Welcome to where I will be sharing just a little about each week as we go!

Find the start of bootcamp here

Or the current week here

Foundations:

Week one: 24th to 30th April

As last week had been very busy with the girls I had only got to computer set up on Sunday and then it threw a couple of curve balls my way. I found myself needing to post up a help request on the first morning, and then a second one later, which was a good exercise in both asking for help and recognising my ego struggles around not knowing a thing and being visible in it. This is definitely an area for me to be aware of and work on over this course. Once my comp was all set up and I was on to the course materials things went smoothly, I enjoyed making mistakes and then figuring out how to correct them. Having not worked in the command line at all before it was so fun to navigate that. One thing that has been interesting is working out how I am going with getting through the course work on time, I kept forgetting to set my toggl tracker or forgetting to turn it off, so this is a thing that I need to work on more. Balancing the girls needs, household needs and my needs this week has been easy. We have set up a table next to my desk so the girls can work alongside me which is pretty fun. The most challenging thing was probably us all getting off our workspaces when sitting down to do a little more after dinner and getting to bed at good hours.

Week two: 1st to 7th May

This week I started the week working on my values, strengths, and limitations blog post. I found it interesting that this was something that I was finding I had some blocks with getting started on, I found myself wanting to get through it and into playing with code again. When I sat with this, I came to realise that this was tied into not being sure how much we were expected to write and wanting to get it ‘right’. Identifying this helped me to move through the block and get my words down on paper. After this I checked had got all the reflections and finishing off things sorted for sprint-1 and as still had a couple days left in the sprint got into the stretch material which was good fun learning more about command line and working with a git repository. Then over the weekend I started to have a look at the sprint-2 work. The freecode camp tutorial was lots of fun to work through and so it quickly was completed. The devtools workshop was a little bit more challenging and I very much want to return to this next week to do some more work on it. I have been setting timers as well as using toggl and this has been great for being more aware of time spent on tasks. Outside of course work this week was a fairly standard week, the girls did more body-doubling with me, I am very much hoping this is not a novelty that wears off fast.

Week three: 8th to 14th May

This week started out great, on Monday I got into creating my blog welcome page after thinking on the weekend about what I wanted to include in it. My focus was my want to see if I could create a functional navigation bar and work out how to link the pages, which after a few times of things not working how I thought it would and needing to play with changing things I did. Unfortunately, just after this I had a medical event which caused the rest of the week to be a write off for me where I was just resting and recovering. By the time Sunday came around I was really wanting to get back to having energy and focus to get back to the study and very looking forward to making time on Monday to get some done. This week has been a good lesson in putting myself first and not pushing through and keeping doing things.

Week four: 15th to 21st May

It was great to feel up to getting back to study at the start of this week, however the state of the small and not so small humans in my life had the first two days a little challenging when it came to making time to get on the computer for more than 5minute blocks. Initially I felt the weight to get dones on Monday but then remembered that I am doing this course this way so that I can still be there for the kids and that I needed to trust myself and be realistic about the workload rather than putting my extra nice to learn stuff and experiment with stuff. I noticed over the course of the week that I tend to have one day where I am like woohoo I got this and then the next day I am more like hmmm I know nothing and will continue to know nothing unless I find all the hours. I have noticed this before when dealing with tricky situations so lucky I am pretty good at riding those waves. Later in the week things were more chill with the kiddos and while I didnt finish sprint-2 by Friday afternoon like I hoped to, I did get it to what felt like an acceptable point by later that night. Interestingly taking the pressure off by handing in what was hopefully good enough lead to me getting up early Saturday and improving on some of the code I was most unhappy with and doing more over the course of the day. The weekend was pretty hectic and loud here as it was the middliest birthday party and so she had 4 friends over Saturday for the night, with another joining the following morning for a time. Sunday afternoon and evening was chill and reset for the week for us. So I have not done the sprint-3 prep that was my plan but all and all feeling good.

