Sunday, February 9, 2014

The Face of Fear by Willow

When the person, standing,
All alone in the dark
Scared, trembling, seeing unsee-able monsters
Looks inside, they find.
The fire in their heart, which shines through their eyes
They can stand up, face their fear
Laugh in the face of Danger
The courage inside them lighting the way,
It leads that person through pain and grief,
Sorrow and anger,
Fright and cowardliness,
The fire shows courage, bravery, strength in
The face of fear, and even in the face of Death
The fire is a fighting spirit,
It is always there in your heart,
And the fire never goes out.

2014

We've had a reasonably laid back Summer- as well as one can when there is a baby in the house anyway!  We've mostly spent our time near home, and have been a bit poor at catching up with friends.  My mother-in-law came to visit, which was pleasant.  We had a few birthdays- Arden was 6 in December.  I made a lovely soaked grain mango cake with self lighting candles!
Willow turned 14 in Januarly- her cake was accidentally made out of oat flour, which I'd bought for oat cakes, and used in error; it was surprisingly tasty!  Damien and I are both now 40, and we had an interesting science experiment, by sharing our birthday cake with a friend, and attempting to light 125 candles for all our birthdays: this is what it looked like.

Sadly we were unable to light all 125, but some towards the middle melted quite impressively, was fun all the same!  We have one birthday left for the Summer- Gabriel will be turning 12 in a week, and after that we will have our first non summer baby birthday, but not until June.


I was rather slow with my homeschool planning for this year, due to Irving's presence.  Normally I do it right at the end of the year, but I didn't start til January this time.  Grade one was fairly straight forward to plan, as was grade seven (Gabriel will be doing a very similar selection of topics as Willow did in Grade 7, but is doing computing as his subject choice for the year.) and grade 9 was a little interesting in that it's a bit more open ended so that Willow can have more time for natural learning this year.  Plus I'm looking at her being a bit more that direction with maths this time, so that she can regain a bit of fun with it.  Asides for geometry, she hadn't really been keen on it last year.  She's also doing history from an artistic perspective.  Gabriel will be starting trumpet this year,  and also started jujutsu last week and Arden had his first circus lesson, where he felt happy and confident to be there,so that was great.  He says that he'd like to do jujutsu too, but I'd like to see how circus progresses first I think.

We're off to a few show for Fringe and Festival season here.  Last night was the Festival opening, down near the Swan river, and the show was quite brilliant.  Tonight, Damien and Willow, have headed off to see "Not by Bread Alone" which is a deaf-bliind baking production.  They were also interested in the Blackout restaurant, but that had sadly sold out.  Arden and I are off to a mime performance, called Ilo.  We've also bought some tickets to see Adam Hall perform Beyonce at the Fringe, and Willow will be taking Gabriel to a Fringe circus show.

Anyway our homeschool work starts again in a week.  I'm looking forward to seeing how we go again this year.  Will be interesting to have two children doing most of their work independantly.