my washing machine with water for each fill cycle! I guess it's better than washing by hand or as one of my friends said : hitting them on a stone like my native country women have done for centuries! Well, my friend, you will not find me doing that!

While I am on the topic of google, I am so guilty of turning to google first for answers that I recall about a year ago, when Rebekah was only five or even before that, she asked me a question to which I said I didn't know the answer and her reply was "why don't you google it?":) I still chuckle when I remember that!

Any of you had any funny / nasty surprises after your holidays?

Happy New Year

We are back from holidays and what a splendid time we had too!

I highly recommend a five week holiday - heaps of time to unwind and totally relax! :)
Since we got married (15 years ago) Ron and I have made it a point to have a holiday at the end of the year. We started out with two weeks for the first few years, then it became three and gradually four but this last holiday, we set a new record - five whole weeks! What a luxury!
If you've never had a holiday that long, I highly recommend it!
We had ample time to truly unwind and relax and recharge the batteries.
We always find that we come back so refreshed mentally, physically and spiritually.

We visited Ron's family in Victoria and spent some time in peaceful Apollo Bay on the Great Ocean Rd.
We also up with Jeanne, my dear blog friend. It was great to meet her in real life and her delightful daughter Jemimah!
We got to house mind for a relative who was away on holidays and got to enjoy their lovely rural home along with the chooks, dog and get this - a tennis court! This was a holiday within a holiday for us, a huge blessing!
Rebekah got to do a few firsts over this holiday - she got to swim for the first time without her arm floaties, hooray for Rebekah and she also had her very first sleep over at her cousins' place!

It's nothing quite like being away from the busy-ness of city living to refocus for the new year.

One of my scriptures for this year that I have been meditating upon and keeping at the forefront of my mind is Proverbs 14:1

¹ The wise woman builds her house,
but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.

As women/ wives / mothers, we hold so much in our hands as far as directing and creating the atmosphere of the home and what happens in a family's life.
My prayer has been that God would give me the wisdom I need to be the best wife, best mother etc in our home so that I would seek to "build" up our home and not "tear" it down.

So, happy new year and hope you all have a GREAT 2010!

Have a blessed Christmas

We are winding down here getting ready for Christmas, the holidays etc, so I'll be on holidays from blogging for a while.
I wish all my bloggy friends a blessed and happy Christmas and I look forward to spending more time with you in blogosphere in 2010!
Here's a picture taken of us as a family a couple of weeks ago at our church Christmas party by one of our friends who is a professional photographer. I think we scrubbed up alright, or maybe it was photoshop:)
See you all later!

Time to encourage myself:)

Two days ago, as we got in the car to head out, Rebekah said to me, "can we listen to some nice classical music mummy?".
Well, this was truly music to my ears:)

It got me pondering on the past year - as one tends to do at the end of a year - and I was really encouraged about all we've done this year with Rebekah.

For instance, I thought of the fact that she started writing her letters in cornmeal early this year



















and now she knows pretty much all her lower and uppercase letters and can write them quite neatly. She knows approximately fifty words that she can read, she has progressed a lot in maths without a whole lot of formal teaching (apart from some lessons in the Singapore Math books that we started a few weeks ago), she has learnt to play "twinkle twinkle little star" by herself on her toy keyboard, and she would say her favourite books are her "art" books - we have quite a few of those:) One of our recent additions is a book called "100 Masterpieces of Australian painting" that we picked up for $5 at a recent second hand book sale (can you believe that!). She loves this book so much and it has become a recent favourite to take with her for her car rides.

When all of this dawned on me the day before yesterday, I couldn't believe that I actually had a part to play in this! Did I actually help her with all of that! It's amazing when you add up all the little bits and take a look at the big picture! I was truly encouraged at my efforts to "home school" her!

She has progressed to listening to read alouds from the Beatrix Potter books to ones like "The Magic Pudding" and "Stuart Little".

