We are currently in school holiday mode – the first two days were spent with me in the office and the kids working with their Dad on farm and house projects.  But the party started on Wednesday.

 

Our Wednesday started with my friend visiting with her two boys.  Daniel, JG and SG had a wonderful time together; racing bikes around the veranda and making super hero costumes.

 

As you may have read we have had friends who have moved from the area visiting for a couple of weeks and the kids have wanted to catch up with their girls as often as possible.  One of those girls had a birthday so a fairly impromptu surprise party was arranged.  So the girls headed off for that mid-day on Wednesday.

 

After lunch we drove Josh to his friends place for a sleepover and picked up the girls from the party.  We brought home an extra 3 girls (visiting family) for a sleepover.  Having 5 girls in the house was the reason Josh escaped to his friends place for the evening!! 

 

The girls played (Daniel was included) all afternoon – they had a ball.  Jess and her friend RT went for a walk late in the afternoon and got caught up in the smoke from a backburn Pete had started.  They got some great photos.  The sunsets are incredible colour this time of the year because of all the burning off in the district.

   

The other kids all played in the cubby until the smoke drove them inside too.  We had a quiet evening watching Christi with tacos for dinner.

 

It was such a delight to have these girls with us for the night.  We cleared out the family room (aka school room which is normally full of desks) so they could all sleep in the one room, dorm style.  They all woke up around the same time, got breakfast happening, did the morning chores altogether and then had free time.  I was so confident in how they were behaving I went for my ½ hour walk leaving them to organize themselves. 

 

Later in the morning another homeschool family joined us and we had our Creative Club – even though the girls haven’t finished their quilts we decided not to spend any more class time on that.  Today we started “crochet”.  It was harder to teach and harder for them to do than I had expected but they have all got it.  One of the mums is left handed and could crochet so she took the left handers (3 of them) and I took the right handers (another 3) so it worked out really well.  I am not sure I could have taught the lefties!

 

Josh and his friend are making a small model size catapult following instructions from a library book.  It was good to see them take initiative in planning a project and carrying it out.  Josh had to give instructions to Peter over the phone later in the day so his dad could buy some extra materials for him.  This was a good opportunity for some clear thinking and math skills, not to mention telephone skills.

 

Once everyone left I crashed on the couch for an hour nap before a quick visit from my closest neighbour and oldest friend.

 

Our social time doesn’t finish today – tomorrow the same group of kids will be back here for our Speak Up lesson (which I need to prepare for tonight!).    Then off to visit other neighbours Friday afternoon. 

 

Doesn’t look like our kids have any trouble finding socialization opportunities!!