FIVETRIBE

School holidays are at an end. Tomorrow morning the alarm, will once again, begin its abuse at 630am. I will bravely and fearlessly get myself up and make my own tea - for the first time in 3 weeks. Reflecting on these past 3 weeks a few things need to be noted: Faith has brought me tea every morning. Levi has made me toast in the morning. Levi learnt to tie his shoelaces No-one has ever woken me before I was ready. Rachel as discovered the joys of Whatsapp. She and I have a steller whatsapp relationship that makes me smile. It seems she is well able to show her softer side through texting. Levi lost another tooth. Rachel lost another tooth. I set up my creating studio again. I bought a painting. I created a new family wall collage in wood. I hung pictures, pin boards and canvases, long overdue. I made a frame for my instagrams - one that can be switched out daily. I moved my dining room into our vast entrance hall - LOVE IT! All 3 kids went to work with their dad at l...

It has been a ritual that each child gets a turn to go spend a day at Dad's work during school holidays. Of course, said child needs to be mature enough to sit still (either at or under the desk) for 8 hours while Dad actually works.... Rach has been able to do this since she was 3. She would pack all her toys, animals,blankets, books and a dvd player. It was the highlight of every school holiday for her! Soon Faith followed suit; in fact just last week she went along and actually fell asleep under the desk for a good part of the day. Today was Levi's turn. He had had a trial run last year where he went for a half day but we felt he was now old enough to do the 530am til 4pm haul. He did himself proud - watched 6 movies and generally arbed under the desk! Russ had a meeting in the next room and when he returned he found a very calm Levi lying a bit strangely and upon further inspection found that he had gotten his arm stuck between the desk leg and the cabinet....and just...

My baby has lost his first tooth. I have pulled my first tooth. Momentous day for us both. Cant say I will be rushing out to do it again but pretty glad I did experience this rather revolting milestone at least once in my mothering stage. Levi is beside himself with joy - he is the first of his close mates to lose a tooth so this really makes him feel like the 'leader of the pack'. Of course I had to smile brightly and enthuse with him on this 'coming of age' thang but inside I was weeping, just a little.

So exciting watching him learn to read! Yesterday Levi decided was *the day*. He wanted to begin to learn to read. They have been doing some basic stuff at school but nothing major. We trotted on down to the library and took out a  handful of readers for him to begin getting acquainted with basic words. He flew through the Starter series but there is quite a jump to Level 2 and I am not sure how the school teaches them so I am hesitant to push on. In the meantime he is just so chuffed to be able to *read something*. I have also found some awesome iPad reader apps for him to play with including one that focuses on sight words using flashcards. She reads the words as they come up and then once he begins to learn them you switch off the narration and he reads them alone. Brilliant app! This is the sight that I awoke to this morning. Him sitting next to me with books piled on the pillow! Made my heart sing - we are *so* close to be able to all chill with our books on...

I stumbled upon this layout I did of Hooli about 2 yrs ago. It is really one of my alltime favourites and it certainly captured who he was at that time in his young life. Blogging is cool but documenting your life with paper, glue and photos is something very special. I have missed it. My kids have been paging through their albums and are literally begging me to continue - for them it is far more appealing looking through those albums than my blogging books. I remember when they were tiny and I was DESPARATE for them to grow up so we could be creative together - to create albums as a family. Now is that time. It is here and I almost missed it. I will be resurrecting my ScrapFan blog too - all new LO's will be posted there. Yayness. :-)

This weekend, apart from camping out in the garden , we had another goal. To get Lulu and Hooli on their bikes sans training wheels. This is the Man's portfolio - my attention span is only about 4minutes with stuff like this. I need not have worried - both kids were zooming up and down our road within 10 minutes. Incredible to behold. Hooli is a hooligan - NO fear. This scares me somewhat. I turned my back for a moment and he was half way up the road! Unfortunately the wind has been too strong for them to get out on the road since but we will be back out there at the first opportunity. Honey and I on our blades and the littlies on their bikes - sure to be an amusing afternoon.