Sophie does Workshop as a subject at school. This is because she likes making things. She would have also done Soft Materials ('clothing' in another era), but they make really lame items in the 3rd form apparently.

So this year S has had units on wood (she made a tiny bookshelf - a divided box really) and metalwork (a cast frog). Her latest unit was on plastics.

Sophie finished her clock and was able to bring it home the day after Katie left for Austria. She was a bit disappointed that she couldn't show Katie - so, here it is!

what to do in the holidays

We don't have any trouble finding things to do in the holidays. Apart from reading, Sophie and Elanor do a lot of baking - and we get to eat the results!

One day they just decided to make lemon meringue pie! No help required, but the pastry got a little brown round the edges. Not that I could have helped them anyway, as baking 'blind' is not something I've mastered.

It looked impressive, and tasted delicious!

Challenge quilts

Sophie and I have had a busy week (apart from all the normal things). Yesterday we had to submit the quilts for the Challenge for this year's quilter's guild exhibition.

The challenge was to interpret a playing card in a quilt of a given size. Each person who wanted to do the challenge was dealt 4 cards from a deck, and they had to choose one of them on the spot.

This was repeated until the deck was used up, although I think the guild issued more than a full deck of cards.

Here, in no particular order, is Sophie's quilt, and mine.

You can tell what the card was because we had to put the number and suit in the usual place for a playing card.

I saw a few other ones when we went in to drop the quilts off, and it's going to be a stunning exhibition.

This is only one small part of the exhibition, as there are also general quilts, which are judged under a whole range of categories, such as best use of colour, best appliqué, and so on.

Sophie and I both have another quilt to exhibit.

The exhibition opens on September 4 or 5, and will probably run for 10 days or so. I'll post the whereabouts closer to the time.

Sophie and Elanor Ice Skating

Sophie and Elanor have spent a few days in Christchurch with Nana and Poppa.

They don't get to go ice skating very often (we don't often go down there in Winter), but it's always good fun.


It was their first time flying without a parent (and our first time sending an unaccompanied minor on the plane). Note to self: arrive early (there's paperwork) and make sure the person picking them up has photo ID.

Sophie and I went camping this weekend

We have been having some lovely weather recently - day after day of fine, sunny weather, and less wind than usual for Spring.

Yesterday, Sophie and I decided it was the right weather for a camping holiday. (This was at least partly because we were both reading outside, and needed some shade!)

We put the tent up, and then lay around in it reading our novels (which is what you do on holiday).

It was Bern's day to cook dinner, and we all ate outside on the grass.

Later in the evening Sophie and I set up our sleeping bags, and stayed the night in the tent.

It's not that robust a tent, and I don't think I'd like to have to rely on it in a rain storm. But it's fine for back yard camping for two. (Or three if the 3rd one is small.)

(What I hadn't realised until last night is that there is a dog somewhere down the road who likes to bark for ages from 10pm. Hmmm.)

Next time I'll make sure we have the camping lantern down from the roof space (forgot it until bedtime), and maybe we can cook our breakfast saussies on the barbie!

(ps, Bern and Elanor have gone camping tonight.)

Christmas Parade

It's been a busy weekend. This afternoon we went to the Christmas parade. Now the girls are older we mostly go to watch out for friends who are in the parade itself. But today Sophie had the chance to be a clown in the parade, so we were watching out for her!

Dancing to Bach

We had a fantastic day yesterday playing outside, and at playgroup, as the weather was so lovely. (It is not today!) When Isla asked for some music on, I decided I didn't want another nursery songs CD, so put on the first classical CD that came to hand - in this case Bach's Brandenburg Concertos.

After school Sophie put the CD on again, and here she is with Grace and Isla dancing with scarves. They really 'got into' the music, and the variations between the movements (and concertos) lent opportunities for a range of movements. Concentration, fluid movements, thoughtful pauses and then more (sometimes changed) movements.

I don' know if I've blogged about the hazards of taking photos when children play. However, it's very easy to change the child's experience by trying to record it - if they see you. Either they freeze up because they think they should do the 'right' thing, and can't think what you might want, or they freeze up in a cheesy grin because they like having their photo taken. Either way, you have interrupted their play, and also don't get your photo.

There are a couple of ways to get around this. One is to sit as inconspicuously as possible (on the floor is good) and keep taking photos until they forget about what you are doing. Another is to be very quiet and sneaky, and hope the music covers the sound of the shutter clicking. I used the later approach, and it worked pretty well.

You've got to love school holidays!

Sophie decided she wanted to make biscuits, and invited the little girls to help. She did all the setting up; I just gave advice on keeping it manageable, and hung around to discourage spoons and fingers from going in mouths!

