Our first official week of school holidays and we are determined to relax and enjoy ourselves.
On our way to church Sunday morning we noticed that this giant cactus was in bloom. I have lived in Sydney for 20 years and we have driven by this plant dozens of times, and I've NEVER seen it in bloom. So on the way home my husband kindly stopped the car, giving me the opportunity to photograph this beautiful plant.
As per our usual routine, the boys are spending their summer school holidays working on life skills. They must fix their own breakfast and lunch each week day, and they have rotating daily chores now instead of just their weekly cleaning chores during the school terms. In the above photo Monster is showing off his skills at making his own pizza for lunch...
Meanwhile, on this particularly day (Monday), Monkey was in charge of the bins. This required that he empty the large rubbish bin in our kitchen, take the bag to the wheelie bin outside, and take the rubbish and yard waste wheelie bins to the kerb as the city collection comes for our area early Tuesday morning.
We spent an afternoon playing Skip-Bo! However, we haven't played the game in ages so it took some time to familiarize ourselves with the game again. We also forgot just how long a standard game takes to play and nearly ran out of time before it was dinner time.
Munchkin enjoyed his turn at washing the dishes, and also spent some of his free time during the week creating a Minecraft Paper Craft Nativity scene.
I clocked in a couple of good days of walking. I have decided to help a neighbour of ours by walking his energetic, young (15 months old) bull dog puppy for him. So Becky and I walked laps around the playing field at our local park twice this week.
Christmas Day was lovely this year. Despite COVID and the threat of a lockdown due to a cluster outbreak far north of us, we were still able to celebrate with other people. A good friend from church came over at lunch time to celebrate the day with us... As we had been to church early in the morning, we started the afternoon with presents! Here the boys are opening the games that they received as a gift from Nana.
In the sequence of photos above the boys are opening their presents they received from Monster's godmother. She always gets them really cool presents that show the thought and attention she puts into her choices. The two older boys each received a brain teaser puzzle toy, while Munchkin received a propagation station for growing cuttings of plants, and a small kit to grow a succulent from seeds.
In the afternoon (while our lamb dinner cooked) the boys enjoyed playing one of their new games with our friend from church (top photo) and also with their cousins. We were blessed to have my brother-in-law and his two boys join us for a bit of time in the afternoon as well.
Later in the day Munchkin worked on his Contraptions Lego Kit while Monster played with his new Rubix Revolution game.
On Boxing Day (26th December) we tried to go out for a pancake breakfast only to discover that the restaurant was closed. But we eventually went to our local shopping centre and ate brunch there. I ducked into the new book store and discovered they had puzzle rolls for half price and immediately bought two as we've been needing more for AGES but I wasn't willing to pay an arm and a leg for them. So that afternoon/evening I sat right down and got to work on a puzzle I've been wanting to start for some time.
In the evening of the 26th we went out to do our traditional drive around to look at Christmas lights. Like everything else in 2020, this looks different for us than in previous years. The house that usually does a HUGE lights display chose not to put lights up this year as he generally has crowds of people every night. Also it was raining so with this exception of one house, we stayed in the car and took our photos out the windows. Thankfully there is a suburb not fair from ours where many streets have beautiful light displays. So we drove through as many streets as we could find in 20 minutes or so, and then headed home.
Upon arriving home we discovered that we have an extra guest living in our house... Actually we've known that this creature has been with us for a few nights. I thought I saw him duck behind the HUGE bookshelf in the playroom one night this week, and hubby definitely saw him in the office one night as well. My husband tried to catch him but again, he ran behind something (this time a framed photo on the wall) and we decided to leave him.
Books, books and more books...
All three boys are working on the summer reading challenge and so there is lots and lots of reading going on in the house. Below you will see independent reading that the boys enjoyed, Christmas picture books we've read aloud, and we also managed to finish another Pippi Longstocking book this week as well.
I hope that everyone who reads my blog is healthy and well and was able to celebrate Christmas in some small and special way even if you are located in an area that is more severely affected by COVID. 2020 is nearly behind us... I don't know what 2021 will bring... but with God and my family in my life I will see each day as it comes with joy and thanksgiving.
