recent happenings

Well after needing extra blankets during the night before and really not wanting to get out of bed into the cold of the morning Ryan and I decided we needed to light a fire yesterday evening. Having discovered we'd actully manged to use up all the boxes of cryptomaria (great firelighter material!) from last winter a quick scoot around the lawn filled up a new box of dead twigs that had fallen, that and some crumbling puriri soon got up enough heat for the logs to catch - the first proper fire of autumn.

It was so nice and cosy, us either side of the woodstove, each under a quilt (me because I was quilting one, him because he only had shorts with him not to mention it being part of his ritual of being here) watching Bagpuss and drinking hot chocolate. It felt like something from my own childhood, except the luxury of having the entire series on video was then well beyond my comprehension and '70s technology!

Ryan had come with William and I the day we went to the farm to get the firewood a few weeks ago. Ruth was still feeling pretty shaken from her ordeal with the ram so was trying to take it easy, Stephan was off helping Dan and Christina get in firewood - Rebecca and Roman were there as well so it was quite a family get together! Ryan hadn't been overly keen on going there at first having wanted to come to our place to play on the computer, but it didn't take long for Stephan's pond and the river to provide enough entertainment for him to be wishing he could live there and play there every day! No matter how good computer games get I don't think they'll ever beat the appeal to a small boy of throwing stones into a deep pool with a satisfying splosh =)

As part of my training and practice as an early childhood teacher I've often had to reflect on what kind of environment we want for children to grow up and learn in and it has to be said I struggle to come up with anything essential that wasn't around 30yrs ago or more. So much recent stuff leaves very little scope for the imagination (I'm now on book 6!) which, I'm as sure as Anne was, can't possibly be a good thing.

As Ruth has been catching up on her website updates not quite as much imagination is needed now to picture what happened to Stephan when bringing in another load of firewood a few days later. I must admit to being rather relieved that our trip out there was way less dramatic! So what with their brushes with death and the fire we've been living in interesting times around here... hopefully life will now quieten down and the biggest dramas will just be of the cat vs dog variety - although even they seem to be reaching an accomodation of each other.