15yo’s cardboard armour had been getting more and more detailed each iteration. I hadn’t seen any for a while and thought maybe he’d finally lost interest in it but one day some parts came in large boxes and suddenly there was more. It was quite detailed with individual pieces cut out and taped together (an entire roll of packing tape was used in this endeavour). I think it was a potential practice run for making larger cosplays (he had dreams of making a Space Marine cosplay like the one he’d seen at the Royal Show and then he realised how much effort was involved and that it wasn’t going to be a few hour thing like his previous projects.

The Christmas Island trip continued with all its fun and educational opportunies. 15yo found a new “pet” at Lily Beach when we trooped over for our annual campfire. It was put back down somewhere safe after the photo.

I had bought The Art of War in very recent history (can’t remember precisely when but I feel like it’s been at least a year by now) as 14yo had expressed a desire to read it. He didn’t get around to actually reading it until recently, when he suddenly went on a health kick (both physical and mental) and on advice of J and 18yo, started trying to get in at least a little bit of exercise, eat a healthy breakfast (the kids and I don’t really eat breakfast as we never feel particualrly hungry for a while after waking up) and read a book every day.

We accidentally had two excursions this month. I’m not sure whether that makes us “caught up” due to not having one last month or able to chill next month given that the first and second months tend to be organisational and transitional. The last time we went to the Gravity Discovery Centre was in 2010. Unfortunately stuff just didn’t occur to J and I, for whatever reason I thought that we were only going for the night thing even though their night things always include entry into the rest of it, so I didn’t cancel roleplaying, and J assumed we’d be roleplaying and didn’t mention it. And it was unfortunate as the kids would have made the entire solar system walk now, before we only managed to get up to Uranus before we had to turn back.

The year started off great with 16yo and I getting our jobs back at the kids’ gym (they’re “just” volunteer jobs but won’t be too much longer). A lot of stuff has changed, a couple of things are really not great, some stuff is fantastic, and some stuff is kind of wait and see. As well as being put on for an introduction class and a group of level 3s, she was allowed to help with the Kindergym classes seeing as she wants to get into childcare. This is going to make up the bulk of her homeschooling program alongside the monthly assignments. She’s been registered for OLNA and we should hopefully work out where she’s going to sit it as that’s happening sometime in the next couple of months.

13yo continued on his dessert presentation experiments, jumping on the Halloween bandwagon with this “vampire” themed one (the bananas were meant to be fangs), and the goblet was a prop we’d bought some other Halloween). Towards the end of the week where we’re running out of stuff and need to do more grocery shopping, there was this much simpler but still very delicious fare (can’t go wrong with peanut butter as long as you’re not allergic to peanuts).

This month was just as action packed as the previous one. There was one more excursion with the parents, extended family and Up Close and Local Tours but minus 17yo (who was feeling a bit run down and decided to play it paranoid) to Bunbury, where we stopped by a little cafe with its own little adorably put together food garden. After that it was off to the Dolphin Discovery Centre.

13yo’s kitchen experiments continued, he made sticky date puddings with caramel sauce. Was delicious warm with ice cream. He made two of them because he loves making massive batches of anything for some reason. Worked out alright as I think most if not everyone in the house likes sticky date pudding.

It was another stay home month as I got too caught up in project related things and kept not sleeping, and also continually failed at finding places that we could go while unvaccinated. We did stuff though. Like going into the TAFE and finding out that 15yo could try to get into the Cert I course that 17yo is doing next semester in preparation for going into the early childhood course sometime next year.

After ending January on a high, I was looking forward to finding more expensive excursions that the kids would be interested in and working out what cheaper or free things I could sprinkle in between. And then vaccine mandates dropped which basically meant we weren’t “allowed” to do much of anything. Fortunately the kids were still “allowed” to go to gymnastics and TAFE, and in that time 17yo managed to regain his backflip (he had it last year, then lost it in the second half of the year), and on the same night got the double.