Category: week in review

We are near the end of the school year and really feeling it. Tempers are shorter, and being summer time, the days are getting longer.

Dad took Huff out for breakfast and a walk on Saturday morning. It was a bit of a bushwalk. Huff saw a particular rock, and then climbed up on it to do this heroic pose.

Her backpack contained a water bottle and some pretzels for snacking. It was a closed loop in a bush park, but there was a certain amount of concern on her part that we would somehow be lost in the woods.

We made it back, in time for a Christmas gathering. We gave the gift of outdoor throw-throw-burrito, which the kids enjoyed playing with.

Oh, and on Friday night, Puff had the chance to paint a mask with his own design. The beak theme is still strong with him.

We’re really looking forward to the end of the school year, which will not be far off now!

We’re in the home stretch for the school year; the kids are consistently counting down how many school days are left, tempers are a little shorter, everyone looks a little more tired.

Huff has a new hobby: making tiny cross-stitches to give as gifts.

Puff has a new hobby – making smoothies.

Puff went with us to thanksgiving dinner, and was shown a puzzle – he worked out a solution to it, but there was an additional twist – the holes in the pieces had to align with the holes in the board. This one was beyond his zone of proximal development, so we haven’t seen much of it out this week.

We had a visit from Aunty C, Uncle J and the cousins on Saturday while Dad worked on a uni assignment in the background. Puff is well-and-truly taller than his aunt, and Huff won’t have to wait too much longer!

After dinner tonight (in part realising that not many photos have been taken this week), the kids were playing words capes together: it was just the right difficulty level for them to be laughing together and having fun.

This is the game that Grandma played a lot in her final weeks of life, so while it’s bittersweet, it is good to see the kids enjoying something from a previous generation of their family tree.

It was an odd week. Some damage to the red car was being repaired, so we had a rental car for a few days. Even though it was a short term rental, the kids became quite attached to it. Huff came with Dad to drop off the car back to the rental car, and pick up the red car again.

On the weekend Dad and the kids went from church out to have ramen for lunch. We saw some graffiti in Newtown that Huff recognised straight away.

Puff was glad again to be out having ramen. One of the staff at the restaurant complimented his shirt (crows with one of them saying “murder” – the collective noun for crows), which he was chuffed about.

A quiet week for us in general; we caught up with Dad’s old school friend J and his family on Saturday, and Dad finished some more uni reading, while the kids did more homework. Puff has started counting down the school days left this year. Huff is celebrating the end of maths homework for the year.

There are still weeks left, but the kids are ready to call the end of the school year.

Huff was excited this week to see that her school banking reward had arrived – the kids earn tokens for each deposit, and can exchange them for toys over time. On the way home there was time for a quick test flight in the park.

This weekend Puff finished his year 7 exams, and so we gave him the new rubik’s cube he’d saved up his birthday money to receive. It’s an expensive cube, and he is only allowed to use it at home, or out with the family, but he’s been happy to press on learning how to solve a cube even faster.

 Dad spent the weekend at uni, and so has been trying to catch up with the kids around the edges. This morning there was time to walk Huff to school before the work day started. It’s always fun to see the world through her eyes.

It’s Mum and Dad’s wedding anniversary as I write this – 19 years! We managed to share a meal together and talk for a while without the kids, even as we’re starting to recognise the task of raising the kids to voting age is more than half over already. It seems like such a quick journey but the count of weeks climbs ever higher, and the kids’ behaviour grows more enjoyable and surprising with every twist and turn.

Dad had a day with a lot of zoom meetings followed by an evening with a lot of zoom meetings, but it was still possible to find some time to grab Huff from school, and mug briefly with her in front of the camera.

Sunday morning Dad took Puff out for a walk. He was looking across the pond here at some ducklings, which was a great moment to share. He still loves ducks, and was reminiscing about other walks when he was younger, and we looked at different birds.

Huff worked out in casual conversation that some of her friends had never seen nor tasted pavlova, and so – in a covid-safe way – prepared (with Mum’s help) eight small pavlovas to take to school and share with some parents and teachers.

The exact context of this photo prompts a series of questions (perhaps it’s the Sherlock Holmes audiobooks that are in high rotation at the moment) – no schoolbag so this was a day where Dad had driven up to make the most of the time – but we were still seeking to sort out dinner, so this was the result of Huff’s suggestion that we have hot chips. This particular expression was because Dad was trying to take a photo of her spinning around in a circle.

Another quiet week of normal school things. This year there was a Halloween dress-up fundraising day, and Huff wanted to be a witch. Kind of a mix of Hermione Granger and away from the more traditional “Room on the Broom” witch of previous dress-ups.

On Saturday we went to a friend’s birthday party. We ended up with a haul of mulberries to enjoy later.

On Sunday, Dad and the kids went to face-to-face church. With much of the free-time earmarked for uni work, Dad wasn’t much company, but he and Huff managed to sneak out for a quick lunchtime date at a nearby Vietnamese restaurant.

Dad is still doing the school run during this work-from-home season. We went back to the local library as well to pick up some new books for her to read – she was more confident asking the librarian for help this time, which was a little proud Dad moment. Less proud was realising that she had chosen not to play through the sculpture in front of the library because of remarks Dad had made earlier about it being annoying. The times that kids choose to listen. And so Dad is now trying to choose words even more carefully.

