Almost the end of the holidays...

January 2020

One more week of summer holidays to go, and I know lots of people feel all enthusiastic about spending endless free time with their children, don't get me wrong, I'm very fond of mine, however since the beginning of July last year they have been in school for 10 weeks in total.....and I'm done with searching for things for them to do only for them to look at me with utter disdain. I'm quite happy for them to be bored and have to occupy themselves, however I can't take the bickering, the stroppy over entitled brats I fear they have become, the emotional anxiety, the hormonal teenager, the sassy tween who seems to have developed a whole load of attitude in the last 6 weeks...I need them to go back to their own age groups and spend time away from each other!

As for me, I'm looking forward to term starting for other reasons, Yr4 and Yr6 are intake years at the kids school, that means, my three will no longer be the new kids, there will be a whole heap of new children and parents, new friendship groups, new classes and lots of opportunities to make some friends....for me. I won't deny it, it was really tough joining a school at the end of a school year, everyone has their friends, everyone is tired, no one can really be bothered to mix up their friendship groups, meet new people. I mean, I'm not surprised, if I'd been in the same position it probably wouldn't even have crossed my mind to reach out to anyone new either. But I will make a conscious effort to chat to all those new parents this term who may feel as as utterly perplexed by all the emails, app alerts, important dates, uniforms for different days, volunteer hours, Seqta.....

So....a quick recap of December and January....

Started the holidays with a few playdates, park trips a lot of swimming pool time and a sleepover....which progressed into an ear ache...ears needing to be syringed....then swimmers ear and an ear infection....so no swimming for 7 days.

Chris's parents arrived just before Christmas and we had a lovely time, visited the Pinnacles, Henry spotted a wild emu casually sauntering between the pinnacle formations, explored the Swan Valley a little bit, took a trip down to Bunbury and Busselton, met up with my FIL school friend who lives in Yallingup (they hadn't seen each other for about 50 years!) .

The kids were booked into VacSwim for a week at the beginning of January, for the first few days the sea was wild, not a lot of swimming, quite a lot of trying to stay vertical, diving or ducking under waves and staying roughly in the same position. Ironically, I didn't book them in to learn how to swim, more to learn how to cope in big waves.... so in that part it was successful. By mid week however, Martha had developed another ear infection, Fearne was clearly in a group too easy for her...but Henry quite enjoyed it.

We have visited the Maritime Museum, the Science Museum, searched Fremantle for dinosaurs, attempted to see some free Fringe events, had a picnic at the zoo, briefly visited John Forrest national park and had lunch with some friendly kangaroos, drove up to the top of ZigZag Scenic Drive and viewed Perth CBD from a totally different vantage point and eaten a lot of ice cream.....I think that's it.

Today we have bought school shoes, sorted out the girls booklist and stationary order that arrived in December but, I have been ignoring piled in my bedroom. The girls wanted to go to Officeworks to buy 'stuff' to organise their lockers when they go back to school.... I think they're ready to go back to school.

This weekend is Australia Day, also my youngest brothers birthday (Happy Birthday Will!), two very good excuses to have a few beers and eat cake! We are off to Skyworx 2020 in Perth to see the airshow, stunt motorcycles, free inflatable waterslides, food trucks and fireworks.