School Travel

Sometimes Barb has the car and Peter catches the bus to school. He walks to the next street to catch it. Because Whittlesea is a country town outside of Melbourne, the trip is a nice one. The bus travels against the heavy traffic going to work from the outlying suburbs. The bus takes Peter past all these new housing estates and into the real country. From the bus, Peter enjoys the look of the Winter misty mornings, as the sun tries to break through. The bus then scoots along doing 100 Km/hr on the open road and drops Peter off at the school gate at the start of the town. It can't get any better than that for a place to work.

Breeding Stick Bugs

Children have a lot of interesting hobbies but breeding stick bugs stands out there as very different. This boy was invited to bring them in to show his class. He was telling Peter that the original stick bugs that he purchased started to lay eggs. These he carefully collected and kept warm for months. Apparently the eggs may not hatch for years, so when they did after just a few months, he was set. He moved from collector to breeder. Now he feels that one of his new females is about to lay and is getting ready to catch those eggs as they fall using sheets of tissue across the base of the enclosure. It is all pretty amazing stuff and he knows so much about it now thanks to the internet.

Coffee and Sudoku

Yes, just another story about our coffee habit. Actually, Barb is ordering hot chocolate these days.  Just sometimes Peter's 'long black' greets him with a smily face. Maybe the image can be turned into a badge. Peter is thinking of getting a badge making machine for his work at school.

Some of these coffee houses have newspapers lying about to read. While Barb skims through the news, Peter removes the fun page and has a go at the Sudoku. We bring along our shared book by Rachel Remen to read as well so our cafe times are always quite involved and full. Full of space to slow down for a moment.

Flying High

This simple kite design has found its way into Peter's range of projects. It is not that kites can be flown often at the school, and never during play recess (OH&S reasons), but a couple of boys kept requesting a large kite that they might fly. So far it has happened once with the permission of their teacher. The kite design was discovered decades earlier in the storeroom of a camp site on Phillip Island. The place was once an orphanage and the original template looked like it dated back to those years. Peter would like to name it the orphan kite in recognition of its origins.

It is simply made using the plastic cut to form from a large garbage bag and with two long bamboo sticks taped to it. Strong lightweight nylon string was attached to each side of the kite and joined to the main line (also lightweight nylon string). It can fly even is a light breeze.

Craft Update

Things have recently got a little more serious for some of the older children who come to the recess woodcraft club. So far Peter has provided seven kits of a particular helicopter design which is really a mix of many and any. The final result is a product of an image that was found by a couple of boys and some material restrictions.

The cockpit window is something that Peter provides to inspire and show that all things are possible with black card and clear plastic (and superglue gel). They have become a popular craft item at the moment.

Banquet at George's

This is a very brief blog in order to share about a special family time at George's Greek Tavern, Malvern East. We braved heavy peakhour traffic to be there on time and we chose the "banquet" option. There was too much to eat so we opted for a 'doggy box' to take away the left overs. It was a super night and very nice for us to see our three children (and our fourth, Gord) in the same space and time. Our three grandkids were being babysat on this occasion.

Jaz is Five

Jaz has to wait the longest each year for the "next" birthday to arrive, so imagine his excitement when the day finally came. On this occasion, Bec brought the three grandkids to our place for an "overnighter". We gave Jaz a pirate card that sang a short ditty about five year old boys, and a city life LEGO set which had an assortment of projects including an aeroplane. Jaz was pretty chuffed. Pumped even!

Piper helped to light the candles which were shaped to be little footballs, AFL style, so the themes were a little confusing, with a pirate card, a city LEGO gift and a footy cake. But hey, did Jaz notice? Noooo! Let's blow out the candles and eat it!

Thank you Funks for coming and making Jasper's day special for us too. We now have loads of wonderful memories, which include coming to children's church, shopping at Savers, eating at a restaurant, playing with Abigail, having a sleep-over, and learning to type words into an iPhone game app (Scribblenaughts Remix).