Amy Garden (13)

Amy is in year 8 at highschool. She plays violin in the Alfred Deakin String Orchestra and the Canberra Youth Music's Peg Mantle Strings, and is a guest musician with the band Earthly Delights. She plays violin for the Dancing on the Lake series and receives lessons from our wonderful friend Lins Vellen. She also plays French Horn in the Alfred Deakin Unicorn Band and the ACT Junior Concert Band. She still visits Melissa for a piano lesson each week.

Ashby (11), Aelfric (8) and Alcuin (3)

In January 2005 Ashby had surgery in Melbourne to remove the part of his brain that they thought was causing his epilepsy problems.Although there were so many things that had a strong possibility of going wrong during the operation, though it went much longer than anyone expected, and although his recovery in the first couple of weeks was slow, he's now like a new boy! Its like a terrible static has been lifted off his brain and at night at last he is able to sleep and in the day time he's able to think.There's more stages still to go through, but it is looking very possible that he could be rid of his epilepsy at last and start to catch up on 10 years of lost learning. To make the most of this possibility we've started sending Ashby to another school with a better program of supported learning, and to send Aelfric to the same school as they also have a 'gifted and talented' stream. Aelfric is still learning the cello under the expert eye of Gillian Pratten and is a regular dancer at our Dancing on the Lake series. Alcuin's growing up and has now started at the local Montessori preschool.