Mumu, BMX’ing and other stuff….

Time for an update on life bordering the driest city in Australia…I say this with a literary sarcasm, since all it seems to have done since we arrived in South Australia is rain….and rain….and rain! And, guess what. It’s raining right now!

Ok, so I was a bit slack last week and didn’t manage much in the way of blog posts, so I guess i have a bit of catching up to do…and I haven’t done a general update since June 8th! Eeek!

So, usually the only way i can figure out what we’ve been doing is by checking my photo’s in date order….

We’ve been to a few homeschool meets and spent time with friends…we’ve had two Food Nights. The first was Australia – Kai decided it was high time we had a home food night, so we had Barramundi and chips for Australia night! I would have made a Pavlova, but i’m shocking at making desserts and it all looked too hard!

Last week Kai chose Papua New Guinea for Food Night…we did some research and discovered that a traditional Papua New Guinea feast is cooked in an underground oven called a Mumu, and the resulting food is also called a Mumu!

Unfortuntely, we didn’t think that our Real Estate Agent would be too impressed if we dug a Mumu in the garden, and, like I said, it’s constantly raining. So, we decided to do our Mumu in the fire place…

Stage 1 – wrapping the food in foil, due to the current lack of banana leaves in Adelaide! It’s free range pork…we don’t normally eat pork, but in order to make it most authentic, we relented for this Food Night!

Stage 2 – wrapped food in the fire. It actually worked amazingly well, and very quickly!

The cooked food. I figure the charcoaled bits only make it more like a real Mumu, right?!

Some of our other research, of course, involved swords of PNG. We found a couple of cool pictures of ceremonial bone dagger, (scroll down for the bone dagger pic) and Kai decided to draw one.

Before you draw unsavoury conclusions as to what other things this drawing may resemble, please view the actual bone dagger and you will see that it does actually look like this! The daggers are commonly made of cassowary bone. Brett took Kai to the museum and they visited the Pacific Cultures exhibit and saw some real bone daggers on the weekend too….

So, aside from our culinary, museum and virtual trip to PNG, what else have we been up to?

Been to the BMX park a few times and Kai got a new bike (note in Mondays post that $6 purple bike is absent!). Also been swimming.

We joined the Zoo and went to the zoo last week. We also visited the sculpture and art exhibit on primates by Lisa Roet. It was really beautiful, and even Kai loved it.

I recommend visiting if you are around the zoo – it’s free, and you don’t even have to go into the zoo to see it! Of course we enjoyed the zoo, and were really lucky to see the pack of wild dogs running around very animated. We were also around for feeding time at lots of exhibits – meerkats, giraffes, and – best of all, the Tassie devil!

Kai also finished saving for his Play Mobil sea monster/ghost pirate set. But when we got to the toy section to buy it in Myer, he changed his mind and decided to spend his money on a Pirates of the Carribean lego set. I have to say I was surprised, but he has played with it a lot since he got it, and I think perhaps it signals a transition to a more constructive period where he might get more into lego….

….we’re also looking forward to seeing the new Pirates movie when it comes out on DVD….and going to see Kung Fu Panda 2 and Cars 2 at the movies in the next couple of weeks!

Phew. So that’s it. That’s a lot of stuff…I’m exhausted just reading about it! Biology, Geography, Maths, Phys Ed, Arts, Socializing….i’m off for a nap!

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Pirates, Dragons and…..Flowers!

Happy World Ocean day, first of all. It seems this day went by fairly unnoticed by most, unfortunately. We are still celebrating in our house with continuing ocean madness, and we got out a whole range of ocean books from the library yesterday! Our Ocean’s project folder (‘Lapbook’ to the more organized!) – is close to being finished…

The weather remains less than perfect….it’s rained most days since the weekend, although there have been the odd sunny moments. On Saturday it was actually mostly sunny, and we took Kai’s bike to the play ground, and he made friends with two brothers and they played hide and seek for about an hour – it was lovely to watch!

