Elephant on a trampoline

We have a new favourite video clip in our house




Resulting comments from various members of the family;
"Wow!"
"Careful, Mr Elephant!"
"Don't believe this, Mum, it isn't a true video"
"Hmmm, they've got the physics a bit wrong there..."

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SNOW!

Some photos of last night's snow at our place. I took some at 7.30 this morning while it was still dark (and the kids were miraculously still sleeping!).

And of course, there's the compulsory "children enjoying snow" photo...







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Why Jesus never married

I'm sure this has been a burning question for you. Certainly Miss5 was pondering it on our way home from church on Sunday.

Here is the dialogue that ensued...

Miss5: Jesus never married

parent (can't remember which of us said what, but its immaterial): that's right

Miss5: 'cos Jews never married

parent: Ah, no. Jews get married. It's just that Jesus spent all his time telling people about God.

Miss5: Yeah. Instead of getting married and getting his wife to do it.

!

So now you know.

As I recall, we were both laughing too hard to set her properly straight on this one, although I think we did make an attempt...

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Tree grows inside man's lung

This article caught my eye a couple of weeks ago and has been waiting for an opportunity to be blogged. There's actually a picture of the wee fir tree inside the lung, if you follow the link to the news story.

Tree grows inside man's lung

A Russian man who was being operated on for a suspected tumour ended up having a fir tree removed from one of his lungs.

The 5cm tree, was discovered by surgeons when they opened up Artyom Sidorkin, 28, according to Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Gazeta.

It is believed Mr Sidorkin inhaled a seed, which then sprouted into a small fir tree inside his lung...

The article continues...

He went to doctors complaining of extreme chest pain and coughing up blood.

Surgeon Vladimir Kamashev told the newspaper he was sure it was cancer.

"We did X-rays and found what looked exactly like a tumour. I had seen hundreds before, so we decided on surgery."

The tree was discovered when surgeons took a biopsy before removing the major part of the man's lung.

"I thought I was hallucinating," said Dr Kamashev.

"I blinked three times as I was sure I was seeing things."

"It was very painful. But to be honest I did not feel any foreign object inside me," a relieved Mr Sidorkin told the paper.

Craziness. And I always thought that those stories of not eating seeds because they'd sprout inside you were utter wives' tales. Turns out that, if you're a bit woolly on the difference between swallowing and inhaling, the old wives might not be so wrong after all. Read more...

The Fresh Prince lied to me

It turns out that 90s sit-coms are not reliable sources of historical information. Who knew?

I clearly remember the moment, sitting at home after school watching the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air finding out something about African American identity that he didn't already know. He was suitably humbled and even granted his namby-pamby cousin a degree of respect for knowing something that he didn't.

You see, the Fresh Prince had thought that negro spiritual/gospel songs were simply ways of bouying themselves up, of giving themselves some hope for the future, and some way of taking their minds off the hell on earth in which many of them lived. But no! His cousin (whose name completely escapes me, so I'm going to have to google it...Carlton!) Carlton knew the true history, and then Will Smith and the entire audience did too...

You see, the story goes that many of the early negro spirituals were 'code songs', giving precise directions and instructions for escaped slaves to find their way along the Underground Railroad - of safe houses where people would give them shelter and help them escape to the north/Canada.

I have loved this story for years, and whenever I hear or sing one of those classics like 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot', or 'Wade in the Water', I'd remember the secret purpose of those songs. I would thrill in the daring and terrifying escape plans, and the communication from field to field as a song got passed along. I never found out any more about it, but that little snippet was enough to fire my adolescent imagination.

The other day we had a CD of Sunday School music playing and there was one song which went

The animals went in one by one
There's one more river to cross
something something rhymes with one
There's one more river to cross

There's one wide river
And that's the river of Jordan
One wide river
There's one more river to cross

The animals went in two by two...

Which I thought was odd. The story of Noah's ark and the animals has nothing to do with the River Jordan. So I thought it must be one of those special songs. I thought that I would finally find out more about these secret code songs, for which I assumed there would be a whole pile of information. Which led me to the internet, of course. Which led to the shattering of a really good story.

Because, you see, there is absolutely no evidence that spirituals were used as precisely coded instructions for anything. All 'reputable' historians who have looked into it have sadly concluded it was a nice story but have placed it into the 'urban legend' category, with the first references to it arising in the mid-20th century. The other type of historian have continued to talk about it, but mysteriously fail to include any reference as to the source of their information.

Which makes me a bit sad.

