Books I Read in February

 

This first photo is a selection of the books I read independently this month. I'm pleased that I managed six books considering we started school and I had to develop a new daily routine for myself. Here are my thoughts on each of them...

"Nine Perfect Strangers" by Liane Moriarty - it took me a LONG time to read this book, but not because I didn't like it. I have yet to read a Liane Moriarty book that I didn't thoroughly enjoy. I just set this book aside for awhile as I needed to focus on library books for awhile.

"House Rules" by Jodi Picoult was another book that I own and therefore took an extended break from while I focused on finishing library books that needed to be returned. This was an excellent story and I didn't even mind the ending. Usually I find Jodi Picoult endings too realistic and a little bit depressing. The ending of this book was different and left me wondering.

"Daughter of Grace" by Michael Phillips and Judith Pella was a light and enjoyable read. I have read other books by this author and enjoyed them so I knew this book would be a good read. I have passed all three of these books that I owned on to other readers as they didn't pass the test to remain in my home library. While I enjoyed all three, I'm unlikely to re-read any of them so I sent them to other homes.

"The Kelly Hunters" by Grantlee Kieza was an excellent read. I found it fascinating to read a book about the Ned Kelly Gang that sympathized more with the police than with the outlaws. I always like to have a balance when reading non-fiction even when I side heavily with one perspective of the topic I'm reading about. I have several more books on my "to-read" list about the Kelly Gang so I will reserve the next one soon.

"Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott was a re-read. I read the book for the first time in the eighth grade as part of my English requirements for the year and recently decided I needed to re-read the book since so much time had passed. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I suspect I had a much different perspective of the story now having read it as an adult instead of a child. I'm eager to read the other books in the "Little Women" series now.

"Half a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was a book I borrowed after a recommendation from a friend and I'm glad I took her up on the suggestion. It was fascinating to learn more about life in Nigeria in the 1960s - though the author explained that she took a fair bit of creative license in telling the story. But the story was compelling and I would be interested to learn more about this time in history because of reading this book.

I decided to include my collage of the reading aloud I did this month as well, even though all these books have already been highlighted in my weekly review posts through the month. I am part of a group on Facebook called the Scary Mommy Bookclub Facebook page. At the end of every month we each make photo collages of all the books we've read and share it with the group. I always do two collages, one of my independent reading, and one of my reading aloud for the boys, to make it easier for the other people to distinguish my reading. 

I wrote more specifically about these books in my weekly reviews, but I will mention here that my favourites of this selection are the two Jackie French books, the two Indian in the Cupboard books (it has easily been 35 years since I've last read those), and I also really enjoyed the Planet Earth book as well.

Term One: Week Four ~ Storms, Floods, Library Books and Youth Group

Week Four started off with some drama and excitement as we got a large thunderstorm, complete with about an hour of torrential, drenching rain. This wouldn't be a problem, except that stormwater drainage is a HUGE problem on our street. So much so that when we get extended periods of heavy rain, the storm drains cannot cope, and the street floods.

I alerted our neighbour two doors down that the street was flooding and she (along with several other people on the street) opted to move her car to higher ground. She walked home via the centre of the road and the water was nearly knee deep.

Thankfully the water didn't breach our verandah, but it did go all the way down the driveway and halfway up our front yard. Munchkin thought it was fantastic and spent some time wading and jumping in the water.

Meanwhile I just kept a close eye on the water level and prayed that it would stop raining soon as I knew if it didn't we would have the potential of water IN the house. Thankfully the rain finally stopped and the water had a chance to drain away. This time I don't think any cars suffered permanent damage. When it flooded just before Christmas, two cars were completely flooded out.

Some of our non-fiction books that we finished this week. Two are specific to Munchkin's curriculum content (the water cycle books) and the other two cover subject matter for both Munchkin and Monkey.

Later in the week Munchkin and I went for a walk to visit the free little library further from our house, and Munchkin enjoyed balancing on the wooden fence near the park.

Progress photos of the tomato plant - Munchkin and I are both thrilled that it is growing well. We just hope that it will fruit before the weather turns too cold.

Two longer reads that we finished later in the week. The second Indian in the Cupboard book was a literature selection for Munchkin and the WWI book was specific to Monkey's learning.

My library bookshelves were cleared off Friday morning and ready for a new load of books. Munchkin and I took a trip to our old library and then I dropped him off at our friend's house so he could attend youth group with his older brothers for the very first time.

Sixty-one library books loaded into our old pram! I was so happy to pick all these new books up. After I dropped Munchkin off I made my way home via train and bus.

Our library bookshelf is happy now that it is full again. The bottom shelf looks a bit empty but so far it houses books that Monkey specifically asked me to borrow for him for his independent reading, and I'm sure the shelf won't stay empty for long.

My three independent reading books that I borrowed from the library for my own personal reading time. I'm super excited to dive into all three of these books.

Munchkin enjoying dinner with his brothers and his friends before youth group.

They enjoy a dinner of sausages, bread and salad, before the husband/father drives them to and from the church when youth group is held. Nearly every week they also have a chilly sauce contest. Here their friend is taking a video of Monster as he tries some super hot chilli.

