Reflecting...

It's been feeling like time for a blogpost for a while, a good reflective blogpost that talks about where we are right now. This weeks' post at the owlet blog finally gave me the 'go' needed.....

Making: in the lead up to belly dance camp my crochet hooks flew, using up leftovers to make a mandala which I turned into a cushion for a dear friend (Neika, if you're reading this, can you send me a photo?  I forgot to take one)

Cooking: sourdough English muffins have made a welcome, wintertime addition to our breakfast menu. 

Drinking: many many pots of rooibos tea. 

Reading: the last three books of a long teen vampyre saga and loving the easy escapism. 

Wanting: my goat to be pregnant. 

Looking: for caterpillars, slugs and snails on my cabbages each day (where do they all come from?)

Playing: 'with friends' tournaments with my family and being amazed by my kids' brain power (again!)

Deciding: that right here is where our family belongs. 

Wishing: that people that I love wouldn't talk about leaving - even though I know their life needs to take them away, I just want to hold onto them here. 

Enjoying: teaching and learning with my kids. 

Waiting: for our wood heater to be installed. 

Liking: autumn sunshine coming through my kitchen window right now. 

Pondering: how I'm developing as a dance teacher but still have no idea how I'm going to teach the choreography that is in my head to the students in my classes. 

Considering: the new electric SUV car that is on the market that Stu really thinks we should buy. 

Watching: the new season of Offspring - love that show!

Hoping: for a quieter month in June. 

Marvelling: at the fact that my baby brother is turning 18 this week but it seems like only a minute ago that I watched him make his entry into the world. 

Needing: more sleep!  It's been a crazy week. 

Wearing:  right now, pjs, but I've been loving wearing my new hooded tunic dress to parties and concerts this week. 

Noticing: that our homeschooling style is actually really relaxed and it suits us. 

Knowing: that I'm good at all of my jobs (except housekeeping!) and that feels good. 

Thinking: that I should really work on being better at the housekeeping part of my job. 

Feeling: lots of love for my family and the collections of beautiful friends we have. 

Admiring: my husband for managing to get on with his day to day work while being a passenger on the roller coaster ride that is our family life. 

Sorting: nothing.... But knowing that we really need to sort out all of our craft materials (again!)

Buying: in bulk. Homeschooled kids who hate the supermarket are a great excuse for monthly shopping to happen. 

Getting: used to the new routine of taking the kids to their different sporting activities.

Bookmarking: homeschooling ideas, recipes and homemade gift ideas. 

Disliking: the government's decisions on just about everything. 

Opening: my new edition of earth garden magazine. 

Giggling: till very late with Sharon at our third very successful belly dance camp (yay!)

Snacking: on the last of the Easter eggs. 

Coveting: the wood heaters in other people's homes (one more week till we have one too!)

Wishing: there were more hours in the week to fill with awesomeness. 

Helping: my kids to find joy in learning and relax into homeschooling (though they don't need much help - they're feast at this!)

Hearing: The Waifs on my iPod (and memories of their concert in my head) and my kids singing musical style as they play invented games. 

Whirring in the wee hours

I've been waking in the early hours of the morning a lot this year. 3am has become a time that I've started seeing about as regularly as I did in my late teens. Back then it was as the last hours of a big night out. Now it is me waking up ridiculously early, my brain begins whirring around and sleep doesn't look like ever coming back. 

This morning, I've been laying in bed for over an hour, whirring. Thoughts of things that I need to do become worries when the hour is less than 6am. Tasks that I was 'getting to' in no particular hurry, suddenly seen urgent.  I begin to stress a little - why haven't I done that yet?  Why can't I get up and do it now!?! In the morning, I can always see the answers clearly - I haven't done it yet because it really wasn't the right time or I'd simply forgotten; and I can't get up and do jobs in the dark, quiet and freezing old hours of the morning, it just isn't feasible. 

Eventually, after worrying over my mental list for ages, I'll get up and write it down. Whirring thoughts are much better when dealt with in the morning. Sometimes just writing my thoughts down is enough to allow me to go back to sleep, other times, I need to read, or listen to an audiobook to switch off my mind. Mostly, I manage to go back to sleep by 6.30, only to be woken by the daytime noises and chores a mere half hour later. The day stretches before me, fit for filling with my nighttime list of urgent chores, only I'm too tired to do them all. 

This morning I'm wondering how many others are awake, wishing they could sleep, laying there, brain whirring. I wonder if other people are thinking that they need to get on with converting their veg beds to wicking beds, planting out cauliflower seedlings, taking their goat for a servicing visit, sewing gifts for birthdays, finishing the building of the hearth for the fire, finalising the plans for an event that they're organising that is creeping up at a crazy fast speed now and/or ringing the doctors to get test results. And is anyone else wondering whether they will try to fit homeschooling book work in around all that, or use that as the learning for the week?

