Another week begins

Jed’s got a new count-down running! We got word from our forwarding agent on Friday to say that Jed’s trike was on the ship and that the ship was leaving China. It should take about 4 weeks for the ship to travel from Ningbo port to Cape Town. Jed’s counting the sleeps till the ship lands. Hopefully it won’t take more than a week to clear the trike through customs once it arrives. We’re planning to visit our friends Aki and Jacky (from Cyprus) in Somerset West and spend a night or two with them when we go down with a trailer to collect the trike.

In the meantime we soldier on with our business initiative, trying to get our newly printed flyers and posters out to every possible place moms with babies would visit. Farmfresh still hasn’t managed to load up our products, so that avenue is taking longer than we expected.

Today we started with our new set of books from Sylma and the ‘history’ book we’re doing covers economics – what a timely book! Called ‘Whatever happened to Candy Penny?’, we’re already enjoying what we’ve read. We also started reading ‘The wolves of Willoughby Chase’ and really enjoyed the first chapter! I pulled up my finest British accent as I read it, and I felt like I was at drama school! The language isn’t easy to read, and I found myself stopping to explain quite a few terms as we went along, but it was great reading! Ethan amazed me as he counted to 100 today: we were working through a 100-square which had some numbers missing, and I think, for the first time, he understood the number-concepts as he visually saw them! It was wonderful! Dieter had a great time writing numbers in chalk outside on the cement blocks with Aimee. Actually, Ethan thought it was so much fun - he joined in too! Its been a busy and productive morning.

I’ve been listening to some homeschooling parents over the last few weeks wax lyrical about how little the actually do (academically) and how good it is for their children. Some of my closest friends are catching onto this idea and, while I think its freeing not to be bound to a strict time/content schedule, I do worry about their decisions. I have a very real sense of not wanting to disappoint my children as we home school by doing so little together that they won’t be equipped to make wide-ranging decisions about their own futures. I’d hate for them to regret our years together and see themselves as being deprived in any way! And so I will continue to do all in my power to challenge and introduce them to as much as possible, done as well as possible! In the meantime, this is such an amazing adventure!

Ryan prepared his first tuna-cheese sauce for pasta this afternoon. We’re going to have spaghetti for supper and he was keen to help make the sauce. He did everything from chopping up the onions and opening tuna tins, to putting all the ingredients together and made a lovely thick, cheesy tuna sauce with herbs. He was rather chuffed with the outcome, and I know he’ll really enjoy it! I had better cook both packets of spaghetti when we get back from football, he usually has a few servings of pasta for dinner and tonight I’m sure he’ll have more!

Its only 4pm and its been a great day already! And today’s only Monday – bring on the week!