Monthly Archives: June 2016
Long sleeps and happy travels
We travelled to Jeffrey’s Bay today for a short break, and left early in the morning for a change. Adam was a champ and had a huge sleep, which meant that we could get through most of the trip without stops or crying. So overall, it was a great success – thank you Lord for the safe travels.
This little champ is getting to be a big boy – now he can even pose on his own for photos
And these crazies….well, they all are very special (and in this case are yelling, “Jeffrey’s Bay!” I love how they get super excited about our time here.
Grace’s 7th birthday and the big decision
Finally, after what feels like it has been a huge birthday week, Grace has turned 7. We started off the day making bouncy balls with one of the experiments from the experiment kit that we put together for her (including some small bought experiments, and a number of household items like vinegar and bicarb for her home brewed experiments).
At this point, we also started with The Big Decision. We decided to let her choose an audio book for us to listen to in the car on our trip to Jeffrey’s Bay…..but boy did that decision take long….the whole day in fact. All she needed to do was choose a Roald Dahl audio book, and there aren’t too many of them. The challenge of choosing started early, and ended late.
After croissants and egg for breakfast it was off to the scratch patch for the first time to search for shiny objects.
The little guy also thought it was fun to play in the stones.
We then went aboard the Logos Hope, a floating bookshop and Christian outreach boat, and followed that with a search for food and ice cream. Grace has been wanting ice cream on her birthday (actually she has been wanting some really nice gelato), but when we got to the shop it was gone! Fortunately we had the traditional birthday sushi in hand at that stage and found a good frozen yoghurt substitute.
Sharing a birthday frozen yoghurt
Grace was popular today, with calls, message and voice messages from family and friends to with her happy birthday.
Supper came and went, but no decision on the audio book had been made, with Grace flip-flopping between the choices. We even helped to whittle down the choices, but still no decision was made. Bath time came, and eventually, with lots of, “I can’t choose!” a little bit of , “Which would you choose?” and a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, Grace finally made her choice, about 10 hours later. And the book choice? Matilda, by Roald Dahl.
Happy birthday my girl! May you be blessed.
Being on TV
When you have TV’s, why not make use of them to spread your message?
Grace picked that up from a talk that was given to their class.
Grace’s chocolate factory
We celebrated Grace’s birthday party with a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory party, which was loads of fun, and also lots of fun to prepare for.
Wonka Bar invitations with Golden Tickets
A Willy Wonka cake (with special thanks to Charl for making the hat for us)
Time to sing and blow out the candles
Edible chocolate pot lolly topiaries
Which have sweets hidden under the edible chocolate soil
Making edible bracelets
Super concentration!
Square sweets that look round
Fruit tree
A jelly car, made from a mould that was used at my parties as a little boy
Oompa-loopma-lympics – Oompa loompa’s are short and love chocolate, so they had to run on their knees to fetch chocolate discs
Kate, the fastest thing on two knees!
Chocolate nests with chocolate ganache, edible soil, and orange zest
The Mike Teavee relay race – an egg and spoon race wearing zany glasses, with the egg and spoon being passed through a cardboard TV to the next person (and a huge thank you to Heather for making the awesome TV’s for us)
Market day
Newberry House Montessori had another very successful entrepreneurs day at the Lourensford market this morning, and Grace also had a successful session today.
She ran a, “Ice your own cupcake,” stall, which was very popular and she quickly sold all her stock to make a nice little profit for herself. It is a wonderful opportunity to slowly learn about business – ideas, implementation, turnover, profit, loss, cash floats, dealing with change, and marketing your product.
Finn and Izzy partaking of the wares
Grace’s birthday circle
Grace celebrated her birthday in class today with the rest of the children who have their birthday’s in June. The junior primary birthday circle works a little bit differently from the pre-school. The is no walking around the sun, but they have the opportunity to show some work they are proud of, tell some stories about their life, and show pictures of them at different ages. They also get to nominate three people who to say something positive about them.
Grace, Gemma, Lea and Dean – the June birthday clan
Showing some work she is proud of
A photo walk through her ages (and Eli got to join in too)
The birthday huddle to decide what song they were all going to sing together…the decision? The national anthem.
And then they eat.
Big brother, little brother
Little brothers like to crawl all over bring brothers
I’m not convinced that Adam wanted his face wiped
