We have a fish in our family

My end of school break is over, and summer school has begun. I sat through my first two adolescent and adult development classes on Friday. It was so hard to be there. I tried really hard to focus, and I did succeed, but it was a big effort. My preparations for next year's honours classes has begun and all I really wanted to do was do more in that area. I'm working on a couple of hours a day, and that should be a pretty reasonable head start when the new semester begins next year.

Chanel had a wonderfully successful week. Her swimming carnival was held on Wednesday and Chanel swam in three events. We're so happy that she can complete 25 metres of three strokes. Our expectations were only that she would swim and have a go. She was brilliant. Fourth place in freestyle (if she were a little bigger she'd have been first). She came third in the backstroke, and second in breast stroke. She was wrapped, and can't wait to get to Gosford over the summer to practice more swimming in nan & pop's pool. Especially butterfly.

I have just finished a couple of brilliant books, one of which was the latest one from Alfie Kohn. I'll be writing about it on my happyfamilies blog in a few weeks. It's called the Homework Myth, and I thought it was brilliant. In it he discusses how research has failed to find any links between children doing homework and learning outcomes. This not only holds for primary school, but up to year 9. Even for the final years of high school homework only provides about a 4% improvement, so long as it's not overdone. What's that got to do with anything? Well, firstly it's a great book that makes us question basic assumptions that we often take for granted. Second, Kylie and I have relaxed about Chanel doing homework. We haven't pushed it for some time (even before we were reading the book). Surprisingly though, Chanel is willing to do it without being reminded, cajoled or otherwise manipulated into it.

I'm enjoying my new job, training in frontline management. It's going really well. Kylie's tupperware is slowing down as we approach Christmas. Happy families.com.au will have a new website in the coming weeks. My web designer has put together a couple of options that I'm excited about. Need some refining, but I'm really excited to see it progress. I'm more pumped about the newsletter and blog. I've really enjoyed doing this and I think it'll be terrific to get right into it even more.

We can't wait to go to Gosford for the break. In two weeks we'll be there