That night we decided to reinstate International Food Night. We chose the Caribbean, given Kai’s recent obsession with the Pirates of the Caribbean. It was a bit tricky to find a recipe that we’d all eat, as a lot of the Caribbean stuff seemed to be spicy, and Kai won’t eat spicy (unless it’s Indian!). So, we settled on Jamaican Brown StewChicken , and I followed this recipe. 

While I was preparing in the kitchen, Kai and Brett listened to a bit of Bob Marley…there was dancing…of sorts!

  

Then Kai helped me cook….Health and Safety alert….i don’t recommend cooking over a gas flame wearing a cheap nylon pirate suit – I promise I was supervising!

 

It was delish…and we ate all of it, despite planning on it lasting two nights!

On Sunday it was kinda rainy, and Kai and I went for a late walk to the local school playground, and then to the local shop which sells hot drinks too. On our way back, we found lots of amazing fungi – those red and white ‘fairy’ toadstools, and lots of other types, and we also found what looked like a native tree full of pink blossoms. We thought this was quite amazing since it’s winter, and we picked a couple of the ‘fairy blossoms’ (Kai’s name for them!) and took them home.

 

Eventually we deduced that the tree was a Hakea laurina, or pin-cushion hakea. It’s native to Western Australia, and flowers all winter providing food to many birds and insects!

Monday – well – Kai did ocean drawing all day, as reported on Monday…

Tuesday it was rainy AGAIN!! Early on we went and picked some daisy type flowers from the garden to do a water transport in plants experiment…you can read more about the science here….

I wouldn’t say it’s an ‘instant result’ experiment…we left the flowers in all night before they looked like this….

 

 ….but it was pretty cool! The blue one worked best for us.

 Around lunch time we went to the library, and got our ocean books, then went to the park, but it got too wet. Kai realized he had forgotten to get any DVD’s, so we had to go back to the library….and then our friends were there. So, much to the disgust of most library goers, Kai and his friend played a very loud game of hide and seek before we left!

Then…after my big long essay on Sunday about curriculum resources, Kai went and asked, specifically, to play Starfall!!! Wouldn’t you know it! So, we did that together for a while….it’s much less offensive than Reading Eggs though!

Today we went swimming, and to a shop that sells ‘school’ supplies, because we wanted some maze books. I was very good and restrained myself from buying lots of curriculum crap we won’t use though! We also met friends in the park on the way home for a quick play, before the rains came back!

Currently watching Jane and The Dragon, which has inspired yet more drawing….(we have filled at least one drawing book this week…) – My favourite being this bejeweled sword…

 

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Our Last Week Up the Hill…

I’m writing this post on the ferry – how cool is technology!?

Our last week up the hill was, of course, extremely chaotic! Packing, cleaning, general craziness associated with moving…

But, we did have time for some fun….we did our last International Food Night, and i made Keema Mattar – as Kai chose India and we fortuitously had roo mince and peas in the freezer (and not much else)! It was a big hit, and i’ll probably make it again – i followed this recipe – which is a Pakistani version.

Kai managed some potion making among the packing boxes outside…he’s keen on doing the bi-carb/vinegar thing at the moment…

it's all about the fizz...

The floo cleaner came on Tuesday, so Kai saw how the guy cleaned the chimney with his big brushes, and the removalists came on Wednesday.

Wednesday afternoon we headed into Hobart and Brett went to talk to a guy at UTas, so Kai and I investigated the Zoology Dept. We found some cool diorama’s, and these life-sized elephant seals…

We bumped into our friend Carryn in the bowels of Zoology, and she showed us some baby spotted snow lizards she was looking after in the lab…

They were very cute. Carryn is going to be a mama any day, and we are sad we aren’t going to get to see the babe…

We also saw Caz and other friends and their kids at the Indian restuarant in Hobart for a last dinner…

the kids managed to scare other diners downstairs! Impressive!

Thursday was a big cleaning day, and gardening day, and generally not much fun for anyone…although Kai helped with the lawn mowing, so it wasn’t so bad!

