THE GRANDIES COME HOME FOR A VISIT....

It has been a tough few weeks for our grand daughter....
At seven you don't don't fully understand what is going on in the world, but you also understand enough to know that things are terribly different to what they normally area...

Not only has her little world been turned upside down with the Corona Virus, but she also lost both her great grand dads within two days of each other, just as the  chaos of social distancing started..

She has developed a fear of things that normally wouldn't have worried her but now at times it is almost paralyzing for her..

When she decided that she really wanted to come home with us last weekend and have a little holiday with us, we all thought that it would be a good idea for her.  Just means that Steve and I have to do a little traveling in the next few weeks as we will need to take them home or at least back to the Sunshine Coast again....

Sarah is also in the thick of Uni Assignments, so bringing them home with us means that I can take over the schooling whilst Sarah completes her studies.

Even though the kids have been excited for the most part to be here with us, poor Willow is still in between wanting to be here with us but still missing her Mum and wanting her to be here with us as well.
Still we have had a good week.
They travelled well coming home from the Sunny Coast.... it is amazing how long an iPad can keep kids amused for.  They had to amuse themselves for the first hour and a half of our journey and Max must have asked us every 5 minutes or more are we nearly there yet.  We stopped for fuel the other side of Gympie and then let the kids watch a movie on the iPad which got us through to almost Bundaberg where we were stopping for fuel and to drop off some of Dad's stuff to my sister....

We were there for a good hour before heading off again and about half an hour into this last leg we let them watch their second movie... This got us almost home.

Sarah had given me all of Willow's school work so after they went to bed, I organised it in a work book for her... Sarah said that this worked best for Willow as this game her an idea of what was expected of her and she could just get onto it and get started.

We started our school work first thing the next morning... normally when the kids are with us, they like to have half an hour of iPad time when they first get up.  This week, iPad time will be the reward when all her work is done...

I also set up a scrapbook for Max with some tracing and letter and number recognition activities for him to do.

Tuesday morning saw them both hop up and get stuck into their work.  Max has also been doing Reading eggs, so once his work was done, he was able to do his Reading Eggs on the iPad whilst Willow did Mathseeds on my laptop..

Willow doing school in Rocky.....

working on her Mental Maths

 Max got in and did his tracing of lines and used the dot paint to dot out the letter T.  The new sound he is learning to match his new stuff toy "Turtle Wurtle"..

 After he had finished his written work, he was then given a lego challenge ( well a duplo challenge) to build something that flies.  He was very engrossed in doing this and spent a good 40 minutes building...

Building his machine that flies...

Willow's biggest challenge when doing her school work is her maths.  She seems to have a real mental block where numbers are concerned and even though she is able to get in and get it done very quickly and get them right when she is not whinging about doing it, she still does not like doing it....
Therefore, I make sure that it is the first thing she does of a morning so that she is tackling it whilst she is fresh...

 By mid morning she needed a break, so we packed up and decided to go for a walk around the block to get some fresh air.  We also though we would go and see if we could find any of the rocks I had hidden around the block... This produced a little fun for the children and Willow did actually find a rock.  Max was more interested in finding, sticks, rocks, feathers and seed pods and ended up with an arm full to bring home...

Max with an assortment of the things he had collected on our walk,

 In the end I had to carry some of the seed pods he found as we climbed the hill to come back home..

Willow showing off the rock that she found...

Once we got home, it was time for some morning tea and then for Willow to get back to her school work and finish her English for the day...
Max had so enjoyed playing with his Duplo this morning, I ended up getting Pete's Lego out for him to play with.  He really got into Pete's pirate Lego and we built islands, and caves and Max had a great time with this.  He was so proud of his accomplishments that he did not want to pack it away but leave it out to show his Poppy.

Building with the pirate Lego

 By lunch time, Willow had finished all her work and it was time for her reward of some iPad time to play any game on there she wanted...

Willow playing "Tom Gold Run" her favourite game at the moment....

 After lunch we headed down to the supermarket to do a grocery shop.  We needed to stock up on some snack foods for the children and fruit and also I wanted to get dinner organised so that we could take the children for a walk up around the top of Mt Archer and watch the sun set up there when Steve got home from work....

Once we unpacked all the groceries and put them away, the kids helped to butter the hot cross buns and finger buns we had bought for our afternoon tea.  We were taking this up to Mt Archer with us...

My back had been playing up all weekend whilst we were away, so whilst waiting for Steve to come home, I decided to ring the chiropractor to see if I could book an appointment for the following day... They were all booked up but could fit me in from a cancellation at 4.30pm that afternoon so I took the appointment and once Steve arrived home, we packed our picnic gear and headed for my appointment on our way up to the mountain. 

Once that was out of the way, it was straight up to the top of the mountain.  Max fell asleep just as we were heading up the mountain so he missed the climb up, but fortunately for us, he only had a 5-10 minute snooze... If he had much longer than that I think we would have had trouble getting him to bed that night...

Willow was keen to check out the view of Rocky..

Not the best afternoon to take photos of Rocky

 It wasn't the best afternoon to be up there as it was quite hazy and definitely not good to take photos of the view...

Max expending some of his hyper energy..

 It was good to let the kids have a bit of a run and work off some of their excess energy that they have at the moment from being a little house bound....

Heading along the track...

arrived just in time for sunset....

  Max doing what he loves best.... looking for sticks...

and he has found a fishing rod... as he calls it...

 We arrived out on the platform just in time to watch a beautiful sunset.....

Sunset over Rocky from Mt Archer...

Another majestic sunset...

 We sat here and ate our afternoon tea before heading further along the track....
Hopefully they will still eat their dinner.... shouldn't be too much of a problem as I have cooked their favourite meal....

A full moon was out tonight....

Fun climbing on all the rocks

We're the kings of the castle.....

  Willow was keen to borrow my photo so that she could take some photos too.. As I had taken our good camera up, I was happy to give it to her so that she could record her  memories of our outings also...

Max the poser...

Willow taking photos of the view...

taking some selfies....

taking photos of us together...

 Max was in his element climbing over rocks and trees... It is so good to get him outdoors... It is his happy place... He was looking for insects and lizards and anything that moved....

 And to humour Willow, we all had to get in a photo together and pull a silly face...

  It was a lovely afternoon... we all enjoyed our time out in the open air, and then we headed straight home where the kids hopped in and had their baths whilst I dished out our cooked dinner....  Once dinner was over, it was storytime, prayers and into bed...  No tears tonight, they settled quickly.
We've had a lovely first day together... Looking forward to more adventures this week....