In the blink of an eye!

In the blink of an eye she has turned 6

 and suddenly has an interest in using the camera to take random shots of things she loves.

 They went with dad to the harbour for a Dad's morning.

 He has an interest in building with blocks of all types....

 and then he turned four and dad built him a lego helicopter from his favourite blocks.

She took more random photos of "things" she loves.

 We were visited by ransacking baboons and we've quickly learned how to defend ourselves: the spray of a hose pipe works wonders!

 We experimented in all sorts of areas of life.... including science.

 She took more random photos of that which she loves....including him.

 We added a new member to the family-Jenna's new love, Cutie.

 She discovered a different beat to dance to as she boogied to the soundtrack from the Jungle Book.

 We delighted in finding tiny frogs on a Sunday morning family hike,

 and hunted for easter eggs in our garden with our home church children.

 They enjoyed one of many parties in The Birthday Season in Sherwood Forest with Robin Hood. 

(are all children born so close to one another?)

We hunted for chestnuts with our Nature Club friends....

 and then built a fire at Wynberg Park and made own sausage in a roll....

 while watching the chestnuts roast! Yum!

 And then just in case building a fire put any ideas into the heads.... we visited the fire station for some safety tips!

In the blink of an eye we have journeyed through five months....there's so much more to share but my time is rather limited nowadays.  After all there's been ballet and music (Jenna), birdie ball which was swopped for gymnastics (Mikey), sewing classes and netball (those are for mom), Nature Club and lessons shared with friends.... and that's in between the daily living and learning at home. 

Entering into a new season.....

The start to this week has been tough, to be perfectly honest it has been horrible.  I had an awesome week-end spending time in the Lord's presence at a church conference on Saturday and returning as a family to attend church on the Sunday-an all new experience for us.  We were so blessed by the time spent in corporate worship with fellow believers.

And then Monday hit!  BAM!!!  I woke late-feeling tired and very uninspired to do school. (We have been following a gentle school routine this year)  Thinking I had no time to start the day in the Word, ignoring His gentle whispers to leave my plans for the day, I climbed out of bed and into a battlefield....and lost every one of the battles my very determined six year old fired at me.

You're lovesick a friend told me.... yes I am.... all I want is to be so fully immersed into His presence like I was on the week-end.  And when He whispered: take it slowly, spend time with me, I made the wrong choice.  I chose fear: What if they never learn to do their chores without a fuss?  What if they always choose to be disrespectful? What if I don't set a school routine in place and they never learn anything?!

Tuesday.  A new day.  New mercies?  Yes.... always, but I didn't hold onto them, instead I gave them away.... we were battling again.....

I needed to get out, away before I turned our home into another battlefield.

And so I walked.... and talked... and cried..... and questioned. I knew I had to return, but I was still too angry, too disappointed.  He put His finger upon an old wound.  The reason for my fears. Things I haven't let go of, yet.  Things I know, only in time, that He will help restore and heal to their fullest purpose.

Turning back I still felt like I wasn't ready to go home.... they are only children and they don't really know what feelings get stirred up inside their complexed mommy's heart.... how could I return if I couldn't face them with arms of love?

Along the roadside I started to notice the aloe and protea bushes were getting their buds.  These are the indigenous flowers which bloom in winter.  Aloes have a fiery red flower-a beautiful sight on a winter morning.   Proteas are hardy flowers: their beauty has grown on me and it brings me great joy to spy their bushes on the mountainside as we drive over to visit family.

As I walked I noticed more aloes and more protea bushes filled with buds.  And I felt like the Lord was saying:  People usually see Winter as a dormant stage of life, a time when nothing of beauty grows-but look at these flowers you have grown to love and look forward to seeing in winter, they are hardy and filled with colour which always lifts your spirit when you see them.  There are times when it seems like you're going through a winter in your life, remember these buds: they are a promise that good will grow from experiences you have.

