puff and huff

Dad spent about half of this week working: the kids managed a brief visit during the week, and we saw one advantage or working in a home office: access to a trampoline! With the work week finally over, Dad headed with Uncle J to the cricket on Saturday – the first game at the SCG for any of the kids!

Mindful of the patience of little legs, we drove to the ground, and parked at a nearby high school (their P&C was charging for parking, so it was helping the school). Here they are walking the long grass with their sombreros, looking a little like hobbits.

Both our kids enjoyed the whole experience at first – there’s a lot to look at, and take in.

Eventually, though, Huff (“will there be snacks? ok, I’ll go”) soured on the experience a little, asking when it would be over, and interpreting any crowd noise as a wicket, and one step closer to being able to leave.

With inexpensive ice creams on the way home, all was forgiven, and Huff has decided she probably won’t be back, and Puff is counting down until he can go again.

The main goal of Dad’s two weeks leave is to tidy up the house, and set up the kids with separate bedrooms. There has been a lot of box moving (and hence not many photos) so far: we’ll see how we go!

And we’re back from Christmas and Summer Camp. And Dad is back to work. After a while having the tree set up, and the presents coming in underneath, we finally found ourselves all in the same place long enough to put the star on top (Mum took the photo). 

Dad had Puff with him on Friday morning, and he was explaining the latest Pokemon Go techniques to very patient people at work.

Dad went on a couple of errands with Huff for some father-daughter time. She was very helpful.

Christmas Eve we had Mum’s side of the family over: the kids had lunch at the kids table.

Christmas day was church, then lunch with Dad’s family, then visiting a family friend. The next day, we packed up the Christmas tree, packed up the baggage. Before we new it, we were at Summer Camp for the week. 

Puff read around 9 books during the week Some of them by headlamp.

At New Year’s Eve the kids stayed up and watched the midnight fireworks. Just barely. Puff made it through with only a bit of a snooze.

Huff didn’t make it quite so far.

The next day, though, she bounced.

The kids had a great time at camp. Huff even said she wished the whole of the school holidays could be camp.

One thing that was missing was pancakes. Dad made pancakes on the January public holiday, with a range of different toppings.

Dad took Huff to the movies to watch Moana.

Puff assembled one of his Christmas presents – a solar powered robot.

One more week of work, and then Dad has a couple of week’s holidays!

At Summer Camp. Updates next week.

And just like that we’re in the countdown to Christmas. Puff and Huff have had some holidays, and are counting down eagerly to post-Christmas camp (and maybe to Christmas. There was a brief mention of concern about how few presents are under the tree so far).

Part of visiting people this time of year involves bringing gifts, and at the moment we’re bringing gingerbread houses. Dad separated out the mixes lollies by colour, which helped bring a certain order to the decoration.

Sunday Dad and the kids went for a walk, and we ended up at the swings. The kids seem so big on the swings now, it’s clear that we are counting down until they’re too big to want to play in playgrounds anymore.

Mum started teaching Huff how to cross-stitch. She’s not ready to do it independently for fun yet, but she enjoyed the lesson. You can see how much she wants to understand it.

Sunday night we watched “Elf” and ate something that Dad had prepared for dinner (the plating was an attempted octopus).

Monday the kids went out with Mum (and even visited Dad at work for a little while). There was lots of waiting involved, but they acquitted themselves well. Huff’s self-assigned holiday project is to write a book: The Angry Birds and the Cake. She’s going to be working on it for a while.

Puff was more in a paper-folding kind of mood (waiting for a chance to play screens, most likely).

Mum took Huff and Puff to a colouring-in place, where Huff sat in their castle for colouring.

Puff managed to sweet-talk his way into some screen time while his sister coloured. 

Next time, Christmas updates!

Almost the end of another year. Where does the time go? But of course that’s the question this blog is designed to answer. Lots of end-of-school-year things this week, including multiple performances and award ceremonies. We even saw a presentation of the Gruffalo with Puff as one of the narrators. We had two lots of carols to go to, one at school, one in the community, which has made for a new record string of late nights for the kids.

At their school awards, both kids received an award. Huff for consistent effort, Puff for academics. It’s a little surreal to be the parent, rather than the child, at one of these things: Dad even had a seat down the front because of his P&C involvement.

We visited Grandma and Doc, and saw their Christmas tree. Huff helped out with it: she’s quite fascinated with such things this year.

Friday night we caught up with the kids’ uncle and aunt and cousins.

Sunday morning, to try and give Mum a quick sleep-in, Dad took the kids for what ended up being a 4km walk. It was enjoyable enough, but we didn’t find any ducks, and the kids were very keen to feed ducks if at all possible. Maybe next week.

Here is Huff’s improvised cape from one of the carols. services.

Our friends generously loaned us some glow sticks, and the kids arranged them in different patterns. I think this one was mostly called ‘moustache’.

And we finally managed to put up our tree. Puff and huff have done most of the decorating of our tree this year.

