Double the NAPLAN joy...

This week, both of my older boys are doing NAPLAN tests at school. Today's persuasive writing topic required them to select a hero to write about. I'm reading online that lots of kids wrote about family members (Mums, Dads, siblings etc).

It would have been nice had either of my kids chosen one of their parents. But it didn't seem to have entered their minds. They both chose a historical figure. The funniest thing is that even though they were sitting on opposite sides of their classroom to do the test, they both managed to choose the same person to write about.

Julius Caesar. Let's just say I had no hope of guessing that.

I think they've been a bit too engrossed in their Horrible History books lately. When I questioned them further, they were somewhat vague on why they had actually nominated him as a hero. Something to do with great military victories, perhaps.

I hope whoever is marking their papers enjoys the experience. I'm thinking Julius won't be a common choice....

Getting our lighthouse fix

Half the people in our house are sick at the moment. One of the others was sick last week. I'm hoping that breastfeeding might give the baby a less severe bout of whatever bug it is (he's still hanging in there staying well, I think, but he has been a bit whingey in the past day or two). I haven't gotten it yet but  the odds would suggest it's only a matter of time before I get sick too.

So to escape the germs, I took the well child out for some one on one time this afternoon while Dad, the baby, the toddler and the ten year old were sleeping. We went off to the library together to pick up a book that he had waiting for him. Then, because we are the two lighthouse-lovers in our family, we headed down for a visit to one of the local lighthouses. Recently, they've done a bit of restoration work on the foundations of the old lighthouse keeper's cottage so you can now have a look at a floor plan of what it looked like once, and you can see the foundations of each of the rooms. We'd been and seen it once before, but it didn't matter. He was fascinated by it again. It's always amazing to see how little space was required for a large family to live in, compared with the oversized homes of today.

And then we had hot chips from the local takeaway shop when we got back from our walk before returning to the illness fray.

A very pleasant way to spend an afternoon before school goes back tomorrow.

Liam's conversation topic for the indefinite future...

....once he hears about it, that is. I wonder how long we can stop him from finding out about it?

Probably not that long. He's a member of the Lego Club so I'm sure the magazine that's coming out this month will be full of information.

Until then, you can see more here.

Yesterday we received a letter from our seven year old

It read:

"You make me feel like you don't love me"

Underneath this, there was a picture of a boy with a sad face.

I wanted to take a photo of it and put it on here but Chris said that might be a bit embarrassing. Perhaps not one of our happier parenting experiences.*

Anyway, it turned out upon further investigation that Mister 7 thinks we don't love him because we won't buy him the Lego set that he wants.

The problem we are having here with Lego is that there is always something more that can be bought. We have noticed an unhealthy tendency with this particular child to want another Lego kit almost as soon as he has built the last new one he received. It's almost like an addiction for him. We need to keep explaining to him that he can't just keep getting more and more and that there are limits to our funds for these kinds of things (particularly when it's not Christmas or his birthday). And that we show him we love him in many other ways and not just by purchasing the next great Lego item.

Fortunately his older brother is much less interested in Lego. I wouldn't enjoy having two of them at us for more of it all the time.

We prayed for Liam last night. He is going through a difficult patch with making friends at school at the moment. I think the Lego addiction might be his current coping strategy to help him manage this. But we don't want him to become materialistic and thinking that the way to fix his problems is to buy more stuff.

We prayed that in the long run he'll come to know that love is not about the things he gets but about kindness, loving and serving others.

*although we did have a little giggle about it afterwards...

Life lessons for six year olds

Don't take your little Lego men into the toilet with you, especially if you are doing No. 2's.

No, Daddy or Mummy will not be fishing out the little Lego arm that you have pulled off the Lego man and dropped into the toilet bowl.

You'll just have to flush and hope the arm pops back up afterwards (for the record, it didn't).

This was the cause of great distress in our house as I was arriving home from work yesterday evening.

Sometimes you just have to laugh (while simultaneously being understanding and sympathetic, of course).

Happy New Year!

A busy few days here. Liam and I share a birthday on New Year's Eve. Good in some ways. For instance, there are always fireworks on in the evening which we like to pretend are for us (we can see them from our front deck so the first photo is an actual view of what we saw, I just need something better than the railing on the deck to hold the camera still), lots of extended family around because it's holiday time, generally our family don't forget our birthdays and we usually have a family get together at our home for lunch on New Year's Eve to celebrate.

The downsides to all this are that often there is only time to make one cake (Liam's, this year a fighter jet, see above), friends are more likely to forget our birthday (although having all the family around kind of makes up for that), and the planning and work involved in hosting over twenty people at home is exhausting.

After the party, we have given my sister and brother in law the weekend to themselves and now have our two teenaged nieces and nine year old nephew staying with us so we are experiencing what it is like to have a large family. They are fairly low maintenance kids, but if we all want to go somewhere together, both our cars are required. And it is raining here...again...so options for outdoor fun at home are limited. The Nerf gun (Liam's birthday present) can only be shot so many times inside before everyone is over it.