As for spiritual things, they are a bit hard to measure but judging by what she said the same night, I am encouraged. She said that she is going to start a "group" in her bedroom where she goes and prays by herself regularly..hmm not sure about the "group" thing but I think she's trying to emulate some of our prayer meetings:)

She loves her science experiments book and maps! In fact she has a child's atlas that she is truly in love with and loves looking up countries and places. She often takes out her history book from next years lot of books and loves looking at it!

Also, she loves nature and we have helped nurture that sense of wonder with things in nature and helped her develop her powers of observation. In fact, she loves drawing in her nature journal and has made quite a few entries, this being her most recent one: (sorry no scanner at the moment so had to resort to taking a picture)




















These are just some of the bits and pieces from our past year of homeschooling.

So, time to pat myself on the back:) and thank God for His grace this past year with a successful year of homeschooling!

Rite of passage?

I thought I'd better tell you about our recent exciting events around here.
Rebekah has just finished her end of year dance concert. She had been looking forward to it all year long. At the start of this year, I wanted to enrol her in ballet but the most convenient place for us taught not only ballet but also jazz and tap. Rebekah has really enjoyed it all and she says jazz is her favourite though she loves tapping about in her tap shoes and has been known to wear it to church on Sundays too many a time:) Go figure! I guess jazz shoes aren't as glamourous!
Anyway, the big day arrived after and here she is:

Ballet:























Jazz: (They did a song from Lion King)























Tap:























I was so proud of my little girl when she was up on stage in front of hundreds of people doing her thing! I had one of those moments when I couldn't believe how fast the years have gone - I thought about the day she was born and how she has grown from this little baby so quickly to be doing this. You know, it was just one of those emotional moments.....universally parents say that kids grow up fast and how true is that! Some days can seem to go slow but from a longer term perspective, it all seems to go just too fast:( I want her to stay little but I know I have no control over that! Anyway, I digress....while I was having this emotional moment I mentioned earlier, I somehow felt like a real mum...as if doing this sort of thing made me feel normal....I am not sure if it's the fact that Rebekah hasn't been to school or not that made me feel that way (you know, not having the normal school experience, first day of kindy etc, knowing all the other local kids in the community etc) I suspect it is...or just the fact that she is growing up....I felt like it was rite of passage into real motherhood...I know it's probably silly to think so but that's how I felt.

And oh, to top off all the excitement of dancing on stage etc, she even got a medal and trophy, now what can top that? It's her first ever medal and trophy and she is so proud of it!


















On a different note, Ron and I have not liked the direction that Rebekah will head in if she continues in this dance school, so next year it might be a different dance school where she can learn ballet alone or maybe even Irish dancing....:)

Some Magic Pudding magic

After days of stifling heat, we had a cool change and so Rebekah and I decided to take off to the park yesterday morning to celebrate! So, while all the kids were heading off to school, we heaeded off to the park!

















It's been a long time since we've been out to the park I'm sad to say.
































Rebekah has named this new park recently opened up at our place as "The Snugglepot and Cuddlepie Magic Pudding Park". She doesn't mind that it takes her 10 seconds to say it's name (yes we counted the seconds as I thought it was too long!) and won't let me call it just "The Magic Pudding park".
It does have some of May Gibbs' characters as well painted along the park - I just forgot to take some pics of them:)

Isn't it amazing how life is filled with some amazing co-incidences. I have noticed this so much more since we decided to homeschool Rebekah. I think it's God's way of confirming and affirming me that we are on the right track.
This park is one of those amazing co-incidences. We started reading "The Maggic Pudding" (well Ron did, not me) to Rebekah a few weeks ago and then we discover this newly opened park about ten minutes from our home. howzat!

Rebekah assures me that Albert is not always grouchy as he seems here:)
















We had a magical time hanging out here before work called us home:(
















Rebekah doing her "ballet" pose on a tree stump....will have to post on that soon.....