Steps on How to Make a Homemade Book

By Amelie Davis                      

1.     For the cover, draw  a picture of anything you want. Here are some examples : animals, people, houses, forest, plants, and cars. 

2.     Write the story first and draw small boxes so you have space for pictures if you want some. After drawing the pictures  rub out the boxes.

3.     If you can’t draw well, print some pictures and colour them in.

4.     Staple on the cover and you have a book.

A Zero Effort 9th Birthday Party

It is a very good thing that kids are so forgiving and so grateful for any little thing we do. 

It is Amelie’s birthday today.  She is NINE!  Can you believe that??  Wasn’t she just a little teeny weeny baby??

Well, we got home from Phnom Penh on Sunday.  I was not really thinking “birthday” when in PP and was hoping for a very low key affair.  She asked for the Narnia movies as her birthday present.  That was pretty easy.  But I didn’t get her anything else.  She has just finished reading the series so I thought the movies would be an OK birthday present.

Yesterday, we (she actually) planned out what we were going to do for her birthday.  She wanted to invite over some friends.  We made a simple party menu.  She designed some games.  Then last evening she invited 4 friends over.  I cooked a packet chocolate rectangle birthday cake and some coconut oat cookie thingies (following an Anzac biscuit recipe but not turning out like any Anzac biscuit I have ever tasted – maybe something to do with the oatmeal rather than rolled oats).

This morning, I made some extra banana muffiny things, grinded up some sugar to make icing sugar, made up some red icing and decorated the cake.  I tried to cut out a liony shape (on the spur of the moment) and I had some decorating pens that I used to help add a few more touches.  She liked it!  I am the WORST cake decorator ever but kids are so forgiving of bad talent.  Thankfully.

Another problem that was gracefully forgiven was the absence of birthday cake candles.  I had none left!  I had 3 big utility candles left.  They were horrible dirty things that the bugs had been in.  Anyway, I cut them in 3 each and put them on a plate and Amelie didn’t mind in the least. 

So the kids were supposed to come at 9am.  They arrived at 8am.  Amelie immediately took them out to look for hidden animals.  Her theme was a jungle theme and they had bought some small plastic animals and Daddy helped to hide them.  So they went out and found them.  They then attempted to play some of the games.  One was “deer being chased through the jungle by a dog” so the kids were the deer and one person was a dog.  I don’t think that game was a big hit.  They came inside.  Ate. Then wildly played all sorts of chasing games around the house.  Finished off watching of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (I really should have previewed these before!).  Then all the kids went home.  Pretty easy for me! 

Here are some pictures from today and a few before   

 

An overdue update

Well, it has been a long time since I posted anything here also (see Ben's Forest Project's blog post from today!).  It is after midnight and I can’t seem to turn the computer off.  I thought I’d just post an update on what we are doing in Rovieng of late.

Not sure when or what I last wrote.  I will work backwards and maybe not get very far.  Right now, the girls and I are at home alone with Ben at his forest.  The girls get to sleep in my bed.  And I get to get kicked at night.  Anyway, that is the treat.  We try to do school on most days.  Amelie is doing great in the work that we get done (mostly!)  She is learning not to complain too much and can almost stay in her seat at the table when required (or stand up at the table).  She still asks to go work on the bed or to sit in the hammock when not required to sit at the table.  I got her a wobble seat so that she could wobble at the table and allow her to fidget!  I think she is in Grade Three.. homeschooled kids never know what grade they are working at so nothing new there.  She is just now in the midst of the Narnia series.  Can’t put them down – I almost have to confiscate them sometimes.  She can read one of them in about two days.  We started on Anne of Green Gables – we usually start these as read alouds together then she goes on ahead and I get left behind.  This time we finished the first Anne, and went halfway through the second.  She then got distracted in Narnia and I ran on ahead to finish Anne of Avonlea and now the next one!  In fact I got back from work today, had lunch and then just plonked down on the bed and read for a long while.  I read somewhere that CS Lewis said that any children’s book is a great book if it is as interesting for 8 year olds as it is to 50 year olds.  Both these series must then be great books by that definition. 

Miss Jarrah, who will be interesting an student for me, is still four and has finished one set of alphabet workbooks on her own initiative.  She does these whenever the mood takes hold.  She almost has her letters down pat with some reminders.  I want to start her on putting the words together.  I tried earlier but she wasn’t too interested.  The other day she did pay some attention to what I was trying to teach her and was quite happy when she could read “no” or something simple like that.... so maybe soon she’ll be ready.  She is just such a “I’ll do things when I want to do things” person – I wonder how I will get along!

