Olivia wanted to ride a horse for some time ago, but in addition to all the activities we have, it seemed impossible to me. So sometimes we went to ride a pony and, as I led him, I was hoping he was lazy enough to run away. Then, in the autumn, we discovered holiday courses with Icelandic ponies, which, in addition to being cute, walk so that it does not burden the spine.
Last year Dominik was doing quite well, which roughly means that he managed to slow down and make small arches on the slope in the children’s area. Olivia learned to ski with the ski poles and she was skiing great, what we were really happy about. This year, Dominik could also join the ski course in Ostin organized by kindergarten. But there was not so much snow, so they were only in the children’s area all the time.
Our lovely children got picture cookbooks for Christmas. With their help, they are able to cook everything by themselves. I only helped them to find the needed ingredients. They already tried to make mini pizzas, muffins, sponge cake, baked potatoes, salad, baked pasta and waffles. Everything was delicious! They enjoyed cooking and were very proud of themselves. Yummy!
A new school year began and Olivia became a Year One pupil. On the first day, she walked enthusiastically with the school cone and school bag to school. Olivia goes to 1.D class. So far we had more homework than her, but those she had she enjoyed very much. Reward for an active participation at school or for good homework are stamps on a special card. When she gets a certain number of them she may choose an extra reward (we don’t know what it is yet, but it motivates her greatly).
It is said that the forest is called black one due to the color of the tree bark. It didn’t seem so black to us, but it smelled amazingly of mushrooms that we literally stumbled over, and there were loads of blueberries everywhere, so Dominik had a blue-violet mouth after each trip. We walked along a gnome path (about two hours in the forest), where we were looking for a capercaillie Anton together with two gnomes.
Dominik became a proper kindergarten kid. His love for machines, whether agricultural, construction or trains, has not changed. He likes to disassemble things and then to repair them and build. Last time, he said he would like to be a builder. He is really full of surprises. With Olivia everything has its rules, with Dominik it just doesn’t work like that, he somehow always finds a way how to avoid them.
Istria is nice hilly and about as far away from us as Italy, so this time we decided to replace the sandy Italian beach with a pebble one. We stayed in the camping resort Lanterna near the town of Tar. The sea was clear, the beaches were well maintained (the algae were also cleaned up quickly after the storm) and there was a pleasant walkway along the beach. Everywhere was a wonderful shade of pine trees, so we spent practically all day on the beach.
This summer I wanted to make the travelling towards the sea more interesting and so I walked with my finger on the map hoping to find something and I found a huge cave in Postojna, Slovenia. The city is nice, everything is being renovated there, tourism is obviously beneficial. In front of the cave, which is on the outskirts of the city, there is a large parking lot, a few restaurants and souvenir shops, but they close relatively soon (we walked out of the cave around five in the afternoon and everything was almost empty and closed, so we found a restaurant in the city center) .
Olivia will be a schoolgirl. I thought that we would buy a school bag at some point in the summer, but in February, there were flyers related to sale offers for school bags with expert advices everywhere and all the mums in the kindergarten held discussions about who had already bought a bag and where. Olivia was quite immune to it until last week, but then it somehow overwhelmed her. She said they would have a day in the kindergarten when they could show up with a school bag, and she wished her own bag.
Last Sunday was very relaxing. Olivia spent three hours at a creative workshop in the morning and when she was back, Dominik fell asleep and slept till dinner time. The theme of the workshop was “I am really tall”. Each child created herself from the paper in the life size. And then they together described each created character in three words. For Olivia’s character they chose: lively, funny and happy.