The week that was

I have not been able to blog in a while as we ran out of cap again! It seems that even doubling what we used to get is now not enough.... Sometimes I wonder how we handled life before home computers, Internet and email etc. For our children, it is a normal part of daily life. When I was in high school we didn't even have computers at school! Anyway, I am really glad it is the first of the month and we have cap again.

Monday was the last day of K's cooking course and it was a treat to eat the delicious goodies she made. I whipped up a salad and baked potatoes to go with the crispy chicken strips she made. We all enjoyed the choc chip cookies over the next day or so as well as the tasty peppermint crisp, caramel fridge cake. K decided to surprise her Uncle with a fridge cake for his birthday too. I just love that she enjoys cooking and baking and pray that she will be a blessing to her own family one day as she lovingly prepares meals for them.

We had some fun with our Zoology this week when we learned about bats. The mother bat sniffs out her baby among the millions that may be in the bat nursery. She has her own unique scent that she rubs onto her baby and this allows her to recognise her baby even if it does not answer her calls. We did an activity to see what it is like to find a baby pup in a crowded nursery...

The children gathered 20 different agents with characteristic smells such as perfumes, vanilla, soy sauce etc. They transferred the scent to 20 cotton balls and each chose a smell to be their own. Z who is my sensitive one, was not too keen on all the different smells he had to smell... we had a good laugh at his expressions while we did this fun activity!

They had to wear a blind fold and sniff out their own "bat pup". The children discovered that bats have an excellent God given sense of smell and we had great fun trying to figure out if we had identified the smells correctly or not.

Nature Study Keepers

On Friday K and I made the trip over the mountain to keepers group. It has been a while since we have been able to meet with the group so we were looking forward to our get together. The boys were busy with Lego league and friends so it was just us two girls. We had a good time chatting and laughing together as we travelled over the mountain.

Shirley led the group and read to the children from a wonderful library book she had brought along. She had also brought a chrysalis for the children to look at and draw if they chose to. She read to them about moths and butterflies.

K brought some nasturtiums along from our garden and she chose to paint those. The colours are just magnificent.... we have deep reds, oranges and yellows brightening up our back garden. The butterflies seem to love them and every day we have seen them flitting about and enjoying them.

K enjoyed her nature journalling.

Today...

I am thankful for...the beautiful day today. The wind has dropped and it is warm. I am thankful for a Heavenly Father who never leaves or forsakes us. He is the great restorer!

From the learning rooms...we are reading The Jungle Book and we finished our section on birds in Zoology today and made headway with our snake lap books. J has one more book to read for the section of history he is working on and we did a science experiment that flopped!

From the kitchen...a delicious spatchcooked chicken, garlic cheese wedges and a salad ... for tomorrow a 3 three bean salad and some health bars with apricots and sunflower seeds...yum yum!

I am wearing...afraid to say, my clothes from tae bo this morning, looking forward to a long soak in the bath!

I am creating....ideas in my head for a veggie garden.

I am going...to take K to keepers tomorrow afternoon and catch up with the moms again as we have not been able to go in a while.

I am reading.....The Yada Yada Prayer Group Gets Down, the second in the series. Just about real life people like you and me who end up in a prayer group together...and all the adventures of their lives...loving it!

I am hoping...to complete our goals a week before the end of term so we can relax when my mum is visiting!

I am hearing...the laughter of my youngest two as they splash in the pool on this warm, windless evening

Around the house...it is spic and span as my dear helper was here today.

Some of my favorite things.....the hugs and kisses from my little boy.....hearing my big boy say "I love you" spontaneously...........the laughter of my precious daughter...........a phone call from my husband when he is busy at work.........the feeling I have after a good work out at tae bo

A few plans for the next week: finishing the paperwork for my tax return, a visit to the library, hubbys birthday, brothers birthday braai , finish my latest mosaic project......

Here is picture thought I am sharing.....

Oh So cute!

Hands on school

We had some fun today and the children made Stromboli for lunch. It is not something we have ever made before but certainly something we will make again! They used a flat bread dough recipe to make the dough. Then they prepared it with tomato sauce, garlic and herbs and ham and cheese, as if it were a pizza. The fun part was to roll it up and make it look like a snake.... The eyes were the first two tomatoes from our garden.

It was delicious!

The children have also been working on their snake lapbooks. We have all been learning so much from this particular lapbook. It has been very informative.I just love learning new things alongside my children.

Mom's night off again!

Being Monday, K went to her cookery class again. She is so enjoying the course. It reminds me of my high school days in Home Economics class, which I took until grade 12. It was one of my favourite classes!

Today she brought home some delicious sausage rolls that the boys gobbled up for lunch, and the best butternut soup I have ever tasted! I will be using her recipe in future. Even though it was one of the hottest days in a while, we enjoyed the soup for dinner and I had the night off. I am thinking of sending J to the next course....

Strawberry picking

Today K had the pleasure of going strawberry picking out in Stellenbosch. She went with one of her nearest and dearest friends and her family. They had a great time! I have never seen such huge strawberries or tasted such fresh, sweet, delicious strawberries!It is now on my list of things I want to do with the kiddies!

Whirl wind weeks

The last couple of weeks have been really busy. Hubby and I decided we needed t0 make the trip to our friends son's memorial service. Within 5 hours of the decision being made, we were heading off to the airport.

We are eternally grateful to all the friends and extended family who made this possible by taking good care of our 3 children, organising complimentary hotel accommodation and lifting us to and from the airport.We felt so blessed to know that there were so many of you out there who rose to the occasion and did what needed to be done.

We spent 3 nights away and it was good for the two of us as hubby had been working plenty of overtime and weekends recently. We had a chance to relax and catch up with one another again.

The memorial service was special and really honoured our friends son. His parents wanted the service to be a celebration of his life, and it was. He lived life large and it was said that he packed 40 years of life into his 19. This was a talented young man with many friends.He will be sorely missed by many.

We spent time with our friends and their two boys. It was amazing to see how their church family took care of them at this sad time. We enjoyed reminiscing about he old days and the fun we had as friends. It was good.

This week has slipped by just as fast as I have had a client from Kenya for a few days. She leaves tomorrow morning and I look forward to returning to a sense of normality again. The children have diligently done their work that has been set out for them but I have missed the usual interaction with them and our reading time.