They all had a really good go at mixing. This was the best photo for getting all the faces in, but Eva was mixing with the best of them too. Cara had particular persistence, and kept right on to the pressing out stage.

The biscuits will be for afternoon tea shortly.

(ps, at the same time, Katie was making a cake for morning tea and Rowena was putting away dishes, so it was a very crowded kitchen.)

Today was the last day of netball. And a lovely sunny day too. Sophie's team has had their ups and downs over the season, but ended on a high note, winning 20:10. Sophie scored about half of her team's goals, and was thrilled!

Bern is the coach of the team, which is made up of girls from the three local schools.

Elanor didn't play today as she felt unwell. So I don't have a photo of her or her team.

Sophie's birthday

The other big event today was Sophie's birthday of course. We woke up early (7am) to do presents before we had to get ready for church (and we had to be earlier than usual).

Here is Soph with her cake. Chocolate with (rather runny!) dark chocolate ganache, and the candles we could find in the drawer! (Must get more before the party next week.)

Soph and I went to Strawberry Fare this evening as well. I have to admit, I'm "all caked out"!

Birthday parties - without pressure

I have just listened to a nine-to-noon segment on kids birthday parties, the ridiculous lengths some parents go to with them, and ways to avoid this. (Podcast here, but it expires after a week.) They talked about an American website Birthdays Without Pressure, which also talks about similar things. But I think (as in everything!) the American experience seems to go to extremes. (Probably comes of having a much larger population, and the extremes getting the news...)

They suggest planning a party for what the kid wants (this probably needs to be within reason) NOT what the parent want just to keep up with the Jones'. A common-sense approach - a feature which some people lack, of course. Here's an excerpt:

Sometimes as parents we plan the party we want, or the party we think the community expects, but not necessarily the party that our children really want. Here are some questions you might ask your child before you start planning this year’s party.

1. What was your favorite birthday party?
2. What was fun about it?
3. What was not fun?
4. What do you remember most about it?
5. How many kids do you think you should have at a party?
6. What was fun about a friend’s party?
7. What are your favorite games to play at a party?
8. How many presents would be enough?
9. How many kids would be enough?

We have Sophie's birthday coming up. In our house you get the sort of birthday celebration that your sisters had at that age (Kate is the trend setter). For a #12 you get: A) to go to Strawberry Fare with Mum, and B) an 'afternoon tea' party for some friends. Sophie will get A on Sunday, but B will be next weekend, as we are busy with Elanor's first communion this weekend.

As for expense, I used to do a birthday party on a very tight budget indeed. This time it's 7 kids to the pool, then home for pizza and cake, and possibly games if enough time. A treasure hunt (with mini chocolates at the end) is almost compulsory around here. Bern is our expert at treasure hunts. (Actually, we always did it that I did the food and he did the games.) Treasure hunts get more complicated as you get older, and are usually of a co-operative nature.

Hopefully there'll be pics after the event.

'This is the way the lady rides'

One of the delights of family childcare is the relationships which develop between the little kids and the rest of the family. It can be quite hard organising the school kids out the door in the mornings because they want to play with the little guys when they arrive. But, a paticularly special time is when the school kids arrive home again after 3pm. The little kids will often run down the hall, callling their names.

On the days that Grace comes, she has nearly an hour here after the other little kids have gone home. That means that she gets undivided attention, often from Sophie. A game they have been playing recently is 'this is the way the lady rides'. I couldn't resist posting this photo - it just captures the fun that they are having together.

You will also notice Grace's 'dolly' - an inseparable companion at the moment.

Walk to the Windmill

This morning I went on a school trip, walking to our local wind turbine. This was with Sophie's syndicate - 108 kids, 4 teachers, a handful of parents and 3 dogs. It took us about 50 minutes, uphill all the way, and was fine except for the last 5 minutes which was a bit steep! (Brutal actually.) Beautiful view when you get there though. I hadn't walked it before. I think that counts for my exercise for today and at least one other day as well.

By the way, you can see our house if you know where to look.

Sushi

I sat down to blog about sushi (of all things) last night, and got majorly distracted looking for a suitable photo on Google Images to illustrate the post. All of a sudden it was past my bedtime! I'm going to have to do my own 'food styling' to get just what I want.

I was thinking about sushi because that's what Bern volunteered to bring for a work morning tea this morning. So we came home last evening from homegroup and started rolling sushi at 9.45pm. In the event, he wasn't well this morning, and didn't go to work, so the kids had some sushi in their lunchboxes, and we can have the rest as an entre tonight.

