Tests - physical and mental

This week Tess sat her NAPLAN tests.  These are tests that all Australian school children do at the ages of 8, 10, 12 and 14 and they are used to assess that they've reached necessary milestones in the key learning areas of reading, writing, spelling, grammar, punctuation and numeracy.  Tess was very nervous about these tests in the weeks leading up to them but on the first morning she was pumped up and ready to go.  She received an extra boost this week at school as she was one of 2 chosen from her class to be in the school Spelling Bee which will take place later this year.  

Jules has also put himself to the test as he completed his second half marathon this morning.  The journey was not a smooth one with him suffering from quite bad shin splints but in true Jules style refusing to do anything about them other than resting for the week leading up to the marathon.  I was so worried last night that he would run a couple of kilometres and then have to stop in agony that I made him go out in the dark and do a few practice kilometres to make sure he could do it.  He was up at 5.30 this morning, he crossed the start line at 7.02am and crossed the finish line at 8.54am - yes that's an incredible time of 1hr 52 mins - what a legend!!  

I want to share with you this amazing gift that Kristie, Andy, Nate and Sarah gave me for my birthday.  I cried and cried when I received it (with Tess and Tom rolling their eyes in the background!) and I've now had it framed and it hangs in pride of place on the wall above the kitchen island.  What I like almost more, but not quite(!), than the actual gift is the fact that, from what I've been told, Kristie, Andy, Nate and Sarah had a lovely evening, no doubt involving a few bottles of wine, creating the words for this masterpiece.  They have captured all my favourite things so cleverly and the only help they got from Jules was the name of my favourite dress designer and they got that help without him realising what it was for - how clever!  


I haven't been mentioning Tess' netball season mainly because I keep forgetting to take the camera along.  We are lucky this year to have a 9am time slot which is so much more reasonable on a Saturday morning although it does mean it's impossible to find a park.  Anyway, Tess loves netball and because of her height is quite good at it.  I think I've mentioned before how lovely all the girls in her team are and so I enjoy immensely the Saturday morning games.  This week Tess got the Player of the Week trophy which she was very pleased with.  


We are off to Fiji next Sunday morning as long as Tom doesn't break his arm again between now and then which unfortunately is highly possible given his general level of activity.  As a result there may not be any posts for a couple of weeks but don't give up on me - I'll be back!