Sorry again, it’s been a while since I wrote. I’ve been doing short courses to qualify for my counselling course next year. I found them challenging to say the least but enjoyable and I’ve finished them now. I haven’t got my marks for one of them but the other I got a 78% pass rate which apparently is good, I only needed 60 for each of them to qualify for my new course. I’ll let you know how I go.
Beth has been a good girl, quite enjoying school and not bitching and moaning as much as she used to. She still tried to bung on the not wanting to go to school when she can though. It was halloween a few weeks ago and it’s gotten quite big in Australia the last few years. I was feeling bad as she still just wants her friends from primary school and no new ones and really wanted to do trick or treating with them. They’ve grown up much more than her, it was a Thursday night and nobody around here really does it much. I said that we’d have a party next year with it being on a weekend. I told her she was too old for it as I didn’t think they would really like to come. Then on the actual halloween morning she woke up, crying because I was getting her up. She said it was a public holiday because it was halloween. I don’t think they even do that in America! Luckily I had an ace up my sleeve. The following Tuesday was Melbourne Cup Day which in Victoria is a public holiday. Not many kids go to school on the Monday and I had decided that they could all have a slack day off. I hadn’t told her yet though. So I pretended to think about it and said that if she was a good girl she could have the Monday off instead. She was happy with that!
On Friday Beth came out of school and one of the aides came with her. I thought she was in trouble for being rude again as the aide didn’t look very pleased. Then I saw that the aide had a puppy in her hand. Beth’s teacher had gotten a new puppy and Beth had asked if she could bring it out to show me. How cute! On the way home she kept asking me about my friend Becs dog Tyson. Bec was told that Tyson has cancer a few months ago, he’s very old but he’s not in any pain so they’ve still got him at home for the moment. Whenever I see Bec and I tell Beth she asks me how Tyson is, how much longer has he got to live, has he been put down yet? It’s really lovely to see how much she cares.
I was happy to see something else this week too. Beth’s teacher from last year – Miss L – comes out with the kids who get on the buses in the afternoon. We often walk past her on the way to the car. All this year Beth has stuck her fingers in her ears as soon as she’s seen Miss L. She did this in grade 6 too with her grade 5 teacher. It was like when they were her teacher they were ok but once they weren’t that was it. It has happened all this year until this week. When we walked past Miss L. Beth said hello to her and no fingers in ears. Wow, first time she’s gone back on something for ages!
We’ve bought a sailboat for Paul for his birthday. I’ll post a picture of Beth’s version of sailing. We were so lucky that when we took it out for a trial a large pod of dolphins swam alongside us for about 20 minutes. Beth kept asking if she could keep one as a pet, I said yes, but we’d have to keep it in the bay! After a while she got over it so went down to the cabin to do what she likes doing best.
