Today You Day 5 - Saturday 29 July

8:14am You came down to my craft room proudly carrying breakfast for me, a wedge of cheese, some cashew nuts, a quarter of apple (core & all).

10:00 You went to swimming lessons

3:45 You made popcorn in the new popcorn maker.

Today You Day 4 - Thursday 27 July

I haven't really got a photo of this so I might just use a photo of the car.

6:30am You woke up & got dressed for school & kindy

6:45 You had cereal followed by frankfurters for breakfast. Weetbix for Brent & porridge for James.

8:00 We left for the school/kindy dropoff. Brent got dropped off first & then James.

Today You Day 3 - Thursday July 20

3:30 You had afternoon tea & got a treat of Pebbles to celebrate a good first week back at school & kindy

4:00 You did your homework. Brent had reading, spelling & his big red prep book. James did colouring in of things beginning with H & wrote a lower case h.

6pm We picked dad up from the airport after he had spent a day working in Wellington.

What's coming up

Today James went back to morning kindy & tomorrow Brent goes back to school. Yipee because I have had enough of loud boys voices yelling & screaming all the time.

Brent was very good this morning & helped me with the housework but as soon as you put both boys together the noise level just sky rockets.

I am doing a layouts class tomorrow night, kindy library on Wednesday. Scott goes to Wellington for the day on Thursday & Friday is the kindy committee meeting.

Brent is going to be going to gymnastics with Medbury on Wednesday mornings so it will be interesting to see if he starts trying to do handstands again. Also the 3rd term is the music night so I imagine we will be having to start helping him memorise some songs for that.

Sometime through this i will have to remember to keep making notes for the today you class so I'll be updating the blog a bit more frequently with all the homework things I am doing.

Have a great week everyone.

Creating

Not much creating has been happening this week, I've been trying to get some of the homework for CC2006 done. I found out that for the 10 classes I'm doing I need a minimum of 31 photos. So it has been a matter of going through old backup discs from last year to find the photos I need for class.

I did create a small 8 x8 layout yesterday after coming across a photo of James' 2003 christmas decoration. I have decided to give each boy an album about the decoration that they get each year so they know the significance of the decoration.










I have also played around with his photo of James from Rangitoto. I love this photo of him because it seems to catch his mischievous but exploring personality.



















So I had a fiddle & learnt a new trick that I have been trying to learn for ages.

Doesn't it annoy you when you have been trying to do something following instructions for 2 months & it doesn't work? Well it took me 2 months to work out that there was a box I needed to have a tick in to get a photo to look like this.

Quite a neat trick that I might try on Brent's photo of him & the new toothbrush.

Photo Decor Class photos

Yipee! I have found all the photos I want to use for this class. Now I just need to get them all printed off.



















I flicked the photo of Scott coming down the hill to a mirror image so that hopefully it could look quite good along the horizontal arms of either the L or the E in the word LOVE.

Today You Day 2 - Saturday 15 July

7:30am Brent made a milk drink "Quick" for him & James

8:15am Both boys went off with Scott to get Mr Puffy for breakfast.

11:00am We came home from doing some shopping. We went to Briscoes & bought some new toothbrushes. Both boys were dead keen to use them straight away but they had to charge for 16 hours. No surprises on Brent's colour choice. James would probably have chosen red if there had been that colour to choose from.













I am not sure which of these photos to use as the 6 x4 & which to use as a 2 x 2. I am also thinking that maybe the photos should be B&W otherwise how will I know if they will go with the paper we are going to be using? I think I might just print all the photos out in colour on Reflex paper & then see about changing or even doing a colour fiddle to highlight Brent's colour choice after the class is over.

Today you - Day 1 Tuesday 11 July

At CC2006 one of the classes I'm doing is Today You with Ali Edwards. The homework is to record 3 simple observations for each of the nine days.

I thought I would do my boys. Maybe I will do observations for both but only do 1 of the boy's observations for the class & come back home & do the other boy.

11:00 You both decided to play a game of "Find Jim the otter", a game that you devised after hearing the news about Jin the otter being found at Issy Bay on Rangitoto.



















11:30 You managed to find the otter but decided he needed fish so you went & threww a skipping rope out you bedroom window & pulled it back in with an imaginary fish on the end of it.





















3:00 You got to see grandad much to your surprise because you were expecting nana. Nana arrived about half an hour later to a lot of excited yelling from you both.


I also tried out going fully manual on the camera. I like the lighting & composition of this photo but I am a bit annoyed that it is blurry however as a 2 x2 inch photo it is not too bad.

Lake Lyndon

Today we decided to take a day trip to the snow. I had heard on the radio that Lake Ida was open for ice skating so we thought we would take a drive up there. We got to springfield & found out we had missed the turnoff. The helpful lady at the Springfield info centre told me that we could either turn around & go up the muddy road to Lake Ida or we could go to Lake Lyndon as there was ice skating there too. We decided we would carry on & got to Lake Lyndon an hour & a quarter after we left home.

The number of cars there was incredible. We obviously weren't the only family that thought cheap outdoor fun, let's go! The ice on Lake Lyndon was thick & the snow just to walk out to it was amazingly thick. The sun was shining, blue sky & a slight westerly wind but that chill didn't deter us. We don't have ice skates but the boys went out on the ice in their gumboots and had a wonderful time. It was the highlight of Scott's day because he had never been "skating" on a lake before.

We had lunch & then turned around & went 50metres up the road to an area where there was a hillside that people were sledding down. We had packed our plastic bags that the pellets for the fire come in & the boys used them as sleds. James was surprisingly not at all sure about doing it so he mainly stayed on a little slope.

Brent on the other hand was very keen to go up the hillside to have a sled to the bottom. Once he had worked out how to hold the plastic & then put his bottom on it before it slid off he was away laughing.

Scott also had fun sledding as well as chasing the plastic bags across the hillside when they got blown away by the breeze. He really enjoyed the sledding but thinks he'll be rather sore tomorrow.

What a great & cheap days entertainment. The boys came home rather tired but very keen to give it another crack next weekend.

School Holidays

It's the school holidays & it has been cold & miserable. Luckily there has only been a couple of days when the boys have had to be stuck inside all day. Usually we take Scott in to work & then come back home & have some toast. We then do an hour of tidying up & housekeeping & then we have morning tea. after morning tea the boys & I have been able to go out for a walk which has been a good way to get rid of some of that pent up energy. Back home for lunch & a rest time in front of TV. Then time for more chores & another walk before picking up Scott. It is quite a good routine & at the end of the week they get a reward for helping getting the chores done.

This week's reward was going to see Cars, the movie. What a great movie. I was wondering how long James would last when he asked "when's the end?" but the action soon picked up & he was able to sit through the whole movie. I loved the movie too because there was some bits that went flying over my boys heads that I could just laugh at. I wasn't alone in the laughing, there was another 3 mothers who laughed with me. In fact there was hardly anyone at the 9am showing. There must have been about 24 of us all up watching that movie. That's the great thing about having early risers because the next showing was sold out (11:20am), even at 8:30 in the morning.

Next week mum is going to look after the boys for a few days so I'm looking forward to that & hoping to use that time to get some of the homework for CC2006 done.

Brent's effort Card

Well what can I say about Brent's effort card. I picked him up from school on Friday 30 June & asked him how school was. He had a monosyllabic answer "fine". Then he clammed up totally. I asked him if he had got his effort card & he said "yes". We got home had afternoon tea & then I asked him for his effort card. What I saw brought tears to my eyes, I couldn't be more proud of how hard he is working at school.





What a great achievement Brent. I hope you keep up the hard work.