Sunday, March 24, 2024

Term One: Week Eight ~ Saying Goodbye, Heavy Work, and Injuries

This ended up being a short week for the boys as far as structured written work was concerned. Again, no photographs of our written work, but as you read through our week, I think you'll see why I failed to photograph the more mundane aspects of our life.

Sunday morning one of the 4 o'clock flowers had several blooms so I took the opportunity to photograph it.

We spent a good portion of Monday saying good-bye to a dear friend of ours. The elderly gentleman who lived across the street from us at our old house died earlier this month. We had been friends since the first week after we moved in, back when Monster was only three years old, and Monkey was a 4 month old baby. Mr G had a sweet old bull dog that the boys adored and we got to know each other during the times that he allowed the boys to visit with her. During our COVID lockdowns I walked Mr G's new dog and also checked in on him occasionally to make sure he didn't need anything. About six months ago his health really started to fail. Two of his three daughters live just a few suburbs away, but I offered to check on him a few times a week and we made sure he knew he could call us in an emergency. Just after we moved he rang me to say that he was in hospital again and this time it was cancer. Although he had surgery to remove the tumour, tests showed the cancer was advanced, and then he developed a lung infection. Thus he made the decision to cease all treatment and let God take him home.

It was absolutely lovely to be included in the funeral. Not only did it give us a chance to say goodbye, but we learned so much more about his life. We knew from photos on the wall in his house that he was a runner. But at the funeral we learned that he ran marathons and ultra marathons. He held the record (until just recently) for most marathons run by an Australian (309) and his fastest time, as far as his family could find, was 3 hours 29 minutes. He also donated just shy of 300 litres of blood (about 78 gallons) and was an all around lovely, decent, wonderful man. I wish I had known him more, but I am so thankful that I DID know him, and that I was able to help him out and also get to know him better these past few months.


Monday, we got home from the funeral late in the afternoon, and I needed some time to process so Munchkin and I went for a walk. I took the opportunity to photograph these flowers once again and the results are MUCH better than last time.

This week we finished reading two longer length books. The left photo is a wonderful compilation of Australian poetry put together by the amazing Jackie French. We read this book several years ago, but Munchkin was too young to remember it. This counts as part of literature for both Monkey and Munchkin and was the beginning of a year long poetry study that we will be doing.
The right photo was an EXCELLENT (and very detailed) look at the way the Aboriginals assisted the early colonists as they attempted to learn about and catalogue the flora and fauna that was all around them.

The autumn weather has been quite lovely so I've been able to spend some of my late afternoons and early evenings reading on the front veranda.

I HAD to include this quote by former president of the US James Garfield.
Munchkin and I are reading a WONDERFUL book all about the history of food and this quote was in the section about peanuts! People who know me well know that I LOVE peanut butter and whilst 2/3 of my boys will eat peanut butter, they don't love it nearly as much as I do.

We finished two junior non-fiction books this week. One specific for Munchkin (left) and the other covered curriculum content for both boys.

Munchkin spent some time this week creating a hieroglyphic secret code for his best friend.



All three boys helped their father out moving MANY pavers. It is good for them to have heavy work to do.

I found this beautiful creature (which I assume is a fly) hanging out on the stack of pavers. I was surprised at how close I was able to get to it without it flying away. I have never seen one of these before and the colours are amazing.

The two older boys attended youth group Friday night.
About 7:30pm I received two text messages from Monkey.
One was this photo and the second message was five thumbs up emojis.
It turns out that during the games he crashed and burned - quite literally.

It required larger band-aids than we had in stock so with some advice from my mum (Nurse Grandmama) we applied antibiotic ointment and large gauze pads, taped everything down and put the wrap on to keep dirt from creeping in.

Plant update:
The tomatoes are doing really well.
Something snacked on the coriander (maybe a cat or a possum) but it is still growing.

What a difference a new pot and some water did for the aloe vera. The right photo was taken last week just after I put it in the new pot. The left photo was taken Saturday and as you can see it has improved greatly. I'm glad because it is always good to have an aloe plant around.

This sad stick in this pot is all that is left of the beautiful sunflower plant that was growing. We have NO idea what happened to it. I advised Munchkin that since the stick is still green we'll watch it for a week or two and see what happens. Thankfully, if it doesn't start growing, he has more seeds, so we can try again.

Left Photo: Munchkin and I walked on Monday afternoon
Right Photo: Munchkin and I clocked a walk around our large block

Thursday we took a quick trip to the shopping centre for some groceries. That is always our biggest walk for the week.



