the easiest party yet

This year was a party year for Gab.  We have a party for the girls every three years - 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, on your own.  And it was the ninth year for Gab.  She invited 3 friends and some family to her party (very different to her extroverted mother and sister!).  She requested pass the parcel and an orange alien cake.  And she wanted to take her friends on a horseride.

It was a lovely morning and a fantastically easy party. And Gab loved it.  Happy birthday my lovely sunny girl!

three mates on a hammock

pass the parcel - I forgot to count the layers...it worked out

new helmet, jodhpurs and boots for her birthday. 

oh yes - I got to ride as well

she loves the pony!

the dog park

As a new dog owner I have been discovering the joys of the dog park.

please please can I go to the dog park please please

My favourite time to go is when there is no-one else there.  Then Scooter and I practise the obstacle course - well she runs it and I tell her to run it.  She can now go all around the course as soon as I say 'do the course' as long as I throw the ball for her at the end.  She is very motivated by the ball being thrown for her.  She is not interested in food rewards AT ALL.  Someone told me  that offering a food reward to a border collie is an insult - they wants jobs, they want to please you, they want to herd something and put it into a gated small area.

Anyway, when I go at times when there are other patrons of the dog parks there with their dogs it is very interesting.  There is the fat lady with the massive greyhound, the two guys with the labrador, the old guy with his white fluffy thing, 

and the Weird 3 Whippet Woman.

She is always there with her three whippets - offering advice to everyone else on how to train their dogs.  She has a bum bag full of treats and a critical eye for other dog owners.  Her whippets take it in turns to be subservient.  I had been 'advised' by her on a few previous occasions on how to train Scooter, and it was getting a bit irritating.  So today when she started towards me, surrounded by the whippets with an earnest expression on her face I countered with a cheery 'hello, it might rain today what do you think okay Scooter get your ball let's go!'  and pretended to run across to the other side of the park.

Avoidance?  Possibly.

But there is only so much not needed advice I can listen to on a glorious Friday afternoon from the Weird 3 Whippet Woman.

in the right job

The last couple of days I have had such good sessions with kids at work.  I am working at a couple of special schools at the moment - so what I am aiming for with a lot of the children is communication, engagement and relationship.  I have been using interactive storytelling a lot - call and response repetitive poems and stories around a stretchy piece of lovely blue spandex.  I lead the kids in a story with repeating phrases and actions, and they help with the characters and responses.

Just in the last day there have been responses from kids that I have never heard verbalise before - one girl said 'help' and 'oh no' today - first thing I have heard her say in three years - we nearly all fell off our chairs - one lovely very autistic five year old boy did all the actions to the story (The Gruffalo) and replied emphatically 'NO' when asked if there was a giraffe in the story, and one ten year old boy with Down's Syndrome said 'thank you' at the end of the session - the teachers have never heard him say anything - and it was caught on video as well!.

My job is awesome sometimes - I get to be creative, catch the joy, hear their first words, build up their vocabulary, play with rhythms and rhymes, and talk all day.  It takes a bit of planning and thought, and laminating and resource making, and trial and error.  It takes teachers and teacher aides who are willing to go along with my craziness and practice language every day with the kids.

There is research and background knowledge and rationale behind all the strategies I try.  I use the spaghetti method of communication therapy - throw everything at the wall and see what sticks - signs, symbols, talking, technology.  But the moment you can't plan for is when the kid peeks out at you from under a parachute and smiles, and finishes the poem 'Connor is someone that I know, but not as scary as the ....... 'u-o-o' (gruffalo).

God certainly had me in the right place at the right time today.

thanks for noticing but....

A conversation I had the other day:

Not Me:  You look like you have lost some weight
Me: Why thank you (inwardly preening and gloating, and thinking how good it was I have been on the 'no snacks' regime again since the beginning of the year)
Not Me:  Around your jawline
Me:  My what?
Not Me: Yeah - around your face - you look thinner.

Around my jaw!!  I do not want to lose weight around my jaw!  I want to lose it around my tuckshop arms, or my tummy, or my butt, or even my calves so I can get high boots.  Not my jaw.  My jaw is quite chiselled enough.

Sigh.

