Round trip to Oz

Heigh-ho!

We decided to take a rather last minute, quick house-hunting, school-searching jaunt to Australia. When I say quick, I mean lickety: I was there for all of 3 1/2 days. (And I think it's going to take me at least twice that long to recover! I've been back four days and I'm still staring at my ceiling for a good portion of the night and dragging all day. But it was worth it.)

Sadly, I left G there to start his new job and came home without him. Sigh. We saw houses and made decisions and bought supplies for him for the coming months. As I left I had the odd feeling that I was dropping off my husband at college: the errands, the setting up, and the farewell all had that same melancholy tinge from last fall with Lauren. We will miss him dearly in the meantime but he is occupying himself with traveling around to the different offices he will oversee and getting to know his new role. August, come quickly!

On a brighter note, we loved Canberra, Australia, all of it. We found a great home in a lovely neighborhood called Yarralumla (with the bonus of being deliciously fun to say), across the street from a park and a stone's throw from the lake. It's tremendously comforting to be able to picture where we'll be. G will be able to ride his bike to work and we're less than 10 minutes from church, schools, and just about everything else. That right there is a game changer, folks!

I'm breathing a sigh of relief now that Maddy and Sam have each been offered a place at the schools we were hoping for, the ones that came up most often highly recommended from helpful friends-of-friends and G's work colleagues. Maddy will attend the Canberra Girls Grammar School and Sam will attend Canberra Boys Grammar School. Walking around them both, I felt like I was entering an Australian version of Hogwarts. When we were there, the boys were preparing for a Music Festival that is a competition between the different houses (3 points Griffindor!). It will be so interesting to enter the world of uniforms and houses and cricket and chapel and tutorials.  I know the transition won't necessarily be easy in those first few months but I'm grateful that my kids are up for giving it a go.

Canberra Boys Grammar School

Canberra Girls Grammar School

Now that we've crossed house and schools off of our list, I feel much more at ease with the looming changes. As long as we have a place to feel at home and my kids are (hopefully, forseeably) happy, everything else is just details and will work out in the end. That's true, right? Humor me. Or, I should say, humour me.

p.s. I'm thankful for my mom's willingness to fly out to care for M & S at the drop of a hat (even though she had just visited us here that week before!). My kids loved it and it made the whole thing possible. Thanks, Mom! xo

Summer mirage

 

This song has been going through my head this week, one of the epic + quintessential songs from a really fun summer of my past.  "It's the summer of love, love, love." It makes me think of a little red Ford Tempo, lent by my grandparents while they were away for year, windows down, breeze rushing through my hair, twilight approaching, music up. Maybe that's why I've been craving orange popsicles and lemonade a bit.

What will this be the summer of? The kids all have completely different kinds of summer in store.

Lauren will be working full time for 7 weeks as a camp counselor in a local day camp.

Maddy will be working as a volunteer (if you visit Orchard House, look for our girl there) and attending girl's camp and EFY and doing driver's ed.

Sam will be attending an awesome service/outdoor adventure boys camp for a few weeks in July (more on that later) and then enjoying a free and easy August.  

For the first year ever, we won't all be summering to the beat of the same drowsy & spontaneous drummer. (hmm, in that analogy, am I that drummer? Yes.) Hopefully we'll still find time to go to the pond together, to bike for ice cream now and then, and go to a drive-in movie. But it'll be different kind of summer and I'll miss the old lovely togetherness (with an honest side of nagging and nerves).

However. The younger two kids are still in school for one more week. For Maddy, it's the worst week of the entire year because of finals. Is that a thing with all high schools now? Ours has university-style finals week at the end of each semester, using a special schedule where everyone takes two long exams a day, some of them cumulative for the year.  Too much and too soon, I say! Anyway, shhhhhhhh about summer around Maddy; it's all just a mirage for her at this point, a summer mirage. She's all highlighters, rewritten notes, and library afternoons until next Friday. (Go Maddy!)

. . .

photo via pinterest and this, attributed to vookie

As you wish

This week is the kids' February break. I welcomed it with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I always love the opportunity to spend more time with my littles (though not so little anymore), especially with a more relaxed, no-homework stretch of time.

On the other hand, we've had roughly 763 snow days in January and gone through our down-time wishlist several times. Also. My school doesn't have February break so there's that delicate dance of being sufficiently available to both worlds, which really amounts to doing minimal school things (emailing with students, meeting with a few) for a week. When the two roles duel at sunset, the mom role always wins and I'm fine with that. 

Last night we headed to our local theater, which was hosting a nostagia movie night with The Princess Bride on the big screen. It was awesome, complete with a cheesy trivia contest and audience participation in joining in on lines (including as you wish, my name is Inigo Montoya, & inconceivable, of course). What a blast we had. Sam and Maddy got into the spirit of things by wearing home-crafted Inigo Montoya nametags. Watch out Rocky Horror Picture Show, there's a new(er) show in town.

 

Glass choir

During Thanksgiving dinner the kids were enjoying getting a ringing sound from sliding their fingertips along the rim of the glasses. So afterwards, Lauren assembled a line of glasses, brought in the tuner and created a chromatic scale, goblet style. The rest of the weekend they spent experimenting with sheet music and original compositions (read: random playing).

It was kind of like when they were kids and they would spend hours building forts or playing with boxes.  Who knew a few glasses would keep the teenagers so busy? 

Summer launch

One of the advantages of getting out of school later than most of the rest of the country is I had time to peruse all of the summer ideas that other families were doing. I loved Jenny's (private blog) take on being productive in the mornings and leaving the afternoons for fun. I remember visiting Christie last summer and loving how her kids earn books each week (I think she has a bin full of new books she snagged at a book fair...right, C?).

We usually like to have some kind of structure (although flexible). I wanted to be able to set aside mornings to get work done on some research and writing I've commited to this summer and, at the same time, give some guidelines for the kids to get a few things done every day relatively unsupervised (and by unsupervised I mean un-nagged). I also wanted to provide some fun ideas to stave off the blahs and the floppies (as in, flopping on the couch, flopping on the floor, and whining). So this is what we've come up with.

Summer Bingo! Stacy described her Summer Bingo idea here and I was hooked (she even includes downloadable bingo forms and rules, which I adapted for my kids' ages and interests). After the kids do their beds, pick up their clothes, do a job and practicing, they can do activities on the Bingo sheet. Some are really fun, some are enriching or educational, some will help move the kids forward on goals (scouts, personal progress). They can earn tickets toward prizes every time they get "bingo" and, if they do the whole thing each week, some $ will be put toward their school clothes or something they're saving for. The best part is that it's self guided and it motivates them to get the essentials (work and practicing) done quickly.

click to enlarge^

Maddy and her best friend, Meg, have been helping as junior counselors for the Vacation Bible School here in town in the mornings. They got home and decided to do the "make something in the kitchen" option. {Mmm. Chocolate chip cookies...keep them away from me, please.}

Sam elected to do the most decadent item on the sheet first: one hour of video games. Figures!

Lauren is babysitting for a neighborhood family all week so she has yet to dive into the world of Summer Bingo.

For the afternoons, we've put together a list of activities and field trips we'd like to do together as often as we can. Our days will be just like a mullet: business up front, party in the back.

What are you doing this summer to stay occupied and sane?