This week we are starting a program in Phnom Penh for our education.  It is a Classical Conversations group which meets weekly.  We’ll come down as we are able.  There are about 20 other kids which meet in 3 smaller groups.  It follows the classical model of education and the Trivium (teaching a lot of information and facts in the Grammar Stage, putting those facts together in the Dialectic Stage, and learning how to form, articulate and argue your own ideas at the Rhetoric Stage). They will learn a lot of history facts, science facts, maths facts, English facts etc. – all memory work, they’ll do a science practical, a fine arts lesson (music or art), and also have to do a presentation to the group every week.  I thought since Ben isn’t home much anyway at the moment, it would be a good time to skip to Phnom Penh and join in a program for the girls.  Both are joining so it should be fun for everyone I hope!

Our dog, Sippy was taken to Phnom Penh last week and spayed.  She has had about three litters of puppies so it is about time.  She is doing OK although her excessive licking has meant that the wound has not healed quickly.  I started her on a second round of antibiotics and have learned to give injections.  Sippy is not happy – but seems otherwise healthy.  It looks like the wound is healing now.

Today, I was at the office and Amelie calls me on the phone excitedly telling me, “I caught a baby squirrel!”  I came home and it is actually a baby treeshrew. I promised her we could get some hamsters when in Phnom Penh this next week but now she has a baby shrew also to add to our menagerie.  We later saw another of its siblings being held by our monkey – she had somehow caught it and killed it and slowly ate it.  Sorry about that image. 

I shall end my random recollections for now.  It is very late.  And maybe I need to read a chapter of Anne so I can get to sleep.  I always have trouble winding down after being on the computer late at night.

Maths Problems

Well Amelie had a question today on her maths work. 

 

If there are 6 rows of desks and 5 desks in each row and 40 children in the class, how many desks are still needed? 

 

She asked me, “They didn’t say how many children sat at each desk?”  A very valid question considering the only school experience that she has had with 4 to a desk!  Here is a picture from Grade 1 when Amelie was 7.  (Jarrah was just visiting!)

 

Amelie was able to finish first grade and did half of second grade here at the local primary school.  A result of our frequent absences (trips to Phnom Penh, to Australia, to the beach!) and also the teacher’s (she ran away at some point because she owed someone too much money) meant that we were just wasting a lot of time.  Pretty sad.  But it was a good experience for her and us.  She can still recite some of her alphabet (better than me at least).  We need to find a tutor for her and me (now is that the right pronoun to use there??) so that she can continue where she left off, and so I can finally learn Khmer properly.

 

 

12 months on..

Twelve months ago our family was in Bangkok.  Ben was only 5 days into a 10 day stay in ICU at Bangkok Hospital (and a month long stay in the hospital!).  Ben's mom and brother had just arrived and we were all still very unsure what the outcome would be.  He had had dialysis about 5 times and his lungs were only operating at about 90 percent with full oxygen through a tube going down into the lungs.  He had had a seizure on arrival at the hospital and we weren't sure if he had any bleeding in his brain (due to a blood stained lumbar puncture) - they were loading him up with blood thickeners to make sure he didn't start bleeding all over his body.  At about day 8 in ICU he went psychotic - that was the fun part.  He told his mother to move the finger probe (that records the pulse, oxygen levels etc.) as it was a bomb.  He was imaging escaping out to the street then running back into bed just before the nurse found out.  He accused the nurse of giving him sedatives and she assured him they were just vitamins (actually anti-psychotics!) They quickly got him out of ICU after that. At the end of the month long hospital stay, he had lost about 15 kg (30 pounds). Somehow he had damaged his rotator cuff of his shoulder and had had surgery to repair that.  He had a blood clot in his leg from being immobile (and probably the blood thickeners) for so long, so was on blood thinners and about 30 different other pills for various other complications from the typhus gone bad (two little doxycycline pills taken earlier would have sorted that out if only we knew).

Prayers from all over the world from all kinds of people, who we don't even know, were being prayed.  And they worked.  He recovered and we are so grateful.

This was the only picture we got when he was really bad.  No one was game to take one - at least I wasn't - in case I'd jinx anything.  You can see his swollen hand there.

After "coming to."  He was not impressed with the intubation and wanted it out just for a bit.  

Anyway, at the moment, Ben is in Nepal with our good friends Jason and Melissa and about 30 college students from Avondale.  Jason, I think heard about Ben being sick last year via satellite phone when he was at Everest Base Camp.  Well Jason and Ben put together a plan to get Ben and the Jombok Hoas team to Nepal this year.  And that worked.  So this is where they were a couple of days ago, not Everest (they couldn't get a flight in) but Annapurna.  Still pretty awesome.

