一期一会

A few months back I had a message from the mom of Opeie's penpal asking if we would be interested in being interviewed by a Japanese newspaper who were writing a piece on education and had been let down by a home ed group. The whole thing sounded really interesting and I thought it would be a great experience for Opeie and something fun to add into us documenting his home ed journey.  To make the visit even more exciting too, Opeie would get to meet his penpal Caelan as his mom Melissa was driving the journalist over to our home.

On the morning they arrived I was a little apprehensive, mainly because our house isn't a classic style home and although everyone that has visited here seems to love the way that we live, I wasn't sure that would translate well to the journalist (I'm pretty sure eventually someone will think we are idiots). It turns out there was no need to worry, when Melissa, Caelan and Saori arrived they all seemed pretty excited by the madness and as we talked I think it was clear why I chose to have our home this way.

The boys hit it off straight away and disappeared to play LEGO while I chatted with Melissa and Saori. It was really lovely having someone so interested in our home ed journey and despite being filmed (which is really out of my comfort zone) the morning was very relaxing. I feel like we have been home-schooling forever, it's the norm for us now and has been such an exciting adventure for the both of us. Being asked all about the reasoning behind home ed and my feelings on the education system in this country reinforced my passion for why we took the step.

Another thing that really reinforced this was Opeie's confidence talking to Saori and feeling completely comfortable with her observing him and how we are together as a family. He happily played his drums, discussed his beetle project and explained how much he loved having his work on display around the house. I'm pretty sure that Opeie comes across as a very content child to everyone he meets and this one to one education along side our happy home life is definitely responsible for this. I genuinely don't think that he would be the same child being dragged through the education system. 

The article was published last week and it was really interesting seeing the both of us in a Japanese newspaper. It definitely wasn't the way that we were expecting to be starting our first week of home ed this year but every September we have done something special to make sure that we realise how lucky we are to be on this education path for Opeie, and our presence in The Asahi Shimbun Globe is definitely this years bit of magic.  

"For every disciplined effort there is a multiple reward."

Its been a fun build up to Christmas this year mainly because we have decided not to go mad, buying things for the sake of it. When writing their letters to Santa this year, like every other year, we told the boys to just write 3 things that they wanted. You would think that this would be easy for any 6 and 11-year-old, the only difficult part being narrowing the list down to 3. For Seth and Opeie though it was a bit of a struggle. 

For a long time now I have been the sort of person that gets to Christmas and genuinely doesn't want anything. I am so content with how my life is that there is nothing that could make me any happier. All I ever want is a happy Mrs M and the boys. This has unexpectedly rubbed off on the boys, Seth especially. Opeie had one thing on his Christmas list that he really wanted and Seth simply said "I feel like i have everything that I need" which I thought was a very grown up and humble thing to say.

I like to think of Christmas as a time for making effort rather than it revolving around heavy spending. I like to try and do something special for the boys around the festive period that doesn't cost anything and this year I decided that I was going to make them both an advent calender. I had made them an advent in the past with the help of Mrs M, this year though I wanted to build them something using those lovable bricks.

At first I was kicking myself that I hadn't kept the LEGO advent calender we had bought last year as they would be great for reusing, all I would have had to do was design a cover for the box and I'd have been sorted. We ended up using the tray from our previous one as paint pots when crafting. Good old LEGO and their recyclable packaging. This years LEGO calender became my advent and mind started ticking away with ideas for the boys, I knew exactly what I was going to do.

Opeie has become a HUGE Ninjago fan since the LEGO Ninjago movie was released so it was a no brainer that his advent was going to be Ninjago themed. I decided to build his advent in the style of a Japanese temple with 25 doors to open. For each day a Ninjago character for his collection. Any LEGO enthusiast reading this with probably think 'that would cost a small fortune' but being a member of so many Facebook LEGO trade pages I managed to trade all of the figures for other LEGO items that we have. The advent didn't actually take that long to build and the look on his face on the 1st was amazing. Now on day 18 I get an excited little boy waking me up to tell me who he has got, its awesome.

I struggled at first for Seth's advent as he's not into any themes that come with minifigures. For Seth LEGO has become all about Technics. He loves playing with cogs and motors and working out how to make machines witch from an educational point of view is amazing. I decided to cruise the Facebook pages again and contact friends online looking for interesting Technics elements that he doesn't have in his collection. The problem I had though, was that I didn't know what style to build the advent (and I'm definitely out of my building comfort zone with Technics). That being said though I sat one evening and worked out how to make a remote control box which worked great but it looked boring so instead I decided to build a snowman with motor and receiver on the back so that Seth could open his torso every morning via remote and get to his LEGO Technic surprise.

Its been such a lovely feeling every morning watching them get excited about whats coming next and for me this is what Christmas is all about. A little effort goes a long way.

"He's going to build a supernatural entourage"

The Yo-kai watch buzz is still going strong at chez Pirates. Since the boys started playing Yo-kai watch 2 Fleshy souls a few weeks back, Opeie's watch has been permanently attached to his wrist and he has taken to carrying a big bag of medals everywhere with him (I'm guessing in case he needs to do battle). Seth has even picked up a watch of his own too. It's great seeing the boys roleplaying together. The Yo-kai excitement has had Opeie asking whether we can get a Yo-kai pad from anywhere. After looking online it seems that you can only get them in Japanese, so I decided to give my phone a LEGO upgrade for his Yo-kai play with. I love those awesome bricks.