Maybe it is starting from the top down.  The next area to look thinner will be my neck.  Then I will be like a big round apple with a tiny stalk on the top.  Or like a modelling balloon that has a bit left at the end to make the poodle's tail.

Makes me want to eat a bag of chips covered in chocolate.

holiday with Granny

 There was a cupboard at the holiday house.  I opened it up and.....


Granny received her birthday gift from Chris - he had made a frame and mounted her Dad's war medals

 Cricket on the beach

 Happy Birthday Gab - she turned nine on our holiday! NINE - that's nearly ten.  My baby is growing too fast - wahhhhhhh

Focused luging from Gab. Silliness from her Mum.

Obligatory Big Banana photo of the cousins

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the beach the beach the beach

 
Out the back of the holiday house was some bush - enough to build a cubby house and make up secret rules and start a club.  I am not sure they solved any mysteries though.

 BMX track! Aunty Katie is in the lead!

 Check out my new photography skill.  It is called Panning.  I don't think I will remember how to do it - but I am happy with these bike photos.  They look like I Know What I Am Doing.

Granny taking the kite for a walk

Chris and Annika made a treasure hunt through the rocks for everyone

We found a stick teepee on the beach.

Searching for geo-caches on the Sawtell headland.

 A rare photo of me on the holiday - I was there - just behind the camera lens.

Dinner on the last night - eat anything you like with something from the second drawer.

  
Games, chocolate and wine.  Every night.  Excellent

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Thanks for the holiday my lovely family!

Holiday installment

I have not blogged for a little while because we are on holidays at the moment. On the annual beach holiday with the rellies. I feel relaxed and rested - we have done puzzles and played games, and been to several different beaches, and eaten much food. I have bought three puppets (!) with plans to use them in many shows this year.

This is the professor. I feel he lends a sense of wisdom to my performances.


The kids have built a big cubby in the trees down the back behind the holiday house where they have spent each afternoon playing. I do extremely important things in the house like have cups of tea and do the crossword in the paper.

There are kids in this picture somewhere. They are having fun. I can't hear them. They come up occasionally for snacks. It is a win situation.



Despite predictions of rain all week it has stayed fine and we have had several trips to the beach. The girls are getting very good and boogie boarding. I like to sit on the sand and watch them, scooping San do to my legs and letting it trickle through my fingers. I like to build dribble castles from wet sand and see how high they get. The complete absorption of the tiny and the profound, the waves crashing in and sucking out. Today it was high tide at the blowhole at Sawtell. When you stood over the crack in the rocks as the waves whooshed in the air raced through a crack and blew hard back up through the rock, like the ocean was a grandpa snorting and blowing his nose in the morning.


Puzzles on holidays are almost like a competitive sport, with us all focused on fitting in the last piece. I had a few thoughts that life is like a puzzle:
- you can't MAKE things go together that don't want to
- you often can't see the big picture
- it takes time to sort it out
- some people are 'do the edges first' people and some people are 'do the picture I can see in front of me'
- it is very satisfying completing it

We go home tomorrow to unpack and wash and check on the chickens.

Holidays are so good because it they are not like the everyday.

it's the climb

to quote M. Cyrus.  At the moment I feel like there is a big mountain for me to get through - conference on Saturday, Gab's birthday with accompanying jobs (cupcakes for school - epic fail by the way - tiny lame things), packing up to go away for a week next week, the house needs quite a bit of attention - really - it's like a toddler following after me going mum mum mum mum mum mum - a pergola to take down and put on council pickup (an extremely satisfying job - when we come back things will have disappeared thanks to the magical city council pickup), children to Get To Places, husbands to actually talk with and not tag like a relay runner handing over a baton...

let's see if there is a google image of mountain climbing












 Oh yeah.

That's actually not me.  At all.  I hate heights and my abs are a little more hidden under comfortable layers.

 

This is not me either.

Actually maybe likening my next couple of days to a mountain climb is a poor metaphor.


It is more like this.


 













Just putting one foot in front of the other and trusting it will all be okay.  Maybe climbing a small incline.  With frequent breaks.  And friends,  And cups of tea.

So Miley the song should go like this - 'it's the small incline with some time set aside for relationships and the satisfaction of getting jobs done' - except that would probably destroy the meter and her sugar pop message.