Boreno Day 4

Day 4 we were still at the Kinabatangan River.  We had and early rise at 6am for another river boat ride.  I think the only big species we had not seen after the first boat ride the night before was the orang-utan.  And finally we saw one.  The highlight however was the little mangrove snake (not coral as I had identified earlier).  Jarrah unfortunately had woken up with a little fever but still came out on the boat ride and slept through most of it.

 

The next activity after breakfast was a hike.  Ben and I went on the “long” hike to the oxbow lake.  It was about a 3 hour trip through lots of mud puddles so again we had to wear gum boots.  This time, Ben found a size that fit him so he didn’t have to go barefoot.  We were still underdressed in our shorts however somehow were lucky enough not to get a leech on us – the guy in front who was all rigged out, managed to get five or so on him in one shot!  So the lesson was that in a hike with leeches, always say at the back. 

 

Aunty Jill, Uncle Vijay and Dad had a short hike with Max who showed them lots of things on a shorter walk.  Dad found lots of greens that he used to collect from his jungle home.

 

Went on another boat trip in the afternoon, much more relaxed since we had seen everything already!!  But we did get a good glimpse of orang-utans and the funny probiscus.

 

No one wanted to go on the night hike, so we all retired – very tired.

 

 

Borneo Day 3

Once we all got together, there was no rest scheduled into the itinerary.  Today we had to wake up at a crazy 5 am to get us all our the door and in a taxi and to the airport.  We managed all that somehow and made it onto the plane without any problems with about 18 pieces of carry on and 6 heavy suitcases.

We flew over the mountain all the way to the east coast of Sabah.  I actually didn't look out the window at the right time to see the mountain but it was apparently pretty impressive.  Arriving in Sandakan town we had a couple of hours to wait for our transfer to the Kinabatangan River.  We roamed around town looking for a suitable (read cheap) Indian style restaurant to fill up Ben's stomach and everyone else's.  Uncle Vijay and Aunty Jill were most impressed by the freshly-made-in-front-of-you parathas for 1 ringgit (30 cents).

Finally we got on the bus and rode the 2 hours to the river.  Through lots and lots of oil palm plantation.  In fact the wildlife reserve is bordered by palm oil plantation.  The reserve is a narrow strip of secondary forest - a corridor.  Very sad.  But what it means is that in this small area is a large concentration of lots of animals.

We stayed at the Kinabatangan Nature Lodge.  We had aircon rooms and our own bathrooms!  Nice.  At 4 pm was our first boat trip on the river.  We had a local guide Max (whose real name was Raziman but he started using his nicname Max when people started calling him Craziman).  Because there were so many of us, we had a boat to ourselves.

Spotted over the 4 boat trips (one every evening and another in the early morning):
Pygmy elephants
Proboscis monkeys
Orangutans
Macaque monkeys
Silver langurs
Saltwater Crocodile
Rhinoceros Hornbill
Black Hornbill
Pied Hornbill
Wrinkled Hornbill
Wreathed Hornbill (maybe)
Kingfishers (not sure the type!)
Broadbills
Cattle Egrets (yay!)
Coral Snake (Aunty Jilli's favourite - especially when we parked the boat under the tree it was sitting in)
Some kind of stork that I can't remember - the biggest in Malaysia

Oh, I'm sure I have forgotten something or someone.  Max was incredible at spotting things.  This snake was sitting quietly in a very leafy tree.  When he spotted the snake, we were way off and no one could work out how he saw it - to the point of accusing him of putting a rubber snake in the tree!  It started moving so we took back the accusations!

That night, Ben and I (we had many offers of babysitters) went out for the night hike.  The others weren't too keen on the idea of mud, mossies, leeches.. !  I located a pair of gumboots in my size.  Ben didn't bother.  His feet are big and it looked like all the big boots were taken.  So he went bare footed.  I had shorts on!  We both had shorts on in fact.  All the others going out had long pants.  Long sleeves.  Leech socks.  We looked quite underdressed!  Despite that, I didn't get any leeches on me and not any noticeable mossie bites.  I saw a leech on Ben's calf trying to fix himself on, which I quickly flicked off.  The only really interesting thing we saw however was a poor little kingfisher trying to sleep while 15 people were shining flashlights in his face!  We also walked over fireants which Ben also found particularly interesting in his bare feet.

We decided not to go out the next night and naturally they saw something interesting - a Western Tarsier (a small very cute looking mammal).

It was a good day though.  Very pleased we saw the elephants!  there were about 20 of them.  Babies and mummies and daddies and youths.  They were eating grass and drinking by the river.  Quite used to being looked at by humans.