Often the kids and I will play eye spy while driving and every now and then something will happen that we just don’t expect. Such as a ute we spotted the other day, nothing unusual there but then all of a sudden a little Shih Tzu popped it’s head up to catch the wind in it’s face. It just looked so ridiculous and completely unsafe. I have no idea why the dog wasn’t in the cabin, especially since there were no passengers and it was a 4 door ute.  Eye Spy a poor little dog!

My nephew is starting half a day a week at daycare today.  I have had him three days a week for the past three and a half years and as an only child he has really benefited from the interaction with my own children. However now that he is 4 years and 2 months of age he is a big boy and I’m sure he will enjoy playing with kids his own age.  It’s no secret that I am VERY anti-daycare and I make no apologies for my view but I realise that my oldest child was in pre-school at 4 so perhaps with the new cut off ages for prep this part time pre-prep daycare option is quite a good thing. Of course you need to be able to pay for the service and I remember when my youngest got a place in a pre-prep program back in 2007 and I had to turn it down.  The fee of $15 a day was simply impossible for us to come up with, thank God those days are behind us! I was quite concerned that my sister would find the cost of this pre-prep a real struggle as well but how wrong I was.  Thanks to a governments rebate system my sister only has an out of pocket expense of 5 cents an hour… yep 5 cents!  Nice to know the government thinks I’m worth 60 cents a day…yay for me!

POST SCRIPT:  I have just found out that my sister doesn’t qualify for the governments JET programe so now instead of an out of pocket expense of just 60 cents a day she has to pay $6.50… my value just skyrocketed…double yay for me!

My seven year old just performed in a class play for us parents and I have to say… it sucked!  The kids were great but the school doesn’t have an enclosed hall or even a drama room so they performed out on the concrete slab near the drinking fountains.  We were under a tin roof straining to hear the children perform when it started to rain.  At this point the children were singing “Puff the magic dragon” and the stereo kept cutting out but the kids continued on as if nothing was wrong.  However something was wrong and when Luke pointed out the problem I could hardly believe it.  There was an extention cord running from a storage room to the cd player and it was in the open being rainned on.  It got worse though because it wasn’t just one ten meter extention cord it was three or four extention cords all joined up leaving two joined sections sitting in water on the concrete!  No wonder the cd player kept cutting out.  Obviously public schools have such a tight budget that health and safety issues get pushed aside.  If this performance was done in a private school I’m sure they would have been in a drama room performing on stage with lights and an audio set up that wasn’t likely to electrocute someone.

My sister and I have been volunteering for a couple of years now at a local food parcel charity run out of a school/church group in my area.  We pack boxes with food items for struggling families, we do this in a tiny room with no air-conditioning and believe it or not – no windows!  We can’t even open the door because the room is like a small storage area attached to a classroom.  It’s not so bad in Winter but on a hot day it’s like a bloody sauna.  So last year we asked if we could have a fan in there and the church purchased two fans for us but no one assembled them until after Summer.  Now that it’s getting hot and we have fans I went to plug them in the other day but guess what?  There were no sockets for me to plug them in!  So I guess it’s going to be another hot summer in that tiny room while the rest of the church building and attached school enjoy air-conditioning.  I guess that’s why the job we do is voluntary… no one would put up with those kind of work conditions!

My youngest goes to school with a boy who has autism and my oldest also had an autistic boy in her class a few years back.   These children have carers to help them so it’s no big deal… or so I thought.  Today after school one of the mothers asked me to sign a petition requesting that this boy be removed from the school.  I couldn’t believe it but then again I didn’t know what was going on.  Apparently this boy is quite violent and has bitten and attacked the other kids without provocation.  He has made some of the children bleed and apparently the kids are scared of him.  The teachers have a book in which they document all the incidences and there have been quite a lot.  The children exclude him because of this behaviour and I think this simply makes the situation worse.  It’s a sticky situation because on one hand I understand his parents just want their boy to be “mainstream” but his agression and violence are causing distractions in the class as well as fear in the children.  I have not signed the petition yet because my daughter is not scared of him and he hasn’t hurt her… yet. I’m just not sure how I would feel if it were MY child everyone wanted to boot out. This is not a black and white situation and I’m not sure what to do… is there a right and wrong here?

