School Holidays

We began this week exhausted after driving to Gosford last Sunday following church. It was Rachel & Leah’s 17th birthday and we decided, at the last minute, to go and celebrate it with them. After 2½ hours driving up the freeway we arrived. The kids had a great time and it was really nice to be with the family again. We’re enjoying it more and more. Of course, by the time we left that evening it was after 8 o’clock, so we arrived home at a very late hour.

The kids are on school holidays. Two weeks is the length of the break and we’re just at the halfway mark. They have been making the most of it and are having a ball. Chanel, in particular, has enjoyed time with her new best friend, Paige. And Abbie and Ella have been terrific too. A few days ago they decided to play a scavenger hunt kind of game. They recalled that at Easter we hid eggs for them. We have no eggs right now, so they decided that they would hide all of the clothes pegs from the washing line, and then find them again!

Each day of the holidays Abbie has begged to do schoolwork. She loves reading, and has been making terrific progress on her words. We checked her current standard against the list of proscribed words required for Kindergarten, Grade 1 and Grade 2. She has about three quarters of them, and she is only one term into her Kinder year. We have also begun tying shoelaces together. I think she’s getting it. Abbie is addicted to learning, and it’s wonderful.

Chanel and I are reading the Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Graeme. It is a beautiful book. I don’t recall reading it when I was younger, but wish I had. His writing is exceptional. Chanel loves books. I am so grateful. We went to a Lifeline book fair on Friday and Chanel bought Heidi, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Treasure Island. She says she is still looking for Moby Dick and Swiss Family Robinson.

I have had a quieter week than normal at school, given that it’s school holidays. I’ve cut my hours shorter so I can be around Kylie and the children a little more. Oh, and also because this past week we have had an amazing amount of swell. I went surfing three days in a row. It was terrific. And it was some of the biggest surf I have previously experienced. I caught some of the biggest waves I’ve caught in my life. I kinda wished that I could just surf all day – but there’s always other priorities.

I have received a green light for my proposed studies. Actually it’s more a case of being given a preliminary nod to explore my idea a little more rather than actually being told that we’ll run with it. There is still a lot to do, but it seems that we may be able to have some fun with my plan. The idea is that people approach their work in one of three general ways: they see it as a job, a career or a calling. At each level there is a different degree of interest, gratitude, and fulfillment. Those with a job have the lowest levels of satisfaction, those with a career fall in the middle, and those with a calling are completely thrilled with what they do. I am investigating the relationships between happiness, meaning, and orientation to parenting. I think that parents who see it as a “job” will have less meaning, and be fairly low on happiness. Those who see it as a “calling” will have greater meaning, and moderate happiness (because parenting is challenging). Career parents will fall in the middle somewhere. So that’s an exciting start.

I am also ecstatic about some other plans we have made. We were going to be driving to Brisbane for the first weekend of May. I decided that I didn’t want to drive… so I would fly Kylie and Annie up instead. When I got online I found $65 flights. So now the whole family is flying up. The cost is only about $100 more than it would have been to drive, but it will be bliss compared with what we would have been dealing with otherwise! Only 90 minutes of flight time compared with 14 hours in the car! I think that’s money well spent.


To finish things off for the week we went and visited some friends, Trevor & Deb, yesterday. He has just returned from three weeks in the USA and brought home two “Go-Peds”. They are motorised electrically charged scooters. Loads of fun zooming around the streets on them! They go up to 40km/h. The kids couldn’t get enough.


I’ve been listening to a new CD recently, The Holy Secret. So many new insights. I love learning.