More about Colin

Well, the Carrot Carnival apparently wasn't too exciting so they headed up to Turoa but were turned back because the blizzard came through. Colin then went to Owhango where they spent the rest of the weekend.

Breakfast on Sunday morning at Cafe in the Fog

Playing pool at Ski Haus

Gloves drying after skiing

Colin phoned me tonight to say they were probably going skiing tomorrow and he was moving up from Happy Valley to Rockgarden flat - so no longer in the beginners area! He is sounding soo much better! And I am so grateful to the people who are trying as hard as they can to make him feel at home. And I am equally grateful to all of you who are sending ME words of encouragement

Roll on Friday!

End of Week 1

Well, Colin went skiing today and is much happier! They spent the entire day at Happy Valley and had a wonderful time and he is as happy as can be this evening, Thank goodness for that.

As for me - one down, nine to go. At least I have Friday off next week. The kids go wild when the wind blows or whenever the weather is bad. The seniors do not seem to be at all worried that they do their Mock Exams in five weekes time. I seem to be the only one worried. Argh!

Homesick

Last night my boy spent ages texting me to tell me he wants to come home. I know he's homesick and of course it breaks my heart. I told him that people can get homesick at any age (I did eleven years ago when we moved here) and beating it will make him a stronger person. I told him that when he starts feeling homesick (at night in bed) he should focus on good things. I also told him to think about the fun things that will happen and in no time it will be next weekend and we will be going up there.

As a mother, I just want to drive up there and hold him and hug him and bring him home but for his sake I know that won't work. Oh but is is hard!

Edited tonight: Thanks for all your compassion. He sounds happier but is still telling me he wants to come home. I said we'd talk about it next week. Much as I'd love to have him back home, I don't want him to come home because then I want him to learn through this and come out stronger at the other end

My boy

Here is Colin in his new school uniform

And relaxing in front of the TV tonight before dinner

Colin phoned me tonight and sounded so happy and had had a really good day. His "Mum" packed him a good lunch and morning tea and he couldn't finish it all! His teacher said he worked really well in class and was well settled too. He loves his new homework book - four pages per week so that's a page a day he tells me! They're hoping to go skiing on Thursday so I'm sure that I'll have lots more to tell then.

Thanks for all the messages of care that many of you have sent me - I really appreciate it.

Home again

Here we are home from a week away. We first went to a farm near Rotorua and it was so wonderful! It is the Apple Tree Farm Cottage and was very cosy and comfortable. The kids loved playing with the farm kids and animals. We went to Waikite pools twice, found Butcher's Pool )tucked away where no one can find them), went up the Gondola and the boys all went on the Luge. We saw a bit of Andy who is my SIL's nephew-in-law whose family are moving to NZ soon to join him.



Then we went to National Park. It poured with rain all weekend but I scrapped on Saturday - all the boys' soccer photos from the last five or six years! I have dragged that pack of photos etc all round NZ so I'm so pleased that they're done! I do need to do some journalling though.

Then it was time to say goodbye to my baby - and I admit I cried in front of him and I didn't want to do that. He is going to have such a wonderful time and his new "mum" is going to spoil him rotten! Then I drove all the way home (310 kms) with just Ross in the car. e did really ell and were home in 4 hours without going over the speed limit. I was really proud of myself when I got home.

And while we were away I won a prize at SBO!

A tribute to .....

This is a tribute to my beautiful siser-in-law, Jenny. Yes, that's right we have the same first name and because we married brothers, we now share the same surname. We also share a love of scrapbooking! We never think of ourselves as sharing the same name but it's always quite funny when other people realise it.

What made me think about this is this post on the Aus/Nz Fiskars blog: Hi this is a happy hello from Jenny xxxxx in sunny Durban South Africa. My sister in law Jenny xxxxx (yes same names !!!)from Wellington New Zealand send this to me.

Jenny and I both have Gmail and Skype so most evenings we have a quick chat to catch up on what's happening in our lives. She's closer to me than any real sister could ever be and I only wish we lived closer!