And this morning was absolute madness….finishing cleaning, trying to fit everything in the car…aggghhh – i feel like we only just did this in Colorado! We finally left the house at 10.50am – which was nearly an hour later than i planned, but all turned out well…

On the way up to the Devonport Ferry, we stopped at Launceston and went to the QVMAG, to see the ‘Eaten Alive’ exhibit. It was all about predators and prey and different types of hunting and camoflague…Kai LOVED it…especially the gory photo’s!

This bit compared three African predators, how they kill and what they eat of the kill…not much left after the lions get to something, apparently!

So, now we are on the boat, and are actually moving toward Melbourne! Glad this week is over, it all went quite smoothly really – although tempers did fray this morning with the last minute packing and cleaning!

Kai currently watching a DVD in the cabin – after he had a picnic on the top bunk and discovered he liked smoked oysters!

...the mirrors in the cabin are fun too!

Next installment of our homeless tribe….Melbourne and Nana and Grandad’s house!

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Fun Up The Hill

Only 2.5 weeks left in Tassie, and we’ll surely miss our cabin up the hill – although not so much the drive up the steep, dirt road….the car is in the shop, AGAIN!

So, since there was a deficit of photo’s yesterday, i’m here to make up for it today!

Here’s what we’ve been up to of late, enjoying our last couple of weeks…

The lavender bush is humungous, so i chopped lots and am drying it out, with a view to eventually making lavender pillows…

Same goes for the rosemary bush…i’ve got the rosemary and lavender in bunches drying on top of the fire…Brett says the house smells like an old lady’s toilet!

Kai’s been mad about playing Poisson Rouge games….

Our environmental toothbrushes arrived! Yay! Since we are all using them – we had to label them!

I knitted a placemat! It only took a few hours, and used up bits of old yarn (recycled – from the op shop!)…i’m going to do 4…THE easiest thing to knit for a useless knitter who refuses to follow patterns (or recipes, or generally directions of any kind!) Drink coasters too! (note to me: size 9 needles, co 15)..

Tonight we FINALLY did Russian food night..we made potato blini with smoked salmon, i followed this recipe. It was a serious pain in the ass…but they tasted good! I’m not convinced that smoked salmon is particularly a traditional topping, despite the claims of the website to the contrary…but we couldn’t afford caviar (yuk, anyways!), and Brett and I did have a mushroom one each too, but Kai doesn’t like mushies!

Other things we discovered about Russia this week…weeeelll, LOTS of swords, and we also found lots of pictures of traditional dress and learnt a lot about Cossacks.

And….finally….no evening is complete without a potion making session…

Just for added zazz, we put some baking soda and vinegar in this one too!

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Beach, Poop And Myanmar Food Night!

Two blogs in two days. Shocking! Firstly, big thanks to Kim at Feather & Nest for nominating me as a ‘Versatile Blogger’ – I like being versatile! I promise to get around to posting the button and making my list of versatile bloggers as soon as I can….hopefully tomorrow!

So, today we got up quite early, for us…we had brekky and then Kai and I went for a walk around the garden…We are starting to realise how much we will miss all the space around our little house up the hill…Kai will miss his rope swing…

And we will miss our metallic skinks that live in the dry stone wall…there have been a lot of gravid females basking in the sun lately…

Hopefully we might get to see some baby lizards before we leave…

We found a unidentified animal poop on top of the dry stone wall this morning too…so we ‘dissected’ it (meaning we poked at it with sticks!)…it was full of insects…

but seriously - how many blogs with poop pictures have you seen today?!

You can see insect elytra on the left there, that we picked out. We *think* it was a quoll poop…it doesn’t look like an echidna, and not much else eats so many insects….according to Barbara.. 

Then we headed to Randalls Bay. The boys went in the ocean, but as usual I was too much of a wussy! We stayed for about two hours though, and Kai made some friends.  We stopped at the Boat House for fish and chips on the way home. We kept saying we needed to go there before we leave, so another thing crossed off our list! It was pretty good!