But in the process, I have learned some more about the Underground Railroad, of which I was utterly ignorant (aside from knowing its name). I also found The National Geographic's Underground Railroad game, where you are a slave seeking to escape from a Maryland farm in 1850. Duly bookmarked for when the kids get old enough to not have nightmares about it.

I have also learned that 90s sit-coms starring teeny-bop rap artists are not reliable sources of information. Who'd a thunk it?


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Young Tory of the Year

From 1995. The more things change the more they stay the same.
From "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" UK comedy show. Read more...

kereru, bruised ribs and puppets

All features of this last week, which has been moderately eventful, as these things go.

For a start, I spent the latter half of last week waiting to discover whether I had Shingles or Pneumonia. Turns out it was neither (thankfully). I had a bad cold and extremely sore ribs on one side - couldn't cough, laugh or even breathe deeply. Went to Dr who sent me off for a chest x-ray and started me on antibiotics in case of pneumonia, but said he suspected shingles, but wouldn't be able to tell until the rash came up. Spent next couple of days in pain and feeling unwell. People from church prayed. X-ray came back clear. I no longer feel the slightest bit unwell. But ribs are still very sore.

Yesterday I recalled being viciously (albeit accidentally) jabbed in the back by a small person's elbow about the day before my mysterious rib pain began. That sort of thing happens all the time so I'd forgotten all about it. Bingo. So I had a cold and injured my rib-cage. Still, at least I've had the x-ray now and know there's no rib cracked or anything. I'll just need to be careful and gentle for the next few days. Yay for a husband who loves to stay home with the kids! He was great - took most of last week off so I could sit/lie around doing nothing while he took care of the offspring. Good stuff.


On to the kereru (native woodpigeon). These were quite common to see in our neck of the woods when I was growing up, but then almost vanished about 10 or so years ago. Well, they're back, and this pair were spotted in the gum tree in our neighbours house. I love them. They make cool "whoo whoo whoo" sounds with their wings as they fly, they try to land on branches that are ridiculously inadequate and fall off, and they're altogether lovely.

I hope they stay and the gum tree doesn't get cut down this year (or ever). There's a couple of neighbours who hate it with a passion as it shades their sections quite thoroughly even in summer, drops gum leaves every where and threatens to 'self-lop' one of its great branches into their section. I can understand all that - gum trees aren't really great in suburbia (they also don't like other stuff growing near them and inhhibit healthy growth of other plants), but they provide great nesting sites for these beauties. And they suck up huge volumes of water each day. My section has kinda soggy bits all through winter so I'm happy for the gum tree to be taking what it needs.

On to our third, unrelated topic for today. Puppets.

I handed Miss4 a book of 100 things to make with paints and paper and suggested she have a look through for something to do today. She decided to make a 'dancing dollie'. She drew and coloured the picture of the dancer, and showed me where to cut the holes for her fingers. Then she cut out around the dancer and voila - a dancing puppet.

I unearthed a discarded wine cask box from our craft supplies stash and improvised a wee theater using the craft knife, and she was quite taken with it for about 20 minutes this morning.


It's fun introducing her to new ideas - she's seen puppets before, and played with our wee finger puppets that you can see in the photos - but we've never taken the leap to staging a puppet performance ourselves. I'll raise it as an idea tomorrow. The usual pattern is that she'll be uninterested in something when I first mention it, but after it rolls around her mind for a while (and this could be a long while) it may pop back up, seemingly out of nowhere, as a full-fledged interest.

I'd also like to get hold of a prism in the next week or so. We're reading the Magic School Bus Color Day Relay chapter book, and there's an explanation of white light being fractured by a prism, but reading about it, hearing about it and even seeing it on YouTube (I haven't looked, but I'm confident its there) doesn't compare to actually holding the thing yourself and seeing it happen in real life. Read more...

boogie woogie piggie #2

Found a yahoo video using Doris Day's "Boogie Woogie Piggie" as the sound-track. I'm not sure what the video is all about - seems to be random still photos of random people - but if you want to hear the original Boogie Woogie Piggie, here it is. Seems it isn't just my Dad's song after all!

If I try and embed the video it is too big to fit nicely, so follow the link below...
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/129189/1275161 Read more...

home school economics

Miss4 (Randomly, while helping me load the dishwasher):

"What you've got to do is, get some newspaper and scrunch it all up really tight and small, and then, you get some gold or some other metal, but gold is best, and cover up all the newspaper so you can't see any. And scrunch it really really really tight and... there! That's how the government makes money"

So now you know. Read more...

ta daa!

Play fort complete!

