Photography lessons

from the wonderful Ngaire Bartlam! At a class at SENz where I was T/A for Ngaire, she told us how to get good photos of ourselves. "Someone else needs to take the photo and that person has to stand on a chair photographing down. A bit of lippy and you're away.

Ross turns 12

Ross chose once again to have his party at Tawa pool with an inflatable. His friends arrived at 3pm when we had birthday cake as Adrian was flying to Auckland later that night. We then went down to the pool where the boys spend two hours having lots of fun on their own private inflatable.















We came back home for home-made pizza and jelly and ice cream. Then they went downstairs to play PS and watch movies on Adrian's new home theatre. Ross had a wonderful day - as usual!

Teaching scrapbooking classes

I taught a scrapbooking class last term at College at the night school and again this term. Many of the ladies from last term asked for a further class. I am teaching Scrapbooking 2 in ten days time. Instead of doing a l/o, I am doing little technique books with lots of techniques in them that each person can then use later

New house in Tawa

no not us but my parents. They have the cutest little house that is three minutes away from us. They are settled in well as is the cat! The garden needs some work but they will work on it slowly.

Crafting Connection 2006

CC was hot, the Mega Crop was not! It was noisy, it was unorganised. Someone did the introduction of the tutors which I feel should have been done by David. There was also a quiz which was a waste of time because all she did was pull a name out of the basket for the winner. Because of the noise you couldn't hear her either. She didn’t speak loudly enough, she wasn’t dynamic enough to get that many scrappers excited, the make ‘n takes were a complete waste of time. Personally, I felt that every one who dressed up should have got a small prize; she could also have gone round to each of the groups who were dressed up and spoken to them and announced their choice of name etc.

As for the rest - WOW! Cathy Z was delightful, Ali was sweet and helpful and Donna was so funny. I didn't finish anything: I wonder if I will! In fact, I haven't even looked at the product bags we were handed in Cathy's classes. These were design talks rather than create classes. I do have some photos though.














Donna had these cute little craft drills that we played with. I'd love one - but I'd never use it again!

It was fantastic meeting so many online friends - we had fun at One Red Dog etc

Settled in

Well, we moved my parents out of their house and put their furniture in storage. The day they moved, we saw a house advertised and went to see it last Sunday along with about forty other families/people. It was just perfect and we were all thrilled when we got the call in the aftrenoon to say it was theirs. What was even better, was that they could move in quickly, so on Friday they moved in. We worked hard all day, but tey onle slept there on Saturday night. After doing more work today, most of the boxes are unpacked - there is just some sorting out to do.

They have two bedrooms, a conservatory, lounge/dinigroom and an internal access garage - perfect for them. They will need to do a bit of work in the garden but that's lomg term stuff. For now, they are settling in nicely and we will fetch the cat tomorrow and then the three of them and have the rest of the week to sort things out.

So tired!

On Sunday I sold my parent's house via TradeMe and since then I have been helping them pack their boxes and look rental properties. I have looked at six properties: three were yucky, two were nice but too far and the last one was too small. If the were comes to the worst, they'll get a long term rate at one of the local motels and put their furniture in storage. I really just hope that the right place turns up ...sooner rather than later! But in the meantime I am very tired and stressed (but then so are my parents).

Look at the new header!!

This is what the wonderfully talented, really kind Vicky did for me! And then she even told me how to add the code to Blogger! Oh and she is such a talented scrapper and one she's going to be famous - and then I'll be able to say "I know her". Thanks Vicky

This photo was taken at 4.15pm Friday

And yes they are both still in their PJs! They didn't want to do anything at all today except stay at home. I believe that children need time out to just "blob" so I was happy too.

Yesterday afternoon they came to the conclusion that they were actually very lucky to always have someone to play with - ie each other.

I really like how closely they are sitting together and the look of absolute relaxation on their faces

Some more achievments

Last year, Colin was getting around 51% on his Basic Facts tests and also getting quite stressed about the ten minutes they have to do the test. So I set him a goal: 75% and I didn't care about the time. He has slowly been getting closer to his goal and last Monday he got 85%! He was so proud of himself and I was so pleased too. Adrian has been working with Colin and his tables in the car on the way to school every day and this is clearly paying off.

Ross wrote the Australasian Maths exam a couple of months ago and got his results on Friday - Distinction which puts him in the top 10% of those who wrote the test. What an achievement! He also got a Class Merit on Friday for consistent effort in class. Last Monday, Ross also did his Grade 2 Gymnastics badge which he passed extremely well - they have to get at least 7.5 on all six events. Ross got three 9.5s!

We ate at Denny's twice last week to celebrate all their achievments

June Tunes X

Tawa, and Tawa College in particular, has a long history of music. Every year, the College Music Department, either produces the Tawa Music Festival or June Tunes, which is the smaller event. All the feeder primary schools send choir members to the College once a week for eight weeks for rehearsals and the Intermediate have their own rehearsals. There is one final rehearsal with all the musicians the morning of the concert. This year was June Tunes X. As the current Head of the Music department said, he remembered in 1969 as a primary school pupil standing in the second row singing in a Tawa Music event and today he is the Head of Music.