I can't remember why we made our first sushi, but it has become something that Sophie is the expert at. We usually make vegetarian sushi, with pickled ginger, cucumber, carrot, avacado, etc. (This is because some people in our house are fussy about fish (!), and we don't usually shop for special ingredients, so just use what we have in the fridge.) Served with soy sauce for dipping, and very dilute wasabi paste. When we were away on holiday with friends in January we had some very elegant picnics with sushi (and salads, bread, etc). It's actually very portable, if you take a board and cut it up at the picnic site.

Round the Bays Photos

They have finally got the photos from the Round the Bays funrun up on the web. These are commercial photos and can't be saved to disk, so I can't put on the blog, but you can see me finish at this link. I don't know how long these links will work, but they are good today.

Bernard is here.

Sophie is here.

Jerusha is here.

Another gorgeous day here, and plenty of reasons to get out in it. We had a picnic in the Dell arranged with a Sunday School group, but in the end only a small number turned out for it. They were probably all at the Cuba St Carnival - which is where Sophie, Katie and I went afterwards. Saw some clever, funny, outrageous, courageous (by turns) street performers, and checked out the stalls. A good range of music too, but too hot to stand around in the sun. (And lucky if you could get a seat in the shade.)

And here are Sophie and Elanor cooling off in the paddling pool this afternoon.

Round the Bays 3

Well, what a gorgeous day was turned on for the run! Overcast at first (which keeps the heat down), with the lightest breeze. By the time we had been going 20 minutes the clouds cleared, but I had the sun behind me at that stage, so, perfect. I really appreciated the water station at the 3.5k mark, and several people were spraying their hoses across the road to cool people down, which was also really good. (A fire engine was doing the same thing at one point.) One of the houses along the way has a patio over a street-front garage, and a small live band was up there singing and playing over loud speakers.

It was quite exciting being is such a large crowd (about 11,000 people). Bern was ahead (he ran the first 1/2 of the course before his first walking break), and Sophie and her friend Jerusha were behind me after the first 1k or so. I found a good strategy was to choose a person and let them set the pace, and if I needed to have a walk, I would just choose someone else when I was ready to run again. There was one guy who carried two plain blue flags the whole race. I guess he was with a group, but he was very useful to me as he was going at about the right pace, and was very visable. Sometimes I would be behind him, and just keep up; sometimes I would be ahead for a while, and he would pass me while I had a walk. I think I finished the course just ahead of him.

At the end we were given water and bananas. The girls came in a bit later, and we missed them in the crowd, so we spent over 1/2 an hour looking for them. Lots of entertainment, food stalls, etc at the park at the end. It would be really good to be with a big group, and there were lots of corporate groups. We saw a few people we knew. We queued for the free sausages and then queued for the free bus back to the start point (where we'd left the car).

And my time? I was aiming to make the 7km in 60 minutes. The times will be confirmed in tomorrow's paper, but on arrival I was told I'd done about 46 minutes. I was stoked! (This might vary depending on how long it took for me to reach the start line after the hooter.)

Painting was magic for G.

Today was the first day for G (aged 20 months) at my house. She was a little unhappy with mum leaving at first, but easily distracted, and she 'warmed up' to us over an hour or so, until I would say she had an excellent first day. After her sleep she was singing, dancing, jumping and clapping with us, and with Sophie and Elanor after they got home from school.

I took the Little Kids to our local playcentre for a visit. At first they were both a bit shy, and I led G around by the hand, looking at different activities, for a while. Then she saw the painting! This must have really struck a chord with her because she painted several pictures, and kept coming back to this area. After that she was away, exploring and playing in a number of areas, both inside and out.

Meanwhile, I(child) had become very independant, exploring and generally getting 'stuck in'. Lots of time with the playdough for her, squeezing, patting, poking - and checking out what the other children were doing.

Round the Bays 2

Only one week to go until the event. We just went on a 6km walk/jog around the waterfront. The total length of the course is about 7 kilometres. What we have done is drive the course and work out a landmark for each ½ k mark. Then we park the car at one point, walk/jog a known number of ½ k’s and then back to the car. For me and Sophie, a brisk walk is 10 minutes per kilometre. I’m up to walking ½ k and jogging for ½ k. I was pleased with the time we made tonight, but a shame about the headwind that came up on the way back.

It was really nice coming round a point and seeing the fountain quite a long way off and watching it as we ran toward it. We also watched a cargo ship being guided into port by a couple of red tugs, and there are other joggers and dog walkers of course. Quite a few people have fishing rods (often more than one per person), and they seem to have buckets so I suppose they are catching fish, though I haven’t stopped to ask anyone.