Echo

The other day Venus, Mars and I were walking back to the car after school. We walked past the empty canteen and, unusually, one of the doors was open. Venus stuck her head through the doorway and shouted "hellooooo" so she could listen to the echo.

It was a pretty impressive echo.

So she did it again, and then called out to Mars, who had already walked past the open door, but was now heading back in her direction.

"You have a turn" she said to him.

So he stuck his head through the doorway, and at the top of his voice shouted "underpants!"

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the many differences between a six year old girl and a nine year old boy.

Here is an unrelated photo of the kids in their cubby/sweat shop. It looks like they're working hard, but actually they're both playing games. I'm kind of happy that they're not too old to build a cubby and spend time in it together. It's one of things I remember fondly from my own childhood. This one had a limited life expectancy because we used the chairs that we sit on to eat dinner, but the kids didn't mind. We can always build another one next time. No, not just another cubby, a bigger, better cubby with free wifi and lots of snacks. 

Hmm, snacks. We'd better make sure it's big enough for me too.

Pancakes

We love pancakes. Some Saturday mornings instead of having breakfast we make a big bowl of pancake batter and we have brunch instead. 

Ah, brunch. That wonderful meal where you can throw down fluffy pancakes covered in chocolate syrup, and they're so delicious that you inevitably eat too many and can't eat anything else until about four in the afternoon.

Or perhaps that's just me.

Recently some friends came over for dinner and I made pancakes for dessert, but people were pretty full already so we had lots left over. 

Today we were going to have the leftovers for afternoon tea. As soon as we got home from school I got the pancakes out of the fridge and started heating them up. Mars was helping me set the table when Venus came skipping into the room. She asked what we were having, and we told her it was pancakes.

One of the wonderful things about little kids is that they can turn seemingly any string of words into a song. Sometimes it's a song we already know, so they write their own lyrics. Other times it's just a nonsense melody.

Venus started to sing.

"Pancakes, pancakes, panky-wanky pancakes"

Hopefully she won't sing it the next time we have pancakes, or I'm going to have some explaining to do. 

The Deck

One of the reasons we bought our house was because we fell in love with the enormous deck that runs right down the side and overlooks a little creek with a bike path running along beside it.

Now, a few years on, the deck needs to be sanded and stained. Supernerd started working on it a while back, but this bit of DIY turned into a drama, and then the drama evolved into a saga. So now we have a guy sanding and staining the deck for us.

We had a good feeling about this guy right from the start, when he made a time to come and quote for the job, and then called back to ask whether it was okay if he got here early. Early! Supernerd was impressed.

Anyway he started this morning and had got quite a bit done. Then this happened.

Now lots of builders and tradesmen take their shirts off when they get too hot, I understand. But seriously, it was overcast and cool all morning, the sun must have come out for ten seconds and the shirt comes off. It was only 18 degrees out there!

He's coming back tomorrow. The top temperature is predicted to be 27 degrees. Looks like there could be a lot more topless action still to come. 

There is one other thing about the deck. Every time I go out there I look down at the bike path and I can see my Dad walking along. In the months before he died he had taken to walking quite a long way every day, and his usual route took him along the path beside our house. 

He used to stop on the path and yell rude things up at the house, just in case any of us were out on the deck. He told me once that he'd called out "Alison, your father's a reprobate and your mother likes sixties pop music!" before he realised that someone was walking along the path behind him. This man approached him, shook his hand, congratulated him on a job well done, and continued his walk. I remember how he laughed when he told me.

Anyway, now I can't go out on the deck without thinking about my Dad, but this morning I went out there with my cup of tea and I looked around and thought about him, and I managed not to cry.

That's progress.

Christmas Stories

This is one of our family's favourite Christmas anecdotes.

When Mars was small I bought a sturdy wooden nativity set. I wanted something solid so that he could play with it. When his sister got big enough they started to play with it together. Their favourite character was baby Jesus. 

The Christmas when she was three and he was six we got out the nativity set and put it all together on a small table in front of a window. Baby Jesus didn't stay there for long. Every day I'd find him in a different place somewhere else in the house. He'd be in the dolls' house,  or in with the lego, or stashed in the toy kitchen. That baby Jesus, he got around.

Supernerd's parents and sister were coming over to watch Carols by Candlelight on television on Christmas Eve, so I encouraged the children to help me tidy up by sorting out the nativity set. It was all beautifully arranged with the star stuck on the stable roof with blu-tack by the time our guests arrived.