You are entering a new season now.... don't forget to look at new experiences as buds which can grow into beauty.  Give them time.... give yourself time........ to grow and blossom into that fiery beautiful flower which will bring joy to those who see it.

We're perfectly forgiven.....

I made this vase in pottery lessons last year. It's not beautiful, but I made it.... so I love it.....

To make it you lay two separate slabs of clay over another perfectly rounded bowl which was worked on a potter's wheel.

After that you scrape the edges with a sharp tool and wet it with water until you have a mushy, messy surface.

The mushy clay edges are then laid on top of one another and you use a tool to smooth the outside edges until the join disappears.

After this you make a small hole at the top into which you blow air and the shape takes on a perfectly rounded form.

The lip is added on later. Also using a tool, water and scraping of the surface.

Afterwards it was glazed and put into the kiln to seal the colouring onto the surface.

Two weeks ago Michael was sitting at my feet rolling it around-gently-threatening to break it. He wasn't happy about something I had asked him to do and he was letting me know by taking something precious of mine and threatening to destroy it.

I knew I had to remain calm. I knew fighting it out of his hands would end up with a broken vase. I knew I had to wait patiently for whatever the outcome would be.....

I could tell by his tone that he was only threatening.....testing to see who had the power?! I waited calmly.....and then asked him to return it to it's place. Testing his boundaries.... testing the strength of the vase he dropped it from a very low height.

He was shocked........to regretful tears.

I reached down to him and gently took his hand. Knowing he had learnt a lesson I held him and then led him gently to his room for bed time. I wasn't angry.....

In fact I had great peace that the lesson learnt was one of such importance to him.......

I never knew it would be for me too.......

A night or two later I was woken in the night and couldn't get back to sleep. I've had times like this before. Times when I lay there and think..... or times when I lay and listen....

HE spoke to me about HIS Love and how, because HE loved me first, I can receive HIS forgiveness and HIS perfect Love too. HE told me about the way in which HE sees me, clothed in HIS royal robes. And that because of these new robes I no longer have to see myself through the worn out tattered rags of my past (old thoughts/habits/experiences which labeled me). I'm LOVED just as I am, because HE made me. I'm PERFECTLY made in HIS eyes.

And, if I continue to choose to wear those rags and lies from the past it is so difficult for HIS Love to shine through me.... it's there, but it's covered by untruths from the past. All I have to do is believe HIM who says I am HIS BEAUTIFUL BRIDE.

And then HE said: See others as I see you! FORGIVEN AND PERFECTLY MADE.

We glued the vase back together again.....

But there's a crack... and a little piece missing.....and I love it even more now because of it's uniqueness.

There was more to learn.....

Later that week I had to look at Ray through those eyes of Love which the Lord had taught me about.....

And HE said: It's like your marriage....Like you were formed from my perfect form.... so is Ray. I have joined you together in perfect unity. My tools are sharp and sometimes it gets messy, but you are joined together! Sometimes Satan comes along and tries to break that perfect unity.... he tempts you to sin. It's how you choose to react that shines MY light and LOVE to others. And look, do you see that crack, do you see that hole? It's there, but you still love that vase just because you created it.... I love you (and him) like that too, trespasses and all.....BECAUSE I created you!

And then HE whispered for the last time:Forgive others because I forgave you.

MATTHEW 6:15 But if you do not forgive others their trespasses (their reckless and willful sins, leaving them and letting go, and giving up resentment) neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses.

I guess it's time for an update!

It's March! Already?! In the past, flipping over the March page on our calendar would have felt like the year was already racing away from me. This year it feels like the year is still new.... like so much lies ahead and it will be good!

Our December holiday was an awesome holiday for our family. It's the time of year when Ray gets a full month's leave and we get to have him around 24/7. I was really looking forward to the holiday. We hadn't planned to do much-one camping trip-and LOTS of family time!

Our camping trip turned out to be quite an adventure: we got stuck on a dirt road in the middle of no where with a broken radiator in a 47' C heat wave! But the Lord is SO good-wish I could tell you the whole story-He provided us with help, a pool, a roof over our heads and transport back into the nearest town to get our car into a garage.

our little safe haven for the hottest night of the year!

the pool was the coolest place to be-and it felt like a bath!

