This week

Oh my, what a week. It seems that it's gone very quickly with very little to tell about it. Let's see - we went to the city to the farmers markets on Saturday, but it was really, really wet. We had a wonderful time - the rain just added to the fun for us. ( Don't think we've had enough rain to dampen any excitement over it yet). We ended up getting 3 inches out here & I can only imagine that they got a fair bit more there. Water everywhere. The rain moved on just as we were coming out of Aldi, but we hit it on the way home & had to go through quite big sections of road covered in water - the kids just LOVED it!!! Amazingly all our water tanks are full & overflowing - we even had to keep the water in this old leaky tank as the other tanks were too full to drain it into there - a first for us!!


On Monday Dave stayed home & looked after the children as my back (SI joints actually) have become inflamed. I stayed in bed most of the day & that went a long way in helping it. I've had this on & off for years, but this time would be the worse it's been so far. It was a very boring day for me - I don't do the sitting still or lying still for long periods of time well. However it's going much better now, so was worth it. We also had a big truck come & take our triticale. The boys loved seeing it, however I didn't let them go down & watch the grain being loaded from our silos as I couldn't walk that far on Monday.



The usual ballet lessons & swim club training have occurred. Ellie came out of her ballet lesson on Tuesday all upset - her teacher had raised her voice at the class ( I was in the next room - it really was just a raised voice with a touch of frustration - not aimed at anyone - her teacher is such a sweet person). I thought to myself that if Ellie gets upset at something like that, it's a good thing she doesn't attend school - I used to sit outside some of those classrooms when Zai was there & listen to the teachers yelling - it always made me cringe.

A game of "front yard" cricket - you can see how every things turned green - in fact we need to mow which is almost unheard of in summer here.


I've also made some pretty big changes in our school curriculum over the last few days. I don't know if it is the sore back or what, but finally I thought enough is enough - I've had enough of the tears with the ACE maths (I love the ACE curriculum overall - but maths is very very repetitive). Sometimes it would take hours for Zai & Ellie to complete their maths pages - not because they couldn't do them, but because with many, many sums on the pages, they get so overwhelmed. We've decided to go with Maths plus which is written by the NSW board of studies, so completely covers everything they need to cover, but as described to me " once they grasp a concept they don't have to repeat it over & over for a week". I'm excited about this - also there are other changes, but will post about them some other time. I know it's a really strange time to be changing - 4 weeks into the year, but I was ready to put in an order for more books anyway, so it works for us!


Tuesday evening I went for a walk with the camera while Dave watched 'Top Gear'- the sunset pictures are from this walk. I actually went to check on my sheep who are in lamb, but no new babies yet (besides the twins who are going very well). I did finally get some pictures of the farmyard friends I've been telling you about:



Our rooster - isn't he just handsome. Our neighbour had about 10 she was going to chop & I asked if I could buy one off her - her hubby asked if I could trade some baking for the rooster instead - works for me!
Some of my hens - they're growing up & are very good layers. I've just ordered another 5 yesterday!

This picture reminds me of that verse in Ecclesiastes

"The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises." Ecc 1:5 (NIV)

Have a wonderful week

Renata :)