Tonight I finally got around to making our Myanmar food, for International Food Night. We chose to make Mohinga, which is known as the national dish of Myanmar…apparently they eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

I followed this recipe (mostly!)…It called for shallots in the broth, but we used some baby leeks from Kai’s veggie garden…we figure we should use as much as we can before we leave…Kai helped me pick them and chopped them up for the soup…

So, the finished Mohinga looked like this…

Traditional Burmese fish soup..we served ours with rice noodles….and Brett and I thought it was yummy – Kai ate the noodles and broth, but left the chunks of fish!

We also learnt a bit about Burma/Myanmar, and Kai is currently colouring in a flag – Myanmar got a new flag in October 2010, replacing the old socialist flag…Kai said he likes the new flag better than the old one!

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Cygnet Folk Festival..and The Return of Global Grub Night

Today we drove over to Cygnet to check out the Cygnet Folk Festival. It was crazy time over there – thank goodness we could park at friends, because there are not a park to be found anywhere! After finally getting Kai away from ‘Lazy Town’ on Bryan and Amber’s TV, we headed down with Amber and the kids.

We didn’t go to any of the pay gigs, which are inside, but hung out at the park where the market stalls were and free music. We took it in turns to kid sit and shop, and both Amber and I managed to spend money on new clothes! We had salmon sausages for lunch, and the kids played at the park and made goofy faces…

Then we went to get ice cream…

 Kai’s tummy was having a good day (until now – late pm), and we went for a swim on the way home – and didn’t get back until after 6pm…long day!

Kai’s watched Mr Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, and I made dinner. After something of a lull, we decided to get back into International Food Night, renamed by Bryan as Global Grub Night…and before Christmas Kai chose Germany as our next country.

So I made (free-range) chicken schnitzel – I kind of combined two recipes…one for weiner schnitzel (although it’s not weiner schnitzel unless it’s veal, apparently – and we certainly don’t eat veal!) and Jaeger schnitzel. So, essentially we had crumbed chicken with a Jaeger sauce! And served it with Kartoffelpuree…otherwise known as mashed potato’s! (I followed the German recipe, but it seemed like any old mash to me!)..

Here’s Kai’s (no Jaeger sauce – he doesn’t like mushies!)…

Doesn’t look very exciting, does it!!?? I’m hoping for something more exotic next week!! Hope we don’t get England!

We found some German swords – quite a lot actually..and lots of pictures of traditional Bavarian dress! Must think of more fun things to do as part of GGN….Any ideas??

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Car Trouble

It’s been a fairly ho-hum kind of a week, this week. After getting over our respective sickness from last week, I think Brett and I have been quite tired, and then I was fighting something again the past couple of days – but it seems copious amounts of Vit C and Olive Leaf Extract *might* have knocked it on the head!

So, we’ve all been moving at a slow pace, except Kai, who has kept up his usual manic pace. He has been entertaining himself most of the week, and i have to admit that has involved a fair few DVD’s!  Currently ‘Iron Man’ is the object of choice, from the library – we also got a Tin Tin and an Asterix from the library…LOVE the library!

Our car is in the shop in Hobart, new transmission pending, costing around $2500…blah…we haven’t been having a good car time of it lately!

We did venture out to swimming twice this week…Monday we went to the Port Huon inside pool, which we had to ourselves! Then on Tuesday afternoon, spurred on by a brief spell of warm weather, we checked out the Huonville outside pool for the first time! It is really a nice pool, but according to Kai it was freezing! We established, using Dr Jo’s rigorous swim testing methods, that Kai can comfortably swim 10m, and probably not so comfortably swim 15m! So, that makes me pretty happy….

