Thursday, September 04, 2008

Unique picnic spot

School kicked off yesterday with an early start at 8.40, and by tenzees we had already done all the language, writing, boys’ reading and maths. After a short break we did the science, history and read-alouds…the boys thought yesterday’s chapter of Mrs Piggle Wiggle was hilarious and so all three of us were nearly crying on the couch. School was finished at 11.02, and then we headed into town. Nick specifically wanted to leave early because we needed to collect some things from the manse, then have lunch, and then get to Tammy for Nick to have a music practice. We did the town stuff (which included picking up an application form for a work permit for me) first then bought lunch from Sally’s, but as it was drizzling in town we couldn’t eat at Castle Gardens as we usually would; we thought of a creative picnic spot instead – our lounge!! All the diningroom furniture has been moved into the lounge to make space for the church furniture in the diningroom, so we sat at the diningroom table in the lounge with our delicious baguettes or salad (yes, I confess I had a sweet chilli chicken salad…simply because it seemed like a more interesting option than chicken on a roll, and it was!). After lunch and loading up the car (just a few more clothes for us and some more toys for the boys), we went to Tammy. The boys played with Harley and Katie who seem to all get on quite well, and Nick and Tammy went over some songs while I worked on the laptop in the studio. The songs are sounding great – Nick does some lovely harmonies with Tammy, and I got to hear the new stuff! I was working on the sleeve insert goodie for Nick’s CD, which he is preparing for release on the island, to raise funds for the rebuilding of the church’s properties. Harry gave him a CD writer last Friday – it is a wonderful piece of equipment, and Nick has now made about 70 copies of the CD. Now we need to design the sleeve (ie the booklet which has the lyrics and production credits and all that stuff), get it printed, and make labels. Pam has been a great help in ordering the jewel cases and labels from somewhere, so once we have those we can assemble everything and start selling it. Pretty exciting, hey! Anyway, we left Tammy at about 3.30ish, and then Nick had a guitar lesson in the late afternoon.

This morning we were back to the usual school timetable, although we still finished at about 11.40. I think the boys are just managing to get their first session work done quicker – whereas in the beginning it would take Aaron 20 minutes to do his copywork, he now gets it done in 5, and his reading takes half the time it used to as well. Although the workload hasn’t decreased, we’re just speeding up. I guess this will be handy for next year when the workload should increase slightly! We had left over tuna and mayonnaise on sandwiches for lunch. Last night I prepared the tuna as steaks, and I’m fairly sure it’s the best tuna we’ve had on the island. We normally have Yellowfin or mixed species, but this was Bigeye, and although the meat was slightly darker, it was also much more tender. After lunch I had a short time to carry on bead-sorting before Elza came to visit, as arranged. She wanted to see where we are living and was very pleased to see that it looks ‘homely’. We had an excellent visit. We had some sun today which was really wonderful – I pointed out to the boys that the sea had reappeared. The washing still didn’t really get dry though, so it’s in the geyser cupboard. A day in there and it’s dry and warm!

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