How quickly they grow up. We’re still reading through the Narnia chronicles – we’re nearly finished the Silver Chair now. The kids watched Kubo and the two strings, and (less well-advised) Who Framed Roger Rabbit this week, and enjoyed them well enough at the time. Onward with Christmas!

This was a busy week with a lot of activity, but not so many photos. The kids received their Premier’s reading challenge completion certificates, Puff’s class ran the school assembly (so there were flashing reindeer noses and antlers) and we had a busy weekend. Huff went into the city to have lunch with her Mum, aunties, cousins and more, while Dad and Puff went on a long walk with Puff’s adventure group.

Here we are setting out for the day.

We caught the train into the city, walked across to Martin Place, and then caught a bus to the Spit Bridge (Puff and his friend T played Pokemon Go on their Dad’s respective phones the whole way, which was perhaps a bad decision on Dad’s part). Once we finished the bus ride, though, it was down to the serious business of walking. This is a photo from only a couple of kilometres in.

By the end of about 10kms of walking, Puff was pretty tired, but he bounced back after a swim in this ocean pool.

We made it home via ferry and train, and then he and Huff and their cousin had dinner in front of the TV.

The next morning was a very early start (6:30am) to catch the bus to Grandragon’s work picnic day. Mum and Dad and the three (!) kids went along on the bus and had a great time playing in the park, at the beach, getting presents from Santa (or Father Christmas, or Ho Ho), and enjoying some watermelon at the end of the day.

Then a bus ride home, and it was time for dinner and then for the tired kids to go to bed. An epic weekend.

From there, we were back into the usual school routine for the last two weeks of school. Dad did the school run on Tuesday: here’s Huff filling in her school banking (an everyday occurrence, but worth documenting). Mum was making her read the rather unfamiliar word “cheque”, hence the look of concentration.

Tuesday night was family mini golf night for Puff’s adventure group, and we all went along to that. Puff is really enjoying the group, and played through in a collective with some of his friends. It’s encouraging (and a reminder of things to come) to see him grow up through the group, and through the other activities in his life.

Huff has spent a lot of time being sick this week. When she’s sick, she is either at full speed, or crashed out resting. This is proportional to whether she’s had panadol, or antibiotics. Here she is resting.

Other times she was fine, and played with toys, and other kids.

She even made it to a birthday party with a school friend.

Puff on the other hand, stayed with Dad on Saturday (training day for an upcoming camp), playing in the kids activities. He and I had dinner together – he even organised my plate for me (lots of carbs, but an excellent cross-section of what was on offer).

We’re still reading Narnia stories. Puddleglum has been a favourite character in the Silver Chair.

Not many photos this week. This first one is Huff with one of her favourite foods. This is, perhaps, a piece a bit too large to be a single serving, but she was pretty happy about it.

On Friday night we took the kids to a local food market – Dad turned up in time to see them with dessert. There was a certain amount of problems with eye size vs stomach size, but the kids were very happy.

On Saturday we had friends over in the afternoon, then a birthday party at night (a lot of jumping around for the kids). Sunday we met with friends and had some yum cha together.

After that, we spent the afternoon with them. Here’s a rare photo of the 4 kids together.

We made some progress on the long battle with tidying up the kids’ room, Huff had a bit of a go at doing some computer programming (with a little help from Dad and her big brother), and Puff kept playing with some programming too.

We have been noticing how tall Puff is getting. Mum tried picking him up to see how tall he would be on her, and with some effort, he’s taller than her (once generously lifted off the ground).

Huff, this week, has started wearing her “Room on the Broom” witch costume for fun . She can make the wave of a wand quite threatening!

Dad has been teaching Puff how to do some arduino coding. It’s been tricky getting just the right level of challenge for him, but achievable. He was starting to play around with some flashing lights, and changing the sequencing. It’s a good start.

Huff is coming along with her reading (an important prerequisite to coding) – she can read longer sentences without getting bored. She still has a tendency to guess a word halfway through sounding it out (which shows her ever-growing vocabulary), but she increasingly pushes through to sound out the full word.

Mum and Dad went away for an overnight trip to celebrate their wedding anniversary, so this is a bit truncated compared to a normal week.

A week of reduced sleep, for Dad at least. Puff and Dad went on an urban camp. Mum went to a school fair. Who had more fun? Hard to tell.

Meantime, the week rolled on. The kids are continuing with their swimming lessons and keep getting better at it.

Thursday we went to Eat Street in Wollongong to see the cousins and their parents. Dad caught the train down so he could keep working, and then hustle back to Bible Study.

And then, suddenly, it was the weekend. Puff was as confident as ever helping set up the different tents.

While Puff and the other boys were trekking in the city, Huff was at a school fair day trying out the rides, and wearing face paint.

Then, after a late evening of movie watching and pizza making, Dad and Puff slept in a tent. Dad didn’t get much sleep and was a bit weary the rest of the day.

On Sunday there was a church service with Puff and the other boys participating. Then we went to celebrate Grandma’s birthday, and then Huff headed to a Star Wars themed bowling party for a friend.

Screen time continues to be a challenge, especially when other kids have screens. Does anyone have a silver bullet for this?