And we still ended up going camping!! At Jenna's suggestion we returned to a nearby campsite which we'd taken the kids to on our first camping trip with them. Perfect place-under pine trees, with a swimming pool and a family of German tourists for our children to play with..... a lot better than the ±45'C place we'd left behind.

putting up the tent is a man's job!

snuggling up for bedtime stories

two little happy campers using our make shift spoons-we forgot the cutlery at home!!!

Listening to Dad reading the German version of Beauty and the Beast-yes, they do love stories that much they'll even listen to them in a foreign language!

playing a German version of Duck, Duck, Goose

I loved the simplicity of our holiday and thoroughly enjoyed just sitting back and taking it a day at a time. Coming back home again was an awakening to the fact that although we as a family tend to live a quiet lifestyle, even the business of managing our home and the possessions we have can add complications and stress to our lives.

we ended off our camping with a visit to Butterfly World-WOW!

I found it really difficult getting back into daily routine when Ray went back to work. It had been so good to spend everyday together as a family taking it a day at a time. It took me a while to get over my "I wish you could be with us all the time" blues. It has been a desire of mine for a while that Ray would be able to work from home-yes, I know that it would mean he couldn't be with us 24/7 in reality-but I find it difficult at times that his work life seems so separate from mine and the kid's daily life of being with each other 24/7. My heart's desire is that we could all be together: working together, living together, learning together! But this is a desire which I will have to continue to pray about for confirmation and acceptance of the Lord's will and not mine ;-)

the view from Peer's Cave into Fish Hoek Valley

So picking myself up and getting on with life I started to research extra-murals for the kids for the year. Jenna is continuing with ballet and has started an Introduction to Music course (which she LOVES!). Michael had said he'd like to play soccer-but we decided it's a little too soon for that, so we decided on Ball Skills for him. Both Jenna's music and Michael's Ball Skills lessons took me back to my old work place. This was an interesting experience. Walking through the school passages left me with old feelings which in the past I would have pushed down and tried to deny. The beginning of the year at any school is such an exciting time for me. New beginnings, new faces, new friendships all fill me up with the anticipation for exciting things which lie ahead. Admitting it to myself was good though, I realised that I still love to see children learning together and I still love to be involved in that learning experience. Now I get to do it with my own children!

Last year Ray and I chatted a lot about how we (as individuals) learn and what we think is important in life to learn. I had thought that he would want a more structured learning environment for our kids, but it turns out he's more relaxed than me about their learning experiences. (Proving, yet again,that it's so important to talk about these things :-) We came to the conclusion that for now, we want our children to learn about what interests them and that it is our job to expose them to a variety of experiences within our capabilities and resources. We both have found that we learn best when we have initiated the learning ie. it has come from our desire. We also discussed that knowledge doesn't need to come in a sequential order at a specific age-we are learning new things everyday ourselves, things we had "learnt" at school, but weren't interested in or ready to understand.

So this meant that I did a lot of rethinking of how I needed to and wanted to approach learning in our home.

However, while I believe that you don't need to follow a structured curriculum to learn, I discovered that I needed some kind of structure to force me, to do more exposing.

Once I had admitted to myself that I felt like I wasn't doing enough exposing I had to consider what I thought was important for me to expose the kids to now. I had loved the freedom my children had to play and be outdoors last year, but I was starting to feel I needed to be a little bit more hands on with them. Last year we had focused on creative play, reading good literature and Bible stories and reading books on topics which interested them. This year things have been slightly different.

I chose to start the year off slowly-I wasn't prepared to start a full blown daily routine from day one. I also know that following a schedule doesn't suit me-and following the same schedule everyday absolutely bores me to the point of giving up on doing anything at all! I'm a contradiction in myself-I like flexible routine!

hiding in the rocks at Peer's Cave

So for a few weeks we only had the goal of doing a Bible time in the morning. I introduced memory verses this year - something I personally wanted to work at. And to appeal to Michael's need to move and Jen's desire to praise and worship we sing together in the morning too. We're also using a calendar to record the weather on etc. At the start of this easing in time we also settled into our afternoon extra-mural routines.

