Term 1

The year is going so fast and most of the time I think that we haven't really done anything, but as I was planning on doing a blog post I was going through photos on my phone and it reminded me of lots of things I had forgotten about.  This year Harri is in Grade 9 and Kobe is in Grade 5.  Neither of them were looking forward to going back to school after summer holidays and neither was I as it's always so nice to have no routine and to not be racing around all the time.   

Kobe has two lovely female teachers this year.  He's never really loved school, so it's nice to hear him say that he's enjoying school a lot this year. He's never really been away from me at all, and has always been anxious about sleeping anywhere away from me, so even though he was excited that he got to go on camp this year, he was really anxious about it as well.   On the morning that they left for camp he had a bit of a cry, but I knew that he would be fine once he got on the bus with his friends.

It was lovely to get messages from his teachers during camp, and seeing photos of him having fun.  Kobe's camp was at Camp Banksia at Port Sorell, and he was very excited that Uncle Eden and Auntie Steph and his cousins came to visit him there one night.

The house felt very empty with just Harri and I home for a couple of nights on our own, but we made the most of it.  Harri got to choose where he wanted to go out for tea, so he chose Burger Junkie.

Harri has been kept busy at school last term as he was asked to help out as a student leader at a few Primary School Athletics Carnivals.  He likes to help out (probably because it means he doesn't have to go to school for the day and gets to hang out with his mates!) and doesn't mind that he has to catch up on work at home. 

The week after Kobe went to camp,  Harri went on a Grade 9 camp to Bakers Beach.  He was annoyed that he couldn't do all the activities as his foot was still very sore but he had a great time.  They slept in tents and had to do all their own cooking.  He shared a tent with his friend Joe. 

Kobe got to choose where we went out for tea while Harri was at camp, and he chose Kosaten which is a cool Japanese restaurant which we both love.  You order the food on an iPad and then the food is delivered to you on a 'train' which comes to your table.  It's lots of fun and the food is really good.

Before Jay headed off to Uni we met Johnathon who was visiting Tasmania from the USA.  He is a friend of a family I started following on Instagram a few years ago after their son Mitchell passed away, and he started following us on Instagram about the same time.  It was lovely to meet in person and to be hand delivered a gift from Mitchell's parents Chris and Natalie.  Johnathon took us out for dinner to our favourite places to eat, that he also wanted to try (Burger Junkie and Kosaten again!) and we had fun showing him around the Gorge.

While we were at the Gorge we ran into Alison. It was lovely to see her as she now lives in Melbourne, so we don't see each other very often.  We had a laugh about how much taller Harri is than her now.  He's definitely grown a lot since she first started working for us all those years ago.

In March we all did Run for a Wish or walk for a wish in my case! Harri wasn't able to do it because of his foot, but came along to support us.

The boys were very excited when footy season started back up again.  We went along to the pre season game with Mum to watch Hawthorn V Richmond. 

About a month ago I saw a call out on Facebook for anyone who was wanting to be a part of a new Hawthorn advertisement that they were filming.  Kobe and I thought it would be fun to go along and his friend Kobe and his family were also there.  We had to pretend we were walking into the stadium with a crowd of people and then pretend that we were sitting in the stands cheering.  

The ad has just started being shown on TV every night because there's a game coming up and we were excited to see that we made the cut! We are all walking in together at about 38 seconds and then Karen and I are waving our scarves at the end.

It was lovely to catch up with Parker a month ago, who was also visiting from the USA and to meet his wife Madeline.

It seems like we've caught up with lots of people who are visiting from the USA over the last few months.  My brother in law Alex was 'home' from Illinois for a few days as he was working in Tassie.  We wish his whole family could've been with him, but it was nice to catch up for a few hours as we had a family dinner together.

This term has flown by and it's hard to believe we are a quarter of the way through the year already.  As much as I wasn't keen on going back to work after the summer holidays, I always love it once I'm there.  I work with some beautiful students and colleagues and they make me look forward to going to work every day.   It was a really busy term, so we were all glad when it was school holidays again, even if it was just for two weeks.