Back to School

Our two weeks of school holidays are over, and I start back at work tomorrow.  The boys are lucky to have an extra day of holidays because it is a student free day.    The end of each term is very stressful, wondering if I will get a contract to teach again the following term.  It's hard because sometimes even when you are doing a good job, there is no guarantee of work teaching in Tasmania, until you are a Permanent Replacement Teacher. 

I found out during the last week of last term, that I have another contract for term three teaching EAL (English as an Additional Language).  I'm very excited because I not only get to continue in a job that I absolutely love, and I am getting a new student who has just arrived in Australia.  He is also a refugee like my other students, and speaks the same language as them. I'm nervous about starting back at square one again as he doesn't have any English at all, but I'm also excited and I know that my students will be able to do a lot of interpreting for me which will be great.

We were all looking forward to school holidays because we were very tired from school and work.  This was taken just after we finished school on the last day of term.

As much as I was looking forward to a break, I was also dreading holidays a little because they're often hard as the days are long without Aaron and Noah.  Each holiday though is getting easier though and I couldn't wait for some sleep ins. I'm very lucky that all of my boys now sleep in (give me older kids any day!) and I was happy to be woken up on our first day of holidays by Kobe after 9am!

Every day the boys slept in till at least 8.30 or 9am (or 10.30 if you are Jay!) so it's been a lovely relaxing couple of weeks.   We are going to struggle to get up at our normal times again!

My boys would be more than happy to stay at home all day, every day so I had to make sure I had planned some things like our trip to Guide Falls and Hobart, so they didn't stare at screens all day.  We had some quiet days, but also planned a few things to keep busy.  The boys loved catching up with their cousins.
While my sister Nicki and her family were down my niece Maddi was baptised.  It was lovely to be able to be there for it. 
Milly hasn't known what's hit her with having us home every day.  She is loving all the attention and long walks. 

The boys were excited to find a treat at the door one day, after Aaron's friend Kristy paid up (with interest) for her ongoing bet she had with Aaron whenever Hawks played against Collingwood.  She's paid up a lot of Pepsi since Aaron passed away, and it doesn't look like we will owe her any time soon :)

One day while we were driving to Mum and Dad's we spotted this rainbow and decided to see if we could get to the end of it...hoping of course for the pot of gold at the end.  We didn't feel like a swim to check if the gold was there ;)
It's taken almost three years, but I'm finding that I'm starting to feel like the old me again.  I'm starting to want to do things that I used to do before Aaron and Noah passed away, like playing the piano and playing basketball. 

When a friend at church mentioned that they often need people to fill in on their team, I said that I would be interested in filling in.  They still have my old team name of 'the mollies'.  I haven't played since Kobe was born, so I was very nervous about playing again and thought I was going to vomit from nerves the first night!  I have played every week for the last month or so, and am absolutely loving it. 

The first couple of games I thought the boys were going to end up as orphans because I am so unfit.  Even though I'm only playing once a week I am already feeling fitter and don't feel like I'm going to die anymore - luckily for the boys! 

Harri cracks me up as he loves watching and analysing the game afterwards.  He always tells me how many goals I got, and loves putting the score up on the board during the game.  The boys are surprised that I can actually play okay.  Jay told me I'm 'not bad for an oldie'...cheeky teenager!

Every couple of weeks we have been booking out an indoor pool for an hour with our friends Simone and Simon and Pip and Ben and their kids. It's been a fun thing to do during winter.


We finished off our holidays having tea together last night.  I feel very lucky to have such great friends, who I can just be myself around. 
Today we went to the cemetery after church and put a new solar butterfly at Noah's grave.  Kobe was too sad to get out of the car, and Harri doesn't usually like getting out, but he decided to get out to do it.  His face made me sad as he looked like he had just so much on his young mind.  We laughed that he had Aaron's hawthorn scarf on there, and I said that Dad would've loved seeing him with it on. I had used it at church as a blindfold for something I was doing with the kids, and afterwards Harri didn't want to take it off. 

I hope that Aaron and Noah are both looking down on us, seeing that we are trying hard to continue without them in the best way that we know how. It's never easy, but I can see we are getting stronger every school holidays as we adjust to life without them.