She even has to wear a dress to climb mountains-such a princess!

Our Co-op did some expanding and rethinking this year too. We're continuing our Nature Walk Co-ops. Besides adding a few more families to the group we've chosen four types of locations to visit in a rotation basis. Sea, forest, wetlands/river, and our own private gardens. We're very relaxed about the learning that happens. Our main aim is to encourage a love for nature by spending time in it and sharing that experience with other special people in our lives. And of course it's a bonus when one of the kids pulls out their nature journal and spontaneously starts to draw! It has been such a blessing to grow our relationships with our friends in this relaxed way-for the moms and the children too!

Looking over towards Ou Kaapse Weg from Peer's Cave.

Being in nature is something we love doing as a family too. This year we have started hiking together. As often as we have been able to we have headed out on mountain walks on the week-ends. We're slowly exploring the walks that are nearest to us. This time is turning into a special family time as we have time to talk to each other and enjoy doing something together outdoors, a place we all love to be!

we had front row seats on a rock climbing lesson

When we had settled into the Bible routine and afternoon activities I started to re-introduce the school-like lessons Jenna had asked for last year. I will admit that this was more of my need this year than hers. A little to do with the lack of exposure thing-Jen has a sense for numbers but I felt like I wasn't exposing her to enough use of numbers. As I didn't want to do Maths everyday I also thought we'd work at her handwriting and phonics.

The amazing thing is even Michael is enjoying these times now-last year when I had tried a more structured unit study approach it had really been a challenge. So we aim for two/three mornings in the week of Writing/Maths/Phonics. In this time we also do finger rhymes and counting. We start off counting etc. together and then I usually work with Jen for around 15 minutes while Mikey plays with fine motor/maths/readiness activities and then we swop over and Mikey gets to play with mom's school things too. He is surprising me so much! However, it is not my aim to do much with him-more to spend time doing fun activities together, when I see his enthusiasm wavering we quit while it's still going well.

My next aim is to do more Art, Crafts, Baking, Science Experiments, Music and Movement with them. This usually happens after they've had a play time after our structured time together. But sometimes mom forgets or they're playing a wonderful imaginary game I just don't have the heart to stop :-)

Fitting in a story time during the day was a challenge. Besides bed time stories where Dad reads their Bible and picture books to them and I read a read aloud chapter book, we always used to have a story time before rest time. Afternoon activities seem to fall where our rest times usually do and as Michael doesn't usually need a nap anymore rest times were becoming few and far between. I use this time as our time to read poems, information books, afrikaans picture dictionaries and for Jenna to read to us. It took a while, but we have finally fitted it back in again, most days!

So as you can see daily life has changed a lot for us this year. I still want our learning to be relaxed though and if we wake up in the morning and everyone needs a play day, a play day it will be! And yes, moms need play days too!

A quick catch up! Well, as quick as I can get!!!

How do you catch up with what's happening in your life when you haven't been around for a while? So much has happened. You know me, I can't do the short version! Well, I suppose I could if I tried....

volcano science experiments: bicarb and vinegar eruptions

the science of sound:it moves!

Here goes: Why have I not been around? A few reasons...

