puff and huff

Huff had a further opportunity to celebrate her birthday with other family members who have a February birthday.

She practiced her covid-safe candle extinguishing skills.

Here she is with Aunty C.

And here are a bunch of family members waiting for Huff to learn how to ride a bike. She is excited to learn how to ride, and wants to reach competence in under 7 hours of practice. The weather has been against her the rest of the week!

Uncle J was helping her as well.

Glad to be around to watch her keep trying and learning.

Elsewhere on the weekend, Dad and Puff walked over the Como bridge and back for a pre-church walk (it took Puff some effort to work out which bridge it was, due to a conspicuous lack of signage on the Oatley side.

Another week back at school for both kids. Puff is slowly returning to coming home by public transport, though is still driven to school most of the time. There’s lots of maths homework and we’re starting to try a different approach to bedtime which will give him some extra time to make progress on his work.

Saturday morning we went out for a long overdue brunch with a friend, near the beach. Mum, Huff and our friend E wanted to walk on the sand. Dad and Puff stayed on the concrete with Puff again trying to teach Dad how to solve a Rubik’s cube.

The blue sky above didn’t last, and there was a huge downpour. We waited it out under this outdoor shelter, but the ground started to get wet, so we ended up hastening to the car.

And then a sad reason for this photo – we went to the funeral of a friend’s Mum today; we’ve known the family for many many years, so we all went along.

Huff was gifted a bike (some assembly required) for her birthday, which was exciting. Dad has been working at night or on zoom with fair regularity, so apart from that, life has involved being at home a lot. Hopefully this will smooth out in the weeks to come.

We are properly back into the school routine, including early morning swimming lessons (while Dad had a day off, and went to the blue mountains).

Huff is now 11 years old! For her birthday she wanted to go and do a high ropes course. Here she is doing the practice flying fox.

It’s easy in the training course, but things quickly get real. Huff and her friends climbed up and did a great job on the course with Dad and Puff supervising / trailing.

Puff was useful to have on the course as he had a natural grasp of how all the different climbing apparatus fit together.

Dad was glad he went along, having never worn a climbing harness before, but spent the next few days with sore arms!

Huff was given a new dress by a friend (and if you look carefully, earrings from another friend).

Aunty C made a delicious giant birthday brownie for Huff.

And we had these helium balloons to help her remember her age.

Pineapple continues to make his presence known in the family.

Puff, meanwhile, is all about the 3D printing at the moment, working out how it all works and what can be done with it – it’s great to see his mind active on a new challenge.

After last week’s trip to the ocean, where Huff picked a colour for the front door, Dad and Huff painted the front door a bright blue, which has cheered up the front of the house considerably.

On the weekend (the last weekend of the school holidays) we made a quick trip up to the blue mountains, stopping for breakfast at one of the cafes on Dad’s “to visit” list for breakfast. Puff was borrowing Mum’s phone to answer some messages from his friends.

Then we met Aunty S and Uncle N for lunch at a pizza place they had introduced us to. Huff walked their dog for a while. 

We paused for a family photo.

And another family photo – out for some end-of-holidays yoghurt.

And then all of a sudden, it was time to head back to school. Puff was doing his best to smile in the photo despite needing to race to the car for the start of the first maths lesson for the year… there will be a lot more 7:30am starts still to come.

Coming next week (hopefully) some examples of 3D printing; a friend has set us up with the requisite equipment, we just need to get it ready to use.

Another week of what is becoming school-holiday-normal. Dad was on zoom helping to run an online event, while the kids were mostly staying home. Puff had a day out at a friend’s house where they played a board game for many many hours (and almost finished the game). We turned that pick-up into a trek out to buy school shoes, the size of which drift ever closer to the parents’ shoe size.

Mum and Huff spent some time running errands, and did some visiting as well (yes, that’s a surgical mask around Huff’s wrist, her preferred way to carry it).

After reminding Dad that the Dad-Huff time ratio has been pretty low of late, Dad took a break from sermon writing, and took Huff out to a cafe, and to walk near the ocean. We had a great time looking at the waves, and saw two rats running around near the path we were on.

The cafe was much nicer.

And Pineapple continues to make his presence in the house known. his current interest is in shiny things: earrings, braces, whatever he can reach, but it’s great to see the happiness the bird brings to Puff.

Last week of holidays to come, and then back to the new school routine, whatever that may look like!

Pineapple is making himself feel more and more at home, and makes a lot of noise when he feels he’s being ignored for too long.

We went to the drive-in to see “Sing 2” on Sunday night – it seemed like the most covid-safe way to watch a movie and the kids had a great time.

And Huff was finally able to get her first jab as part of the pandemic adventuring. Dad spent some time empathising with her about her hurty arm, but she has been otherwise fine.

 

Another week of school holidays, fairly consistently punctuated by work tasks for Dad. We still managed some family time, heading out for an outdoor cafe breakfast.

And Puff finally picked up his Christmas present – a new cockatiel named Pineapple. Here is pineapple on the way home.

Huff helped with the painting this week.

Huff is also a big fan of the bird.

It’s great to see Puff (and Pineapple) smiling so much.

Other highlights this week were seeing the cousins, and having dinner with Uncle M. 

With Summer Camp in the middle, we have two weeks to talk about! Christmas was a time with family; we had people over, we visited people, all with the shadow of COVID hanging overhead.

The kids enjoyed seeing one of their great uncles they hadn’t seen in a while:

Knowing Puff wasn’t sure about going to camp, Dad took him out for a walk the morning before, to see the familiar sights.

Then on camp, we didn’t see much of Puff as he was staying with his fellow campers. Overall he had a great time with some teething problems. Huff, on the other hand, was living her best life.

We managed a family photo at the end of the week.

Huff had a job on camp to run the snack shop, and returned the cans and bottles to recycling so she could raise more money for camp.

Then we had a couple of recovery days at home, followed by the chance to spend time with friends on their boat! Huff even had a bit of a chance to steer the boat.

Puff had a slightly longer chance to steer the boat.

And we managed a family photo. Very grateful for the opportunity. It was even a pleasant workspace for Dad for a while, as he had some pressing work to do.

Then we went back to our friends’ house for a swim, and Dad even managed to get into the water.

A bit light-on for photos this week. With the school holidays up and running, it was time to take the kids out to sit at the far end of the table at a work-related lunch. They were quiet and amused themselves, and we had a chance to hear them laughing about various in-jokes they have created during the drive there and back.

It was also great to catch up with some other friends, though we somehow managed not to take any photos of that.

Then on Saturday, we had a long-overdue catch-up with an uncle who taught Puff a bit about how motors and cams work and can be adjusted.

Other highlights: drive-through covid-test for 90 mins (again no photos) and finding out, some days later, that we are all covid-free (so far).
 

The school year is winding down, and it’s time for our end of year rituals. Huff was struck by how much taller she was than last year – she was even tall enough to put the star on the top of the tree.

We had a fairly quiet weekend, but Puff managed to get the family an invitation to dinner, and so we went out for Italian food together.

Huff and Puff both had a great time talking to some kids who were a bit older than them.

It was a brief taste of the future, when one day they too move out and start their own lives.

We also had a family Christmas gathering last weekend, with more to come.