Being good, being important, crystals and soccer dads.

1. Both my kids have been "Caught Being Good" at school recently and rewarded with  a book, a certificate and some public acclaim.  Climber's award was for being a conscientious and hard worker in all learning situations (well done, o firstborn) and Cherub's was for sharing with a friend.  Actually his teacher was super impressed with him for his actions - there'd been a special goodie bag from the canteen for Anzac Day and a boy in his class whose parents don't speak much English messed up the order, and he didn't receive one.  Cherub immediately offered to share his pack with the disappointed child, and although full marks for kindness I am bound to add that Cherub, being the fusspot he is, really wasn't that excited by the snacky contents and felt no pang in giving them up.  Still, take the credit where you can, hey?



2.  Cherub grew a crystal from one of those science kits, and a mighty impressive process it was.

This is the early stages where it started creeping down the wall as though it were a family eating triffid crystal...



 ... this is how the solution looked at the end of the 10 (?) days ...



... and this is the finished crystal, which is so pretty.



I'm keeping it as an ornament.

3. Climber's soccer team had a 'friendly' game against the parents a while ago.  Actually the Dads and one Mum put up a fairly impressive showing but ultimately went down due to lack of stamina and team fitness.  I ended up taking one of the Dads (Mavis' ex, slightly awkward) to hospital because of a shoulder injury, but as Mister Fixit put it You know it was a good match when only one of the parents ended up at hospital.



Mister Fixit is the dad in the red shirt with hair, and Climber is the sprinting blond in the centre front.

4. Cherub was class VIP last week at school. His teacher made it much more low-key than Climber's, so all Cherub was expected to do was complete the double page spread in the VIP book. - he included this photo to show that he can now do a forward flip on the trampoline - bravo! 



As an optional extra, the VIPs could bring along someone to Friday afternoon VIP presentation, and Cherub said he'd like me to come in and give everyone a tap lesson.   It was a smash success, with the kids absolutely loving it, and nearby children and staff coming from everywhere to watch and cheer and even join in behind us.

Ever the comedian, Cherub opened his VIP book entry with This is Gerald, Gerald the Chicken, no actually it's me, Cherub.  It got a good laugh when he read it out for the class. The caption that went with this photo in the VIP book was this is my weird brother Climber, and our cat Basil.



Luckily his brother thought it was amusing too.

Spending the Inheritance.

Dear Blog,

I am very sorry I've been so slack. There have been a few reasons why I've not updated - having two boys playing in different soccer teams this year seems to have taken up large chunks of my life, both in a physical sense, ie having to drive them All The Time to training and games, and in a mental sense, ie I'm going mental trying to sort our various team administration and human relationship type things.  (Don't ask.) Then there's my tap-school, being quite the going concern these days, busy, busy.  But let's face it, the real reason is that a bequest from my late stepfather came through, some of which I immediately spent on a new ipad for me (business necessity).  And just when I'd got that all up and running to my satisfaction, loading apps and music and whatnot, someone introduced me to the game Drawsome and now I just don't have time for anything else.  Must draw pictures for my friends to guess and then guess their efforts. Must.

However, here is a very brief round-up of what has been happening in between bouts of ipad art.

After Easter, we had a couple of other fun days out for what was left of the school holidays, including visiting the Melbourne Museum, where the boys constructed stuff for the Melbourne Gallery.



The boys and I had our first ever ride on Puffing Billy, Melbourne's famous steam train that runs out in the Dandenong Mountains.  Such a lovely day.  It was the last day of the school holidays, the sun was shining and we were with our special and best friends, the Mothers Group gang. If you've never been for a ride behind a steam train, you should.  Apart from the pain of getting soot in your eye, it is a grand way to travel. Puffing Billy has open carriages, so the kids sit on the window ledges and dangle their limbs outside and have the best time.  On the way back I leaned my whole upper body out the door-window for  20 minutes as we rattled along, and it made me feel happy in the same way that sitting outside on the Sydney Harbour Ferry did.





Cherub is now playing soccer in a proper team instead of just diddling around on a Saturday morning with the soccer skills program.  He's had 4 games now, 1 victory and 3 defeats, and is having a good time.  He initially insisted that he was a defender (like his brother, who is a very good defender), but the coach switched him to midfield in the most recent match and he was much better there, and set up 2 goals, much to my delight.



I went away for a gorgeously rushed 24 hour sewjourn (aka craft camp) organised by my friend Jenny, and made a dress in between all the other fun parts - the bath, the food, the drink, the  chocolate, the quiz/crossword, the laughs and the chats.  Nell and Astrid and Suse were there too.  It was lovely.  I'll show you the dress when I finish the buttonholes.

