I am thankful for beautiful children

and now that today is finished it is 11

Ah what beautiful children I teach (in between their spurts of causing mischief and frustration).

Today was a great day which I have to admit have been few and far between recently, yes we have had ok days and good moments but a whole day ...ahhh bliss.
I have been stressing, which to be quite honest is when it all goes down hill. This term has been very full on with 12 days fighting fires, mustering, yard work, and now kids off sick and a pile of schoolwork that had to be completed (still has to be but the pile has shrunk considerably) with very few spare days to play around with, none in the case of the yr 3s.
We now have 2 weeks and 1 day left of our school year and it seems that we might finish this unit on time so I see the light at the end of the tunnel and have decided to go "stuff it" and let it be ... and that is when it all falls into place. When I stop worrying about getting things finished (which of cause leads to nagging the kids to speed up) everything settles down and just works.
So my piece of advice for today is if you feel things are getting on top of you, when school is stressing you out throw your hands up in defeat ... take a step back and hey presto it works, it figures itself out. When you stop stressing, so do the kids and everyone is happy. Yes, it may not be the best solution but it works for me (also remember that if you get bogged down in the work there is always a teacher, parent or govie you can vent to or with so that you can get on with the job).
So to finish off here are some pictures of the wonderful workers doing their thing.

Miss Yr3 doing her handwriting book.

Mr Yr 3 working on finding different types of angles in his maths book.

Miss Yr 6 doing her spelling mastery

Mr Preppy writing that the number 5 is 'small'

They are beautiful kids ... personable, as Miss Yr6 learnt today ... even though there were heaps of distractions like this

Horses heading down to the House Dam.

and this

Wobbly heat haze cows.

and this

Taking cattle ... somewhere

and this

A fella came to spray the houses today.

and dreams of doing this

Swimming in the Gorge Dam

the troopers that they are carried on in our sauna and everyone's day ended with smiles (probably with the relief of being released from the sauna).

No on airs tomorrow as we don't have them on a Friday so should be a quiet one ... and downstairs Mr Yr 3 is telling his mother that he needs to have to have some afternoon smoko "to keep his energy levels up"