Tag: Children

Categories
momentous events Work

3/52 thinking on dogs and libraries

It sounds like the start of a riddle, doesn’t it? “What do dogs and libraries have in common?” And I must admit to not being witty enough to solve this one, sorry… my blogpost title just refers to these as the two main themes of this last week’s photos!

You see, my girl Kiya turned 2 on Wednesday. This was her on the beach the day before:

And then on her birthday itself (photo taken by Miss17, on whose birthday Kiya was born!) Check out that tongue and the ear curled back 🙂

It was also the week that I started, officially, back at school. New year, new job – Head of Library at Nambour Christian College! So I’ve been thinking all things ‘library’ this week, as I’m out and about, both online and IRL. Proof from my camera roll:

I’ve been back on Pinterest and saving inspirational pins like this:

And from Facebook, an idea that will mean I can keep a ‘live’ plant in my office without potentially killing it:

And for the library floor itself, check out these plants I saw when in Cooroy Pharmacy on Monday afternoon. Don’t you think they’d look good spread out around the library floor, near shelving or book displays?

Anyway, that’s been my week. And today it’s Bloxham Birthday Party day, to celebrate Hubby and both daughters… it’s our eldest’s last day of being a teenager today… now is that a milestone or what!

Have a wonderful week, dear Reader 🙂

KRidwyn

Categories
places to visit Random thoughts

49/52 on Maths and hammocks

Okay, okay. My Maths skills are woeful. If there are 52 weeks a year and this is the second-last week then *surely* this should be 51 not 49. Sigh. Mathematics? Not my strong point. I guess I got mixed up doing #blogJune or something? Oh well. I can always try again next year.

Speaking of trying things again… this is my view while blogging today:

It’s been years (maybe even a decade?) since I last relaxed in a hammock. And this one – a Christmas 2024 present that I’m getting to use early!) is absolutely perfect! I forgot how much I enjoy having my feet up at pretty much the same height as my head. Now to watch my heat-swollen feet reduce, or something?

Since Hubby and I lashed out on a Stockman Rover back in August, I figured we’d better get lots of use out of it. So the kids are at home (have I mentioned how AMAZING it is to have 2 out of 3 graduated from high school already?!) and we’re HipCamping for the weekend… because we can! Hence the $41 Bunnings hammock. So far, my favourite Christmas present!

Speaking of Christmas, it’s this coming Wednesday, so my next post will be after all the celebrating.

Here’s praying you might have a day full of love and laughter, surrounded by your nearest and dearest, dear Reader. God bless you!!!

KRidwyn

Categories
family anecdotes places to visit Reading Review

37/52 On family holidays

The last time I holidayed with Hubby and all three of my children was pre-Covid. September 2019. My eldest was in Year 9; she’s now just 3 months away from turning 20.

But a family holiday on K’gari is what we’ve all just enjoyed over this past week. And it was amazing! The memories. Seeing my Miss19 repeating “I remember this” and “This has changed so much”… and now sharing the driving load! Wild.

Leaving Kiya at Mum’s though… that was hard. She didn’t look happy to see us drive off 🙁

And it was pretty great to be able to catch up on some reading. I particularly liked this little gem of wisdom:

The bit about tortuous Latin lessons showing how questions anticipate answers: one way to ask anticipates a ‘yes’ and the other anticipates a ‘no’. This was quite interesting, I thought! (The book less so, all things being equal…)

Well, that’s it from me for the week. I hope it was a wonderful one for you as well, dear Reader!

  • KRidwyn
Categories
Random thoughts

29/52 Things I’m grateful for :)

New starts. The fact that I awoke this morning with a wealth of opportunities to enjoy and spend my time on.

The warmth of the sun on my back in spite of the chill in my toes (within  of just socks but also ugg boots – have I mentioned before how much I don’t enjoy the cold?) and the fact that our house was warmed by a fire last night.

I’m listening to my daughters (aged 19 and 16) voluntarily spending time together, talking and playing with Kiya now we’re home after church.