1) Ray's month or so of illness went from flu, to glandular fever to food poisoning to gall stones....to an operating table to remove a gall bladder and bigger than hazelnut sized gall stones. {He didn't really have food poisoning, it was the toxins from the infection} Through the whole operation experience we knew that the Lord was right by our side and it was a peace-filled time. Afterwards though, things fell apart a bit. So I've been learning a lot about the need for calm after the storms! It's so easy for me to rush in and try to take control of things again instead of resting in and waiting on the Lord for the next step. I feel like He's been saying: wait, let's do things slowly, just take it one step at a time, everything will get back into order again. Unfortunately I didn't seek Him first after Ray was finally back home, well again, and I tried to make things feel *normal* by following a set routine. Routine is important, but it isn't what should rule me, it isn't what should make me feel secure. I do find this tough though, seeking Him first. Although, in the past, I have learnt that routines don't need to rule us, I'm still learning that seeking Him first is most important! I'm hoping that this is starting to sink in to the deepest parts of me.

beauty on our mountain walks

he just loves creatures especially the small ones

learning about water currents and force is child's play!

2) In the midst of all this I used the computer as an escape pod and a research tool. Using it as a research tool isn't bad in itself. I learnt a lot more about healthy living styles and eating habits. But using it to escape from life, or more specifically, to escape from spending time with the Lord, ends up in me being like a dry well with very little life to share with my children when they most need me. So when Jenna stood next to me at the computer and said: "Mommy, you're spending too much time on the computer, you should be doing something with us, like teaching us!" I took that as my cue to shut down for a while and limit my computer time.

life is full of adventures on dad's new motorbike

3) After a recent home schooler's park day which had a few older children at it, Jenna asked me: Mom what does it mean to be home schooled? What?! Haven't we be doing this your whole life? What am I doing wrong that you don't get what we've been up to all this time? (I've always told her we can learn from our life experiences, books etc. and the interests we have. And believe me she's definitely done that!) And that's when I realised: she's wondering about all those older kids we saw at the park! Was she thinking home schooling was just for little kids like her? (Our usual park group has mainly under six year olds.) Or was she actually thinking-like most of our population-that school is just something you have to do when you're older? So that night I decided we needed to chat a little about it at bed time. And we came to the conclusion that she wanted to do school like activities again. So I told her I didn't think it was important for me to teach her to read-she'd done that herself already and ultimately I really want her to understand that she has the ability to teach herself many things using various resources. And I said I had been thinking about doing some number work with her and writing to help her to write some of her letters correctly which I had noticed she was forming incorrectly. And that's what we've agreed to do. On alternate days we spend ± 30 min doing Writing/Copy work (which actually means writing the words for a story she drew) or 30 min doing Maths (estimation, counting and number concept development). And if I'm really organised we may just do some Science experiments, crafts or play games! It's been going well. Some mornings Michael even gets involved. And some mornings she just says I'd like to play first mom and then we do school later! Or not :-)

Frank, our cat, is our hunter! A little mole who we rescued and relocated later to a nearby field.

we've eaten broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, strawberries, carrots and tomatoes from our garden

4) While Ray was sick (and the kids too at times) we sort of fell off the socialisation circuit. Now, while I believe that it is not important to run around to every activity to ensure that my children are getting socialised, I also realise that isolation is not healthy too! This was emphasised for me when we started to try to get out into the world again to socialise. My children, who are mostly very happy to go off to play on their own at a social event, became unusually clingy! Realising I needed to be patient with them, I remained near enough for them to see me and feel safe. After two or three social events I could see their usual exploring, assertive selves coming back and since then we've been trying to catch up with all those we didn't see while going through this "sick time". Admittedly though, too much socialising is draining for me so next week we'll be staying at home, well mostly ;-)

A Nature Walk around our area turned into a litter hunt upon my little nature lover's requests.

5) As Christmas is here we've also taken the time to make our first Jesse Tree Advent calendar. I'm really enjoying how it helps me to focus on the real Gift of Christmas! Of course this all took time and was a good way of keeping me away from the computer-that is after I had done all the research again!

Jen just loves bringing beauty into the home and often makes her own flower arrangements-setting an example for me to follow!

Ok, so this post hasn't been a short one-promise, I tried-I haven't even caught you up on our co-op nature walks we started or the home school picnic we had with the dads or our family mountain walk which we're trying to do more regularly.... oh well, I guess that's what happens when your life is full of learning, there's just so little time for recording it while you're living it ;-) Chat soon!