Looking past the not so fantastic moments from last year , one definitely VERY fantastic thing that happened was kicking-off our reading of chapter books together. So far we’ve finished reading Enid Blyton’s ‘ The Wishing Chair ’ and ‘ The Wishing Chair Again ’, and a little bit of ‘ The Magic Faraway Tree ’… Roald Dahl’s ‘ Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ’ and ‘ The BFG ’… and we are about halfway through C.S. Lewis’s ‘ The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe ’. I managed to score some extra time off over the school holidays. So I decided to indulge in a bit of bookish fun by bringing some the books we read to life. We set up our own ‘Willy Wonka Factory’ making our own Wonka bars, everlasting gobstoppers, non-melting ice creams and other confectionery creations. I made some gingerbread ‘bars’ for the kids to decorate and create their own versions of wonka bars, edible play dough for them to mould and shape into various sweet treats, and handfuls of mini M&Ms, Nerds candy and...

It seems every year we always need to take one really hard knock before we can move on to the next year. This year’s share of hard knocks was probably more than others. It was kind of a year of just buckling down and weathering through the storm… We were down to a single income family this year (me being the primary breadwinner). I dropped my phone, cracking the screen and had to pay out my existing phone contract to get a new one. With the current bleak economic situation looming over everything, we got stuck between a rock and hard place with a number of our investments. Hubs and I had to weather through a lot of ‘tough’ discussions throughout the year. Then someone rear-ended me in my car and we had to navigate through the whole insurance game. Towards the end of the year we were beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Right after Christmas I finally thought we were over the worst of it and could breathe easy. We were home free! And then tragedy struck. While...