Lightening Online

I did my “Easter Shopping” today. So I’m all ready now. I generally try not to shop too early as it’s too tempting!!! LOL.

We often go away for Easter but this year we’ve been so busy that we decided against an Easter weekend away. Fun as it would be, I just don’t have the energy to get packed up again (We’ve had 2 weekends away in March as well as being away Tuesday night for our anniversary plus 2 of the kids have had school camps this term).

Of course, added to that is the complication of “who” to spend Easter with. Farmboys family tend to gather at the family shack. We also have a few friends who we’ve gone camping with and it gets hard to choose who we will go with.

So, we’re looking forward to a little quieter weekend this year.

Our weekend looks something like this:

Thursday night - Tennis wind-up
Friday - Church in the morning then down to the beach to spend some time with DH’s family.
Saturday - Quiet day at home. Farmboy is planning to do some more paving and I’d like to get out in the garden (hopefully the weather is nice).
Sunday - unlikely that we’ll make the dawn service this year (would have to leave around 5.30am to make it) so most likely a quiet morning at home then down to the beach for more time with Farmboys family.
Monday - another home day

It should be pleasant without being too overwhelming or exhausting.

We also seem to have fallen into a kind of pattern for what we give the kids:

* pr winter pj’s (would buy anyway but it’s nice to put out for Easter as it’s often about when the weather starts to cool down - although being so early this year, they might not get used for a few weeks).
* book
* chocolate eggs

Plus I’ve bought some small eggs for an egg hunt (another tradition we’ve done any Easter we’re home since the kids have been little).

We also give to the nieces and nephews on Farmboy’s side of the family (when we see them which is most years).

I’ve tried not to buy too much chocolate this year but by the time you add in hot cross buns with butter, chips, dip, cheeses etc, Easter is a really DANGEROUS time for my waist line.

So, what are you planning this Easter?  Heading away or staying home?  Do you have any family “traditions” for this time of year?

And the big one:

What do you do in the way of Easter “gifts”?

Do you buy the same things each year or vary it.  Do you set a money limit?  Do you buy more than just chocolate for gifts?

We had a fantastic weekend albeit an exhausting one!!!  Kids have SO much energy!!! 

Here is our wonderful “Team Jamaica”

The way the camp works is that groups come from various areas with their leaders and all join together for 2 days and 1 night.  This year we had the second largest group there (and definitely the loudest LOL).  Each group was allocated a country this year (to fit with the Olympics team).

The kids were so great at getting into the spirit of the weekend.  I’m sure it added to the fun.

While we had games and “olympic” activities, the emphasis was on participation and good sportsmanship.

Here I am with my “Jamaican look hair”:

And Farmboy:

Singstar Princess:

Lleyton:

As you can see, we had a lot of fun getting into the “theme”.

And I have spent most of today either in bed or on the couch recovering from the weekend. Was fun but very tiring running around after a bunch of kids all weekend.

Farmboy and I are leaders on a Kids Camp this weekend.  The theme of the camp is “Olympics” and our group has been allocated Jamaica as our “country”.

So this morning, I dyed my hair black.

It doesn’t have any product in it (hence the “fluffiness”) because I’m about to start plaiting it.  Singstar Princess will help me with the back plaits tonight and I’ll plait hers as well.

Lleyton and Farmboy have Jamaican wigs.

Trailer Boy isn’t old enough to go yet so he’s having a holiday with Granny and Grandad.

It should be a fun (and no doubt exhausting) weekend.  More pics next week (hopefully).

Tiff from Three Ring Circus has set up a little charity fundraiser for the hospital where she and her beautiful daughter Ivy have spent far too many nights.  She wants to raise money for things that there just isn’t any other funding for.  Like decent beds for parents who have to spend the night with their children in hospital.

As if staying in hospital with your child isn’t stressful enough?  Having an old run-down bed, or worse, NO BED at all, only adds to that stress.

Anyway, go read about it here.

Then go and donate here.

$5000 might sound like a lot to one person.  But all we have to do is find 5000 people to donate $1.  Or 1000 people to donate $5.  That’s not very many people in the internet world.

When you’ve donated, please blog about this so we can spread the word.

Bloggers Unite for a Cause!!!!

Last week my focus was on farm work.  This week, I’m back to “housework”.  Next week is crazy busy and then it’s Easter so I want to get on top of things before then.  Princess Singstar is also at camp for the next 3 days so it’s an opportunity to work on her room.

I’m on top of the “basics” (other than the washing which is todays job) and the house has had a “basic clean”.  So, it’ll be more about the “deep cleaning” and “decluttering” this week (at least, that’s the plan).

To help keep me on track, here is my week’s plan:

MONDAY

Washing, Washing, Washing!!!!

Strip Singstar Princesses bed

Ironing

Decluttering Area - Laundry plus 1x 15 minute stint in Singstar Princesses room

Deep Cleaning Area - Laundry

TUESDAY

Office Day - update accounts, pay bills, deal with mail etc

Decluttering Area - Office

Deep Cleaning Task - Window Sills (and maybe some windows if I’m energetic enough)

WEDNESDAY

Decluttering Focus - DD’s room (plus remake her bed etc)

Deep Cleaning - Skirting Boards

THURSDAY

Decluttering Focus - Built In Cupboards

Deep Cleaning - Cupboard Shelves

FRIDAY

Make sure washing is all up to date

Pack for camp

Take some time out for me before a busy weekend

No idea how far I’ll get with this plan.  There’s only so much energy I have each day.  But at least it’s a starting point to help keep me on track.

My decluttering goal this week is the equivalent of 4 garbage bags of stuff OUT OF THE HOUSE.  I already have 2 nearly ready to go (1 with rubbish and 1 with stuff to give away) so it’s not that lofty a goal really.

Hopefully posting this will help keep me accountable to my goals (and spur me on a bit).  Will update later in the week.

What sort of things do you do to keep you on track?

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.