At some point during the evening the sun was streaming in through that window so Supernerd's Dad reached over to put the blind down. He let the cord slip through his fingers a bit too fast so the blind rushed down and hit the stable at the back of our nativity scene. The stable hit the shepherds, the shepherds hit Mary and Joseph, and the baby Jesus was knocked to the floor. 

Venus, who'd seen the whole thing happen right in front of her, yelled out "Oh, Jesus!" and we laughed until we cried, because it was just so funny to see a tiny little girl inadvertently blaspheming at the top of her voice.

Nativity scene, with dinosaurs

This year, I have new Christmas story to add to our collection. This one comes from a boy in Mars' class at school. I was helping in the classroom this week and the kids were working on an activity they'd started the week before. They had a picture of Santa striding along holding a rope over his shoulder, and they had to colour it, paste it onto a larger piece of paper, draw something on the end of the rope, and then write a story to go with their drawing.

This boy, let's call him Andrew, wasn't sure what to draw. I gave him some suggestions and when I later checked on his progress he had drawn a Minecraft dog. Now, I know a little bit about Minecraft, having watched Supernerd and the kids play it together a few times.

I asked Andrew what his story would be about, but he said he didn't know. I asked him whether the dog had a name. He told me its name was Bob. I asked whether Bob, being a minecraft dog, would do 8-bit poo all over the place. Andrew laughed and said no, but the girl sitting next to him got the giggles big time. I'm not sure whether it was funny because she thought I was being clever, or whether she was just laughing because I said "poo".

When I next checked on Andrew his story was done. It went roughly like this:

Santa has a pet dog. His name is Bob. Bob is a good dog. He kills zombies and creepers and skeletons. So Santa got another dog and those two dogs bred. Now Santa has a herd of zombie-killing dogs. The End.

I don't know about you but I'm so relieved to know that, in the world of Minecraft at least, Christmas is now safe from zombies, creepers, and skeletons thanks to Bob, the 8-bit dog.

The First Christmas

This is going to be our first Christmas without Dad, and it's not going to be easy. In fact I'm dreading it, but I'm trying to stay focused on making it a special time for our children and my nephews.

I normally love Christmas. It has deep spiritual meaning for me, and while I realise that's not how everyone feels, I also love that Christmas sometimes brings out the best in people who otherwise can't be bothered. People send cards, and make phone calls, and bake for one another. They feel closer together and that's a good thing.

But like anyone, there are things about Christmas that drive me crazy.

I object to what I call "Christmas tat". Cheap and nasty decorations and gifts that are badly made, unwanted and unwelcome. The shops are full of Christmas tat at the moment and to me it's just a symbol of how commercial Christmas has become. I hate the fact that people refer to it as Xmas, and just remove Christ completely. 

I also find that I can't stand some of our modern Christmas carols. I adore music, I do, but some carols drive me crazy, and I was astonished to find myself in a shop being subjected to terrible versions of lovely Christmas songs in the month of October. It's October, people. It's too early for Christmas music in shops.

But those things aren't the point. The point is, I'm rather like Douglas Adams' electric monk just at the moment. I am simultaneously holding two contradictory beliefs. The first is that Christmas will be fine. We are all organised. The meals with our respective families are sorted. The presents are all bought and mostly wrapped. It will be fine.

The second is that if I just close my eyes and block my ears and pretend it's not happening, that Christmas will just go away and I won't have to face it.

At some point, I know, I'm going to have to face the fact that neither of these things are actually the truth. It won't be fine, and it won't go away.

But, as Ms Awesome pointed out to me the other day, we only have to get through this first Christmas once. It's just one day. Even if it hurts like hell, it's just one day.

The Star Wars Party

I promised my son a Star Wars party and I promised you a cardboard box creation. 

This time the boxes all came from Auntie Leanne, who moved house recently and brought home boxes from her workplace. This worked out really well for me, as I then had three boxes the same size and I used another single box which was kind of short and stocky.

The great thing about three boxes the same size is that you can stack them to make something tall. See if you can guess what they turned into.

To give credit where credit is due, I need to tell you that my inspiration came from these pictures.

These are templates for small paper toys. You cut them out, fold along the folds apply glue to the tabs and then you have little droids. They come from this great blog and there are lots to choose from. All I've done is adapt the pictures for my purpose.

I turned my boxes inside out, stacked the three matching boxes and stuck them together, shaped the top front flaps and painted them. Then I drew and painted the illustrations on the front and sides of the boxes. The whole thing was done in about seven hours.

