Second day of school

Well, so far so good. Trying to ease us all back into the routine.  Serenity is quite excited to prepare "school" for Israel. eg she dresses him in special clothes and brushes his hair, and packs some snacks for him in his little backpack :) then she chooses some pages from his collection of activity books (like dot to dots, matching things etc.)
He loves having his own things to do during the first intensive parts of my school work with Serenity.
We start with reading a chapter or two (or sometimes 3-4) from the Bible.  We started from Genesis a year or 2 ago, and are currently up to the end of Job.  I read it straight most of the time, but occasionally i translate some tricky words.  I found a great resource of activity sheet sets, which include a colouring page she does while i read, a sheet of true/false statements relating to the particular reading, and a word find and maze.  All with 2 varying ability levels.
http://children.calvarychapel.com/SITE/curriculum.htm
  Awesome! check it out!
Im trying very hard to go softly softly with her reading and writing.  She struggles so much with it, and she improved so much in the last semester of 2009, that i want to give her a break for a little while.  After all, now she is delicately exploring small reading opportunities - like the tv guide at Nell and Grandpas house, and the new kids recipe book she got off Nanna Debbie.
http://www.littlekitchen.com.au/shop2/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=92

I read to her from a lovely book about the history of pianos.  Seeing as we had lo leave the piano in our home at Ulmarra, she cant have any real piano lessons for a while.  So ill do a bit of theory.
Of course when lunch came around they were hankering for a swim, so we all jumped into the pool.  Serenity is trying to perfect her new diving ability.

Welcome to my world!

Well, i am sitting on a large deck at the back of this large house, eye level with beautiful eucalypts and a bright fuchsia-coloured bougainvillea draped high up in the branches. Samuel, Serenity and Israel are enjoying the pool below me, splashing and laughing. Serenity just called me down to show me her new skill - diving properly! I was very impressed.
Theres a lovely cool breeze to compensate for the warm day.

Today I have been scrubbing the walls, skirting boards, doors and furniture of two of the bedrooms here. Its our investment home that we are hoping to rent out to Uni students this year.

We have surprisingly little food that is interesting to eat, and as its Australia Day (Invasion Day), no shops are open. So we had baked beans on corn thins for lunch :).

The kids have been watching a few hours of tv today - that dreaded box! We received it free from our church and we will leave it here for the uni students.

The picture on the left is how the camera took the photo of the bougainvillea, the one on the right is me playing with it, to try and show the true colour. Its such a vivid, bright rich pink!