Change is afoot

If any of you are still out there waiting for me to add to my blog, here I am.

A lot has happened since August. We have moved house. I honestly thought I had found the house I would spend my life in, but then this house came up for auction (twice), and there were certain things that tempted us to it... actually really only one thing - the sea. So now we live on a coastal property, and if you walk 82 steps down from our deck, you get to the sea. You have to go at high tide, or you'll just find mud, but that's OK with me. The kids like the mud, the change is kind of interesting, and I quite like having to consult a tide chart when planning my day (or even my month).

So we can now invite people over "for a row" (if the tide is right). And, fabulously, we're in a cul-de-sac, so the kids can play out in the street with a number of neighbourhood kids. Our old street was far too busy for that (and it attracted boy racers). On the downside (and I think I might cry here), we've lost our mature fruit trees. This new property has a few - bananas that actually fruit, although unfortunately a rat or possum is eating them, and a fabulous grapevine that is actually inside our house in a sort of greenhousy-dining-room area, but we had so much more at the old place. Weep, weep. The only other downside is the loss of a big outside grass area. This section is a bit smaller and much steeper (as you get with coastal sections). The gardens are actually fabulous in their own way - lots of exotic plants which are meant to be of 'historic' interest even (I doubt anyone's interested). So it feels sort of tropical here - date palms and nikaus and bananas and an evergreen magnolia and a huge Moreton Bay fig - but there are also piles of weeds, and not very much to eat. Oh and there is a very very pretty climbing rose.

Other changes have happened too of course. Our house guests are still in NZ, but they're in our old house. We still see lots of them of course. And another big change has been going from a household in which one child reads fluently (and two don't) to a household in which two read fluently and the third is on the cusp of it. You might not think this would make a big difference, and perhaps most families don't notice this change much because it happens more slowly and it happens at school anyway, but when you are a home ed family and the reading-lightbulb-moment happens very suddenly, you certainly notice. Somehow, we have left "young childhood" behind. There is much less time spent playing with little animals and fairies in the doll's house, and much more spent in complete silence, on the bed, with nose in book.

Poor old Poz is the last one to learn to read. He is so so so so close. He is reading better than Daughter could 3 months ago. And yet her change has been so meteoric that he feels there is a gulf between them. Watch this space, though. He is trying so hard.

My ghastly skiing injury is NOT changing. After 3 1/2 months it is much improved but it feels very static. We are still going away sailing this summer, and I have found that I can get in and out of dinghies, so hopefully all be well. However, I am NOT patient. I am utterly sick of it.

At some point, I'll upload photos of the new house and of all the other things we've been doing.

I do want to write something more about our home ed journey sometime soon. Because it is going along so beautifully at the moment. Not just the reading. The whole shebang. But that will take more time than I have now.