2016 Update

After years of not posting on our blog I figured it'd be a good medium for our 2016 update. I guess in the last few years social media has partially replaced blogging, but I didn't want to put a big story on Facebook. 

It's been an interesting year for us. First year of high school for Christopher, Annabelle to Cycle 3 in Montessori, an eventful year for Bernt and an inspirational one for Doris.

Christopher just finished his first year of high school: he was accepted at Templestowe College in the MAP stream, the Montessori Adolescent Program. TC is a public school that was revived a few years back by Peter Hutton - its (now) principal for strategic development. Peter had experience at both public and private schools and has rather unconventional ideas about education, but ones that we are pretty much aligned with - they are actually not that different from Montessori principles.

The school is very student-centric: it sees them as more capable than society and schools normally do. This means for instance that students can submit plans for courses they'd like to take and can be involved in staff hiring procedures. As with any organisation - the attitude & energy of management trickles down into the whole organisation, and that's definitely the case here: whenever we visit TC I feel this wonderful vibrancy that I haven't experienced at many other schools (or businesses for that matter).

There's a school bus that Christopher takes for the sometimes 1-hour peak-hour trip, but he doesn't mind that: there are always friends on the bus. He thoroughly enjoyed the first semester at TC, but it became less positive later on. There were aspects of the MAP program he didn't like - including the camps (roughing it on a farm) and the mandatory participation in their yearly play: he doesn't like acting. 

So in December after a meeting at TC he changed to the main stream program. This still gives him a lot of the Montessori-like flexibility in terms of course choices. We were really impressed with how this situation was handled by the school.

Christopher is still a real homebody: he loves sitting on his couch reading, playing computer games or watching television. His other great love is playing soccer, which he does at the Nillumbik Junior Soccer Club. Regrettably they have a short season, from late February until September, presumably to fit-in with cricket that's played during the Australian summer. He's really looking forward to soccer training starting again. Their team is not all that successful but they have lots of fun, and a lost game doesn't affect them much at all.


We are really proud of how Christopher is developing. He's got a very clear moral compass and will always say things as he sees them - sometimes a bit too directly; could be his dutch blood 😅...
High school has done him good: he's more confident and willing to speak his mind.

Annabelle just finished grade 4, she turned 10 in June, 'going on 20'. It's the internet age, and you can tell with both her and Christopher. Their language and expressions are much more advanced than ours used to be at that age.

Annabelle is doing well at school although there were some minor social issues this year. Sometimes Annabelle isn't aware enough of the effect her actions and words have on other children. Something she'll need some more help with but will sort out.

Annabelle absolutely loves dancing and has been taking lessons at the same local school for 3 years now. This year she took 3 classes: ballet, contemporary and hip hop. This meant three performances at the end-of-year dance school concert too, which was a fantastic event. I never liked dance performances much, until I saw these, and not just the ones that Annabelle is in! Next year she'll also take an exam ballet class - it'll be four afternoons a week at the dance school!

Annabelle got into a different hobby late this year: making slime...! She combines different ingredients (baking powder, laundry detergent, borax, glue, contact lens cleaning fluid and colourings) to make all kinds of stretchy, slimey blobs. She even ended up handing it out to friends and teachers at school!
She gets the recipes from YouTube and can spend hours experimenting and playing. The large kitchen island bench is half used by her, and would be all hers if we allowed her... 

Annabelle is also crazy about animals - at school she did a big project about dogs and she's been wanting a Pug for ages. That's not happening (yet), but at least she can sleep under one now... (yes, it looks scary, but it's just a doona cover)

For Christmas Annabelle got two bunny rabbits; 8 week-old sisters that she named Eevee and Fuzzy. Thomas (our beautiful, now 7-year old Golden Retriever) was always absolutely obsessed with rabbits, and he loves them. We think he seems them as playmates, but the way he sometimes salivates looking at them means we won't let him alone with them... 😁
It all works out well, although there's a lot of cleaning to be done!

Like cleaning the two fish tanks (Annabelle has a small one on her desk), these tasks seem to fall on our almost unfatigable Doris. I have been spending a lot of time in Brisbane for work this past year, so organising the household and doing most of the daily work has been on Doris' shoulders. She still works 4 days a week at the pharmacy in Healesville. 
On schooldays there's a lot of planning required. Annabelle then goes to before- and after-school care. We've had lots of help from friends that take Annabelle over to dancing after school when Doris is still at work, and Christopher has been picking her up from after-school care also! Yes, he takes a different bus from his school to Annabelle's, signs her out, and then they take a regular bus home together! 

One day our wonderful neighbour Brian texted me in Brisbane saying he'd just seen Christopher and Annabelle walking home from the bus-stop, and how lovely it was to see them talking so animatedly. A far cry from how me and my siblings used to be...

We're blessed with two very different children, and although they do annoy each other at times, they do get along really well and there's barely ever any real arguments or fights.

Doris enjoys her pharmacy work, but of course still has problems with the whole western health-care system, and the profit-focused pharmaceutical industry. A lot of it is aimed at keeping 'the customer' coming back, so there's not much incentive for real healing.

We've both seen how our history (both personal and societal) forms us and in many cases deforms us from the loving beings that we're born as. Doris is still passionately exploring these spiritual aspects of our lives, finding new sources of information on the internet on an almost monthly basis. She continues doing past-life hypnosis/regression sessions with clients and is also taking a year-long course with a Canadian lady, which cumulates in a week-long meeting near Toronto this year. 

Thanks to China Southern Airlines wonderfully competitive prices we got tickets for the whole family to Toronto. We'll spend one week together around Toronto and then when Doris has her course Christopher, Annabelle and I will fly to the US to explore Washington DC and New York for a week. We're all very excited!

In 2015 we found out that my brother Ric has cancer, and he required a number of operations in 2016. Regrettably a while after the (successful) liver operation, they found that the cancer had spread to other areas of the liver, which meant that they could now only treat him with chemo. That can be done in the local hospital which is a lot less stressful for him and he has been doing well considering.

Early 2016 I was in Holland for a couple of weeks and could attend Ric's 50th birthday. It also gave me a chance to catch up with close friends and family in Holland, which as always was a lovely experience.

Around that time I was quite involved in the school board at Annabelle's school. There was a lot of upheaval in the school community because around 15 teacher and staff had left (yip, at a 200-student school). Some parents organised in groups that (rightfully) wanted truthful explanations and answers. Regrettably they went about that in less-than-ethical ways and I got caught in the middle. This, combined with some complete lies from staff members caused me to be asked to step down from the board. 

I'd spent heaps of personal time on these school problems, partially at the expense of a work contract which had fairly tight deadlines. My boss decided to hire some other developers that took over, so besides losing my board position I also lost my job. I wasn't a happy camper...

In April I approached my old employer digEcor and could start there again - but I was required to spend a lot more time in Brisbane than before. We were getting ready to install our second generation IFE (In-Flight Entertainment) system on three Boeing-767 aircraft owned by Euro Atlantic Airways - a Portuguese charter airline, and there was still a lot of development to be done.

Apart from basically every other weekend and some other times when I needed to be in Melbourne, I was in Brisbane. So pretty hard on family life, but we've grown through the experience. And I must say - I do like Brisbane a lot, especially the West End / South Brisbane area where work is located.

The first plane installation basically finished just before Christmas. Here is the initial result - something for us to be proud of: 

Well, this gives a reasonable overview of how we've been going in 2016. We're looking forward to a great 2017 and wish you all the same!

Love from the ABCD Family - Annabelle, Bernt, Christopher and Doris