Kien's keyboard recital

All the hard work and hours of practice he has put in - I'm so proud of him. This is his first year learning to play the keyboard. Although its been hard at times when he just does not want to practice and I think its a total waste of money to pay for these lessons - I know that he will be thankful for the perseverance. It's important to me to teach him commitment, and today was a very proud mummy moment for me watching him up on the stage and pushing through his nervousness. He told me he was scared; that he has stage fright. I told him its okay to be scared, that he can do it. He did it.

Here's a link to the video on youtube in the event you can't see it through whichever method you have received this post :)

Sprysen beyblade tip

Thought I'd better get back into getting Kien writing his stories again. We get a bit lazy on a Sunday, and I'm finding him stuff to do to earn points. He's already emptied the dishwasher, practiced some catching for cricket, and practiced his concert piece on the keyboard (in a couple of weeks he's playing a little piece for the music school performance concert). A 3 sentence story earns him 3 points, so its a worthwhile exercise for him, even though the time it takes him to actually do it is an exercise in patience for me!

"Give me a smile, Kien. A proper smile. SMILE!" Urgh....

School field trip to MOTAT

I try to make at least one school field trip a year, and a couple of Fridays ago I went with them to MOTAT. This was one of those times when I told my boss that I really had to be a good parent and attend this one - being the last field trip for the year and since I have been so busy with work I've not spent a lot of energy or time with Kien. So even though I'd had a short week with being at the conference, doing this was important. Fortunately my manager and my project managers understand, so I found myself assigned to 6 kids on a bus heading to Western Springs.

We had lots of activities to get through, so after our briefing away we went.

My kids were the only ones that wanted to explore the library, and they had a great time sliding the moving walls back and forth. The poor librarian; at first he thought it was really cute, and then 10 minutes later he wished me good luck as I shooed them to the tram station.

These two have never ending conversations about I don't know what.

Then after lunch it was pretty much a lazy afternoon wandering around getting into mischief.

It was an exhausting day, but very enjoyable. After the bus dropped us off at the school gates at 2:30pm the teacher said I could take Kien home. I was like, no way! He's going to after school care. I need a break! So she shipped him off to after school care and I went home and poured myself a large glass of wine, and watched some trash TV on demand, and ate some cheese.

​ Conference in Wellington

I’ve been away for a couple of days for a work conference held at Te Papa. I had to wake up at the ungodly hour of 3:45am last Monday to catch the first flight out. Meanwhile Jef has had to deal with his work stuff as well as all the parenting duties, including taking Kien to the dr with a sore eye on Monday afternoon. So that's twice in 2 weeks for 2 different reasons. Good thing I did duty of emergency pickup the week before. It's never easy when the school calls to say Kien is in the sickbay, and then Jef and I have to negotiate on who has got the least amount of commitments at work for the day. Last week I had only just arrived at work having driven to the airport through all the traffic (my current project is based out there), only to have the call up from the school office to say Kien is unwell. After I spoke with Jef I ran inside to let me colleagues know I was going home. Very thankful people understand these things - family first...always.

I’ve employed a tutor to help kien out with homework and music practice etc for a couple of afternoons. She came in handy these last couple of days when I haven't been around. That definitely took the pressure off Jef a bit with having to rush home to pick Kien up and then having to do all the schooling stuff, as well as the music practice stuff. Nah, lets just get someone in to help us do all that other stuff that is so tiring and naggy.

Anyway, just a few pics from Wellington. We were very lucky to have brilliant weather yesterday. My colleagues and I went out for dinner to the yacht club, and although cold outside, the views were fantastic. Good thing they supplied blankets for us. We drank our champagne and decided to move inside for the main course. Afterwards nobody wanted to walk the kilometre back to our hotel, so we lazily taxied there, much to my disgust in myself that I too wanted to catch a ride. The conference wore us all out. Thinking is such hard work.

Halloween fun

Yesterday's school Halloween disco turned out to be lots of fun. Not just the school disco, but once it ended we had an impromptu party at ours and then took the kids trick or treating when it was late and dark. Being a school night all the other kids were in bed, but we didn't care. Besides, we had his teacher (from last year) with us, and all of us adults were having just as much fun roaming the neighbourhood as the kids. Here are some scary photos from yesterday. I didn't take any of these. Some are courtesy of a couple of other photography enthusiastic parents.













These little guys are best friends this year. Good times!