Yesterday we did some treasure hunts outside, using Nana’s Christmas chocolates as treasure (sorry Nana – there are 4 left!). We each took it in turn to hide a chocolate and then draw a map and mark the X.  Kai really got into it, and i’m sure it’s something we’ll do more of…Our treasure hunt was pretty basic – hide chocolate, draw map, find chocolate, but for older kids I found this site had lots of ideas…

We also FINALLY got around to Chinese food night. I wasn’t feeling great, so i didn’t do the squirrel shaped fish I had planned, but i did make traditional dumplings (from scratch, if you please – no wonton wrappers for me!) with a veggie filling – I kind of mixed this recipe for the filling, with this one for the wrappers. As one might expect, China was a particularly rich source for very cool swords – making it Kai’s number one country right now!

Kai finally finished typing his letter to Santa. He’s decided that typing is easier than writing (he gets frustrated his letters don’t look like mine…but they do when he types!)…and with uncommon persistence he typed the whole thing himself…and we emailed it to ‘santa’ who emailed back and said he would do his best to find a double cross-over ninja sword (yikes…!).

Today we met up with homeschool/unschool friends in a lovely cafe in Kingston. The kids had an absolute ball, and we all had a wonderful time chatting and eating yummy food!

This was in the back of the cafe – Citrus Moon, great for kids and the food is all free range and goodness!

Unfotunately, all three of us fell asleep for 2 hours when we got home…so it’s likely to be a late night!

Phew. When I just re-read that, I realise it wasn’t such a quiet week after all! No wonder i’m knackered!

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Unschool Monday: follow the knowledge trail

I was chatting to a friend last week, who unshooled in the ACT, where the registration and reporting process is somewhat more…urm….rigid, than it is in Tassie. I can’t tell exactly what it’s going to be like in SA, but I think somewhere between Tas and ACT probably…

The friend mentioned a particular method she used in her reporting that the edu-people liked – and that was how she and her daughter followed a knowledge trail.  We all follow knowledge trails with our kids, probably just some people are more aware of it. Even kids Kai’s age..and in terms of ‘watching them learn’, it’s a great way to show how learning happens in an unschooling home.

So, clearly with nothing better to do with my time than play with graphics and pretty pictures in PowerPoint, I decided to make a flow-chart (*groan*) of the knowledge trail (s) that resulted from this weeks Global Grub country – Costa Rica.

 

I did plan on having a photo of the final casado con pollo that we made – we got the recipe for the barbacoa chicken from here, and the recipe for pinto gallo/casado from here, but a friend came over and I forgot all about photo’s! 

And the text is rubbish and you can’t read it…maybe if you zoom in! Next time i’ll figure out a better font!

I think, in terms of keeping the education people happy, this is a good thing to record occasionally – maybe when you go on a really long and convoluted knowledge trail…..

I’m certainly learning a lot about food culture and cooking…

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Unschool Monday: What idiot called it the 3 R’s!?

Our friend Mama Owlet has asked us all to play along with ‘Unschool Monday‘,  I’m just trying to figure out how to put the button on my page…so here it is for now… and I’ll keep trying to figure it out!!

I guess i’m hoping that doing an Unschool Monday post will help me focus and actually think about ‘how’ and ‘what’ Kai is learning, rather than just knowing and trusting that learning is happening…things I’m going to have to think about more and more as the time comes closer to registering with the schools board…

So in this past week obviously we have been camping and we did a lot of what could be classed as ‘biology’ type stuff. I would imagine that Kai is probably somewhat ahead of most kids his age in terms of his biological knowledge, not because he’s Sid The Science Kid (SUCH a lame cartoon!), but basically just through osmosis since that is what Brett and I talk a lot about, and what a lot of our activities revolve around….spotlighting, finding and identifying tracks and poop, catching lizards, identifying different species….

I think it’s also imperative that kids get the chance to actually interact with animals in the real world – and by that I don’t mean a zoo or a DVD, I mean really in their natural habitat – on the beach, in the woods, in the dirt. A whole book has been written about the dangers of our divorce from nature – “Last Child in the Woods” by Richard Louv. I’d recommend reading it, it is a great book, although I found it rather tediously verbose in places.. (yeah, i know – i should talk about being verbose!).