Sunday, March 17, 2024

Term One: Week Seven ~ Just Life

Sometimes all that gets recorded photographically for the blog, is pictures of our real life. This has been one of those weeks. No matter. With only two students now, and both of those being in high school, gone are the days of super exciting "school" related photos and blog posts. But I hope that you, my readers/viewers, don't mind the more mundane posts now. After all, generally speaking, life is mostly about the mundane, with the highs and lows interspersed here and there. So enjoy this visual look into our life as we head into the second half of Term One.

Sunday ended up being a planning day for me as I didn't do the work on Friday evening as I usually do. I had marking to do and then I always take a look at the next few assignments to make sure there aren't any surprises and/or worksheets that need to be printed for the week.

If you have researched the 4 o'clock flower at all, you know that it only blooms in shady conditions, generally early morning and just at sunset in the evening. So I have to be pretty sneaky to catch flowers on our two plants worth photographing. Munchkin and I are SO pleased that both pots we propagated from the plant at our old house have thrived and are flowering now.

Excitement early in the week as the fence between our property and the neighbouring one was replaced. Then started bright and early tearing down the existing wooden fence and replaced it with a nice cream coloured metal colour bond fence. Munchkin was the most intrigued with the work and spent quite a bit of time looking out the kitchen window. Once they really got going he was able to bounce between the front and back yard to watch as well. The workers were really nice and didn't mind when he came out to check their progress.

Some time ago hubby purchased a butter cake mix and asked Munchkin to bake it for him. We decided cake for sweet treat this week would be nice, so Wednesday morning we got to work. As per usual now, Munchkin did all the prep work of the batter. My only job was prepping my all-in-one cooker (our equivalent of the One Pot for my American readers), pouring the batter in the machine, and turning it on. Munchkin did all the rest.


There are a LOT of photos of Munchkin cracking just TWO eggs for the recipe, but that is because cracking eggs is still a skill he is working on mastering. He was really pleased that he cracked both without getting any shell in the bowl and also without getting too much egg all over his fingers.

Mixing the batter...


The four junior non-fiction books we finished this week. All are TECHNICALLY for Munchkin's curriculum content, although the Deserts & Savannahs of Australia and the Forces and Motion book crossover into a little bit of Monster's content as well. I LOVE it when I can easily combine their schoolwork.

In the afternoon it was time to ice the cake. Munchkin has the sillies when he was mixing.

The finished product.
It was delicious.
We enjoyed a slice each on Wednesday AND Thursday night as well.

Friday I decided to tackle my side of the bedroom. I didn't like that this bookshelf looked cluttered and messy and I also decided I didn't like having a majority of my books in my wardrobe (closet) either. So I started a rather large afternoon project.


I started by emptying this black bookshelf, then emptied the three bookshelves in my wardrobe, and because of that Munchkin decided to have a little fun.

I put ALL my books on the bed and then got started sorting them into the bookshelves. It took awhile and isn't quite 100% how I want it (a few books had to remain in one bookshelf in the wardrobe) but I'm mostly happy. Also, as I read more of the books I own, and pass them on to other people or homes, I'll have room to bring the few in the wardrobe/closet out into the open.

The AFTER photo and I'm quite pleased. You may also be able to see school portfolios and such at the end of my bed. The momentum of the big cleaning job encouraged me to do my school planning and marking on Friday night so that I would have Saturday and Sunday free for other activities.

A rare photo of Monster.
He doesn't feature much on the blog anymore because he has graduated from our homeschool.
But every once in awhile I will slip something in.
Here he is demonstrating his strength ability now. He won't be happy until he is fully horizontal, but I'm impressed with the progress he has made.

My weekly (Saturday) photo shoot of our plant progress.
The apple mint (left) is thriving with this beautiful off shoot. Munchkin is considering if it needs a bigger pot so that may be a project for the coming week.
Also, the sunflower plant continues to grow nicely (right).

The tomato and coriander are coming along nicely and we fertilized them this week so it will be interesting to see how they react to that.

We have two aloe vera plants that aren't doing so well. After some online research we have some ideas as to what may be wrong and firstly they needed re-potting so I set to work moving this one into the beautiful pot you see here while Munchkin helped hubby in the backyard with another big project. We'll see if the new pot gives it new life. It is possible it hasn't been getting enough water and may be getting too much sun, so we'll do some experimenting over the weeks to come.
Meanwhile, the cucumber (right) aren't doing well at all. We fertilized them as well this week, and there is a lot of rain in the forecast in the coming days, so we'll see if they improve in the next week or so.

Finally one mammoth walk to the shops was all I managed this week. I need to work on getting some smaller walks in again.