What you see here is Dad getting the cement ready to fill in around the posts, while Miss4 gets her first sit inside. It now also has a ladder attached down the front where Merl is standing. Brilliant. I'm thinking that underneath is a prime place to move the sandpit to, come summertime.

In other news around the house, I've got some photos of what's been happening in the garden lately. First up is the gooseberry bushes and rhubarb that I planted. Here they are in their not-quite-final resting places. The gooseberry starts are just small dead-looking twigs, and the rhubarb is dormant, so believe me, a closer shot wouldn't have shown you any more :) Although you might have been able to see my classy re-used envelope plant labels. The bush you see at the far left is a dahlia, then just in from there is my wee garlic patch, then two gooseberries, then the rhubarb crown near the righthand-end. I edged the garden with branches from our trees which lately received a much-needed cutting back. The mulch is mostly leaf-litter, with some lime and blood-and-bone sprinkled on and forked in. Our dear friend who gave us the goozies says I have planted them too close together, but upon looking it up in a gardening book to see just how far apart they should be planted, I see that they are often planted close for the first year then transplanted to their final spots once they're more bush-like. So that's good - one job that can wait until next year!

Here is our wee Meyer Lemon tree, gifted to us from my Dad. He'd been unable to get it to fruit down at his place, but we have a much milder micro-climate here so we'll give it a go. I am very pleased, as I was going to go buy one and just happened to mention it to Dad in passing. He then promptly offered us his, and also my Nana's, which was also at his place in a pot. It's now at our place too, re-potted, and in a sunny spot. We shall see if we have more luck than Dad. I've promised him some lemons if they do prove fruitful up here on the hill.

I also have begun using very un-organic poison on an ivy that is growing up one of our fences. I've drilled holes into the trunk and poured un-diluted poison into the holes, so it's a very very targeted use of poison. Ivy must die. Can't stand the stuff and can't understand why anyone would plant it in this climate - it just runs rampant. And besides, I need the fence-space for the fruit trees I plan to espalier along there... I'm thinking an apple, a plum and perhaps an apricot or a peach if I can get heirloom varieties that will suit.

I haven't looked into it but I'm guessing it is too late to order them for this year, but that gives me a year to prepare their spots with legume crops, good mulch and other goodies.

Or perhaps I'll just nip down to the garden centre and buy the first ones I see. You never can tell :) Read more...

tool time, people

Our Play Fort arrived yesterday! So we spent several hours today getting started on putting it together. My Dad came and helped out for a couple of hours this morning, digging holes, getting the posts in and the floor level. Then friends arrived for lunch and we had a break from fort-building to make sushi!

After our friends departed we spent about another hour and a half putting the top walls in before darkness and dinner.

If the weather holds we'll finish off tomorrow by bracing the legs, attaching the climbing wall and ladder, and cementing the posts into the ground.

I'm so excited! I would have loved to have a tree house as a kid, so I'm pleased to have one now that I'm a grown-up. Even if the kids spend no time in it (which I think unlikely, given how many times we had to lift them down off the step-ladder today), but even if they don't, I think it will be a great place to lie down with a cold drink and a book come summer time!

Almost as good as a hammock - or perhaps even better - there's nowhere to rest your drink to turn the page in a hammock.

So I'm hoping that the promised Southerly Change will hold off for another day. It was supposed to come yesterday afternoon, and then this afternoon, but as you can see from the pictures, there has been not a sign of bitterly cold Antarctic winds, sleet or even rain.

Long may it continue!
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Being hit on the head lessons

Was reading this article over at Best Homeschooling. Alfie Kohn is responding to the common opinion that kids are going to come across bad/boring/tedious/harmful practices and events later in their lives, so we should expose them to such things early so they can get used to it - something he calls the Better Get Used To It principle (BGUTI).

You can see this in all sorts of areas, like homework, standardised testing and win/lose competitive events. Of course, some people believe in the educational and personal benefits of these things, and that's up to them - we all have our own opinions based on what we have read and experienced ourselves. But there are other people who readily concede that in an ideal world kids should not have to endure these things, but then say that in fact kids should have to do it, because they will need to have those skills later on.

Alfie Kohn was reminded of the Monty Python sketch which includes Being hit on the head lessons:

When the student recoils and cries out, the instructor says, “No, no, no. Hold your head like this, then go, ‘Waaah!’ Try it again” - and gives him another smack. Presumably this is extremely useful training . . . for getting hit on the head again.

