New year jottings

Phew! It’s been such a busy January!

Back around Christmas time, the summer holidays seemed to stretch endlessly for weeks ahead. And now, we only have a couple more days before the new school term begins for the year.

Here are a few jottings of what we got up to this past month…

Summer Play
As usual the days flew by with lots of fun play and activities. We cooled off with plenty of water play in the backyard. We hung out at the library to take advantage of the free air-conditioning and their line-up of school holiday programs, which included stroking a giant cockroach and wrapping a live snake around our shoulders.

Meal Plan Kits

A new thing we tried out this month was a meal plan kits (i.e. those companies that provide conveniently packaged recipes and ingredient kits). I stumbled across a 40% off promotion and I decided to give it a go. It was also a nice and easy way to transition back to the cooking routine after our holiday. Both the kids were happily involved in following the recipes and prepping the ingredients. Nathan helped slice cucumbers and tomatoes with a real knife. And at the end of it, they even gobbled down tomatoes and beetroots, which they normally would not have touched with a ten-foot pole.

House Painting
Our next big house project is to repaint the external frontage of our house. After ten years, the original paint has been showing clear signs of weathering. I’ve always harboured a  small sense of regret over the original colours. So this is an opportunity for a fresh change. I agonised for weeks over paint samples and colour choices. Finally with input from my architect brother, we settled on a single bold dramatic colour choice. I’m excited to see how it turns out once the painter is finished.

Glasses
Recently, after an unfortunate incident with Grace which is too emotionally frustrating to recount (suffice to say that it involved not handling the word ‘No’ very well) – Grace ended up accidentally (sort of) kicking me right in the face causing my glasses to snap. The loud and tear-filled aftermath of the incident was too painful for words. And the damage to the glasses was irreparable. Luckily I had contact lenses to fall back on while waiting for my new pair to be ready. I was very disappointed not to be able to find the original frame design or anything close to it (with nose pads and that was covered by my health insurance). So I’ll have to make do with the second best alternative I found.

Harry Potter
Nathan and I have been continuing our daily reading of the Harry Potter series, and we’re now almost at the end of Book 4 (Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire). Nathan has turned out to be one of those ‘book before movie’ kind of people. He initially refused to watch the next movie until he had finished this book. But finally he yielded a bit and asked to watch the movie bit by bit, but only up to the chapters completed. The suspense must be so hard to bear but he’s sticking to his guns.

Saying Goodbye
The house has been chock full with kids over the holidays. But all that will change dramatically next week when I finally bid goodbye to my last lot of family day care ‘graduates’ moving on to kindy and pre-primary. It’s definitely a season filled with plenty of heart-tugs. All of these children definitely wriggled their little roots right into my heart and I will truly miss seeing them on a regular basis every week. But I guess it’s inevitable as a teacher to have to say goodbye to your little charges every year as they move on to the next stage.

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The prettiest goodbye present from one of my daycare girls ❤️

A post shared by Serenely (@livingserenely) on Jan 20, 2019 at 11:04pm PST

P.S. with all these goodbyes, there are now empty spots to fill in my family day care – do pass the word around if you know anyone looking for care south of the river in Perth.