Week of wins.

Fixit started work on Wednesday. He leaves the house at 6.30am but is home at a reasonable hour. He seems to be enjoying himself, but is tired at the end of the day.  When he was first retrenched I found it annoying having him around in the morning. He kept getting in my way while I was trying to get the boys off to school! But then I got used to it. So it was weird this last few days not having him around.  I would say it actually ran more smoothly, but we all missed him too.

Both boys had music concerts this week.  Climber, in typical fashion, neglected to tell us that his flute ensemble were providing pre-show foyer music so we pretty much missed that. But the two bands he performed in during the show proper (Junior Band and Junior Stage Band) were excellent, and he looked very handsome in his concert shirt and trousers too.



Cherub was highly excited to be doing a music concert as well.  His band has only had 6 weeks preparation, and most of them only started learning their instruments at the start of last term so they only played three very short pieces, but they clearly enjoyed themselves and played with gusto.



I'm feeling proud of all the boys this week!

Oh and PS I bought new tap shoes, because my purple ones have never quite recovered from having the cracked tap-plate. There were no purple ones left in my size so I've gone with some all-black lace-ups.  Busting to try them out tomorrow morning!

International Tap Dance Day 2014

On May 25th we celebrate the birthday of Bill Bojangles Robinson and International Tap Dance Day. This year I decided to put together a little video to mark the occasion.  It was so much fun to make. 

I only have moderate iMovie editing skills, and an awful lot of my students were absent this week *curse you late Autumn Flu/Cold mini-epidemic* but I am pretty happy with the result.

 Hooray for tap dancing. It is the best!

Singing in the Rain

It is Walk to School Day today. Here are some school-kids (Cherub and his best friend) Walking To School. Well, part of the way, it's a bit far for us to do the whole slog on foot. We were going to ride our bikes but then the rain came down. So we compromised: some car, some walking. It's all good.
 

It is exactly 39 weeks today since Fixit was made redundant. For quite a long while we lived off his redundancy payment and my earnings. Then the big payment ran out and he (finally, reluctantly) went to Centrelink. He was immediately eligible at that point for unemployment benefits and our family also qualified for a health care card, hooray for health care cards and the concessions they bring! So that was a load off my mind, but still there was the nagging problem of what he should do. We still haven't worked that out exactly, but ... today Fixit got a job! As a driver/mechanic for a medical aids delivery company. He starts next week.
 

He's feeling so happy right now. So am I.

Bike Ride

Today was a gorgeous Melbourne autumn day, and Fixit, Cherub and I decided to ride our bikes to school.  After we'd crossed the river there's a hill you need to stand up in your pedals for, with a little bit of flat in the middle for a respite. When we approached the hill, I overtook Cherub (little legs, small bike, no gears) and called out Come on Cherub!! as I powered past. He hates me overtaking him, it's very funny.  He called back Don't do that, you make me laugh and then I haven't got enough power to get up the hill!  Then as we came to the second part of the steep hill I heard a stifled chuckle, and there was Cherub being assisted past me by Fixit riding beside him and pushing him along.  After they'd passed, Fixit looked back and smiled at me, very pleased.

I love riding with my family.

(Cherub's school photos, can't decide which one I prefer)

Catching Up: Picnic at Hanging Rock II.

On Anzac Day we had our annual (as of last year) extended-family Picnic at Hanging Rock.  Hanging Rock is about an hour's drive north-west of Melbourne and was the scene of a well-loved Australian novel and movie, set in the early 1900s which told the story of some schoolgirls going missing while climbing the rock.  It is in fact a perfect setting for a story of disappearing people; both years now when we've climbed it I've ended up having a mini panic attack because I couldn't find one or other of my children.  It is SO EASY to get lost up there. And of course I felt like such a fool zigzagging around the many, many nooks and crannies, my chest tight with anxiety while desperately trying to glimpse a child, but it is a big rock, it is full of deep crevices and my kids were exploring and climbing like a pair of mountain goats. Having said that, they were absolutely fine and no-one but me thought anyone was lost. Actually I think maybe *I* was lost. I wandered round the peak for 20 minutes without once catching sight of my family and they were all there, having a great time.  It is a magnificent climb though, and thoroughly atmospheric even with all the other people clambering around.  The boys were the perfect age this year to get the full benefit and couldn't stop talking all the way home about what awesome fun it had been.  Cherub and my sister's boy were about the same level of competence in terms of climbing skills, and had a fine old time getting into caves and tunnels and imagining Lord of the Rings scenarios.  Climber, true to his name, was up every challenging peak he could find.  It was difficult for me to look at him half the time. Be careful sweetie!





The other fun part was hanging out with my family.  My cousins have now got babies of their own, and it was great seeing my boys engage with and entertain the smaller fry.





My sister, who has now relocated to Victoria after years in Canberra, was also very excited to be a part of a gathering like this, and took some gorgeous photos.



