Today was a school day. Yes, in the usual sense, it’s Friday and Emily went to school on the bus, but our whole day revolved around the school today.
First, it was Merit Assembly day…this is run every fortnight by a different class and they put together a whole lot of little things to present to the other kids and the half dozen parents who show up. Today was Emily’s class and we don’t often go but Emily promised it was going to be funny. It was, too, with the class having put together a power point story about being “firewise”… I think the motto in the end was “get down and get out fast or you’ll just be a memory of the past”…catchy for 10 year olds!
This was the other reason for going in to school this morning….
The big school girl
Oh, yes, be afraid, Tara is about to start school! Her birthday isn’t for another month, but she had her first school visit with schooliform today. They have a lovely system here where the local day care centre takes all the 4 year olds to school for one afternoon a month, so Tara has been going to school for the last 11 months..but not in her schooliform! She was soooooooo excited to put on her uniform. She was a bit quieter when it came to being handed over to her teacher, but she sat through the assembly riveted to proceedings and then toodled off with her class to their room. We left two children at school today, which was quite odd to be truthful.
On arrival home, it was a whirlwind of the usual jobs before having to go back to school to pick up Tara at lunchtime. I had to do the rounds of the kids who know me as the “baker” from hockey, and those who wanted to tell me about the progress of the chickens they’ve got off of us this year. How come everyone else’s chickens are laying eggs and ours aren’t?!?!
Eventually home for lunch and by this time Adrian has left for hockey practice at school, so he’s back there doing the practice and then a coaching workshop that the school has deemed all their coaches must participate in. At 3pm he excuses himself and heads into Dannevirke for the hockey games.
As for me, after lunch we get into the preparation for hockey afternoon. Put dinner in the crockpot, bake bikkies for after the games, dress the children in 14 layers of clothing as both of tonight’s games are outside. At 3pm, leave to get into Dannevirke to do library, supermarket, vet and the warehouse, then hockey.
4.40pm Norsewood Blue vs Weber Blue. The Weber team is super good with lovely skills and they’ve been playing since they were 4 or 5, and they beat our other team 9-0 in the first game of the season. Our Blue team is ever so slightly better than the other team though, so we had high hopes. Until the last 5 minutes, all was pretty even, and then all of a sudden our guys ran out of puff and Weber ran in 3 more goals. Still, it wasn’t 9! Final score, 6-3 to Weber. Biggest pasting that the Blue team have had this season so probably quite useful for them, but they still get warm chocolate chip bikkies afterwards….no wonder so many kids play hockey at our school!
5.10pm Norsewood Red vs St Josephs Green. Our blue team beat them by 2 goals last week so we had confidence that the red team could do pretty well. Briar and Tara had abandoned 10 of their 14 layers, were stuffing themselves on chocolate chip bikkies and ready salted chips, and had disappeared into another part of the complex to play tag with all the big kids. Emily played defense and this was her usual pose…
Patrizia in goal with her loyal defender, Emily
These guys saw a fair bit of action, but we did get down the other end….
The melee at the goal, but we got one in!!!!
Again, the second half kind of fell apart and they got too many goals and we didn’t get enough….6-2 we think….ooops! Still, everyone got chocolate chip bikkies afterwards, though they weren’t warm by that stage!
And finally, at 6pm I bundle 3 children into the car and wend the half hour home before lighting the fire, plonking them in front of “Jake and the Neverland Pirates” and cooking some veg to go with the chicken I’ve had in the crockpot. Late bed again.
Adrian however, still had more to do…a hockey meeting….more school stuff…and he got home at 8.45pm. That’s pretty much 12 hours he spent at school or related things today…
Phew, thank goodness it’s the weekend tomorrow!
rapukestyle 