Week five: 22nd to 28th May

On Monday two of the 5 kiddos came down with the flu and that ended up setting the tone for the week. While only three of the kids got it, it was a doozy so there was a lot of work to be done supporting the girls and slotting in course around that. I felt like I was waiting to be taken down but fortunately I wasn't and fortunately the eldest also managed to isolate from those that were sick and stay healthy, which she was very motivated to do as she had a weekend away booked. The core work was fun this week, it is lovely to get to know others in the cohort more. The JS challengers were great, I really enjoyed working out the last two loops, I the suggested resources after have been great to work through. After learning more about ChatGBT I have been using that more to help me find those little errors driving me batty. Tis great!

Week six: 29th May to 5th June

Illness dragged on into the first half of this week, then we had a friend visiting for rest of the week so been another busy one this week. Course wise, the DOM challenges flew by, it was so cool to see how much I had picked up, the JS cafe base work was a lot of fun, I challenged myself to try the things then learn how they should be done and it was very enjoyable. With there not being clear pauses on when to stop I wasn't sure how it was meant to be, but this way worked well for me. I had such a block with getting the blog done and so that took a lot longer than it should have, and as a result I have not got into the stretch challenges in the JS cafe or added JS to my blog like I would have liked to. So now with the last little bit of the weekend I am torn about if I start the next sprint or if I get on to those stretches. Oooh I did a little bit of pair programming which was heaps of fun also! Will be so much learning in doing that as we go along.

Week seven: 6th June to 11th June

This week started with a day focused on getting some of my core work done for the week as I have noticed that having all the blogs to do at the end of the week really ended up with me having a lot of time blocked, but if I use my desire to get into the tech course work to help me with my motivation to get through the core blogs this should help over come that. I worked and I got the writing for the blogs done that day and was then able to move onto the tech work. It was a little slow going over the week as was a busy week with the kid. But on Friday I was able to get to the JS-kata which was a lot of fun. It is quite a blast getting fail after fail and then it finally clicking and passing.
I had a child free night friday night and did no course work but instead enjoyed a night away at the beach with was great! Saturday evening I got back to the kata got it finished which was great! Sunday was busy with the girls and rehearsals and I was feeling a bit more under the weather so trying to rest to avoid more bugs.

Week eight: 12th June to 18th June

After having got the kata done on the weekend I got into my tech blog on Monday and got it done. Which was really good as by Tuesday morning I was feeling a bit rough and then soon admitted that I had the flu. Tuesday and Wednesday were complete write off's with me just sleeping and doing the bare minimum with the girls. Luckily they were amazing helping with food prep, making me hot drinks and helping each other out. Thursday I was feeling better but took it easy as I have a tendency to rush back and delay recovery.
So it was really good that I had the option of taking some time of as I managed to have these days off and not end up behind. Friday was spend playing with the new module work added to the sprint which was really cool to explore with animating things using js. Over the weekend I had a read of the sprint 5 work, it looked a little daunting so of course I wanted to get into it, especially as it started with tic tac toe which the littlest two and I have been playing this a lot while I have been doing foundations so really wanted to be able to show them that work also.

Week nine: 18th June to 25th June

This week started out with flying through the JavaScript Carnival. The unicorns provided quite a challenge starting out and that took a bit of problem solving work for me, but then getting into whack-a-mole things fell into place which was a nice boost. The tail end of the week was low on hands on keys time, I planned to watch some youtube and do some freeCodeCamp work seeing as was getting through the sprint work, but ended up not getting any done, which was a little tricky for my brain as then start to feel behind and the weight of to dos, so trying to make sure I am being realistic with the messages I am giving myself.

Week ten: 26th June to 2nd July

Last week of foundations!! It was another very busy week where getting time to code was on the low side, I did manage to have some good check in's and conversations with others from my cohort which helped a lot with head space, I got the last of the code done early in the week, and then finished the core work on Friday before heading up to New Plymouth for the weekend. With being away for the weekend it meant that I couldn't do the stretch work before the end of the sprint but it give me something to do for the break.
I have been giving a lot of thought to what I want to focus on over the break to be as set up as possible as I can be for bootcamp. I really want to work on some css, and some JS work but know I need to be realistic about what I can fit into the time. Stay turned to see how that goes!

