Teachers' Day

Today was Teachers' Day and the kids had no classes. They had a small celebration at school yesterday and we made these portraits for their teachers Mariana and Edna. Both kids drew themselves with their teachers. Luana also wrote "teacher, I like you." :) I then cut hearts out of EVA and glued them on small magnets and we were done! I especially liked the fact that Lucas drew a halo above his own head. I bet he's a little saint at school! :D

busy busy busy

We (or I) have been quite busy the last couple of weeks. Some unexpected things happened also... Luana fractured her ankle walking home from a kid's party near our house. Initially we thought that she had just twisted her ankle real bad but the x-ray revealed a tiny fracture. So she'll have a cast for a month or so and there won't be any ballet for her for a while. Our Outdoor Hours have been reduced as well and I'm trying to do activities without having to walk anywhere...

We were left without water for over 30 hours last week... Something broke at the local water company and the whole town was without water. Luckily we have a well on the other side (the house that's rented at the moment) so we got some water from there. It was a good wake up call though and we've had long discussions about our water consumption with my hubby. We're going to make some improvements around the house and we've also been talking about how not to waste water with the kids.

Last week there was an international crusade in our church and I was the interpreter for three foreign evangelists. They came from Norway, South Africa and the US. It was really good as I like interpreting but haven't been able to do it for a while. The whole campaign was a real blessing.

Will be posting about the latest Outdoor Hour in a minute!

Reading journal

As Luana now clearly can read I introduced a reading journal hoping it will make her want to read by herself. I drew a few lines on the top of each page so that she can copy the name of the book there. Underneath the lines I drew three faces with different expressions so she can indicate what she thought of the book. The rest of the page is for her to draw something about the story or for me to write what she told me about the book.

This is the very first book she read all by herself and it's called "A party in the school". She thought the book was ok and chose to draw a scene where the children act out the sleeping beauty. She also had a go at writing "in the school there was Sleeping Beauty". I thought it was cute and she's really excited about her journal!

Learning new things

Luana learning to crochet with grandma. She's well on her way to become a craftster like me and my mum... :)

Green Hour challenge 11 - Luana's picture

This is the picture Luana drew after our study of the guava tree. The tree with two green guava's is in the middle and the little dots on the left side are ants walking up and down the tree. The branck-looking thing is actually one of the roots as we observed that parts of the roots are visible. Luana is on the right in the swing. The one with the red shirt if Lucas and he's holding a ripe guava. I've got a camera in my hand.

First cards are ready!

We finished off ten cards for the Christmas card swap. Luana glued the pressies under the trees. These were such fun to make (and easy too) that we might be making more of them... We're running out of pompoms though and I haven't seen any around over here but I'm sure we can think of something else to glue on the trees.

Luana's birthday

On Sunday we celebrated Luana and Lucas' birthday in Sunday School. This is how the table looked like just before the kids came in :) First we did some crafting and then we ate.


This is Luana with the cake she decorated (with just a little help from grandma).
Luana was born at 6.15 pm after a lengthy day :) We went to the hospital at around 11 o'clock and I had hoped for a special room (and a possible water birth) in the same ward where Lucas was later borntwo years later but it was full. So we ended up in another ward and the labour was quite usual for a first baby I guess. It took some 15 hours all together and I had an epidural that allowed me to sleep for a few hours during the day.

Luana was born with the umbilical cord around her neck and she had inhaled a fair amount of liquid. We got to keep her just 15 minutes after she was born and then she was whisked away to the children's ward as she wasn't breathing as well as she should have and her oxygen intake wasn't good enough. We got to see her again soon after that but weren't able to hold her or cuddle her. She had to stay in the children's ward for two nights and I'd wake up every hour just to see where my baby was.

I had no help in breastfeeding and it was really difficult in the beginning as she was bottle-fed while she was in the children's ward. I was really decided on getting breasfeeding going and wanted to get rid of the bottle. My mother helped a lot and I finally got some of the nurses to help me too so I managed to start breastfeeding. She also developed an infection and had to be on antibiotics so we stayed in the hospital for five days. That wasn't too bad though as we had a family room where my husband could also stay (and we finally had Luana with us too).

She was such a calm baby; she'd sleep all night since she was born :) A lot of that calmness has disappeared with time though and now we have an amazing little princess full of energy. She loves drawing, dancing, playing hairdresser, riding her bike etc.