Photo dates.

Simon and I have a tradition of having dates with our kids.  On Monday afternoon after school, one parent will take one child on a date.  When that parent has worked through the children over a 4-week period, the other parent has a turn.  We would love to be able to cover all the kids in a two week block instead of over four weeks, but we are still working on that.  On a date we take the child who's turn it is to do something special with them (eg: go out for milkshakes and donuts; go for a walk/bike ride; wander the toy section of Target/Big W and dream of what we'd buy if money was not an issue; visit a playground; etc) and I always try to give them time to ask questions they've been pondering, or share things that may have been bothering them, or things they are excited about, and then at the end I pray with them before we head home.

For the last few weeks Simon has been taking the kids on "photo dates", meaning they take our old digital camera and Simon takes the new one and they go on an adventure walk through Macquarie University, taking photos of anything that interests them. I have been very impressed with some of the kids photos and decided I should share some.

Here are some of Abby's photos...

some of Tim's photos...

and some of Ben's photos...

Ezra begged for weeks to use the camera, but when it came to the actual day of his date, he decided to go for a bike ride with Simon instead.

It's been nice to see the kids get excited about 'their date', but at the same time it is a little sad that they can't get such individual attention more often.  We really need to reorganize life to make more time with them.  I am hoping to do some cooking with them on my date with each one over the next few weeks.

Long time... no blogging

It's been a very long time since I made an appearance here at my blog.  Well... strictly speaking that's not true.  I actually check in here almost every day, just to see whether anybody I have linked to has written a new blog post, but I never seem to find time to post anything myself.

Life has been the usual kind of busy in the Gellert family, with a few exciting highlights since I last posted.  I began studying for a Diploma of Theology last term, doing one subject to begin with and I'll evaluate how I'm going at the end of the year and see if I continue with it next year.  What I'm learning will, hopefully, make for another blog post in the near future.

We have also had a wedding in the family  Simon's brother Matthew got married to Kylie on October 2nd, this year.  

Simon gave the message, and did an excellent job (in my opinion).  Our children were in the wedding party and were, mostly, very well behaved.

 On the whole we had a lovely day at the wedding, and everything went well.

We also had lots of holiday fun while we were in Victoria.  We felt a bit like we were on a strict schedule most of the time as we tried to fit in seeing all the people we wanted to catch up with.  Sadly we did not manage to fit everyone in, and many of our visits were very brief, but we did see more than I had expected we would.

We caught up with family...

friends...

more friends...

 And it was all followed by a very long drive home again.