Family Home Evening

We did the Christmas tree tonight. Before the tree was dressed the two younger ones decided to dress themselves.

Ho, Ho, Ho.

Giddy-up reindeer.

The kids had fun, I watched, Christmas is after all for the kids.

I decorated the mantle piece and hung the stockings up.

It was good!

Sunday walk

We still hadn't gone and seen any of the island, except for where we live so on Sunday we took a drive. Our intention was to go to Ventnor beach, but we got lost on the steep windy roads and landed up at Bonchurch beach instead. It is just up from Ventnor, so we weren't' too far away.

Cheryn was at Angela's house and we had Vincent, it was a lovely walk, and on our way back it was already quite dark.

Those tins contain little plastic army men, not chocolates, but they once did contain lots of chocolates..... yum, yum!

Pictures

Zeek and Rachel's First day of School

The school they go to is wonderful. They don't do homework in the "normal" sense of the word, they say it exhausts the children and doesn't work effectively anyway. So every three weeks they are required to hand in a project illustrating the work covered in those three weeks.

They don't separate the subjects, if you are learning about Italy (geography) and there is a certain kind of animal that lives there (biology) which has in the past been considered a pest for XYZ reasons (history) but is now being protected (current affairs).... So all the subjects are rolled into one big interesting lesson. I love it!

On Fridays they stop work at 12:00 and can go off into groups to do enrichment activities (all free of charge) swimming, golf, music, dance, tennis, hockey, theatre, and so on, I don't remember all of them, but there are 20 different things to choose from. Zeek said he is doing the golf, and Rachel wants to do the theatre.

Like I said, I love it!

Corbin's new uniform

I love the casualness about the uniforms here, they are comfortable, and there is no tie to make untidy and for the girls no skirt to roll up.

Corbin had a great First day, his teacher is wonderful, and he had a classroom assistant (all the classes do) who is so fun and friendly. Today he is having his first violin lesson (part of the school curriculum, and free of charge.) and he was so excited today to get to school and play his violin. Each child is given one for the year. His school snack is also provided by the school free of charge, fruit, dried or fresh is on the menu. He is in a class of 21 children in a school with 123 children. I am so happy with him being there.

So on Monday Cheryn went to school, then on Tuesday Cheryn and Corbin went to school, and today all of them have gone to school.

(Can't get the photos to load for some reason, will post later, and if you want the originals with the school logos on the jumpers then let me know and I will e-mail them to you.)

Cheryn's new school uniform

Doesn't she look lovely! She had a great first day at school, she has been put into all of Vincent's classes, so she has a friend! That is brilliant.

The exhausted travelers

A big thanks to Donovan and Eva for letting us stay at their house on our last night, without your help it would have been a very cold and uncomfortable night indeed! (The truck had already left with all our bedding)

So we woke up at 02:00 and got into the car, then we had to go into town and drop off our keys, by the time all of that was done it was 03:00. I drove South out of NI and down through SI or Ireland until 08:00. Then we boarded the ferry, we were all exhausted.

That's a desperately tired smile :(

I slept on the ferry for about an hour, the kids ran around and played, the ferry trip lasted 3 1/2 hours. Then back onto the road for another 5 hours - it was supposed to be 4 1/2 hours, but the traffic was quite bad near to Portsmouth, so we lost half an hour.

Then it was onto the next ferry, this on lasting 20 min. And finally onto the IOW. I got to our new house at 20:00, so it was a very long day.

Poor Pete had to wake up the next morning early and drive the truck all the way back to NI. Then the next morning he flew down to Heathrow, caught two trains, another ferry and finally we were back together as a family in our new home.

Another thank you to Graham and Sarah for having Pete for the night, and to Angela for finding us our house.

Loading the Truck

Phew, Ben, Pete and Zeek worked so hard. The rest of us helped, but they did the heavy lifting. A huge thanks goes out to Ben Noble, without him we would not have been able to do it. Thank you Ben.

The van was loaded right up to the door! It was such a close fit that we had to let the air out of the bike tires to close the door the last little bit. WE DID IT! YAY!