An eventful couple of weeks......and some handknit eye candy.

It's been a crazy couple of weeks here lately, from life changes like Mikes mother is going to be moving in with us!.... to our car breaking down several times earlier this week.

We've had builders visiting, real estate agents taking advantage of Mikes mother and car radiators spitting boiling water into my face in a hospital parking lot...... all the while crunching numbers to figure out how to build a house large enough to fit us all in!

Amongst it all though there have been some positives, number one being a larger house on the horizon, you can imagine after living in a two bedroom house with the family bed in the lounge/kitchen area, this will be a dream come true! 

Gosh under this alone I can rattle off so many pluses....our own bedroom, a proper place for the washing machine, possibly even a dishwasher!! Oh yes! And the highlight......a SHOWER!!! 

Oh how much I have missed a shower! 

Baths are over rated! 

Give me my shower back!!! 

Honestly it has more of a relaxation effect on me than soaking in a bath, and I think the sound of the water drowning out the noise and possible screaming of children might have something to do with it! hehe

But other than that what are some other positives? Well for one having Mikes mum and the children's Grandma living with us! There is something to be said for multi-generational living, not only will our kids and Grandma benefit, but we will also....for one Mike's mum is far more tidy than we will ever be, so she is bound to keep us on our toes in that department! And I'm sure my washing will never be left overnight on the washing line anymore! 

 Plus I'll imagine it will enrich our lives in more ways than we can even think of right now.

But how about the broken down car?.........hmmmn yes well partly this is our own fault, a disaster waiting to happen really, and one that always happens when I'm driving the cars......for a quick summary:

 

My First Car = broken down alone in the middle of no where with  3 kids from 3yrs old to 2 weeks old!

Second Car = came around the corner at night in wild weather with four kids in the car and alone again, crashed into tree that had just fallen down on the road....and out of cellphone range.

And this week = after the cars radiator boiling over and exploding at me, I thought I had fixed it, so I cautiously continued to drive to the library, Bunnings and then a food shop at P n S, where with a car full off groceries, the car decided not to start.....again alone with my eldest child......turns out it wasn't the car battery and it was a computer problem, which attributed to telling the car that it was colder than it actually was...hence boiling over radiator.

So my positives are.....the car is getting fixed finally and I didn't get burnt, it hurt, but I'm okay......those 3 hours waiting for help in the car park were a good life lesson for my boy and I, and what started off being an anxious experience, resulted in him being more positive than me!  

And this week we've enjoyed swimming lessons in the back yard of a local home-schooler, meeting with other home-schooling families and being thankful for the use of my Mum's car!

Phew!!

  So life has been full, and it doesn't look like it will be slowing down in the near future either! 

But that's our life, so we will just continue to roll with the punches!

 

Pictures of a Tropical Lily top, pattern by Tikki Knits.  I knitted my Lil girl this a couple of years ago but it never fitted her until now.....details on my Ravelry Page

Home schooling and learning difficulties - 3/52 Things I made 2015

This year is our second year of home schooling and it's also my Lil girls first proper year of learning, so I have been gearing up to start making resources to help her learn her basics.

I've been wanting a Laminator for ages! And now that I have one its all go go go go, creating learning binders etc, to assist her with processing all this information.

My children's learning is not something I mention much about on my blog, but it's something that's a big part of lives....learning in all areas of life as well. 
 Around here it's not just about presenting all the basic academic information in a format my children understand, a good part of it is also teaching social rules. 

You see, my kids all have learning difficulties to varying degrees, which has been a huge focus for us in the last couple of years.  

Last years absence on my blog was the result of one of those....2014 was consumed by an added condition on top of another, and it was a dark year to say the least! Thankfully we are on the other end of that journey and things look brighter than they were. 

 However last year we got a second diagnosis for my little girl, amongst it all.

 I had been in denial for many years, quite aware that something was amiss from when she was as young as 6 months....that's when alarm bells starting ringing, I'd 'been here before' I thought, but I pushed those thoughts away, denying what I knew deep down.  

Then when she was close to 3yrs and her speech and language was not on track compared to her peers I started the process of involving a Speech Language Therapist, which in turn led us to her second diagnosis late last year and a sigh of relief to put the naysayers in their place...there is always the naysayers isn't there?!

And throughout this journey, we have been involved in many courses, I have read so many books and scoured the internet on these subjects, that all I want now is a good fictional book to absorb myself in! since reading non fiction is not my strong suit, unlike my eldest who loves it!

But instead because of our hard work, I find myself now, armed with a plethora of information, a laminator and a big roll of Velcro dots! 

So this term we are learning the alphabet!  I'm pretty sure she will have many of these figured out quickly, since thankfully she is a very quick learner! ( and she will keep me on my toes ) 
It's just all comes down to how the information needs to be presented.  What my little girl may lack in auditory processing, she certainly makes up for it in processing visually!

So now we have the key, its our time to unlock the door!