Fortunately, we are now the owners of a Wii (my birthday present) which everyone is currently upstairs playing. I am still dubious as to whether this will be a worthwhile long term investment, and can see the novelty may wear off quickly but for the short term it is saving our sanity.

Under the table can be any place you want...

Liam has spent a fair bit of yesterday and today under our dining room table reading his library books. Yesterday he was calling this hiding place a "World War 2 bunker" and today it has been reborn as a campervan. No real obvious differences in what it looks like today compared with how it looked yesterday.

I love the imagination of five year olds.

Liam's paintings

Some of Liam's paintings from a workshop he went to at the art gallery in the July school holidays.

As you can see, knights and castles are his preferred subjects. We have about twenty more of these at home, all with the same theme.

Your children have been watching too much Masterchef when...

...this appears in the middle of the dining room table.

It's a medieval pig roast (cooked on a spit...I saw it hanging on the string attaching the pen to the Magna-Doodle...but didn't get a photo of that unfortunately). Accompanied by pieces of the wooden fruit and vegie set (that's a mushroom on the pig's back) and bits of plastic pizza.

Made by Liam. And yes, he did tell me he was "plating it up."

Another week...

...of hearing the lighthouse talk. This morning Liam made it through to the next round of the school public speaking competition. That's the good news.

The bad news is that we now need to find new ways to motivate him to practise it since we've been running with "this is the last time you have to do it" last night and this morning.

All good

Liam is home safely and tucked up in bed asleep. He is on plenty of antibiotics and painkilling medication and his eye looks as swollen as when it was first hurt (apparently he sneezed as he was waking up from the anaesthetic, probably not good when you've just had facial reconstructive surgery...) but other than that he seems back to his normal self. Eating well, talking well, we are going to find it hard keeping him quiet for the next few days I think.

Thank you God for keeping him safe through it all. Now we have to wait to see if the double vision disappears...

What more could a day throw at me?

Lecture to 55 Uni students successfully completed. Only a few yawns in the audience but to be fair to them, I was the second half of a two hour session that began at 8am. Quite an early start for Uni students I would assume.

Early this afternoon, Liam had his surgery in Brisbane (Chris, his brother and my Mum were there). It seems to have gone okay but they said the fracture was pretty big so it needed a big plate to fix it up (which will dissolve eventually). He will be home tomorrow if everything keeps going well. The latest update is that he is sitting up in bed eating jelly and icecream with a big smile on his face so that sounds promising. I always thought that jelly and icecream in hospital after an operation was a myth, but apparently not.

I arrive at school to pick up Aidan to receive the bad news from his teacher that he spent some time in the principal's office today for encouraging another kid in his class to say swear words. That I was less than impressed would be an understatement given that I was still waiting to get the call to say that Liam was out of theatre safely. Unfortunately I tend to be a fairly reactive parent which meant the afternoon didn't improve greatly from there as far as Aidan and I were concerned. I guess he feels like not enough attention is coming his way right now and he happily agreed with that when I asked him if that was why he did it...but now I worry that maybe I have just offered him a convenient excuse??

Yesterday I read and commented on this post in Simone's blog. A "happy, simple worry-free life"?? If only...

Well, I think Rosie had a simple worry-free day today actually. She coped really well with being looked after by someone other than Chris or me (the first time we'd attempted this) and she has slept really well during the day today which meant I could deal with the other stuff.

Waiting...

Lecture is written, and only one photo in the powerpoint presentation is playing up. A pretty good result really, given there are so many photos in it. Babysitting organised for tomorrow morning, so everything is ready to go there...

Operation is confirmed for tomorrow afternoon. Liam is in bed asleep now. He is being very calm and brave about it all at the moment (the joys of being only five I guess). I prayed with him and with Aidan before they went to bed.

Trying to stay calm is difficult. Please help me, God.

Off to watch some Survivor to take my mind off things. With Boston Rob's departure a few weeks ago, Sandra is now my favourite to win.

No time for blogging...

Busy busy busy writing this lecture for the Uni students. Done now, I think. I'm a perfectionist so I'm sure I will see lots more possibilities for improvement but good enough to run with as it is I think.

I have a photo of Rosie's cool new/recycled furniture that I want to post but haven't had time to get it off the camera yet.

We had a surprise birthday party for Chris' Mum yesterday at Bribie Island, great fun, lots of happy snaps taken but as with the furniture photo they still need to come off the camera.

Being busy is good in some ways, haven't had much time to sit and think about Liam's operation on Wednesday. Chris is going to Brisbane with him, I am staying home with the other two and keeping things (relatively) normal here.

And in a totally unrelated item of news, I saw an icon from my childhood this afternoon as we were driving to Fingal Beach to take some photos in the last of the afternoon light...a Soft Serve/Mr Whippy van! It was even playing Greensleeves!