Study Break:

Week one: 3rd to 9th July

This week started with a great bit of coding. When doing the whack-a-mole I had found a tutorial that showed making a countdown timer with a coloured animation which I really wanted to make, but I didn't have the time during that sprint. So this was my first go to this week. The timer bit itself was not to complicated, the making a circle shape was very stretchy, I spent a bit of time reading the links about making circles and making a path, a lot of it is still quite over my head, while I could understand it while reading it I def would need to do lots of reading to be able to write it without the tutorials help. I ran into quick a challenge with it where I was finding that my animation was going backward to what I wanted, with playing I could get it to go from the start but it would be doing it with the colour not working like I wanted. I asked a friend for help and got directed to chatGBT lol so asked chatGBT for some help, this helped me learn about how to manipulate the start points but did not manage to switch the direction up. Eventually I left this for later.
Next up I went to working on minesweeper. I remember playing this lots as a teen so was excited to get into it. It did have some tricky bits, like remembering to use the modules properly and getting overwhelmed looking at what was in those files, but over all it was pretty good. I really enjoyed figuring out how to make it work, and how to turn it into a game with options at the start of how many challenging it is or the size of the board. I ran into a few things like having the function to create the mine list in the wrong place which meant for each board it was being created for each cell rather than once, once I figured this out I was able to pull apart things a little more to make this work like I intended. I think one big take away for me with this project was that I need to remember to make smaller functions that just do one thing more.
Apart from those to bits of coding I did not manage to do much else tech wise this week. A fair bit of the mental and personal time energy I had was spend on thinking ahead to the next week, preparing for food and other logistics for school holiday programme and also trying to make sure the kids were are rested as they could be for that. And also getting some rest myself also.

Week two: 10th to 16th July

This week was chaos and as exhausting as I expected it to be. So I got no time coding or really doing anything outside of school holiday program and kids bedtimes etc for the week. We were leaving the house between 7 and 7.30 each day and returning between 6 and 7.30 each night. The days were filled with sorting children, managing teachers so kids got breaks from rehearsals, cleaning, crafting, organising costumes etc. It was more of a challenge than last year, maybe because there were less days which meant that the teachers were trying to fit more into the days. Having the two different shows there definitely made a difference too. There was lots of learning for me on speaking up, and also on regulating my own emotions in times of uncertainty etc. I had some lovely talks with other parents while doing this which was very nice. And most importantly my kiddos had a lovely and tiring week.
I would have liked to have spent the weekend getting back into code, but the kids and I ended up visiting extended family for the day on saturday and then getting sorted for the week ahead on Sunday.

BootCamp:

Week one: 17th to 23rd July

This week has been quite the journey for me. I was really nervous and excited leading into Monday, then quickly felt a little overwhelmed and nervous about managing the work load with my every day life. I loved the idea of an accountability partner but with my schedule it was hard to find times to pair code that worked for the both of us, which had me feeling very worried about letting others down each week due to my availability, or lack there in normal work hours most days. I was nervous that I wouldn't have time to watch the lectures before I was trying to fit in time with my partner, and so I wouldn't be able to pull my weight in the pairing sessions. Thankfully over the course of the week I was able to work through these feelings, recognising that it is not always expected to pair program, and that my accountability partners and I can work out how it works for us, some weeks this might be lots of pair time, others not, and that I can still work with others. My partner and I got into a wonderful groove of messaging a few times a day checking in, talking about life and coding and generally encouraging each other. When I got stuck she was amazing at helping me problem solve which was really awesome also.
Once I got to watching the lectures and having some time to jump into code the code aspects went well. I didn't manage to get to the bonus work, but all the standard kata's were great fun and I very much enjoyed them. The bowling kata I somehow managed to smash out in a short time with it all just flowing beautifully. I would love to refactor it and try other ways to solve it as know there are so many different ways and so much I could learn from that. But for now this is not such a thing. I guess the list of things we would like to spend more time on with grow and evolve as we go through more projects. It is such an interesting thing not being expected to finish the katas, this is something that will take a few going overs to get into my head!
Life outside of code has been as hectic as ever this week. We got the show schedule for September and it is bigger, with more shows than I had expected, and my girls got added to extra casts (which they are mixed on as they were looking forward to helping out at the theatre on their off casts, but also they are excited by the challenge also). We started working on the flats for the set, and also training some of the kids that are going to be involved in set moving on stage as we want to both make sure that they are well supported and also that it is as safe as possible. I managed to also get some time supporting our youngest groups in learning their journeys which is great as the lack of time to do this has been bothering me plenty. So all in all great times, but definitely feeling very aware that the last three weeks of this term are going to be much more full on than I realised. I will need to talk with the tutors about managing that as had only said one week not three to start with! Will need to think about the what and hows for the biggest poppets dance for those weeks also. Possibly both of us with have lots of work to do in the holidays catching up!

