Monday, September 22, 2008

Misc.

A few notes from the last week or so....

Kieran got his NSW Maths results back... Every year the University of New South Wales does a series of tests called ICAS (International Competitions and Assessments for Schools). The tests come back with detailed results about how Kieran did and also comparitive information as to how Kieran did against the other year 6 particpants in NZ. Normally Kieran gets a distinction- but this time around his maths was a High Distinction which means he did better than 99% of other year 6 children in NZ... pretty darn good!

Talking about school the new traveling arrangements are excellent. Our neighbour Niamh is enjoying not having to be up and ready to go and I'm loving having everything that I have to go out and do done by 9am! The boys, Finley and Fraser, are warming up to me... they were a bit quiet to start with... and I am sure that we will all be rocking it to school in typical Stockley fashion sometime soon!

A couple of weekends ago we did the kids gardens for the summer. I weeded them out and totally mixed up the soil (it was pretty compact with old root systems etc). Then we went on a family adventure to Kings and brought compost and seedlings. I added the compost when we got home and the kids added the seedlings... all going well we will have an awesome crop of lettuce, rocket, tomatoes, capsicum and basil at least and some other good stuff too like corn and pumpkin later on.


We also brought some flower seedlings so I did some work on the kids roses to get them ready for summer as well.



Kieran's rose had died so we got a replacement and this spurred me on to getting Will's rose which we had to order in especially. It was good to finally get his placenta out of the freezer and into the pot although I am going to be in trouble when Merenia realises that I did it while she was at school because she wanted to see his "activity" (umbilical) cord. Each of the kids had their placenta buried with a rose (even Merenia you can bring them through customs!!). This is a scrapbook page from last year;


Kieran's is 'Blue Moon' (lilac/blue ), Saskia's is 'Auckland Metro' (cream with a pink apricot tinged centre) and Merenia's 'Blackberry Nip' (rich blackberry red) Will's was a tough choice we looked at all the roses at Bell Roses up the road from us but could quite find what we were after though Kieran did spot "Iced Ging-a" which was the hot favourite till we found this on the net...


So Will's rose is 'Matawhero Magic'. Mata has a number of different meanings in Maori, one of which means fresh, whero is red. Matawhero is also the Maori name for the planet Mars. Orange is Will's colour I always knew it would be, before he was born even, don't ask me why I've never associated a colour with my unborn babies before but I knew Will was orange.

Merenia had her Cross country the week before last as well. I offered to pay her if she improved 5 places on last year... unforutunately she only imporved 2 places so she just got an ice block. I'm not at all competitive but I don't want her to be that girl the one who walks in last for all the school races... like me. So for the last three she has done she was last but this time she was third last and made a really good effort to run in at the end. Yay!




I've also been meaning to tell you about what Elliot does for a while now.....



Elliots pet name for Will is 'Maah' don't ask me why that's just what he calls him. Most days when he comes over he reminds me to take Will's daily photo if I haven't already but the other thing he does is to 'hypnotise' Will and Will is quite taken with it. It goes like this....



"Look into my eyes, look into my eyes. The eyes, the eyes. No not around the eyes, look into my eyes, look into my eyes. 1, 2, 3, (click) your under!" ~Insert instruction here~ eg "You will stop screaming for 10 minutes" and then "1, 2, 3, (click) you're back in the room." Will stops and listens to that every time Elliot does it and will generally follow the instruction for at least 60 seconds... it's a lovely funny relationship.

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