Aus/NZ Fiskars

Please go to this site: http://fiskarscraft.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/07/around-the-worl.html?cid=121751388 leave your name and where you're from and my name and from NZ and maybe we'll both win a prize!

This and That

Yay for wonderful school holidays! I didn't really sleep well the first few night of the hols because I'm stressing about school, but I've put it behind me as I've made some decisions about my future there.

Then I haven't been sleeping well because I caught a cold (but not the "man -cold" that has also been here).

The boys have been quite good so far - minimum bickering and lots of playing. They are both out at the moment so I managed to get a lot done at the shops earlier. Now I'm just enjoying the peace and quiet! And surfing and visiting blogs that I haven't seen for awhile. (By the way, Tracy - I am unable to leave comments on your blog). I should have been sewing some trousers for myself but I can do that tomorrow.

It has been soooo cold here and a lot of the roads around National Park have been closed - as long as they're not closed when I go up there! I have been getting things ready for Colin to take with him including having to go to the inefficient Postie+ to buy school pants for him. We got them in the end!

Snapfish had a photo collage promotion and I ordered one for Colin to take with him. I was going to do a little mini-album but decided that a collage would be nicer. I also got one for myself. Then I got some nice frames at Briscoes and yes they were on sale - 40% off!













"Pieces of Me" is for Colin and "These I Love" is for me.


I also got a bargain at Spotlight - a trolley bag for my sewing machine. I take it with me every Monday night and it is heavy and Spotlight had a 50% off today so I got a nice tapestry one for $50! I can just see A's face - he'll say "not another one"! At least I don't have to carry my sewing machine now.

Also, I got a new disc from Esselte for my WishBlade - only one cutting program was working and when I asked for the third disc in February they told me I didn't need it. Anyway, in the last few weeks I emailed and emailed and emailed. Finally they admitted that it may well be because I had version 4.0 and maybe I should have had version 3.1. The disc was couried to me, I unistalled and reinstalled and voila - my WB now cuts in both programs!

I must say that as the time gets closer to taking Colin to school I am getting sadder, but it's such a wonderful opportunity for him and I'll see hime every two weeks.

PS I sold one of my tea cosies on Felt! Yay!

The Big Read

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed

01. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
02. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
03. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
04. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
05. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
06. The Bible - Much of it
07. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
08. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
09. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - some and a number of stage productions
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwel
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist- Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker7
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks9
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet- William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I have highlighted those I've read and italisized those that I have seen a movie or stage production. Hmmm ......... at least I've read more than six!

More cupcakes!

More cupcakes! I have in my Felt shop

Full time teaching

So I have a full time fixed term position to the end of the year. My head said "Say no"; my heart said "Say yes". My head reasoned that if I'm not good enough for a permanent f-t position, then why am I only good enough to fill in everytime they need me?

If nothing else it will pay for trips to National Park and I have already received permission to take some Fridays off. If I go by myself, I'm going to catch the train on a Friday and back on a Sunday. The extra money will be useful

How I see NCEA results

For those of you who have said you don't know; and for those of you who do - feel free to add your comments!

Basically there are Achievement Standards and Units Standards. US have been around for ages so I'm not going there. Some AS are internally assessed and some are externals - the externals are the exams at the end of the year.

There are four possible results: N, A, M, E
Not Achieved
Achieved
Achieved with Merit
Achieved with Excellence

If a student gets sufficient number of Achieved and Merit results the final result in a paper is M. If there are insufficient A results but there are some M results, these M results are converted to A and the final result is A.

A student cannot get an M or E without an A so it's really important that they can do the basics.

From what I have seen, it's not hard to get an A. An M takes some effort and an E is designed to make the bright kids think.

Personally, I quite like it

Ross Report

So his first "real" report at Secondary school ....

English: Four Achieved with Merit, one Achieved
French: three Achieved with Excellence, one Achieved with Merit
Maths: three Achieved with Excellence
Science: two Achieved with Merit
Social Science: one Achieved with Excellence, and one Achieved with Merit

A pretty good report all round!

