Terraria, horse riding, games

My tiredness continued into yesterday - I obviously pushed hard all last week and then collapsed a bit on the weekend. Tony had yesterday (Sunday) off work though and we had no big plans so I was able to take it fairly easy. It got hot early and I found it quite exhausting, especially when I was in the kitchen.

I was up early and had a bit of time to myself, then LiAM, Millie and Tony came out. LiAM was very excited that Tone was home for the day, and the three of them played Terraria for a while before breakfast.

Caitlin went to a friend's house in the morning, I took her over there and then stayed while she had a horse riding lesson - I hadn't seen her ride much and was impressed at how straight her back was and how comfortable and confident she looked in the saddle. Her friend then had a lesson and I left Caitlin there for the day, and I went to pick up V to bring him back to our place.

Once we got back Tony, LiAM, V and Amelie all played Terraria together and spent a lot of time negotiating with each other to swap armour and weapons, and coming up with team strategies for defeating the bosses. They played on and off all day and I loved listening to the conversations. I don't find Terraria easy (or very enjoyable) to play, but I do know a lot about it and enjoy hearing other people playing. LiAM was reading the attributes of the items that he found too, without any help - he doesn't realise he's reading when he does that, because the words just make sense to him, and he still thinks that reading is difficult. When he understands what something says without having to try hard, he says he wasn't reading, he just knew the words. Which at first was kind of true, he was recognising certain words that he already knew, whereas now he often reads things correctly with no context, and with words that he hasn't memorised - it's quite fascinating (and exciting) to watch his reading develop so naturally.

Amelie watched some more pokemon and finished the series she has been watching. She then watched 'Annie' (the new one from last year), while the boys played Halo on the xBox. I did a lot of work in the kitchen and cleared most of the kitchen table and all of the area under it, ready to reorganise things a bit with some new furniture I picked up from hard rubbish. Tony and I did a scout around the house and yard to see if there was anything we could put on our own hard rubbish pile, and did manage to find a goodly sized pile of broken chairs, a ripped mattress, broken ride on toy and a few other things. Glad that we remembered to do it before things start getting picked up today.

Tony and I did a couple of geography quizzes - we work well together, we remember different things - and were going to play 'Letters and Numbers' but I felt too fuzzy and didn't think I'd be able to think quickly enough. I hope we get another chance to play soon because we both really love playing and it's rare to have an opportunity when we're both home and the kids are happily occupied without us. Amelie spent a lot of time in the afternoon during her elephant puzzle, both as a full puzzle and just making up each elephant separately. LiAM also played with it for a while after V left. Amelie also spent hours playing with her My Little Ponies, they had a great time flying around the house rescuing each other and then having a party on the kitchen table. StarLily (the Magical Unicorn) joined them for a while too.

Amelie and I learnt some signs for colours in Auslan, and refreshed a few other words. Now she can ask for pink milk, chocolate milk and hot chocolate by signing, which is very handy for all of us.

Caitlin stayed at her friend's all day and had fish and chips in the park, then they brought her home and she showed her friend around the property, especially looking at the chicks. Tone met the parents and the guys had a beer and we all chatted for a while. After they left we ate dinner and watched 'Australia's Got Talent', then the kids played some puzzle games on the computer, and Caitlin cleaned up the lounge room a bit to play Just Dance on the playstation - but couldn't find the game so played Book of Spells instead, which then led her to joining the Pottermore site on the computer.

Quizzes, McDonalds and house organisation

I've discovered a quiz website that I love - www.jetpunk.com - and over the last couple of days we've all done many many quizzes on it. Lots of geography - I now know all of the Asian countries, including all the -stans and how to spell them, and am getting better at South America and Eastern Europe and Africa - as well as general knowledge, movies, words, sporting teams, and The Avengers and Harry Potter. LiAM and I did an Avengers quiz on Friday - name as many of the 100 people who have ever been on the Avengers list... At first we got about 16, then we looked through the answers at the end, then browsed his Avengers Character Guide book, looked up a few on wikepedia that were listed in the answers but he felt could never have been Avengers (and discovered, for example, that Sandman did try to work for good for a while, and did join the Avengers, then became corrupted again). We tried the quiz again and got closer to 40 - we'll come back to it again probably today and see how many we get. We did a lot of Harry Potter quizzes yesterday, with everyone joining in, and knew most of the answers (all the horcruxes, lots of spells, characters, locations, how characters died). The hardest (and most fun) was to name the 100 characters who are most mentioned in the books. We got around 60 the first time, then Caitlin had a go on her own (she wasn't there when we did the first attempt) and got close to that, then together we all did it and thought of 87. It's been so much fun - and one of the things I like about the site is reading some of the comments at the end of the quizzes - most of the people doing them are really keen to learn and keep trying the quizzes over and over until they have learnt all the answers. Especially the geography ones, I am finding it exciting to see people truly eager to remember all of the countries of the world. None of it is knowledge that is  necessary for getting on in the world, but it's interesting and fun and I love to see people learning because they are enjoying it, and I am enjoying it all so much!

On Friday we met up with another unschooling family, we had planned to go to a park but it was raining pretty hard so we met at McDonalds in Ringwood instead. I tried to use the self-ordering system (partly because our order is always a little bit complicated, and it seemed easier to take on the complications myself rather than explain them to the server) - it was so confusing and I ended up ordering 2 meals for myself and the wrong burger for Millie... The staff were lovely and gave me a voucher as a refund for my extra meal, and I went back and bought the right burger for Millie (although forgot to take off the onions and pickles, so she nearly didn't eat it anyway (I scraped them off and ate them myself, they are actually my favourite part of a McDonalds burger). The kids played with their friends in the very cool playground, and I chatted with the other mum, and once our food was all sorted out it was a very pleasant way to spend the afternoon. We were going to finish the visit with mega choc waffle cones - but their ice cream machine wasn't working! So both of us promised our kids we'd get them at a McDonalds on the way home. I was able to use my vouchers which was pretty cool - the kids had a quick play in the new playground at Croydon Maccas, I don't think it was as fun as it looked, Caitlin had been so keen but was a bit disappointed. They ate their ice creams on the way home and that was a lovely end to our outing.

I had a bath when we got home, while Tony cooked spag bol, then he went out to a darts practice night, and the kids played outside on the trampoline and swing, and looked through their binoculars at things, while I ate my tea outside with them and then read my book until it was too dark to read outside. I also took lots of photos of them, including some of them jumping all at the same time on the trampoline, it was very cool. After we came in we watched the christmas bonus episode of Heartland Series 4, then turned the tv off and headed for bed.

Yesterday we had a whole day at home with no plans (my favourite kind of day). Millie and I played Neopets, we all played with the fish/animal puzzle at various times, the girls did their nails, we watched some TV and the movie Rango, LiAM and Millie played with the dinosaur pattern board, Millie and Tony did jigsaw puzzles, LiAM and I had sword fights outside using pool noodles (it was hilarious - at one point L had chopped off my leg so I could only hop, and I had knocked his sword out of his hand, so he was running around trying to get it back while I hopped around it and waved my sword at him - exhausting and really really fun), and we did heaps of work on tidying up, sorting things out, more rearranging of the dining room so that I can start putting things away in there. I felt like I made heaps of progress in lots of areas yesterday, it was a great day. Caitlin has also set up some cool new lights in her room - a long strip of lights that can change colour, and she can operate by remote control! They look very cool and inviting, and she's loving having light again in her room (I broke the one powerpoint in her room a couple of weeks ago, so she's only been able to use battery powered light, it's great that she now has another option, and we've got ideas for how to get her more).