But people don't really get better at coping with unhappiness because they were deliberately made unhappy when they were young. In fact, it is experience with success and unconditional acceptance that helps one to deal constructively with later deprivation. Imposing competition or standardized tests or homework on children just because other people will do the same to them when they're older is about as sensible as saying that, because there are lots of carcinogens in the environment, we should feed kids as many cancer-causing agents as possible while they're small to get them ready.

To be sure, we don't want students to be blindsided by destructive practices with which they're completely unfamiliar (although this seems rather unlikely in our society). But how much exposure do they need?

Anyhow, I am unable to resist gratuitous Monty Python sketches, so here is the Argument Clinic, in all its glory (the head-hitting is at 4:08). I have watched it and there isn't any nudity, but there is mild 1970s British abuse language :)

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"We've got socialisation covered"

Found this yesterday while looking for info to pass on to family members

We've got socialization covered

Published: Sunday, Aug. 28, 2005 10:23 p.m. MDT, Deseret News

When my wife and I mention we are strongly considering home-schooling our children, we are without fail asked, "But what about socialization?" Fortunately, we found a way our kids can receive the same socialization that government schools provide.

On Mondays and Wednesdays, I will personally corner my son in the bathroom, give him a wedgie and take his lunch money. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, my wife will make sure to tease our children for not being in the "in" crowd, taking special care to poke fun of any physical abnormalities.

Fridays will be "Fad and Peer Pressure Day." We will all compete to see who has the coolest toys, most expensive clothes and the loudest, fastest and most dangerous car.

Every day, my wife and I will adhere to a routine of cursing and swearing in the hallways and mentioning our weekend exploits with alcohol and immorality. If our kids attempt to use the bathroom without permission, we will punish them immediately.

And we have asked them to report us to the authorities in the event we mention God or try to bring up morals and values.

Alan Brymer

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Poem (or something)

Sent to me by Anna, who was pleading with the general public to turn this into one of those saccharine slide shows with sunsets and fluffy ducklings in it... or something.

One night I had a wondrous dream,
One set of footprints there was seen,
The footprints of my precious Lord,
But mine were not along the shore.

But then some strange prints appeared,
And I asked the Lord, "What have we here?"
Those prints are large and round and neat,
"But Lord, they are too big for feet."

"My child," He said in somber tones,
"For miles I carried you along.
I challenged you to walk in faith,
But you refused and made me wait."

"You disobeyed, you would not grow,
The walk of faith, you would not know,
So I got tired, I got fed up,
And there I dropped you on your butt."

"Because in life, there comes a time,
When one must fight, and one must climb,
When one must rise and take a stand,
Or leave their butt prints in the sand."
- Author Unknown

I tried to identify the author, but the internet is silent on the matter (at least, it wasn't telling me anything this evening - several copies of it around, but no author attribution). If you have never in your whole life come across the Footprints poem that this is parodying, you will find it here. Read more...

Play fort!

We have decided to purchase this kitset play fort for our family. Merl's Grandma very generously gave us some money at Christmas for just such a purchase and it has taken us this long to seriously get around to deciding on something.

This will fit really nicely in our 'tree bit' of the garden - in where we took out a big self-sown sycamore last year. So it will be like a safe treehouse - since none of our trees are very suitable for actually putting a treehouse into.

I'm just waiting to hear back from the sales guy. Hopefully it will be in place in the next month or two! Read more...

Preparing for Passover

This year our homegroup (bible study group/cell group/life group/whatever term you like) is having a passover 'meal' again. Merl and I organised one in our last homegroup a couple of years ago, and it was really terrific. An amazing thing to experience a 'last supper' of our own, and to see even more ways in which Jesus fulfills prophecy - even prophecy that is not written, but is symbolic in the gestures and the foods (e.g. the hidden matzah that is striped, pierced and unleavened, then broken and hidden for a time then found to great reward).

We use a Messianic Seder found at these links: Preparation; Haggadah (words and instructions for the meal); Explanation. This Haggadah is a great one for us Gentiles, because it explains everything, as opposed to some that we looked at, written for use by Messianic Jews, which, naturally, assumed that you knew stuff about Judaism.

We will not actually have a meal as such - just the ceremonial foods, and maybe some cake or nibbles at the 'meal' portion of the service. Last time we did it, we cut out many of the optional bits and were still going 2 hours later. Which is great, and perhaps if we were all mentally ready for it being one of our big Feast Days, we'd have a big meal together as well. But since it is an interesting, albeit powerfully moving, thing to do in our homegroup gathering, keeping as close to our normal running time will be good.

