Within a few short weeks we will see the conclusion of Einstein’s second year as a soccer referee.  Einstein is our third child to become a referee and we have found this opportunity to be of immense value for him as we have with his older siblings.  He has grown in confidence, organisation and maturity. During dinner last Saturday he entertained us with the highlights of the Second Division game he had sidelined that afternoon. “They were discussing hair gel on the field!” “A player positioned a leg back into a curl when doing a header!” “Another player crawled off the field crying, cramp, cramp!” “When two players collided they apologised and hugged one another!” The interesting moments when…

This past week we were blessed with a couple of visitors from down South.  It became an incredibly busy and unusual week.  In our time honoured tradition of hosting guests we put them to work, in this case laying a verandah. Whilst Daniel spent a couple of days building, Jessica happily attended our usual Saturday morning soccer games and an all day Carnival Sunday.  Both days she worked in the canteen and thoroughly enjoyed herself:) It wasn’t all work however, lots of time was spent singing on Singstar.  Our Princess really enjoyed herself having fellow music lovers and of course computer games were popular too, as was the pool table. Jessica was marvellous…

Yesterday Carpenter underwent testing for his Provisional Driver’s License and he passed!!!   He is rather ecstatic and so are we:) Here in New South Wales to be eligible for receiving your Ps you have to be 17yrs and to log 120 hours driving with a ‘supervised driver'(generally a parent) and of course you need to pass your driving test.  This is a huge undertaking for all involved and we’re rather stoked to have ‘launched’ our second child. Gaining ‘control of the wheels’ is always a major milestone in a young person’s life and one for us as  parents too.  Our young people  have a power of life and death, a fact we strive hard to impress…

These holidays our teens have had a rather busy social life. One night they hosted a movie night, inviting the tweens & teens from a couple of families for a sleepover. Another week the boys hosted their annual LAN party, a two day fest of non stop gaming on their networked computers. This time we had five extra boys plus our three, so they set up an extra room. A couple more social events elsewhere and then time to return to our new school year.