Apart from the ubiquitous biology and natural history in our house, how and what else is Kai learning?

I suppose most people are most interested in the three so-called R’s…although whoever (actually – Sir William Curtis) came up with that idea is clearly as literate as the person who invented the Toys R Us logo! Although I don’t subscribe to the propaganda that reading, writing and arithmatic (or Reckoning – as the original third R was!) are any harder than anything else to learn, I suppose the school board will – and I know they are ‘core’ focus subjects, so I suppose I should make an effort to think about them here!

Well, Kai’s grasp on numbers and simple math seems to have improved lately….mostly related to trying to figure out how many yogurts (or chocolate mousse) will be left in the box if he takes another one! He’s also been having a go at counting out his allowance to see what he can buy with it, and, of course, he’s been playing Jedi Maths on his Leapster – but on closer inspection i’ve noticed that he just shoots any answer until he gets to the right one!! I’m sure it’s all sinking in there somewhere though and eventually it’s gotta be easier to shoot the correct number first, surely!?!

He is enjoying ‘reading’ comic books – we get K-Zone from the library, and I got him a Scooby-doo one yesterday. I’m pretty sure he knows a few sight words, but he mostly likes the pictures (don’t we all? The Scooby-doo comic is awesome – it has bad mummies and vampires!!).

As for ‘writing’…well, yesterday he finished his Kumon maze book, that we bought in Colorado…I don’t make it a habit to buy workbooks, but he does like mazes, when it suits him, and is actually very good at them (better than me, although that’s not saying much!). At the end of the book was a certificate for me to fill in and give to him as a ‘prize’ for finishing the book. I’m happy to say that he was monumentally unimpressed with getting a certificate, although I filled it in anyway!

I’m not the least bit worried about writing – it’s the one ‘R’ where I actually see him progressing in a way that makes sense to me…and I know and trust he’s progressing in all other realms of learning, sometimes it’s just not in a way that is traditionally obvious.

By rote of ‘International Food Night’ (renamed – Global Grub Night!!), we have been doing a whole lot of geography, culture, history and cooking…and a bit of politics!

We  had Iran last week, and we looked at the scenery and animals of Iran (Iranian cheetahs are very cool, and the scenery was breathtaking!), and we talked a bit about dictators – although there’s only so much a 4 year-old can take in about dictatorships I think, it was just that a picture of the Ayatollah Khomeini came up while we were googling! And we found some mightly cool swords …

We chose Iran’s national dish of ‘Chelo kebabs’ – the first time yet we’ve actually found a ‘national dish’. Since the only red meat we eat is kangaroo, it wasn’t totally authentic, and we also didn’t use basmati, or chelo, rice, since i only had brown…but they looked pretty good, and tasted better – i think the stainless steel camping plates add to the authentic look !!

This week Kai has chosen Costa Rica, and we got a Inca and Aztec book out from the library (although I can’t find any evidence either the Inca’s, Aztecs or Mayans actually lived in Costa Rica – but close enough!)…more to come!

Sometimes it seems, certainly to others – and occasionally to me, that we spend a lot of days doing nothing in particular, and certainly nothing ‘educational’ or ‘schooly’. But when you stop and write it all down, it’s really quite amazing what we do in a week, and how much we achieve…no wonder I’m knackered!

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Libya Food Friday & More…..

Up until today, we have been enjoying the spring sunshine up here…yes, even on the mountain! On Thursday we hung out at home and then went swimming at the local pool in the afternoon. Well, Kai did, specifically, i sat on the side and watched. It was kind of annoying as there was a lesson, with kids around Kai’s age, and they took up the whole shallow end….but i guess it made Kai swim more since he couldn’t reach the bottom!

On Friday we went to PALS, although Kai wasn’t really too keen before we left. But, we made a pact that if he wasn’t having fun, we’d ditch it and go to the coffee shop! But, as is usual, he had fun when he got there, especially since it was sunny and all the kids were outside. I had a somewhat strained conversation with a mom who thought that some kids ‘just needed’ to be smacked…I made some disagreeable noises and moved on…Sometimes i wish i had more guts to really tell people what i think…i’m working on it!

