Weekly Wrap up – Week #38

If you like the idea of a weekly wrap up, then join in over at

Three Little Ladies.

We’ve had a good week.  What defines a good week?  A week of laughter and friendship, a week of learning, a week of doing.  A good week is where I know we’ve done the best we can, we haven’t done it all, but we have been diligent.  A good week is where I don’t feel overwhelmed by all that still needs to happen – I have a long term perspective.

Homemaking:

This is one area I’m feeling challenged in at the moment.  The basics are done but…. I’d like more.  A few weeks ago our family talked about ‘excellence’ and I defined it as the little polish/shine on the top.  This is where I’d like to take my homemaking – so there is a little shine on the top!

I started my Christmas prep this week.  I call it Project Christmas.  I set aside 2 hours a week, for 12 weeks and work on the things that are closest to my heart for our family Christmas celebrations.  I invite you to join me, I’ve posted my first week to-do list.

In conjunction with starting my Christmas prep, I released a small e-book which is about thinking about the “what and why” of our Christmas celebrations, Restoring the Heart Mind and Soul of Christmas.  If you are unsure about how your Christmas celebrations focus on Jesus then this workshop style e-book may help.  It isn’t full of wonderfully creative ideas – there is plenty of that on the internet – but it guides you with some thinking questions so you can discover what is right for your family.

Community involvement

I haven’t mentioned for a while about Jessica’s weekly involvement in Mainly Music.  Mainly Music is a church based initiative to serve and encourage the community by providing a music / dance activity for parents and pre-school age children to enjoy together.  Jessica is on the committee and is very involved in the weekly programme.  My other children often help setting up (though we didn’t this week as there were plenty of other extra helpers around).    There is also a monthly committee meeting that Jess goes along to.  Though I am present at the meeting I sit in the back and work on something to give Jessica the opportunity to stand on her own two feet!  Though we know Jess helps out a lot at Mainly Music, we are thankful to the ladies for making room for a young girl to learn how to work in such a committee.

Training

Joshua – Joshua was over at Canberra this last week with a Rotary Citizenship programme.  He had many amazing opportunities.  Not only has he seen all the normal things you see when you go to Canberra – Parliament House (old and new), Australian War Memorial, he also saw CSIRO (Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation), Duntroon (Royal Military College) and the Australian Institute of Sport.  He spoke to many different and interesting people in each of these institutions.  This was his first time in a big group of peers with the purpose of learning.  He learnt many things about himself and other people.  He had the opportunity to speak publicly several times both in planned and impromptu situations.  He talked political issues and generally had a fantastic time!  No doubt he will be blogging about his time away this coming week as he starts to sift through it all and prepare a presentation for Rotary in a week’s time.

Jessica – This was a week of different projects for Jess though she did a little of her regular studies as well.  She learnt how to use Movie-Maker and made a movie for our minister’s farewell.  She continued to work on our bookcases and storage issues!  We started Keepers again – the older girls (which includes Jessica) continue their dressmaking lessons – they had a lot to think about in lesson 1.  Jess has also worked on the powerpoint for the church service.   Jess was on kitchen duty this week which meant she also cooked a lot of our evening meals.

Naomi and Daniel – I’m joining Nomi and Daniel together for my thoughts this week.  We are working on establishing habits in their discipline studies – these are the areas where they need daily practice and can work on it by themselves.  For Nomi it is Piano, Math, Writing, Art.  For Daniel it is Math, Writing, Reading, and his Activity box.  We also worked at getting back into the swing of several lessons – namely, Bible, Character and Reading aloud. 

Because Josh was away it gave us an opportunity to bump up responsibility for the others.   The challenge of course, is to maintain this level of expectations and training even after Josh gets back.

We took the opportunity of Josh being away for Nomi to move into the ‘boys’ room for a couple of nights and spend some time with Daniel.  We have always found that the time just before falling asleep is great talking time, which builds their relationships.  I’ve tried to remember the idea of swapping around at other times and am hoping now that we’ve done it once we’ll take other opportunities (not week in and week out, but specific opportunities) for the kids to swap around and share time with each other.