And finally, the bequest from my stepfather has also provided a new trampoline for the boys, because the old one was declared unsafe last November when the springs started flinging off in a highly random and dangerous manner when the kids were bouncing.



I am  trying to spend this money on happy stuff, as opposed to groceries and the inevitable car repairs, and man, it's fun.



Lots of fun.

The Easter Weekend.

Our Easter weekend was lopsided.  We had 5 social engagements in the first 2 days and then 2 much quieter days.  This turned out to be a blessing, because the 5-parties-in-2-days scenario was so much fun as to be exhausting.

Good Friday started with a hot-cross-bun party, then lunch at Astrid's house, followed by a family party to celebrate my Dad's recent victory in the Australian Science vs the Wi-Fi Thieves legal battle.  It was so busy that I forgot to take any photos.

Easter Saturday was family lunch with the Fixits.  See all that chocolate being handed out below?  None of it was for me.  Fixit's family assume because I am slender that I do not like chocolate, and nothing I say dissuades them.  Also, Mister Fixit never ever buys me an Easter egg.  If it hadn't been for Nell and another friend Mr Quiet, I would have been totally dependent on sneaking 'spare' eggs from my 'hunts and emergency present' stash.



A Fixit family lunch is always a massive meal, so I was unable to eat anything at the second engagement, Pizza in the Park with the Mothers Group.  Fixit and the kids were not such wimps though.



Now that Daylight Saving is ended, the kids were delighted to be out late enough to see some Possums.



Easter Sunday was mostly just us.  The boys left out baskits I mean baskets for the Easter Bunny, who did not disappoint them.



... and then I organised an egg hunt with clues for the boys. 







We also received visits, and Easter eggs, from Mr Quiet and from Nell, bringing the official level of chocolate in the house up to "obscene".  The boys are courageously working their way through it.

Another Year, another Toy Fair

A week after the last public performance, the Tap Kids and I were once again stomping it out in the open air for a good cause. Here's the link to the photos if you like.  And here's some live footage of a couple of dances.

 Apart from the usual aceness, the only things to report here are...

1. that the boards were VERY slippery (forgot to wash them with softdrink & detergent) but hardly anyone fell over.  There's a slightly concentrating look to our movement and faces because of this.
2. that (as always happens at this particular gig) a small child from the audience endangered itself, and us, by running across the boards during a dance.  I swear every year I always catch the same expression on the guardian of the pitch-invading child - one of gentle amusement at small child's cuteness / willingness to join in, and no concept of how this might inconvenience the performers.  I believe this year it was left to me to shepherd the child off stage, rather than her being grabbed by an embarrassed carer, but maybe I've remembered that wrong.
3. that my children scored rather well at the post-show prowl round the second-hand toy stalls.  Possibly the best item was a dvd copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I've put off letting the kids watch this as I thought (rightly) that there was a lot of violence in it, but they seem old enough now to accept it as fantasy (I'm not sure if this is a good thing) and needed no more than an adult presence in the room with them as they watched it.  I went to provide emotional support to them when the face-melty bits started but was reassured they were both fine.  (This in stark contrast to how stressed they got that night when I read a chapter from the very old-fashioned and wholesome book The Picts & The Martyrs -one of the books in the Swallows & Amazons series- where Dick and Dorothea almost get caught by the Great Aunt breaking into Beckfoot to get Timothy's chemical equipment.)  Anyway, the next morning, Cherub woke up and informed both Fixit and me that he was now officially obsessed with Indiana Jones.

Grade 3 Concert

Here you go, lots of photos of adorable children wearing rompers, including Cherub in his obligatory pre-show photo, featuring Action Pose.



The theme of the Grade 3/4 Concert was "School Days".  I think it was the best concert I've seen at our school.  Not a dud number or low point to be found.  The kids were absolutely shining with energy and joy. They sang and danced with this gorgeous mix of purity and gusto.  If you're the soppy type like me, you would have had a happy tear in your eye, even as you laughed at their antics.  Especially when they sang the finale: Cat Stevens' Remember The Days of the Old Schoolyard.



Cherub's class were doing The Playground.  Their two numbers were Get Ready (not a song I was familiar with, but rather catchy) ...

 
  
 ... and The Clapping Song (3,6,9 the goose drank wine, the monkey chewed tobacco on the street car line) ...



... which included some playground activity where Cherub and his friend were completely hilarious and surprisingly competent with their hoola hooping.