Week Two: 24th to 30th July

Monday was the littlest of mines birthday so we had a full house with her having four friends over for a birthday dinner and sleep over. It was a super late night and everyone including me was a little jaded the next day! Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday were busy days with set design and painting, which was a lot of fun, it is such a wonderful crew working together which makes it really enjoyable.
I was pretty nervous going into the first human skills deep dive not knowing what to expect and knowing that I can find group things tricky, but it was so great, having small break outs to chat about the topics was really great for being about to dive into topics in a safe way, and I was lucky to be paired with someone that I have chatted with a lot to start with which was really awesome, we had some great chats, and then for the last one we had someone new with us which was really lovely to as it was a great way to get to know someone else in the cohort. I really enjoyed diving into the content, and also the videos that were posted in the classroom.
Code wise I was very blocked to start with when it came to doing the art reader. I was excited to jump into the challenge and then when getting started I had no clue what to do for a while, I had to read it and then walk away to process, and then the same when I was trying to get the prompt to work, and the editing the main function. Each time once I had walked away for a little and came back to it came together much better.

Week Three: 31st July to 6th August

I was quite nervous about how diving into new material would be after having the two weeks and the holidays of mostly working on revising things rather than new material. To start with it all felt so over my head with the new terms and acronyms, but jumping into Express Server was lots of fun, and I found that the code along lecture really set me up well for the task. Adding in handlebars was really cool, I like the idea of templating to build up the content, it makes sense to my brain which is helpful. I would have liked to have had time to jump into the testing of the server-side rendering task so will have that on my list for when I get a moment!
Human skills focussed on Te Whare Tapa Wha this week which I really enjoyed, it was a great invitation to think of the different aspects of wellbeing in ways I had not considered with Sarrah pointing examples that dive a little deeper than the surface level that we can often sit at when considering wellbeing. It gave me a great opportunity to consider my own view of wellbeing and my plan, and consider ways to improve upon it (See my blog page for my additions if you are interested, hopefully more updates to come as wellbeing is always a work in progress right!)
Life outside of course was pretty hectic as always. We had a friend stay unexpectedly which was very lovely to see her and get to catch up, it is alway just the balance of having enough hours for all ot the things! The theatre stuff is ticking along slowly, there is always a big list and at the moment I don't really feel like I am finishing any tasks. I have stepped by from set a little as there are lots of cooks in that kitchen and so sometimes its better if there are less!

Week Four: 7th to 13th August

I was really excited to get into puppies at the start of this week. It provided plenty of challenges in learning just what data was being looked at and how I needed to then work with it so there was a lot of time spent console logging things and experimenting which as always I loved. I would have liked to have used the code from class less in figuring it out, but am being gentle with myself on that. I also was pretty focused on getting it done so that when it came to group projects I was not also feeling the need to go back and get the weeks work done to be able to hold my own.
FIRST PROJECT TIME! I was so excited to see how this would work with the different timetables and part-time nature. Jumping in to planning with my team on Wednesday was such a blast, we had a lot of laughs and really took the time to understand where each other was at with code, with time available and with aims for the project. Then we got into designing it, and doing some code together. None of us had spent much time working with much of the git work flow or in code with others so we had lots to learn together but it was such a smooth process for us. We ended up having lots of opportunities to figure out how git works through challenges with accidentally deleting the wrong things etc, I still feel like there is a lot to learn here for me, but am sure the other projects will be good opportunities and I am also going to make more branches in my local projects so that I can practice there as well and get into good habits.


