Who Are We?

After living in various locations over the years and having some grand adventures, we moved to the lovely East Coast of NSW at the beginning of 2007. We LOVE it! We're close to the beach, a huge lake and some beautiful countryside, still reasonably close to most of our family, and living alongside some absolutely fabulous people! What a privilege. It's been so fantastic to see the kids forming fantastic friendships so quickly.

Here's "us":

Geoff - working as a psyche nurse and establishing himself as a sought after lecturer in mental health. Also currently studying his masters as well as working full-time and lecturing on the side and setting up his business.....  Busy, busy, busy!

Karen (probably the person who'll most commonly be writing on here) - loving the privilege of being home with my precious kids (well, perhaps not "home" much) even though it makes life pretty tight financially. It seems a million years ago that the oldest two were in school. Our life certainly looks nothing like "school" now! I also enjoy being involved in social justice issues (my local TEAR group, plus I'm starting a Kids Social Justice group this year for home ed kids) & environmental issues (I'm a bit of a greenie!). I can't relate at all to the comment "What do you DO all day?" I can NEVER fit even 10% of everything I want to do into each day! Life is full and exciting. I'm loving developing deep and lasting relationships with some of our friends here, and exploring something of what a relaxed, unstructured urban-community-centred-around-Christian-spirituality might look like!

Mr T - My oldest, first-born son, who's now taller than anyone else in the family, although his "little" brother is hot on his heels!! He's explored a variety of things in recent years including bicycle repair, drumming and ice hockey but has now firmly entrenched himself in the body boarding scene. He usually finds time to go to the surf at least once a day! He's also working at McDonald's casually, but doesn't plan to stay there forever! He has dreams of perhaps owning/managing a bodyboarding shop and perhaps one day becoming a PE teacher.

Mr B - He loves the freedom of "life without school". He's currently developing a strong interest in woodwork, and enjoying the challenge of accruing as many tools as possible to set up his own workshop. (Apparently even a BOY needs his "shed"!) He has woodwork lessons with a friend of ours, who has also become a bit of a mentor. He's also been helping him on "real" jobs lately too! Like his big brother, he's growing taller every day, and has explored a few interests such as electric guitar before settling on body boarding (and wood work). He will be going in comps this year too.

Mr D - Our oldest fully unschooled child. Yes, he's NEVER been to school and he's a very free-spirited, creative child. I wonder how different he'd have been had he spent the past 3 years in a classroom? He definitely doesn't like to do most things twice, preferring instead the excitement of new challenges. He's our first self-taught reader and is an avid reader, particularly enjoying adventure/fantasy/medieval type books! Pretty good for a kid who's never had to do a workbook page in his life, or read a "school reader" type book!! He's also currently loving the piano. He's quite the composer, and is now trying to master reading music, already being quite good at playing. His interests include trampolining, hip hop dance, archery & gymnastics!

Miss M - Also fully unschooled. She's quite the computer whizz and is beginning to ask lots of questions about life in general. She loves to wrestle with her big brothers but also just loves to play with friends, as often as possible!! Singing, drama, gymnastics and Little Athletics are her current passions. Oh, and how could I forget animals of all kinds - particularly DOGS!!!!

You'll get to know us more as we post more about our life. Enjoy!!

After playing around with a few titles, I've decided to called this blog "Mosaic Spiral". My original intention was to have separate blogs for separate things I'm passionate about, but in reality, they all meld into one big beautiful mosaic, made up of various elements, all spiralling around a central core which is God.