Perhaps I have too many things going on in my life right now. Perhaps my brain doesn't have time to deal with it all during the hubbub of daily life, so it takes the opportunity when all is quiet and I can't run around 'doing stuff' to think it all over. Well, to that I say, good plan brain, except you failed to remember that my body needs enough sleep to be able to do all the jobs on the list!

Sigh..... 

Homeschool Dairy Farm Excursion

We've been homeschooling now for a few weeks, and the general consensus is that we're loving it!  Every day is something different and we're loving the freedom to learn what, when and where we want.  I'll fill you in on some of the things we've been doing soon, but today's post is all about this morning's excursion.  It was our first opportunity to meet up with our local homeschooling group, and we joined them on an excursion to a dairy farm.....

Lachie: We woke up early in the morning to get out of bed, get dressed and get in the car.  We were already running a bit late.  For breakfast, we had muesli bars that we had made yesterday - yum!

Tracey:  It was the coldest morning so far this year!  The car was frozen when we went to leave, but the views on the drive were spectacular of a terrific sunrise over misty country.

Jamie:  The drive was 45 minutes.  We eventually drove past where we were supposed to go, eventually we got there,  thanks to mum's terrible navigating! (T: AHEM!!!)  When we got out of the car, a couple of people were already there, so we walked up to the dairy for the first bit of the excursion.

Lachie:  We went and saw the calves, one was bigger than our goat and only two days old!  Then we went to the dairy, the cows got milked and then when they were done, they would kick the milking machine off because it was sucking too hard.  Me and Jamie had a go at washing the cow poo off the yard with a hose and then we went to see what the milk did next.

Tracey: Travis (the farmer) did a terrific job of showing us how he milks his cows.  It was great to visit a small (320 head) herringbone style dairy - they all seem to be huge rotary dairies around here these days!

Jamie: Washing the yards was my favourite part.  The hose was really strong, you felt like you were going to be pushed back.  The poo went down a drain and into a pond.  Then we went down to see how the milk was processed next and got to look inside the vat at all the fresh milk.

Lachie: Next, we went and fed the calves.  One had been taken off its mum a bit early and took a bit of time to get there and there was another one who thought it was a bit special and stole the bottle off it!

Tracey:  The kids helped feed hay to the calves too and spread out rice hulls for them to sleep on.  Then they loaded up for the highlight of the day......

Jamie: All of the kids got into the trailer and we went off on a trailer ride to see where the cows go.  We went under the road in a passage that they made a year ago.  The cows used to cross the road, but people got sick of waiting for the cows to cross and since it was a tourist road it was pretty busy.

Lachie:  The trailer ride was my favourite bit.  We followed the cows all the way down, went under the road, then turned around.  We saw the hay bales being turned onto the ground.  It was cool.  Then we went back to the house to turn some of the milk into butter to have with some date loaf that we had brought - yum!

Jamie:  Just before we left, we were playing on the trampoline with the kids that we had met that were closest to our age.  We had a good day.

I had a lovely time meeting other homeschooling families (and other thermomix owners! - LOL).  Thanks so much to April for organising the great excursion and to Crystal and Travis for being such great hosts.

Fixin' stuff

The last few years have seen us doing some hefty renovations - the kitchen, pizza oven, shed, solar hot water and then solar power, goat yard, other fencing etc.  So this year, we decided to take a break from big changes and building projects and focus on maintenance and repairs. Of course, that was before someone suggested a property to look at, before we decided to homeschool our kids and before this years bunch of 'great ideas' popped into my head!

But we're still trying to keep a lid on major renovation type projects and repair and care for what we have.  This has meant washing the weatherboards (all that dirt and dust was masking our pretty white house), touching up the chipped architraves in the hallways, cleaning the parts of the house that don't get much of a cleaning look in usually, pruning trees and shrubs that have grown too big and more. Our maintenance list was quite extensive when we wrote it at the start of the year, and it is, sadly, not getting shorter even though we've been working on it every week. 

It seems our house heard that we were fixing stuff this year, and with a groan, decided to show us a few older fixtures that needed replacing or fixing. Our water pump isn't working properly, the skylight in the bathroom decided (in last week's rainstorm) to pour water onto  the bathroom floor and the little old (really really old) portable room heater that carried us through last winter when our central heating had died, tried to cause a fire - so we had to make a decision about a new heater. 

So it's been a busy time around here, and looks like it won't be letting up for a while. But we have made the decision to stay here and each one of these little problems reminds me that if we had moved house, we would have been finding so many more problems and household idiosyncrasies than what we are finding here - at least here, we know what we're dealing with.