The children were very impressed. Mars wanted to be Yoda and Venus was Ahsoka, a Jedi padawan who is a character from The Clone Wars series.

The droids were so popular that the children lined up to have photographs with them!

We also hosted the world's cutest Darth Vadar. That's Bumblebee, who is two and a bit now.

And this is Wicket, my new nephew. At twelve weeks old he is the most adorable Ewok ever seen.

 There's just no denying it. We are a Star Wars family, through and through.

Cardboard Boxes

People say that cats love cardboard boxes but let me tell you, cats hate cardboard boxes compared to how much I love them.

I collect them, I store things in them, I never want to throw them out just in case they might be useful for something.

My favourite thing to do with cardboard boxes is to build with them.

Earlier this year the X-Man had a pirate birthday party. So I got myself a couple of big boxes and spent about nine hours transforming them into something awesome.

Here they are, the Jellyguts and the Squidbones, pirate vessels ready to set sail. That's Venus poking her head out of the front of the Jellyguts.

One of the boxes was from Nana's new heater. The other was a fridge box salvaged from the skip out the back of a local whitegoods shop. I cut them open, turned them inside out and taped them back up, making a long point at one end. Then I cut portholes and flaps for extra fun, and drew all the details on with a couple of big black markers. The flags are made from long cardboard tubes and large sheets of black paper. If you look very closely you'll see one of those skulls is missing a tooth, the same tooth that Venus was missing at the time.

At the time I thought they were a bit small and that really only two or maybe three kids at a time would fit in each one. I forgot to factor in the size of your average three to five year old. When the pirate ships came out to play the Jellyguts was immediately occupied by three mermaids, and Squidbones, the bigger boat, managed to hold no less than five boys at any one time. In fact, the hatch that I had cut into the top of the ship which was 30cm square (the one Venus is standing in) had two small boys sticking out of it most of the time.

There were black balloons which quickly became cannon balls and there was an awful lot of swashbuckling going on. 

I think the best thing about building things out of cardboard boxes is that they are easily transformed, and when the kids first clapped eyes on them, they all started to shout "Pirate ships! Pirate ships!" None of them looked and saw cardboard boxes.

Then when Venus decided to have a witches and wizards birthday party, and by "decided to" I mean Ms Awesome and I suggested it to her and she said "Yes! Yes! Yes!", I got a bit ambitious. I'd seen some fairly impressive pictures on the internet and I became convinced I could build my little girl a witch's castle. Out of cardboard boxes. Of course. Doesn't everyone?

In the end I used three dishwasher boxes, two fridge boxes, one cot box (thanks, Auntie Marvellous) and one TV cabinet box (thanks, Auntie Leanne), and I produced a castle that exceeded my expectations.

Here are the raw cardboard boxes. I cut them all open and turned them inside out, so I could paint on the plain side and not have to worry about painting over text.

Here are some of the boxes in progress. You can see one of the turrets and one of the smaller buildings. I worked out that with the boxes I had I could manage two turrets with an arch, and two smaller individual buildings. I wanted to paint stones on all of them but just ran out of time, so the smaller buildings have their stones drawn on instead.

The finished turrets and archway. I knew they'd look good, but I never expected them to look as good as this. I added a string of artificial roses across the archway to soften it a bit. I cut plenty of peekholes in all the buildings. One of the turrets has a "secret tunnel" and the two smaller buildings have doors.

I rearranged my loungeroom so that the pieces of the castle formed a rough square inside the room. I can't tell you what the guests all said when they first saw it, but I know my kids were impressed when we installed it the day before the party. I can also tell you that those two little buildings were extremely popular. At the time Grandpa told me that all the kids were climbing in and out of those things constantly, playing peekaboo with each other and their parents and generally having a whale of a time. Again, that little house on the left had five kids crammed in it at one point, and they were all having a blast.

This project took about twenty four hours to complete over the space of five days. I learned a lot in that time. I learned that painting takes a lot longer than you think it will, and that you really really really need to think about the size of your work before you build it downstairs in the rumpus room. The large turret on the left was too tall to stand up in the room where I was secretly working away, so it had to be partially disassembled, moved, rebuilt, and then the painting had to be finished upstairs. In addition to that the small building on the left was just wider than our doorways, as it turned out. So getting the whole thing upstairs was quite an adventure.

Having all these experiences behind me, I'm beginning to think I can make just about anything out of cardboard boxes. Mars is having a Star Wars party in about three weeks. I wonder what I can build between now and then... I'll let you know.