Well, we're still waiting for this baby to arrive.  Technically he's not due til Tuesday 29th, but I was wishfully thinking I deserved an early baby for a change!  Not that the others were that late, the last two were born on the due date!

In the meantime, we've been told by our Metservice that the biggest storm in a decade is brewing over the country today, set to hit our region by evening.  (Baby will probably decide to come in the middle of all that, lol!)  I'll let you know on Monday if we've been blown away or not!!  It also happens to coincide with Condoleeza Rice's flying 24 hr visit to our wee country.  She's spending the day in Auckland, supposed to be one of the worst affected regions by the storm - that'll be a visit for her to remember.  The University students in Auckland had put up a $5000 bounty for a citizen's arrest of "Condi" (as a protest against the Iraq War) but after being warned by police they've pulled it!!  Like any of them would've got past her security people! 

Well, that's a little ramble from me today, enjoy your weekend!

Eeuwe came home from work last night with a couple of books from work.  Apparently when his employers immigrated to New Zealand from Holland they bought what used to be a secondhand bookshop. (It is now a picture framing business).    Anyway, they inherited some books from the bookshop and have decided years later to have a cleanout.  Eeuwe spotted a couple of books he thought I might like and brought them home.  One was a book about the artist Cezanne.  I thought that was great, as I didn't have on of his books yet, but after perusing his paintings, I decided it's not suitable to keep in a house of little girls!  When we study Cezanne we will pick some of his more savoury paintings from an internet site!

The other book however, is a wonderful find.  It is Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden!  I already have The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady (a Charlotte Mason enthusiast's favourite) and Nature Notes are Edith Holden's nature diary entries for 1905, the year before the Country Diary. 

It is full of Edith's beautiful watercolour & pencil illustrations as well as accompanying nature notes and many nature poems.  It makes a lovely companion to the Country Diary.

This week's Renoir picture is a still life:

Fruits from the Midi, 1881.

I love the vibrant reds in this picture.  I plan to have the girls make up their own still life arrangement to draw, using oil pastels.  We will refer to our colour lesson with Graham Braddock.

Eeuwe was making coffee in the kitchen when he spotted these goldfinches out the window.  They were feeding on alyssum seeds in my pots (which happen to be in much need of re-planting!)  As you can see, it's another rainy Saturday in Feilding!

...and, no, these haven't escaped from our aviary, they are wild goldfinches!

The girls finally got around to drawing Renoir's Young Girl with a Parasol.  Here are their pictures, along with some they drew 4 years ago.

Ainsley's picture (nearly 6 yrs)

Bethany's picture 4 1/2 yrs ago at age 5 1/2.

and now at age 9 3/4.

Emily's picture & narration at age 4.

and Emily's parasol at age 8 1/2.

Emily is our still life specialist!

I just received an email through the CMandFriends-ANZ@yahoogroups.com list to say that Nature Talks to New Zealanders by Philip Crosbie Morrison is now available as an e-book.  You can find it at Down Under Literature.  Thanks Michelle for making this great book available again!

Here is this week's Renoir picture:

Young Girl with a Parasol, 1883. Oil on Canvas.

The girls drew this one in 2004, too, so I'm looking forward to what they can do with it this year.

For this week's picture we made copies of the colouring page from Colour Your Own Renoir Paintings. 

Bethany & Emily both coloured theirs using oil pastels:

 The colours in Emily's picture look great on a black background.

Bethany's picture.

Ainsley chose to do her own version, also with oil pastels.

Here is a quilt I made this week for a friend who has just had her sixth baby girl :-) 

Barb from Harmony Fine Arts was asking me about our winter today.  Yes, we're in the middle of winter here in New Zealand and have experienced several hailstorms and lots of rain in the last couple of weeks.  The sun is shining today, but it is very cold outside, the forecast for today is a high of 9°Celsius and it had been at least 2°C below zero overnight.  We have a lovely fire though and have just recently installed a heat transfer system which is designed to pump the warm air from the living room through ducting in the roof to vents in the bedrooms.  It works really well, our bedrooms are toasty warm at bedtime!  We're not so prepared here in NZ though with things like double glazing & under floor heating, so we probably feel the cold a bit more.

I thought I'd post a map of where we live here in the North Island.  We live in the town of Feilding (pop. 13,500), just north of the city of Palmerston North (population approx. 78,000). My parents live in the largest city, Auckland (pop 1.3 million), a day's drive north of us.  If it snows on the main route through called the Desert Road, Mum will have to take a detour when she comes to stay after baby is born.  We could travel about 2 hrs north to play in the snow, but it's something we've never done with young children...one day!

I hope you can spot Feilding!  It's in the lower central part of the island between Palmerston North & Dannevirke (which isn't as big as it's lettering suggests at a population of around 5500!).