The food was also excellent.  There's a lot of good cooks in the family.  I made a freekeh salad, some Anzac biscuits, some hummus and a baby beetroot, walnut, caramelized onion and goat's cheese pie. I know. Getting fancy in my old age.

Cherub just ate a jam sandwich. Typical.

Twist of Fete

We were, once again, an absolute smash hit at the Merri Creek Fete last weekend.  So many great comments about how good the kids were, and a smiling and appreciative (and huge) crowd to cheer them on.  We had a great time, and I was super proud of them all.  My sister came along and took some gorgeous shots for me.

We tend to perform from youngest to oldest so you can see the development.  This is the Flappers class, for beginners and preppies.  They are a very capable crew this lot.

 

I thought they did a great job. They had to master some tricky stuff but they made it look easy.

 

The next two classes are younger More Than Beginners, and I now have so many of them we've had to split across 2 classes.  These are the Gliders1 Crew.
 


They always bring me sunshine.



And here are the Gliders2



They make me happy.



The Shufflers are intermediates.  I love the application and dedication in this group. They really want to learn tap, and quite often I see kids from this class watching other classes to learn extra routines.



They had a fun and fast routine and they just seized it with gusto.  A couple of these girls will be my junior teachers in a few years time, for sure!



The irrepressible Groovers.  Junior advanced. Always fun, with that touch of Broadway in their souls. I could teach these guys all day. They're delightful.



Their performance was rather ritzy, and had quite a few performance elements that they worked very hard to achieve, like formation changes and different parts for different groups.



Tapsters.  The Big End of school, the advanced class, the seniors.  They got a huge cheer at the end of their routine, because the tapping was so full on in it.

And they had a surprise prop! Here they are throwing money around, although apparently Climber just couldn't get his out of his pockets in time. His face isn't giving it away though.

Take a bow, you gorgeous kids!

Fast and Furious

Our doctor has put Mister Fixit on the Fast 5:2 Diet, in an effort to break the weightloss deadlock with him.  He is not great with self-control, that Fixit. If you haven't heard of this program, basically you eat a tiny amount of food (500 [girls] or 600 [boys] calories) for 2 out of every 7 days, and eat normally for the remainder of the week. It claims to work because you don't live in constant denial, and you also train yourself to forgo instant gratification of the hunger reflex, so your stomach can shrink. It is supposed to have amazing benefits for your cholesterol, immunity and anti-aging. Anyway, I think it sounds perfect for him and I have started on it too, to encourage him, and to deal with 4 pesky kilos of my own.  Gotta say, my first fast day felt like the slowest, longest day of my life! Also, the day after my first fast was a disaster, owing to a bad reaction (too much acid on an empty tum?) to starting the break-of-my-fast with freshly-squeezed orange juice, the upshot of which was me vomiting my breakfast just before I was due to start teaching 4 hours of tap. You can't really say to the watching parents I'm sorry I won't be teaching your children very well today because I've put myself on a crazy fad diet, so I just plugged away, and nibbled at some muffins and recovered after a while. So we'll see if I stay on it for long. I kind of hate the way way fasting makes me think about food ALL THE TIME, whereas normally I really don't.  Meanwhile, I am encouraging and helping Fixit to enter his food intake into a calorie-monitoring app, and I really hope this will encourage a degree of mindfulness with his eating habits, something he sorely lacks.



Climber had his swimming carnival a couple of weeks ago, and came second in the breaststroke!  Just like his brother!  He competed well in several events, but not against just people his age, I'm not sure why.  In excellent timing on our part, Fixit and I were there to see him win his ribbon.



Cherub has gone of on school camp today. As always, I think the house will be much quieter without our singing, dancing chatterbox.  He was so excited, and pretty much sat ready, with his packed suitcase by his side, for an hour this morning, waiting for me to be ready to leave.



Climber has bought, with his own money, a Soda Stream machine. It is making me feel cranky, because I never buy softdrink for household drinking, it is purely a party or going-out treat. I have banned use of it to once-a-week. I feel mean about it, because I know half the attraction is the actual making of their own fizzy drink, but the other half is Climber's unhealthy need to feed his sweet tooth.  Anyway. It's a weird situation now. I feel guilty for denying him the fun of purchasing his exciting new fizzydrink maker and like the biggest spoilsport on the planet, he feels guilty for letting me down but also just really, really wants to make it. And drink it.  He is such a lovely boy.  I suspect many kids his age would just abuse their mean mothers for ruining all the fun all the time.



The house across the road has been slowly knocked down this week. It was the rental house of the street, the one with young people throwing parties, and it was in a terrible state: only good for party-throwing young people, basically.  Despite that, it sold last year for  three quarters of a million, as a knockdown.  We don't even live in a highly desirable suburb. I find that incredible. And rather depressing. I wish the real estate market would settle down. It never does though.