So now I just need to hope that all the right stuff is available at the good supermarket in town. Once again, I have left my passover purchasing until the last minute :) Thankfully the actual Passover on the Jewish calendar is not for another month, so hopefully they won't be completely out of horseradish paste, and will have bought in the Matzah ahead of time...

Image from here Read more...

Storyline Online

Merl's Aunt (one of the many librarians in the family), passed this fabulous site on to us.

http://www.storylineonline.net/

Actors in the Screen Actor's Guild read out kid's stories, and there are little animations of the book's illustrations too. Very cool, and Miss4 quite likes it. Useful for rainy afternoons for about 15 minutes... Read more...

Miss4's birthday party!

Despite pouring rain all night and the forced cancellation of outside play, Miss4's Jungle Party was a rollicking success!

I broke all my healthy eating rules with the kids munching on cheese Twisties, red-food-dyed cheerios, white, margarine-ed 'fairy bread', and a store-bought (but home decorated) cake. As a concession to healthy food choices there was a bowl of blueberries and a bowl of strawberries. Some strawberries did get eaten, but I suspect that not a single blueberry was tasted by any of the party-going kids (Miss1 thought they were great, though).

The cake was a masterpiece, if I do say so myself :-) It is my first attempt at decorating a cake and it was a lot of fun. I drew the same lion on the cake as I used on the invitations and the favour bags. A little OTT perhaps, but what the heck.

The kids had a blast decorating their head-bands into various jungle creatures. Some exotic species were chosen, including a couple of kangaroos and a blue-and-black tiger, and the kids could choose to get their faces painted too. The face-painting stretched the ingenuity of my cousin and I. How do you face-paint a kangaroo? Fortunately the kids didn't know either :-)

There was pin-the-tail-on-the-Zebra, and Merl organised a Safari (treasure) Hunt where the kids hunted for little tattoos (I found some cute cartoon jungle ones at the $2 shop). And we played "Sleepy Lions" (which is roaring around the place while the music plays, then dropping to the floor 'asleep' when the music stops), we read jungle stories, and we had a Jungle Parade where we marched around and around the house singing "In Africa there is a Jungle, EIEIO, and in that Jungle there is a ... kangaroo... " etc, and the kids joyfully joined in with appropriate noises and actions.

No epic meltdowns, and only a few minor ones - one from Miss4 who suddenly decided she "needed space" (which she does every so often when overwhelmed by stuff - or possibly to have a sulk, I'm not sure which actually - this behaviour may need some looking into. Sulking to get your way is not desirable). And a couple from the wee lass down the road who is ... um... not used to sharing or cooperating, as she doesn't get any practice at this at home. But the situation was resolved without pandering to her, so that is all good (we redirected play into Story Time at that point).

Merl had the brilliant thought of appointing a friend who was here with his son to be 'photographer', so we actually have quite a good photographic record of this birthday. Hooray! Read more...

tiger tiger burning bright

On Saturday Miss3 went to a friend's birthday party. This friend and Miss3 actually share a birthday, but E's party was last weekend and Miss3's is this coming one (and we have another one to attend the day after... why has my preschooler got a fuller calendar than I do?).

The party was held at the Otago Museum's Butterfly house, which I have waxed lyrical about about before. The kids (all girls) had a 'butterfly food' morning tea, a trip through the butterfly house, made butterfly face masks and had their faces painted.

When I went to collect Miss3, I saw 5 little girls with their faces painted like butterflies, 2 who hadn't wanted their faces painted at all.

And a tiger.



Not one for conformity, our child :-)

Needless to say, her party will be 'jungle themed' - She has repeatedly told me that "it is not 'Jungle' - it is 'Lions and Tigers', cos we like to dress up and go ROAR". But I know for a fact that some of the kids coming would much rather be giraffes or monkeys than lions and tigers (a couple of the girls, funnily enough - the boys will be roaring around with the best of them), so a "jungle" theme it will stay.

For now we are expecting about 7 or 8 kids to come, so hopefully the weather will be fine, otherwise it will be utter chaos in our house this weekend! Read more...

kid's game from recycled milk bottles

Saw this on planet green I think, leading us to RePlayGround's instructions.

Worked really well. We haven't decorated ours so you'll see much prettier ones if you follow the link, but they were a hit at our church picnic a couple of weeks ago. Instead of the tin-foil ball that they recommend we used a lightweight plastic ball that we already have (we reuse our tinfoil until it is a mess - not so good for kids' toys!).

Much fun had by all, and I don't worry about the small one sucking them and 'breaking' them - the cardboard handles are in plentiful supply and can quickly be replaced :-) Read more...