School Representative Council

Katy was voted as the School Rep for her class for this semester. She gets to attend fortnightly meeting with the other SRC members to discuss school matters.  Well done Katy!

Pesky Possums

Was very disappointed when I harvested the corn last weekend to find more than half had already been enjoyed by the possums! Then of the 7 untouched corn cobs, only 2 were good. In the remaining 5 cobs, the kernels had insufficiently developed. Not sure if that is a result of poor soil, poor pollination or what....

As for the rest of the garden, well it is mostly doing ok. There a few capsicum, chillies and eggplants growing; the tomatoes are continuing to ripen and the sweet potato vine looks healthy. The raspberry plants have flourish and I look forward to next year when they produce their first crop. Despite the zucchini plants flowering we still are yet to be inundated with zucchinis.

We have planted peas, red cabbage, cauliflower, broccolini and coriander. So far they have survived the possums, warm weather and bugs but it's only early days really!

While planting these last weekend, this black bug with iridescent blue wings caught my eye...it was wondering around in the mulch.

With a little help from google, we discovered this was a Black Flower Wasp, a native wasp. Although these have stingers, they are not aggressive as they have no nest to protect. Instead the female digs in the mulch to find a beetle which she temporarily paralyses before laying her eggs in it. Thus the growing larvae has its own food supply!

Winter Ready

The sun is rising later and the coolness is creeping into the morning air - it was a very crisp 3°C a few mornings ago  and  Perisher had a dusting of snow! And so we farewell our short but hot summer. In preparation for winter our firebricks arrived! One tonne of them on a large palate. Thankfully the forklift squeezed down our driveway, placing the bricks as close as possible to the garage.

We first heard of these fire bricks last winter and tested a few boxes. We were very impressed with them. The bricks are created from sawdust, compressed under high pressure. The result is an environmentally friendly heat source that burns cleaner and hotter.

The only catch, the fire bricks need to be stored in a dry place, so last year Andy put together a few shelves in readiness.  A simply transfer of the fire bricks into the garage revealed our calculations were slightly out and we needed more room! No problem, a trip to Bunnings for more melamine and another storage area appeared. We are ready for ignition so bring on that chilly weather....

Weetbix Tryathlon

Katy and Ella both signed up for the Weetbix Tryathlon in Canberra. The hot weather continued with a maximum of 35°C forecast. We arrived in plenty of time to collect the t-shirt, have numbers drawn on, have a bike check and set up in transition.

The 7 and 8 yrs olds were first to start although the 7 girls were the last in the block. While waiting for Katy, Ella ran off with Aoife, Lily and Mia to explore the village...have fun in the bouncy obstacle course!

Katy was fairly nervous leading up to the event. We did find one of her school friends on the day and they went in together to the briefing. Katy needn't have been nervous. She smashed the swim (75m) catching the wave in front and dodging noodles! A quick transition saw her onto the bike (3km). She was still smiling on her return. The 500m run was easy and she was very happy to have finished.

It was a little wait before Ella and Aoife began. Eventually they appeared in transition and were off on the bike course. Ella also appeared to be enjoying herself. We had to jog (quickly) to watch Ella cross the finish line. She looked hot and spent some time under the water spray tent.

Both girls were inspired with their races and there was talk of investigating the ACT triathlon calendar for kids friendly races!

Keeping Cool

Last weekend was a scorcher here in Canberra with two 40°C days!! Despite no air conditioning in our house we managed to keep cool.

On Friday night, while I was catching up with some mums from our mothers group, Andy headed down to Lake Burley Griffin with the girls and Pippa. They enjoyed their picnic dinner and multiple swims.

On Saturday, Little Aths, anticipating the heat began their program 45mins earlier. There was a surprise visit from the ACT Fire Brigade and everyone thoroughly enjoyed being hosed down!!

Later in the afternoon we headed down to Cotter Bend with friends. A great spot for a dip and another picnic dinner.

Job Jar

A few years ago we tried to get the girls to do jobs for money. It was ok but didn't really last for very long. Recently we instigated a scheme - jobs for iPad/ screen time jar (thanks Annwen for the idea). 

How does it work? Well very simply...each child has different coloured popsticks A job and time equivalent is written on each popstick. Once a job has been completed, the popstick is moved to the iPad jar. Then as the opportunity arises, they can cash in the popsticks for screen time.

The beauty of this scheme is in the flexibility of the jobs and time equivalent. We can add or take away jobs plus change the time to place more emphasis on jobs that we would like them to do, or ones they aren't very good at doing! At the moment the girls like to fold the washing earning them a large chunk of time (15mins) but are reluctant to make their bed (5mins). Anyway it's early days but the job jar seems to be working with the girls often looking for jobs to do which makes a nice change from me badgering them :)

 

School Begins for 2017