We did go to the coffee shop – a really lovely place in Cygnet called The Red Velvet Lounge, the chef gets all local produce where possible and keeps this blog….i got a chai and Kai got a jumbo choc chip cookie!

In the afternoon, we pottered around home. Kai’s rope swing has undergone something of an evolution of late, making it bigger, better, more fun, and slightly safer….

I think he looks so old in this photo! So, he played out there for a while, then we picked some silverbeet from the garden for our Libya dinner.

So, the dish we decided on for Libya was Tabikhet silq, otherwise known as chard stew with chicken, and i got it from here.  I’m now going to try and copy and paste the arabic words for it: طبيخة سلق – so there you go! I really love the arabic script..it is so beautiful..i’d love to learn it, but i know i never will!

So, Kai was a great help in the kitchen again, chopping the silverbeet and the garlic for dinner.

Yes, that is a real paring knife! Kids are able to do so much more than we give them credit for..Just take a look at these amazing images – some of these kids are working in quarries and who knows where else….I’m not saying that i’m going to send Kai into a diamond mine (hmm, now there’s an idea..kidding!!)….i’m just saying I trust him to be sensible with a knife when he wants to contribute to dinner! I think he feels very proud that we trust him to use it and he can really help out. Since we started with International Food Night, he has been asking to help out more and more, and helped me chop the veggies for a soup tonight too.

Today we decided to head into Hobart, the big city…Kai and Brett went to the museum, and I had a browse around the Salamanca Markets. Kai took his camera and took a few pictures in the museum to show me what i was missing…

He took this – i think it’s some kind of carnivore! And he also took this…

…Which is the Muttaburrasaurus in the lobby.  His camera is a Vtech Kidizoom, and it’s actually pretty good…I’d recommend one for a kid Kai’s age (maybe up to 6 or so…older kids will think it’s lame!)..it’s pretty robust, but it is digital and downloads to the computer, and has add-on’s to put frames and images on your pictures too.

While i was downloading Kai’s camera images (of which there were many!), i found this self-portrait, which i absolutely love…i might blow it up and get it framed..

So, after that, we had fish and chips at the docks, which were yummy, then we headed across town to look for a tent for our summer adventures in Tassie..In looking for a tent, we inevitably ended up in Big W, and Kai spent this weeks allowance on more Star Wars figures (Count Dooku, and some trooper guy!)…and we actually found a Star Wars game for his Leapster…it was called ‘Jedi Maths’, which i tried to explain, but he still wanted it even if it required number work….so, with the last of his birthday money, we got it…and he promptly got annoyed at it on the way home, said it was too hard, and he wasn’t going to play it!! So…maybe he’ll drag it out on occasion, maybe not….his birthday money, his choice!

We did get a tent, and we are looking forward to using it in the next couple of weeks..

Other than that, i have had a lot of work on, which is fabulous, but finding the time to actually do it is something of an effort! I finished one article on Thursday, only to get another email from another magazine to do another…I am pretty happy that mags are actually emailing me about work…and the deadline is not too crazy for this one! The most recent NCCARF Newsletter (which i design, write and edit) also came out this month, so here’s a link! The newsletter details climate change adaptation research and news from around Australia, specifically for terrestrial ecosystems.

My most recent assignment concerns the environmental impact of toothbrushes…which i’d never actually considered, i’m ashamed to admit…Since we moved to Tassie, I have been very conscious of keeping the house as plastic free as is possible – i have no plastic in the kitchen – no bowls, glasses or implements…now Kai is older, that is easily possible..but the one thing i hadn’t thought about was our plastic toothbrushes…so this is an interesting assignment – and if you look, there are alternatives…recycled plastic, biodegradable plastic and bamboo toothbrushes are some options…can’t say much else till the article is coming out!!

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