Cherub and his bestie were on a high for the entire evening, and deservedly so.  We took them, as per tradition, for an after-show treat.



Mmm, gelati!

A Year of Lasts, Part I

This year is Climber's last year of Primary School.  (That's how long this blog has been going, he'd just started Prep the year I began blogging!  Here's a little reminisce, aww.)  Today we received the form for nominating his secondary school preferences. I can't believe we've come to that in so short a time. High School! How can that be?

Anyway. Being, as I am, the sort of person who is bad at letting go, I am really noticing how this is a year of lasts.  We just finished his last ever Term 1 at primary school.  He's had his last ever primary school School Camp.  He has had his last ever primary school School Photo, and Cherub and he won't be doing a sibling photo for another 4 years. *sniffle*



He has also had his last ever Carnevale Parade.  Climber has never been as keen on dressing up as Cherub, but he quite likes it and would happily join in; except that, his little posse of friends seem convinced that dressing up at school in front of everyone else would be the Most Embarrassing Thing Ever to happen, ever.  Never mind that everyone else is dressed up too.  They were never going to be up for the Grade 6 tradition of dressing as a girl for the parade, as some of the more socially confident boys did to great effect. So this year Climber did say maybe I won't dress up? possibly under influence from his peer group, who sure enough walked round the parade ground in their civvies.  But when I pointed out to Climber that he needn't go over the top - a mask and a cape would do, and wouldn't be flamboyant or anything - and that it was his last ever Carnevale, he cheerfully agreed to rummage through the dress-up basket and find something suitable.



Meanwhile, his little brother, who likes to put together a Look, decided on a Black Caviar mask, a pirate eyepatch to go over the top, a black hat, a cape with silver bats and the master touch, a pair of green gloves.



Later, he kindly loaned one of his gloves to his best friend, who had felt inadequate wearing just the mask and nothing else. 

Feted

We had a tap performance last Saturday at a local primary school fete, and (once again) it felt like our Best Show Ever.  This outdoor performing thing, we know how to do it now. All the dancers and dances were very well received, we were applauded and cheered heartily and you couldn't help seeing that we'd drawn an excellent sized crowd and they all had great big smiles on their faces as they watched us.



I think there are a few reasons why this particular performance went so well, namely:

• The primary school we were performing at is just lovely, their fete is lovely and they therefore draw a lovely crowd.  The sort of people who probably appreciate a dance school where the kids have genuine rather than showbiz smiles on their faces, where the moves are age appropriate and the stylings are gender-neutral, and nobody gets upset if the littlies stare vaguely into space while their teacher does all the actual tapping.

• This is our 6th performance at this particular fete, so we really knew what to expect. There were NO technical problems. The boards went down easily and quickly, the ipod/sound system worked, no tap shoes were forgotten: in other words, we were very well prepared.

• The choreography was pitched at the right level in terms of audience entertainment and what the dancers were capable of performing and remembering - the remembering part is not to be underestimated when you're tap-dancing!

• I didn't talk at this one. Sometimes I think I should, you know, talk my school up, but I never feel I do a very good job of it and this show I decided to let the kids' dancing speak for itself.  That's what people want to see, right?  Not the crazy purple lady burbling on, just the cute kiddies and their tap skillz.

• My injured foot didn't play up.  All week I'd been nursing a sore left foot, and ended up having an x-ray for a suspected stress fracture in the 5th metatarsal.  Happily, it turned out to be just tendonitis in that area, and coddling it all week was probably a very good thing (my feet don't get much rest otherwise) because, as I expected, when it came to performance time, a rush of adrenaline took over and I completely forgot about my sore foot.  I was hugely relieved to find that my foot felt absolutely fine afterwards, and in fact didn't start hurting again until the next tap lesson on the Monday.  But it is mending, and school holidays will do it a world of good.

• Finally, and I think most importantly, the tap kids are so ace.  From the adorable Littlies who hold my hand and get slightly stage-struck but who melt the audience's heart with their cuteness, the Beginners who sort of know what to do (but haven't quite mastered doing it all at the same time) who smile and jump around with adorable enthusiasm, the More Than Beginners who are bursting with pride at how they are doing fancier footwork now and can't wait to show everybody, the Intermediates who I think of as my Broadway class because they possess skills and aplomb, and finally the Advanced Group who are starting to really wow the crowds with how good they are and are giving the other groups (and parents of the younger tappers) something to aspire to.  I always say it, but it's true: I have the nicest families tapping with me.  I love those tap kids.

Thanks as always to my Number One Crew: production manager Nell and head roadie Fixit, and to all the wonderful tap families who came and danced. More photos here.