My girls are turning 8 and 6 this year and I have managed to avoid birthday parties… until now!  I have always flat out said “no” to parties and I have no idea why I’m crumbling like a cookie now.  However, I’m not buying into the whole “wonderland” party scene where parents fork out big bucks to have pony rides and jumping castles… no way Jose.  Not when kids are perfectly happy just laughing and playing amongst themselves.  Sure I’ll have a few party games but not this crappy everyone wins bull plop… there’s only ever one winner and the sooner the kids learn that the better.  Go on call me harsh, call me a meanie, I don’t mind.  My oldest will have high sugar party foods and drinks crammed into an hour and a half of games and fun at the local park.  Surely that’s enough, isn’t it? As for my youngest, I offered her the same deal but she turned it down.  Her celebration request is a party for one with her boyfriend… isn’t that cute?  So it’s a playdate and dinner with my possible future son-in-law, that should be easy enough.  Next year though…. NO PARTIES!  Ahhhh who am I kidding?  If all the Kings horses and all the Kings men couldn’t put Humpty together again… a crumbled cookie is going to stay crumbled!

Two nights ago we had quite a wild storm and the next day at school all us mums and dads were comparing damages and telling tales of woe.  The lollypop lady told me of a tree that was down around the corner so I drove past out of interest and my curiosity was surely satisfied.  As I slowly went by I saw a huge gum tree lying on it’s side just inches from someones home and a large chunk of the footpath was simply gone… torn apart as the roots were pulled from the soil.  This was just one tree but all through Brisbane trees were knocked over, cars and homes damaged and unfortunatly even a young man drowned in a stormwater drain.  If this was the damage from a storm I’d hate to see the damage from a cyclone! The only good news I heard was of a woman who now has beautiful sweeping city views thanks to the storm bringing down the big tree in her neighbours yard.  As soon as the tree fell the value of her house jumped dramaticlly… now that’s a blessing if ever I have heard one!

We recently got brand new couches, in leather so they are easy to clean.  I watched the leather care DVD that came with them and I also rubbed them down with the leather protector product we purchased.  We haven’t had them long but already my daughter managed to get pen on them so off I rushed to the bedroom to get the appropriate cleaning products I have stashed under our bed.  (any storage space available is used in our house)  My jaw almost hit the ground when I returned to the lounge room to find my husband using his spit to try to rub the ink off.   I know parents will sometimes use spit to rub something off their child’s face but spit is NOT a couch cleaning product!  AAAAHHHHHHH… the leather care DVD said to not let unclothed body parts come in contact with the leather… crazy I know… but if they don’t want you sweating on it I highly doubt they want you spitting on it!  I used the correct cleaning products and got the ink off the couch, I love my new couch!

My oldest is in a 3/4 composite class at the moment and last year she was in a 1/2 composite.  Last year she seemed fine with her school work and excelled at reading, however she was a grade two student so perhaps the work was a little easier to accomodate the grade ones.  This year however Claire is a grade 3 student with grade 4 work in her ciriculum with the added pressure that her teacher taught grade 5 last year.  I just don’t like the composite class arrangement!  Claire is the youngest in her class being seven and the oldest student is a girl aged ten… that’s a big gap.  Today I discovered that Claire doesn’t know the states of Australia (apparently Canada is a state of Australia???) yet her homework required that basic knowledge in order to complete the task. I just get the feeling that the teacher is trying his best but perhaps there are a lot of assumptions as to what the students have been taught so far… I don’t know.  So Luke sat Claire in front of the computer to have a look at Australia on google maps.  A short time later he came back to find her zoomed in on a road and he asked her where she was, to which she replied “I’m in the middle of nowhere”.  Perhaps I simply have to accept that my little pumpkin is not as academic as her father!

I hate to say it but I believe it to be the truth… Steve Irwin had to die!  Well we all have to die, right?  And with that in mind the tragedy that surrounds Steve Irwin’s death has in fact been a blessing to conservation.  Of course it’s very sad for his family but I doubt very much Australia Zoo and conservation in general would have received as much attention as it has if Steve Irwin were still alive today.  Just yesterday I read a news article about the 2008 Craft & Quilt fair where a Steve Irwin quilt sold for $9000…Crikey! He will forever be known as the crocodile hunter and I’m not sure that would have happened if he grew old, wore down and simply faded out of sight.