Only clocked two walks this week.

Term One: Week Three ~ We have an Adult!

This week of Term One is always a short week because the focus of our week is on celebrating Monster. This year it was a bigger deal as he turned 18!! and we have our first official adult! I honestly don't know where the time has gone. In the blink of an eye he has gone from a small baby who struggled to nurse and refused to sleep, to this tall, intelligent, polite young man who now eats just fine. We are excited to see what the future has in store for him as he ventures out into the adult world.

The week started with special celebrations at church. Our pastor's wife surprised him with a beautiful and delicious white chocolate cake (his favourite) and our church family sang him happy birthday.

Our traditional photos of Monster with his godparents. This MAY be the last year we make a point of doing this. These two precious people have been such a wonderful influence on Monster's life and we are so thankful for their love and dedication.

An extra bonus - Monster and Auntie L in 2024 (left photo) and Monster and Auntie L in 2006 (right photo) - taken on his first Sunday at church when he was only 7 days old.

After church we stopped at the shopping centre for some groceries and discovered there were celebrations for Chinese Lunar New Year and so we stayed to watch the dragons parade through the centre.

It has been a LONG time since I included a video in my blog post so I hope this works.

Sunday afternoon I decided to walk to the other neighbourhood free little library that is farther away than just up the street from the house. Munchkin came with me and enjoyed balancing on the fence along the park. He also spotted this interesting beetle. Sadly it is missing one wing, but we enjoyed walking it race along the pole.

The walk to the free little library was successful as I found these two books. Munchkin was thrilled that we found the second book in the "Indian in the Cupboard" series, and the other book is on my "library to read" book list so now I don't have to worry about borrowing it some day when I'm ready to read it.

Every year since Monster was born I have taken a photo of him at 12:15am - the ridiculous time of his birth. This is the last year I will force myself to stay up to take the photo as it was a challenge to do it this year. As you can tell from the photo, he is WIDE awake. He may have learnt to eat well since his newborn days, but he still doesn't require much sleep.

The traditional birthday breakfast of bacon and pancakes. I cooked a triple batch of pancakes and fried up 1kg (2.2lbs) of bacon. There were half a dozen pancakes left over but the bacon disappeared.

A quick photo of Monster opening all his lovely birthday cards after breakfast.

He also had a special birthday dinner of "Jordan's Favourite Casserole", fried sweet potato, and steamed cauliflower. He also enjoyed another white chocolate mud cake for dessert but I didn't get any photos of dinner or dessert.

We had a thunderstorm Monday afternoon and the clouds were beautiful.

Other special events on Monster's birthday included playing a card game we hadn't tried yet - "Get Rich Quick 2.0" and the boys enjoyed drinking spiders. Monster's chosen version was creaming soda with vanilla ice cream.

It was a three day school week for us this week. As well as Monster's birthday celebration on Tuesday, I had an appointment Monday afternoon that meant we only got our reading done. Despite the shortened week, we finished three books. Top left photo is a book for Munchkin's science content. Top right book is for Monkey's first history unit study on WWI. We will study World War I all year this year and then World War II all year next year. Finally, the third photo is a "bonus" book for Munchkin. He studied bushrangers last year but our library didn't have this wonderful book. The local library that serves our new neighbourhood DOES have the book so I immediately jumped at the chance to read it aloud to the boys.

A couple of photos of Munchkin working on school work. He preferred the lounge for a lot of his work this week. The second photo shows one of his pages of math that he worked on this week.

Our weekly gardening update...

The tomatoes are thriving (left photo) and I was finally able to photograph the 4 o'clock flower when it was blooming. We are excited that both of these plants are doing so well.

Munchkin was thrilled to discover that his sunflower has sprouted, and he is trying to grow a blueberry plant from a blueberry that he planted (right photo) so stay tuned to see if it worked.

Our coriander is still alive (which is a miracle) and the Spider Plant is doing well also.

Our apple mint is flowering and thus starting to attract flies. Curiously, a wasp sat on the plant for one entire day. We have no idea why and we hope that isn't a common occurrence. Now that we have successfully propagated one apple mint, we will take another cutting from the neighbour's garden and grow another plant. We plan to have a pot of apple mint at the front and back doors to discourage flies from coming in the house.

Sprouts have finally appeared in these little seedling pots that Munchkin wanted to try using. They don't seem to work quite as well as the packaging suggests, but we are happy that the plants are growing.

Finally, his Australian wildflowers are doing well and will be ready for larger pots soon.

As an extra bonus, I thought some of you might be interested to see what sort of record keeping I use. We will have a new AP when we register in 2026 so I want to make sure we show adequate learning. I have typed up curriculum content documents for both boys and as we go through the year I will make note of what books we read, the papers the boys write, and the documentaries we watch. Then at the end of each year I'll type it up nicely in colour and bold so that it stands out nicely. It should then be easy for the AP to skim the documents and see what we've studied and learned.

I got several good walks in this week - again, not the normal amount with the celebrations this week.