It’s that time of year again.

Parent-Teacher Interview time.

Personally, I quite like them.  I guess we’ve never really had an unpleasant one.  It’s a great way to touch base with the kids teachers and raise any questions/concerns we may have.

I’d love to be a fly on the wall at others though and see what is said and what other parents say about their children (yeah, I’m nosey like that ).

I went along with my little list of questions.  As it turned out, I had 1 for each teacher, so not too bad.

And the Verdict?

Trailer Boy - started the year on level 1 readers (so basically little to no progress over the first year of school in terms of reading).  Is now up to level 8!!!!  We are so relieved.  And the main thing?  He’s so HAPPY at school and so interested in learning (such a turn around from last year).

Singstar Princess - is apparently an absolute delight to teach!  How nice is that?  Her teacher is delightful too and the whole style of the classroom set-up and learning really suits her.  She’s the only 1 of our 3 that really “fits” in the system.

Lleyton - he’s doing well as expected and getting along with his teacher.  Just working on the homework issue now.  Not that I’m a big fan of homework but he really needs to get into better patterns in preparation for high school.  It’s not his fault he’s not already in that pattern.  Year after year of teachers setting spelling words that are too easy for him or finishing off when he’s always finished has meant that he really hasn’t done much homework so far in his school life.

Overall, we’re really happy with the teachers our children have this year (it’s not easy to have 3 kids in 3 different classes and be happy with ALL of them).  Our kids are settled well and learning well.

What a relief!

Now, if I can just get the school to deal with the swearing bus driver, I’ll be a happy parent (*sigh*).

This week’s mission is clear.

Murder as many little green things with purple or white flowers as possible!!!

I even have a spray gun that feels something like a gun (not that I’ve ever actually handled a gun) as I shoot at these blasted weeds!

AND…

The dye in my mix is HOT PINK!!!!

So I am flat out spraying the paddock “Lightening colour”. 

You can see where I’ve been by the hot pink patches all over the paddock.

Time is short and the weeds are winning the fight.

So this week, I’m spending as many hours as I can possibly manage, killing as many weeds as I can possibly manage.

Wish there was a “non chemical” way to deal with them.  But for now, this is the only way we have.

When I close my eyes at night, this is what I see:

I stare at them for hours on end and then when I close my eyes, I can still see them!

I don’t think I actually got around to posting some completed pics from our back verandah project.  So, here you are:

Front View of House:

This shows the front angle of the verandah up a little closer:

The stoney area to the bottom right of the picture is going to be paved (not sure whether pavers or slate yet) and turned into a bit of a potted garden area.  We’re also thinking of putting a small tank in here to make watering easy.  You can just see at the top that this section has no covering.  The plan is to grow grapevines over this section of give shade in summer and allow the winter sun to hit the lounge room window.

And this is the view from the “backyard” (our backyard is along the side of the house really).

We purchased a cheap dining setting from Kmart before Christmas and “Christened” the back deck by having our Christmas lunch out there.  It’s become a popular eating spot over summer (when the flies aren’t too bad).  It’s taken DH a little while to get the painting done but he’ll be glad it’s all done now that we’ve had so much rain (past couple of days have been very wet here).

It looks a bit different to this:

It’s almost hard to picture what it looked like before (thank goodness for photo’s!!!).  It’s really made a HUGE difference to the size of our house.  Basically we have a whole extra living area now.

NEXT PROJECT:

Most urgent is the paving of the area where the car goes.  The pavers are ordered and Farmboy just needs to pick them up and lay them (well, we need a Dingo here to dig the area out first).  After the rain we’ve had the past couple of days, all we have is a huge mud pit at the moment.

It all takes time (and money) but our house is slowly becoming more of a “home”. 

Don’t fall off your chairs peoples.  I really have posted 2 days in a ROW!!!  One of these days I might even get back into the habit of posting daily.

I’m so happy with my grocery spending for February.  With only 4 weeks, I ended up with almost a week’s worth of grocery money surplus.

That worked out to an average of around $115 per week spent.

I put aside $70 cash toward our next lot of bulk meat, taking the spend to around $130 a week.

To be honest, I was quite surprised as I didn’t feel like we were all that careful with our grocery spending.  I know there are areas that I could tweak if we needed to.

I’ve been trying to figure out why our grocery spending is so much lower than others we know, even when I’m not really trying.  I guess there is a certain amount that is just “habit”.

Anyway, it’s nice to think that I’m on track with the budget and even have a little bit of room to move with rising prices and growing kids.  At this stage of the year, it’s probably better to have a little more than we need than be right on budget.

Will be interesting to see if things stay this way or whether I’ve just been “lucky” this month.

Lleyton had a big day of tennis on Sunday.  We entered him a tournament in a regional centre a couple of hours from here.  We’re not spoilt for choice when it comes to tennis opportunities around here and it’s not easy to make it to those tournaments.

He had a WONDERFUL day with LOTS of tennis.  He played in the 11&Under singles (and finished as runner up) and the 13&Under singles (got into the top 4 and only lost that game 5-6 so it was close) and 13&Under doubles (they came runners up there too).

Here he is with his 2 runner up trophies:

He also won a free pizza (think that was almost more popular than the trophy!!!!).  At the start of the day he was hoping to get 1 runner up so he could go home with a trophy so he was stoked to end up with 2!!!!

I was happy for him (what parent doesn’t want their kid to be happy) but the highlight of the day happened when he recognised the value of keeping his cool during a game.