Personal life stuff was pretty mixed this week. I was in a bit of a funk and feeling the weight of all the to dos in all the different areas of my life but not quite sure how to support myself or ask for support from others. I was able to keep that mostly away from the kids which is good, I really probably need to do a good day of housework to get on top of the backlog there and then it might be a bit easier to manage all the other things.

Week Five: 14th to 20th August

Starting databases was an interesting struggle, I am noticing a pattern that when a new topic is introduced I find it very hard to get my head around watching the first lecture and get nervous that I am not going to get it and then once get fingers on the keys it gets easier quickly so I really just need to ride that wave of self-doubt to start with and then get into it. I really didn't have time to get into code much this week. On monday I watched some of the lectures and did a little bit here and there but on Friday I was still on Mondays tasks which was a little stressful. I really wanted to listen to Johns suggestion that Dreamfest was the most important and so to skip to that if behind, but with still not having my head around things I found I really wanted to keep working through it in order. I am glad I followed what was most comfortable for my brain as otherwise I think I would have been working against myself, I managed to still take John advice in a way as I stopped activities when I had a good base where as I normally would have gone further into it as they were not taking too long. I got up to the typescript on the weekend and really enjoyed sinking into that. I really hope I can get Fridays work done on Monday ready for the project time.
I did get to do a bunch of pair programming one day with a couple of course-mates which was great for practice, for diving deeper into my understanding, and also for my ego as they were so lovely their feedback!
This week has been so busy with theatre stuff, we spent a lot of the time out and there were some pressing deadlines and logistics of working in varied teams that took up both a lot of brain space and physical time and space. I had some time without children on the weekend and as was feeling super overwhelmed with all the things on my plate so realised I needed to really prioritise some time to relax and not think about all the things, which I did Friday evening and a little bit of Saturday evening and it was just what I needed. I think that this is one thing that I am not very good so it was good to do it.

Week Six: 21th to 27th August

I got pretty busy with the code work Monday and Tuesday this week as really wanted to be in a good place to smash out group projects Wednesday and Friday as had mum and my sister coming to stay for the weekend and a lot planned for it so knew that I would be low on time. It all went pretty smoothly, if was not trying to smash it out for a deadline I would have done some going further with each exercise and doing the stretch but that was not to be for this week. Group project was a little stop start this week, but had a great team and learnt a lot through it. Had some growth opportunities sitting with my discomfort about not being available when would like to be and needing to proritise some personal life things which was good. I learnt heaps to about git which is wicked as was very much needed! Hope it sticks for next week lol
I needed to take a couple of days off theatre again this week to have some balance, but it seems like things are slowly being ticked off there, am nearly at the point that I feel like we will have enough backstage helpers which is good as there were some big gaps to navigate there. The weekend rehearsal went really well which was great as was the last one for that cast.
The family and I had a great time over the weekend, I did need to do some course work which they were cool with which was great! We went to see Wicked which was amazing, the girls loved it. The week ended with doing our group presentation at 10pm Sunday which was a bit of a challenge.

Week Seven: 28thJuly to 3rd September

As usual this sprint started with me feeling completely out of my depth and not sure that I was cut out for this, but thanks to the other weeks experiences I just let this sit and trusted the process. I managed to then get through the weeks work alright, did some pair coding (despite some vs code challenges making it a bit tricky for us to manage) which, as is nearly always the case, was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the wins that came with getting to world wide router and feeling like things were starting to come together more in my head. I am definitely feeling the to dos with theatre time upcoming, the increasing pull between the different areas, but by the end of the week was feeling like I was figuring out the code alright and was about where I wanted to be for a few days of coding next weekend and then off til the holidays.
The kids are seeming all set for theatre and it feels like through making some systems for food and how we will sort things we are getting there. It seems like there are a lot less nerves this year and people are super keen for getting to see the big kids do theirs first which helps as well I think.

