Black and White Wednesday

Found this over at Cop Mama's blog... started by The long road to China and decided to join in with this shot i took last weekend.

first day at school... public v private?

One happy little kindy kid... She has been counting the sleeps until she could go to school


She absolutely loves getting dressed in her 'nuniform'...

Unleashing the poser with in!


One more bonus of havin a shift workin cop daddy is he gets to come for our first day of school!
And pick up too! (In the background is mrs groves who i am trying to teach grace to stop calling Mrs gross, but i think the whole class has got her name wrong as i have heard others doing it too)



I made the decision a long time ago to send y kids to public schol at least for primary school (first seven years). Finances has a little to do with it (about $60 a year vs $4000) but mostly it comes down to the options available. The best performing schools in our state are the private catholic schools, but I cant stand the religious factor. I mean i am a Christian and i love going to church but there are so many rules and regulations and routines in catholicism that i dont feel bring us any closer to God, but anyway that is a whole differet topic. Digressing... for that reason idont want to send my girls to a catholic school.
The Christian schools in our state whos beliefs are most aligned to ours are all strictly christian enrolments only by pastoral reference and i dont feel that segregating my children from the world they will evenually have to interact with will benifit them. I truly belive when our beliefs are challenged we are sharpened and grow, and the opportunity to share Christ and our testimony with friends is paramount in our walk with God.
There are baptist schools who's doctrine is good and enrol all students but the ones in our area don't fare much better academically than the public schools and i just cant justify so much extra money when i feel i can teach Christian values and lead my children in finding a relationship with God at home...

So we have done our research and got grace into a great schol in our area, and i plan to chec out their teachers each year and keep up with the programming so i can make sure we discuss any conflicting things that come up values and beliefs wise and plan to make a decision about highschool a bit further down the track. that said, If being in that environment has a negative impact on the girls we will find the money to send them to a Christian school.

I would love to hear what you all think/what your experiences have been

Tom boy toddler

Jaeda...

The ultrasound tech couldnt tell me if whe was a boy or girl, and sometimes i wonder still...

Unlike her sister J is loud, more than mildly destructive, hard hitting and resiliant and more often than not referred to as the animal of the family.


Openly defiant but quick to repent, miss J is less focused that her sister but far more headstrong.

Given the option at the aqaurium of about 15 animals to colour in including all the pretty ones like dolphins and seahorses J choose the shark, then as she takes 10secs to cover the pic in blue crayon she goes back to select...the shark again... not once but 3 times. When suggesting the pretty coral scene I was met with a determined "No, i donnn liiiyyyke it!"

Jaeda's favourite game is hiding in her closet and jumping out at people "roaring".She is pretty convincing too. :D

She loves dinosaurs (and ocasionally ballerinas), racing cars and iggle piggle.

She is a jumping,climbing, running, water baby and she loves sleep, her sister and puzzles and FOOD!!!


Most recently she made off with Graces toy baking set only to use the "electic beater" by removing one beater and putting it on the wall like an electric drill, saying "fix it".

I guess there had to be one considering their mother was a skateboarding, baggy pants wearing, owner of only one solitary pair of shoes (skate shoes) with not a skirt or dress to be found until a wedding dress made its way into the closet...

Grace-isms

a few from the files

"Mum its raining out...do you have an under-brella"

"no its not a tramp-olene mum its a Jumpolene" well yes that would make more sense

"Mum where is Jesus"... "does that mean he is riding in the back of our car right now"

and after hearing alot that Jesus is in our heart and not know the difference between her heart and other insides
"But i Neeeeed more food because when i eat my food then Jesus can get it and he might be hungry"

An the latest one....When about to call our friend who has just had another baby...
"mum, Aunty Carly has 3 babies...(me well kind of)...We need another one too. Me:you will have to talk to you dad about that one Grace: NO, we can just borrow another mummy to grow one coz i dont want you to go to the hospital again and then we can have another brother or sister and the other mummy can go home.
Nice Plan Grace :)

Some belated photos

For some reason I couldnt get these to download the other night so i had to save copies elsewhere on my harddrive and it worked.
These photos where taken by an officer who goes to our church(the uniformed officer in the group pic below), who happens to do a bit of photography on the side. Many thanks to him as my camera had nither the zoom or resolution to get good shots where we could actully pic D from the crowd.

I have not included some shots as too many other officers where visable. I have also blurred any other officers in close view and some details for obvious privacy reasons as although you would really need to be directed to find this blog it is technically a public forum.

Funnily enough in our fairly small church there are 4 regularly attending cops, i am yet to decide whether our church is appealing to a particular personality type that includes alot of cops or if there are just alot of christian cops out there.

I am not such a hopeless blogger as to not have even posted some christmas photos...










And i most definately would not have neglected to post some pics from Grace's first ballet recital.


Nope...not me!
.

I Did not laugh out loud when my 3 year olds first comment when i pointed out a 7 year old amazingly talented piano player on morning TV was "he doesnt have any friends does he". Nope, i am far more responsible and woul most definately have told my daughter immediately that that was an inappropriate and not very nice thing to say. (I actually decided she probably just meant because he was all alone on a big stage)


Oh and i did not just realise that those are sideways and simply ignore that fact as i cant be bothered reloading them...nope, not me

Academy days are over...

I cant believe about 2 years ago my husband, then a qualified tradie started throwing around some talk about joining the police. 6 months of think about it, more than a year of tests, exams and qualifying, appointments and tryouts, and 6 months of academy you think i would be used to it right...well no, i still cant believe he just went and became a cop...

The Gradution was great...although the newly appointed constables were very hot out on that parade ground. Our girls watched their daddy march and even tried a bit of marching themselves much to the amusement of those seated around us. A few guys from church turned out too which I think D really appreciated.






We had the celebration ball that night which was nice...

we landed up on a fairly quiet table, but the table next to us, the younger recruits more than made up for our table. D made a great speech for his squad and the high ranking officers and supervisors made a point of coming over to tell him their table were placing bets on how long (or not) it was going to to take him to be promoted to their ranks.
While i am on a boasting role, D picked up 2 out of 10 awards distributed over the 2 squads, the good samaritan award and the professional conduct award.

So we were stuffed and so keen to get home at the end of the night and we pulled into our drive way and D slows down to make sure a couple who are fighting, shouting and pushing and shoving each other are Ok, and because we were driving slowly (thank God) i noticed something on the road. It took me a second or two to realise it was a girl face down in the road. So the couple are really screaming it out at this stage and the girl is sounding very frantic so Duncan and I quickly figure the girl is passed out, get her to respond and move out of the road and he heads over to check if the girl who is screaming needs assistance and i do my best to keep the girl, who is absolutly tonked, off the road. Long story short the two things were unrelated, everyone on our street just had a bad night at once.
I just praise God we had slowed down because of the couple because we would have otherwise probable turned into our garage just short of where the girl was lying, leaving her exposed to anyone driving down our street.

Oh and my apologies to the call centre, as i had dialed 000 when i noticed the girl in the road and we had trouble waking her, but once i was talking to the dispatcher she had responded and was adamant about not wanting an ambulance, but at this point i though the female screaming may need assistance, so i started to outline that situation, and then things there calmed down and they went their separate ways so i sort of had to explain that while i had half described two potentially emergency situations, i actually didn't need anyone to respond. I wonder what she thought, maybe that i was just reporting things for my own entertainment or something, at least that was what her tone of voice suggested.

I am pretty sure D enjoyed "having" to tell the girl that he was an off duty police officer and couldn't just leave her in the street as she suggested we do. (not that he would have left her regardless of his occupation).