My house is not clean. The list of ‘stuff I should be doing’ is huge. But I am happy. Even with the hedge clippings that my eldest daughter shook off her clothing, yesterday, in the sunroom, which still litter the floor near my feet.

These clippings mean the mock orange hedge beneath my bedroom windows is now looking amazing, and through my daughter’s – and not my – efforts. They’re glossy green, meaning the plants are healthy and have enough water in spite of the lack of rainfall here in this part of Queensland. Again, through no effort of mine. That’s a God thing.

My part to play in all this? Enjoyment. That’s it. (And pick up the leaves in the sunroom.)

What an amazing blessing that is!

Have an amazing week yourself, dear Reader!

– KRidwyn

Categories
Random thoughts teaching Work

28/52 On the return to Term 3

Phew! What a week it’s been!

Yesterday morning, I drove Kiya, with Mum and her dog Trav, down to Brisbane for an appointment. It occurred to me that last Saturday morning (7 days earlier) I had also collected Mum… but instead, to go car shopping. We’d visited a quite rusty Suzuki Jimny, locally, before heading down to Brisbane to look at a 2020 version – which sold en route. We then pulled into Suzuki at Nundah, and ended up buying a brand new Ignis, before stopping at CostCo on the way back up the Coast.

This week was

  • the return to school (that’s right, I have a 0.9FTE teaching job as well)
  • the collection of Mum’s car on Wednesday
  • Miss 16’s trip to QldTransport to have her photo taken for her Learners
  • the (hopefully successful) migration of this website from one host to another
  • Miss 19 job-hunting and speaking with prospective employers, and finally
  • yet another big trip yesterday.

Today, I’m playing violin at church, then spending the afternoon with my parents and godfathers who are visiting from NZ.

Phew! again…

Hope it’s been a productive week for you, too, dear Reader!

  • KRidwyn
Categories
#blogjune

#BlogJune Day 21

Today’s been big. Master15 had his Athletics Carnival, necessitating a 90 minute drive each way, and now I’m waiting outside a fitting room in one of our local shopping centres while Miss16 finds clothing suitable for a week of ‘Uni experience’ next week. We’re going to start the ‘formal wear’ hunt today too, I think.

Phew! Bring on the weekend, I say!

Hope you’re having a great end-of-week too, dear Reader!

– KRidwyn

Categories
Random thoughts

19/52 On colour theory

Take the colour blue. Then add the colours black and white. (Yes, yes, okay. The ‘shades’ black and white. I know.)

Now use them to make the colour red.

Impossible? Nope. Not according to colour theory.

If you’d asked me 3 years ago what ‘colour theory’ was I would have looked at you blankly. I’d never heard of such a thing.

Enter Miss now-16 and her older sister, both dedicated artists for these same three years (well, longer, actually).

And now I know – well, to be honest, I still can’t define ‘colour theory’ exactly… but I know – it exists because it’s the reason why blue and black and white can make red.

So this image in my Facebook feed, although super-cool, is no longer the ‘what? how?! that’s not possible’ reaction that it used to be.

Screenshot

(If you zoom in, you’ll realise that there’s no ‘red’ in this picture. There’s only blue, black, and white. Crazy, hey?!)

Apparently it has to do with the way the brain perceives colours. Place black beside blue, then contrast it with white beside blue, and HEY PRESTO! Red!

Phenomenally cool.

And even more awesome is that my daughters are still happy to teach me stuff 🙂

Have a family-filled week yourself, dear Reader!

  • KRidwyn
Categories
family anecdotes

18/52 Thoughts on parenting and creativity

It’s been a week. Hard to really get a grasp on just how much has happened in the past 7 days, however as I said to a friend just yesterday: priorities. Get these right, then everything else falls into place.

When I consider my own responsibilities, my first priority is to my three kidlets. (Hence the ‘parenting’ in the title, btw). They didn’t choose to be born, so I’ll try my darnedest to ensure they have the best life I can give them. Now absolutely, there’s times – many, many, MANY times – when we don’t see eye to eye, but again, I’m the parent and I need to shoulder what needs to be shouldered to ensure that our relationships are as good as they can be.