Changing family dynamics

My friend Alicia has suggested I write don how I think things will change next term and then compare my list to the actual changes that do happen. So here they are:

Ross will realise how much he misses his brother: not just because there is someone with whom to play, but because the chores get spread.
I will miss Colin.
Colin will learn to make decisions for himself as he won't have his brother to do it for him
I will miss Colin.
There will be no bickering.
Did I mention I will miss Colin?
Colin will become self sufficient
I will ........... no, I've said that already!

As I think of things I will keep adding them

Cupcake Tea Cosy

Like all good maths teachers, I have a Graphics calculator which produces random numbers. So I set my calculator to pick a random number beteen 1 and 12 and it chose #1! Roo!! I have your address and I have lots of stuff to post (sorry Vicky's sister, Lara, Julie and Meek) so I will get it into the post for you soon.

Our news

Colin is going to ski school next term!! He is sooo excited about it and really looking forward to it. He will be at school at National Park Primary for the third term and take part in their ski programme. He will be boarding with the principal and his wife who are friends of ours. He will be skiing a number of times a week on that beautiful mountain up there ^^^^^^

We think it's a wonderful opportunity for him but we will miss him very much. We will go up every two weeks to see him and he probably won't be able to come home as the train is not suitable and the bus only goes to Palmerston North. Anyway, a good excuse for me to see my mountain more often!

So it is all systems go in getting him organised for his new school!

Cupcakes!

Cupcakes are just so in at the moment and I don't mean the edible ones. Bath bombs, felt decorations, handbags - you name it - it has been turned into a cupcake. Here's my version:

A tea cosy

I'm making more and I will be selling them. I've seen them at Etsy for US$36 - what are they worth here? The next one is chocolate brown with lime green "icing". So leave me a comment by Sunday night and I'll do a draw to win this one and I will post/ship internationally.

Weekend Away

We went away for the long weekend to National Park. For those of you not in NZ, it is a tiny dot on the map about halfway up the North Island and is the gateway to the Whakapapa ski fields on Mt Ruapehu (that beautiful mountain up there ^^^). Friends of ours live up there: Terry is the principal at National Park school and Di works in the Station cafe at National Park Station. Terry has his 60th birthday weekend so they invited firends and family to join them at a ski lodge for the weekend. It was a gloriously relaxed weekend - Saturday we went into Taumaranui to the chemist and on our way back stopped at the Raurimu Spiral - an amzing piece of engineering.

Then we headed up to the mountain which had cloud swirling about it. We got up there and it was very cold but the boys found some snow to play with and we went for a little walk. Saturday night there was a lovely birthday at the Lodge.

Sunday Adrian and Colin went on a two hour walk to the Taranaki Falls with some others and I stayed at the Lodge and finsihed lots of marking. Sunday night was a roast dinner at the Station Cafe.

We drove back today through lots of rain but we were ahead of the traffic which was good. We had a lovely weekend away.

Look at the mist swirling round the mountain

Grumpy today

I have this Year 10 class that it relatively small but also has some of the laziest kids I have ever come across ......... that's apart from the noisy, disruptive, won't do their homework types.

Today I kept two girls after school because they would not stop talking and giggling while I was talking. One of them I kept last week because she hadn't done her homework. The next thing I see she's talking to her mother on the cell-phone, "I don't know why I'm being kept in." I said I'd talk to the mother and explained about the noisy, disruptive, rude behaviour. The mother told me I should give notice when I'm going to keep her darling daughter in - when they enrol at the college the parents sign that their children can be kept up to half an hour without any prior notice. I have explained to my two junior classes that they will be kept in on a Tuesday if they don't do as expected - so why don't they just do their homework and behave in class? Then there's no problem with them staying in.

Then the mother started on about how her darling daughter gets "picked on" about homework. Well, I nearly said to her, "Be glad that the teacher cares enough to check your daughter's homework every day"

Sometimes I wonder why I bother; I have a sick child at home (Ross) and I'd rather be at home looking after him than dealing with someone else's spoilt brat. And quite frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn about other people who clearly don't care about their children. I am done with checking homework

Replies

Penny - I go to AE Preston which is a Wellington butcher. I think the meat at the Mad Butcher looks revolting and cheap!

Tracy - I don't seem to have a link to you anymore?