Colin sang with other members of Redwood Year 5s and 6s. He was so excited on the evening as were many of the other kids.








This was the end of the evening with all the choirs either on stage on or on the side of the stage. The four young men in the front are MIB - Musical Island Boys, an internationally known babershop quartet, trained by one of the College staff. They are currently in America at the Internationally Babershop competition where they are hoping to improve on last year's third place.

My new toy

I bought a new toy - Olympus SP 500 UZ (Ultra Zoom). It is a 6mp 10X optical zoom and has a host of really cool features such as "Use available light". I took this photo of Ross in his bedroom: the blackout curtains were closed and the only light was from the TV set - no flash.

Now I have to find a new home for my other Olympus C5000 5mp 3X opitical zoom - any takers?

They must take after me!!

My boys and their brains, that is! We had a parent/teacher interview at Colin's school where all his English - reading, spelling, comprehension is at a 14yo level - Colin is 10 so we are so very proud of him.

Then Ross brought home his report and his maths level is higher than many of the kids I teach who are three years older than him. So we have a mathematician and a linguist. To celebrate we went to see "Cars" [did you read that part Sherri?] and afterwards we took them to a games arcade where they played on a car racing game.

Have a look:

An update

Well Jenny and Sherri - here it is an update. Although I'm too busy writing report and marking test and assessments to do this properly!

So what should I tell you? Probably that I've lost weight: 16kgs (35lbs). Here's an new photo of me - compare it to the one with me at the cheetahs! Oh and I probably should add that my new goal is to loose 3kgs (6 1/2 lbs) per month; so far in June I've lost 1kg

More home renovations

Before and After! I wanted to get the "grey" bedroom painted over the Easter weekend. It was dull and dingy with awful grey striped wallpaper and curtains. We wanted to have Buttermilk (pale yellow) and blue and in January 2005 I found blue curtains on sale at Bunnings. Peter at Rezene Porirua, mixed up the blue paint for us and got an exact match - we were so pleased!

Friday we stripped the wallpaper, Saturday morning we picked up the paint and came home to wash the walls. Sunday morning after finding what the Easter Bunny had hidden, we were able to put the first coat of Buttermilk in the bedroom and Barley white in the passageway. After a lovely bbq lunch, Adrian and I went and did the second coat in each room. Monday morning we put on the first coat of "Engelbrecht Blue" and in the afternoon we put on the second coat. Then the worst job of all - cleaning up!

We are so pleased as it looks fantastic! Slowly our house is taking on a new lease of life with the painting we are doing.

Hurricanes vs Sharks!!

A collegue at school offered us tickets to this match on Friday 24th March so off we went. It was freezing cold and raining and very windy, but the boys were looking forward to it. They got Captain Hurricane tattos and black & yellow face paint; we bought wine and cold-drinks and went to find our seats which were rigth on the half-way line. Just after the game started, the rain came down so we went to the top of the stadium behind the big screen. It wasn't a very interesting game and the boys and I were a bit bored, but Adrian was keen to stay.

View from the top

.................... of our deck that is! We finally finsihed the fence - this is the view looking to the back and then to the front. behind our fence can be seen the neighbour's fence - brown like ours used to be!

Busy, busy, busy

I've been really busy since school went back - my hours have increased so I have four classes now (last year I had three). The increase in time is more than 25% though - seems like 200%! I am doing a digital camera course at the local Community Education; hopefully I'll be able to use my camera with all its functions at the end.

At Intermediate, the pupils earn "Merits" for example, when they get 99/100 on Basic facts, they get a Basic Facts Merit. Well, Ross got his within a week of being there.

Colin loves his new teacher - Mark Kyne - and I am pleased as I asked for Colin to be in his class.

Adrian is very busy at work but loving it. He is doing a Web Page design course at Com Ed and is enjoying that too.

I had some news from my sister-in-law this week: she and my niece are going on a three day scrapping cruise!! That sounds so wonderful and I am envious of the two of them

Painting Update

Well, the decks are done, as is the gate next to the garage and the shed outside. Adrian and Colin also sanded back the garage doors and put new oil onto them. I have now bought the third 10 litre bucket of paint and hopefully this weekend will be fine so we can waterblast and paint the fence.

February!

First of February today and I had a department meeting at school while the boys went to the pool with Gay-Gay and Pa. School starts next week and not a moment too soon for the boys - seven weeks is waaaay too long for me to have them at home! I was really pleased to go scrapping on Saturday and managed to get quite a few l/os done (two above).

On Friday night, Adrian and I went to see Memoirs of a Geisha, which was very good. We saw it at the Lighthouse cinema, where one sits in couches to watch the movie. The is also a cafe where one can get food and drinks to have in the movies. After the movie we had dinner at a little Thai place in Petone - a very pleasant evening indeed!