Oh, and Puff is getting ridiculously tall. Which is excellent and appropriate, and a bit sad.

If there’s one thing to be learned from this weekly routine, it’s how quickly we move from sunrise to sunset.

We watched a Netflix movie over the weekend called “Over the Moon”. Huff is a bit obsessed with the soundtrack, which is cute, but the main thing we noticed was how quickly the kids picked up that the Mum character in the film had a terminal illness. There were some slight clues in a montage, and then suddenly there is a memorial in the home. Something, sadly, the kids have internalised from the past couple of years.

Now that we’re back to an ordinary week, going back through the photo roll, there’s very little. In fact, there’s a picture of Puff wearing the same shirt as last week, going to the same place we were going back to!

This time was to catch up with Aunty S and Uncle N, and A & V for lunch after church. Dad and Puff went to church in-person for the first time in a long while, and Mum and Huff stayed at home to watch church online.

After the lunch place closed, we went to Enmore to a Turkish ice cream place. Huff was enjoying the apple tea (and we were all enjoying being somewhere warm on a rainy afternoon).

 

We’ll try for some more photos next week.

Back at school, life has returned to its usual school-term pattern. Unusually, it was Mum’s birthday this week!

But first, the story of this photo. Originally, Mum was going to head down to visit the cousins, and Dad was going to look after Huff and Puff. Sadly, Mum called on her way to say our car had broken down, and we needed to do a change-over. So Huff and Puff spent an evening with their cousins, instead of at home.

We have the car back and working again: there was something odd attached to the throttle.

Saturday was Mum’s birthday. Huff wanted to have rag curls in her hair, and Mum obliged the night before.

Puff made her a heart shape with his 5×5 rubik’s cube.

Huff was happy with the way her hair looked.

The kids were glad to be out celebrating with Mum.

We all had an enjoyable day.

After brunch, we went to get gelato together.

After brunch and gelato, we went back home, and then caught up with friends around dinner time.

On Sunday, after virtual church, we had a lunch and cake (thanks to Aunty C and Aunty C, and also Uncle J and Uncle J).

Overall Mum was well celebrated. We are glad to have her.

Final week of holidays, and now we’re back at school again. And Dad is now back at work too, having spent the first day back clearing the inbox.

So it’s pleasing to look back over these happier times. Encouraging Huff to walk up a few more stairs (this one was a bit staged).

 

Back from the Blue Mountains again, we had some time at home, and then we had dinner out with Aunty S and Uncle N. We had a delicious meal, and the kids enjoyed some not-too-spicy food.

We learned afterwards that Puff is the same height as his Aunty.

Dad is handing in there as slightly taller, for the moment.

Dad had uni all day on Saturday and Sunday, so on Saturday night we had a quiet evening at home, watching Farmageddon together, and Sunday we visited Doc, and then grabbed some takeaway on the way home. There was a bit of a chance for Dad and Huff to have a quick walk together, and then to grab a bubble tea. The tea place had a new strategy, which was a bit too tall for her to drink from.

And now we’re back to school and work again, but hopefully with Dad having learned some useful lessons about how to manage time and attention, and how to make the most of time with Kel and the kids.

First full blog-week of the holidays; we’ve actually been away for a few nights so the blog post is a day late. Making the most of Dad being off work, we had a Dad-Huff outing, where we went to watch Trolls 2 together, and then Huff had another go at the indoor jumping thing that was set up in the shopping centre.

The four of us went for breakfast with Uncle J and Aunty C, and Huff and Dad went briefly to a park, but it was in full sun, so we had to give up on that pretty quickly (the swing was too hot to sit down on)!

We also had dinner and gelato with church friends, and then went away to the mountains. Here’s Dad and Huff at Wentworth Falls – it was crowded, but people were still (largely) thinking in terms of social distancing – this angle isn’t doing much justice to the gaps between people.

Perhaps this photo of the way back via under cliff walk gives a better sense of what it was like.

We tried to recreate a photo from a previous week, but with limited success at finding the right spot. 

 And we found couple of pizza ovens hiding in the bush.

 After the bushwalking, we stopped at the “Lolly Bug” in Little Hartley for some confectionery.

 At Bathurst we called in at this ice cream shop, where they had very generous portion sizes!

We spent some time watching the ducks in a large duck pond in the middle of Bathurst, which was the highlight of the trip for one (if not both kids). Huff picked up some tiny flowers and made a tiny bouquet.

Mum wasn’t sure the kids would be interested in a museum, especially one of fossils and minerals, but they were both keen.

 Puff was fascinated, and found lots of minerals he hadn’t seen before.

Huff borrowed Mum’s phone, and tried to photograph the entire museum! Nonetheless, she noticed many things that were of interest to her.

After all that cerebral play, the kids climbed a tree (Huff had a little bit of help).

 We visited a friend in Orange. The kids were well behaved, playing mini ten-pin bowling and, it turns out, looking at Puff’s phone for some of the time.

Then we returned to where we were staying, and the kids watched The Incredibles on a data projector while Dad caught up with an old friend.

Final photos from our trip next week (Wednesday was the last day of our time away).