The way I see it, that means taking an interest. Miss19 in our roadtrip last year wanted to talk ‘The Owl House‘ for 12 hours straight? Sign me up. She convinced me to watch it and was so glad to be able to share her passion with me. And really, who could pass up a conversation about King that cute little Titan?!

Then ‘The Owl House’ finished and interest morphed into ‘Arcane‘ and – via Schnee – Studio Ghibli.

Recently, it’s become ‘Purple Hyacinth‘ with Miss16 – check out this artwork! –

 

and (of course) Fortnite with Master15.

I regret nothing. For realz. Both my daughters want to work in the Art sphere – you know, the one being taken over by AI? – but I don’t care. I’m going to support them and their choices and their decisions no matter what. Because I’m their Mum. And because this post I shared on Fb the other day is *really* how I feel:

Screenshot

Have a great week, dear Reader!

  • KRidwyn
Categories
family anecdotes teaching Work

3/52 Final day before the chaos

Yes, that’s right. The 2024 school year starts back tomorrow. It’s been a wonderful holiday… not the least of it due to family gaming time.

Decades ago now, Hubby was an addicted gamer, to the extent that I was a ‘computer widow’. Since I couldn’t beat him, I joined him, and once multiplayer games became a thing (yes, I did mention ‘decades’, didn’t I) we had some pretty amazing sessions, some of which bordered on the truly epic.

Fast forward to sometime in 2021, I introduced our son to Caesar II and the Age of Empires franchise. Fast forward again to the 2023 / 2024 summer holidays: we had our own Mum-Dad-two-teenagers slaughterfest on AoEIV (Anniversary Edition) where it was me getting slaughtered, Hubby barely hanging on, and our daughter (who’d only just started playing two days earlier) just narrowly being beaten by our reigning champion son. Hours and hours and hours of fun was had! And humbling experiences too, I must admit, for me, as well as Hubby…

Seeing my little computer villagers building castles got me inspired to also spend some time re-reading one of my favourite trilogies: The Heaven Tree series, written by Edith Pargeter (who also wrote as Ellis Peters, of the Bather Cadfael series). The protagonist is a master mason who dedicates his life (literally… he gets killed as soon as its done) to building of a castle on the English border with Wales. It’s a magnificent story, and the writing style is sublime 🙂

And then, to bring it all ‘into the real world’ as it were, this showed up in my Facebook feed:

What a simply stunning piece of architecture! Isn’t it inspiring that someone had the courage to design such magnificence – let alone the bravery of the people who built it (and maybe even, who lived there!)

Anyway, I just wanted to share these thoughts with you, some reflection time, just prior to heading into the chaos of this school year.

Happy first week back of school, dear Reader!

  • KRidwyn
Categories
Life More about me Random thoughts teaching

On ‘schooling’

So my two school-aged kids are at the same school again, for the first time since June 2021. It’s Brisbane School of Distance Education, and they’ve completed the first week of Term 4.

And so far, it seems to be going well! Miss15 started last term, so it wasn’t ‘all new’ for her, but my taller-than-me-now Master14 has been at it for a week… and he seems to be tracking okay 🙂

Such a relief. This parenting gig is harder than it first looks… and wow but that pregnancy bit does NOT look comfortable!

I’m always second-guessing myself. Should I “let” Miss18 have a gap semester or a gap year – or just figure it out for herself? Will the benefits of Distance Education outweigh the issues for the other two, or have I just made yet another foolish decision? Will they be able to support Master14 with his autism, more effectively than at a regular school? After all – that’s why I’ve moved him…?

And when on earth does it all get easier?

Still. BSDE schooling *seems* to be going okay, at this moment in time, so here’s hoping that this will continue… Wish me all the best, dear Reader!

Til we meet again 🙂

  • KRidwyn