mickey stories; chapter four

I have a small friend called Mickey.  He is very inventive and cheeky.  I have taken it upon myself to write up the stories of Mickey's life as they need to be told and remembered.

He is currently five years old but this story is from when he was two.

Mickey was in the bathroom at home for a very long time, being busy at something.  His mother assumed it was just some long business, but after about fifteen minutes she came to check what he was doing.

Remember he was only two at the time - so the literacy skills are pretty high.

Fortunately his mum remembered to take a photo of his handiwork - and this is what he had done.

"HI" back at you Mickey.

The end.

treats for friends

Every year around this time we are madly getting organised for Christmas stuff.  I know, I know - crazy hey?  But it seems to happen every year, so here we are.

Part of being at school is being in a class.  And part of being in a class is handing out treats for your friends and writing cards at Christmas.  So my girls have been busily writing meaningful 'to-from' cards - the younger one has been decorating her envelopes with beautiful drawings, and I thought I had the treats thing covered by buying cheap candy canes a month ago.

Apparently not good enough.

I made the mistake of making little holly things last year (and the year before) for the friend treats.  And now they are expected.  I couldn't get away with $2 shop candy canes.  Holly things it is.

Here's how you make them.

Gather supplies - Jaffas, mint leaves, red and green cellophane, locate the only pair of scissors in the house, and sticky tape.

Twist one jaffa in a square of red cellophane and two mint leaves each in their own green cellophane.

Then twist them together to look like a little branch of holly and tape up the sucker.

Try not to eat too many mint leaves.

I made 20.  My oldest daughter made six.

In case you are interested it takes one packet of green cellophane and one of red, half a packet of jaffas, and one packet of mint leaves to do a class of 26 kids.

My oldest daughter is probably right - they are more interesting than candy canes that someone just bought from the shop.

Do you think my four packets of candy canes will last until next year?

tree house

When my daughters were three and one my husband built them a wonderful treehouse.  He designed it himself, and built it in the mango tree in the back yard.  He had to get out his year 12 maths book to work out the angles for the pitch of the roof, as the four posts are not evenly placed.  It is quite high - safety not being my primary concern. I figure they will learn.  It's the same reason I don't have a trampoline with safety pads.  Old school for us!  No-one has fallen out of it yet.  Although I have caught a visiting young boy doing a piddle through the branches from the roof of the tree house.

It has provided hours of fun for the girls and a place to escape when their mother is reminding...nagging..about cleaning their rooms.  The mango tree and the vines have started reclaiming some space over the last couple of years when it has actually rained in Brisbane.  It's a jungle out there.

We even had a family portrait in the treehouse!

minute to win it night

Thanks person in TV world who thought of minute to win it.  It supplied a great night of fun material for our end of year kids club break up with heaps of church and community families attending.  It was crazy, loud, sugar loaded, touching, exciting and fairly injury free - all the things a kids club night should be.  God has done great things through this ministry.

The games we played were:
- the one where you move the cracker down your face moving only your facial muscles (a crowd favourite)
- the one where you wrap someone up in toilet paper like a mummy without breaking the paper
- the one where you keep two balloons in the air for a minute
- the one where you strap a pedometer to your head and see how many times you can shake it
- the one where you have to blow up as many balloons as you can and then pop them
- the one where you see how many sandwiches you can spread in a minute
- the one where you throw ping pong balls into a bucket on someone's head and see how many go in

and, my personal favourite

- the one where you have a minute to clean up the whole hall

We used the minute to win it timer from youtube.  I need to install one at home and see if we can play such fantastic games as:
- minute to put away your washing
- minute to have a shower
- minute to get ready for school
- minute to do your homework
- minute to clean the chook pen....

It was also a bittersweet night as it was my last night at kids club as a leader.  I got a lovely unexpected gift and lots of parents and kids came and said thanks.  One beautiful little girl came and stood in front of me patiently as I was handing out some Christmas presents and organising clean up, and then gave me a quick hug and said thank you.  I have had a great time doing it - and there is a wonderful team taking it forwards.  But I will miss it!  Thank you everyone who has been part of the kids club team with me for the last five years.

Some evidence:

mickey stories; chapter three

I have a small friend called Mickey.

Not his real name.

He is inventive, cheeky and we will all be amazed at what he does when he grows up.  I have taken the role of Mickey-chronicler as his mother is taking the hard road of Mickey-raising.

This year I attended his sister's birthday party with my two girls.  It was a great party, with cake and games and shrieking.  There were seven adults present, and four children - the three girls and Mickey.  The time came for the cake.  It was carried ceremoniously to the loungeroom, upon which the candles were lit.  We all sang happy birthday, hip hoorayed, and congratulated the birthday girl.  We turned to Mickey to ask if he would like a piece of cake.

He was gone.

In the time it takes to sing 'happy birthday' he had taken the matches from the candle lighting, scooted under the house, and was lighting them to see what would happen.  And there were fourteen pairs of adult eyes there.

He is a ninja.

The end.

my daughter...the star

My oldest daughter performed in the school musical tonight.  She had a MAJOR role - well, she had some lines and a song.  She did fabulously, and I had many proud mummy moments.  She played the role of 'Simple Simon' in a musical about nursery rhyme characters and a birthday cake for Old King Cole.  I was amazed at all the kids remembering their lines and entrances for an hour and a half.  And I was amazed at the teacher's dedication to the kids.  And I was amazed at how surprisingly good it was for a primary school musical.  And I was amazed at the kid that decided to do laps of the hall for the last ten minutes of the show - he was an audience member with the wriggles I guess.

All those times spent sitting in the lounge room watching her 'shows' have been worth it.

She has become an attention seeker like her mother.

a proud sister moment

a proud grandma moment

show in translation

On Sunday wide eyed stories was invited to come and perform at the family service at the chinese methodist church.  A translated show.  Into chinese.

We had to send the script a couple of weeks beforehand so they could subtitle our show, and for the action parts we had a live translator.  I had that experience when you are being translated of saying one word and listening to the paragraph of translation.  And the opposite one of when you say a whole sentence and the translator says one or two words.  And the embarassing situation when you have a go at a chinese word and get it completely wrong in front of a crowd of two hundred people.

It was very exciting and the church made us feel very welcome.  But very difficult to not improvise (only slightly!) with a puppet.  Oh the jokes I thought of and didn't say!  Wasted gold!

It was a wonderful experience, and confirmed to me that we are all part of one family in God.  I handed someone my camera and asked her to take a couple of photos.  My camera was returned at the end of the service with 80 photos capturing every moment.  Fantastic.