He was playing a tough opponent in the 13U singles comp and lost the first 2 games in close competition.  He then admits he gave the 3rd game away because he lost his cool.  Farmboy and I were really concerned watching his behaviour on court.  It was subtle but we don’t want him to become the kind of player who shows poor sportsmanship when losing.

However, he pulled himself out of that and ended up winning 6-3.  The beauty of it all was that he watched his own opponent gradually lose it and could really see the value of keeping your cool even when losing.  It was an awesome lesson and I was so proud of him (it’s not easy to pull yourself out of that personal frustration).

At that moment, he was going home a winner no matter the outcome of the rest of his games.

On Tuesday, he had the Grand Final games for his Junior Tennis local comp.  His team made it into the top 2.  They played the top 2 off for first and second and the next 2 off for 3rd and 4th (the 5th team was eliminated).

Here he is in action:

The competition was close all the way and ended up coming down to the outcome of his game.  Lleyton plays position 1 for his team so his game was left until last.  At that point, the teams were drawn.

I was concerned for him being under pressure but I don’t think he knew.  All the kids lined up along the court to watch the finish of the game (thankfully he’d been playing with an audience over the weekend so was used to an audience).

I think it ended up working in his favour as it made his opponent more nervous than it did him.

He ended up winning 3-1 to take out the championship for his team!

The winning team all got given a medallion:

Cute, isn’t it?

And it’s not over yet.  This weekend he has a finals comp for Senior Tennis.  They finished the season 4th so I guess they’re going into this game the underdogs.  Who knows though?  They’ve beaten this team before so I guess it’s anyone’s game.

If they win, they go into the next final.  If not, that’s the end of Senior Tennis for the year.

Thank you to all who took the time to leave a comment on my Mooo Giveaway post.  It was great reading of your enthusiasm toward their product range.

I have used a random number generator to select the giveaway winner.

And the winning number is:

Comment Number 3!

Congratulations Kelli!

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to enter.  I’ll arrange to have your 20% discount codes sent out to you ASAP (oh, and Kelli, your $50 voucher of course).

Cute isn’t it?

I can count on 1 hand the number of Valentine’s I’ve been sent in my life.

So it was a welcome surprise to receive this in the mail!

Singstar Princess had fun putting it together for me.

I <3 her too!

Pity my font doesn’t make a very nice heart.

Lucky Lego does!

My lack of posting has not really been due to lack of time (although that is always a factor).

It has more to do with limited brain power.

Right now, my head feels like it’s going to explode.

That’s what happens when you take on a role like President and the Parents and Friends when you have NO IDEA what the job entails.

I’m on a high learning curve here.

And a lot of it is just little stuff.

Like…

Where’s the cupboard?

Where’s the key to the cupboard?

What do I do when I need to photocopy stuff?

How do letters home to parents work?  Does the Principal need to see them/sign them?

Finding out the best ways of communication with the school and within the school.

Not to mention figuring out how to communicate with parents.  And how to communicate how IMPORTANT parental involvement in the school is.  And how to commuicate that Parents & Friends are NOT just about baking cakes!!! 

Yes, any minute now I think my head might explode.

I sure hope it gets easier than this!!!!

If not, my blogging is either going to be non existent or a bunch of whines about how busy I am and why don’t parents care and why doesn’t the goverment care…etc etc.

Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.  Otherwise I might have a grand total of 3 readers by the end of the year! 

MAN - why couldn’t Zemanta give me an image of a brain exploding.  That would have been kind of cool!

Have you seen this website with personalised clothing, labels and other fun stuff?

I’m a BIG fan of personalised stuff.  My kids love it and I find it particularly good for presents for my nieces and nephews if I’m not sure what to buy them (in fact, I just ordered matching t-shirts for my twin nephews).

Mooo sent me some samples and I have to say the quality is wonderful!!!!

They have lunchboxes, bags, puzzles and much MUCH more.

It was interesting to find Mooo also mentioned in the great fundraising ideas mentioned on my last post.  You can find more information on this under Mooo Fundraising.

To help spread the word about their growing business, Mooo have offered readers of this site the opportunity to win a $50 gift certificate for Mooo.com.au.  All you need to do is visit the site and then leave a comment on this post stating what your favourite Mooo product is and why.

Entries close Sunday February 28th 2010 and the winner will be announced Monday 1st March.  All non winning entrants will be given a 20% discount voucher to be used on the Mooo.com.au website.

So, what are you waiting for?  Go check it out then come back here and comment!

This Giveaway Has Now Closed.

There’s an interesting discussion happening on the Simple Savings forum (paid membership forum) regarding fundraising ideas.  I’m amazed at how many different ideas there are out there.  No doubt we’re all involved in one group or another that has a need to raise funds for various running costs or projects.

On Friday, I took on the role as President of our school Parents and Friends group (unintentionally I might add).  It’s a group I’ve only been involved with for a year so I’m not even 100% sure on the full role the group plays in the school.  However, one of the things it does do is raise funds to help with bits and pieces that aren’t covered in other funding (and there’s always plenty of those).

So, my question to all of you is:

What successful fundraising ideas have you been involved with or seen?

In particular, things that are reasonably simple (workload wise) with not too much outlay.  We’re not a huge school which puts some of the big fundraising ideas out of our reach.

Also, how many fundraisers does your school hold a year?

Do you think that is too many?  Too little?

I actually think our school could do with holding a few more but I don’t want to overdo it either.

Any other thoughts you have on the whole issue of fundraising I’d love for you to share.

Thanks for your help. :)  Oh, and wish me luck.  LOL.