Brent's Effort Card

Friday also saw Brent bringing home his effort card for the last part of the term. He was very proud of it, and with very good reason.

You can't ask more of a child than that.

Well done Brent what another fantastic term you've had.

James' last day at Kindy - Fri 15 September

The last day of kindy what a wreck I was that day. I still can't believe that my baby boy is going to school in 2 weeks. He made a playdough cake with 5 candles on it. To my great surprise he wanted us to say the colours in Maori as each candle was lit. He has never even wanted to count to 5 in Maori before but with Ngam & Kirsty's help he was able to say the colours. His profile book was given to him, it had been finished for quite some time because we thought he was going to school a term early.

At the end of mat time we got Joseph, Ammon & Rhianna to stand with James so we did get a photo of his friends before he left kindy.

Brent's Cross Country - Thurs 14 September

It was a beautiful warm sunny day, maybe a bit warm to be running around the course but there was an iceblock for everyone at the end of the prize giving. At this level it is just expected that everyone will participate & everyone gets a certificate of completion. In year 3 & 4 they run around the track 4 times (the young ones only go around twice) & can even win a cup for winning the race.

Brent ran a good race & let people climb up & over the stairs before him. He isn't competitive in this type of thing so was quite happy to come in the middle of his class. He ran well within himself so I think next year he does at least have the stanima to run around the course 4 times.

The Week Coming Up

Well everyone this is James' last week at kindy. He won't be there on Wednesday because he will be having a school visit until after lunch. He has been buddied up with a friend he met at Gymbaroo & he seems to be really starting to find his feet at Medbury. He seems more comfortable there than at kindy now & when i go to pick him up at mat time at kindy he is often not sitting with his kindy friends. he complains to me that they are so loud. It's funny really because I noticed Ronan did the same thing to James before Ronan left for school. I think it is just a sign that he is ready for school.

Scott starts his holidays on Thursday & he has already organised to have the electrician come in & fix our electrical problems on Thursday morning. Brent has his cross country on Thursday so James & I will go & cheer him on at that.

Friday will be an emotional day for me. James will be having his little leaving kindy presentation around midday. I'll be there with camera in my hand, hopefully getting some good photos. The end of my association with kindy isn't really until the end of the year after I hand over the reigns of the library & resign from the kindy committee. After we have picked up Brent we will bring him home, get him changed & then hit the road. Hopefully we'll be able to pick up some fish & chips in Geraldine or Tekapo on our way through.

We'll be heading down to Invercargill after lunch on Sunday & then having James' birthday in Invercargill. James is looking forward to it & we are all looking forward to meeting Magnus.

Keep well everyone & I will probably catch up with all my family some time in the next two weeks.

Geocaching

We gave Scott a handheld GPS unit for fathers day this year. He has had a lot of fun learning a bit about it so as today was such a nice day I asked if he thought we were ready to try geocaching.

Geocaching is like a treasure hunt using a GPS unit to find where the cache is. I found one called Why Maree? on http://www.geocaching.com I guessed that it would be near us & sure enough we headed out to the Groynes to try & find a cache. It really was a lot of fun & took us a good 20 minutes to walk to the cache area & then it took us about 10 minutes to find the cache. Inside the cache there was a notebook that we wrote a message in to say that we had found it. There was also some stuff we could swap if we wanted but we really didn't have anything appropriate to leave in it so we just hid the cache again.

We all enjoyed it although that photo doesn't make it look like James did. He was pretty tired but has decided he wants to try & find more.

I am hoping we can make this a family event once a week, especially in the summer. I have already gone back to the website & found some places to look in Invercargill & Central for our upcoming holiday.

James' Birthday party

We had James' birthday party yesterday. He invited 5 of his best friends from kindy & also Amy & Andrew. Having 8 boys running around certainly made things loud but we were very lucky that it did not run. We started offf with a treasure hunt & then had a pinata. After that energy burn off we played pass the parcel. Around 2:30 I brought out the cake not that James was very interested in eating it. He was more excited to play with his new lego knights. We finally got him up to the table to do the cake thing.

After that the boys went back outside to play rugby until it was pick up time.

We also let james have his birthday dinner last night. His choice was predictable so off to Mcd's we went. Unfortunately we had to go to the Riccarton one (because it is the one near us with a playground)& it is just awful. The playroom stank, the floor was sticky & most of the tables hadn't been cleaned off. I think I really prefer the Papanui one but it doesn't have the play area which is what James wanted.

I think James had a very tiring but happy day.

Latest Layouts

Since being back from Crafting Connection I have been doing some layouts. I have been doing a digital scrapping course through http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com

A couple of these layouts are from that course. The Boy oh buoy one & the Everyday one.