Weeks Eight to Ten: 4th to 26th September

While I thought I had the start of week eight before the theatre madness started it turned out that right from monday we were in the thick of it and from waking each am til bed each night for these weeks it was all theatre time! The girls did amazingly well with the busyness of the weeks. I ended up with a much bigger lighting job than I had expected! I learnt a lot though and really enjoyed it! The Legally Blonde shows were absolutely amazing, and for my eldest the looking after Arlo (the dog) backstage really filled her cup, my littlest became one of the teens at hang out time and was living her best life there, and my middlist was pretty pleased that my earlier statement of everyone needs to have some days and nights off came to nothing as it was actually all hands on deck! As always the girls were amazing help when it came to light setting and they blew the teachers and light tech away with this. After the Aladdin shows we all are very shattered and in need of a few days off, and then I very much look forward to swapping back from a lighting console to VS code.

Week Eleven: 25th Sept to 1st October

This was holidays for others and was meant to be a busy catch up week for me doing the work from the last three weeks of term as I aimed to smash out as much as I could and then have the second week to get stuck into revision and making sure that I was well set up for the start of the term. This was not to be as I was so wiped out from the theatre weeks that I could not manage anything apart from setting myself up in a nest on the couch with the girls and supporting their need for some reconnection time for most of the week. We had some lovely times and I think it was pretty needed really and I possibly should have expected it. Talking to another mum who was as involved as me and the teachers it would seem my couch nest was also a feature at others places for the week.

Week Twelve: 2nd October to 8th October

This week was less of a write off than the week before and I managed to get to the tasks from the last sprint before the holidays. I found it a lot to remember the things from so long ago and apply new lessons to it, getting very lost in the tasks initially not sure where to start or what I should be doing. It was another got chance to practice self compassion and just enjoy the process of not knowing and exploring to figure out how it works, remembering that in the first task of the week I don't have to understand what is going on I just need to be able to look at the code from class and figure out how to make it work. Rather than getting through to close to the end of the base work for these tasks instead I was stopping well short and letting go of the need to complete every task which was a great chance for me as I still very much has found that I have a must do all of the things to the end kind of mentality. I hope once it is back to everyone working and the real course time next week it will get a little bit easier to get the work done.
Again the kids were mostly happy with a pretty home based week which was nice for me with low energy and the need to have some time behind the keys. We did have some pretty cool hang outs and they had some big idea for the upcoming term so we started planning that out which was good fun. The little two and I also got out on a big walk which was great and everyone has decided they want to do more adventures out in the bush or other walks around the place whichI am very much keen on also.

Week Thirteen: 9th October to 15th October

Back to normal term! Interestingly it has not been as easy to get back to work by using the fact that others are back to it also. Part of this has been a brain challenge for me just not quite managing to get my head to the space I need it to be in to be able to do the work I need to do. Part has been that the start of the week was pretty busy with the kids and outings and then I got pretty sick from Wednesday onwards and was not really fit for anything except the very very base line of what was required for basic child care! I spent most of Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday laying down either reading or napping and while I did start watching quite a few of the lectures quite a few times I mostly watched them through my eyelids which was not the best way to learn the material! On Sunday I was still pretty wiped out but could feel that was possibly starting to recover some which was nice.

Week Fourteen: 16th October to 22nd October

I was pretty nervous about where I was at going into this week, I really wanted to be through the block that had me not getting to the work as I really wanted the sprint work done and to feel like I understood the material before getting to the group project. But that was not to be. By the time Wednesday morning rolled around I had done the first two tasks which were the ones needed for the task, but I very much did not feel like I had much of a grasp on the work at all which was a bit uncomfortable for me.
Our first group meeting was pretty good for helping me work through this discomfort as the others were pretty supportive. I was in group with 4 others which was a new experience as had only been with two others before. Often in situations where there are more than one or two others in a group talking I tend to be very quiet and find it hard to contribute, but I surprised myself by finding some times to have my voice heard. I think that is probably a good testament to the awesome work of the rest of the group creating an inclusive feeling environment and being wicked supportive humans. We worked well out a plan for our app and then all took time to either get our heads around the project or for those who were more confident to dive into the work. I found this really helped me settle down into the work and I learnt a huge amount, revising front-end-routing, components, and react hooks. We had some stop and starts and didn't get as far through as some would have liked, but everyone came away having learnt a lot, both about working in bigger groups and also about coding the areas we worked on. I also was pretty pleased as I managed to do some front end testing on the project which was not something we have managed on projects so far and testing was something that had def not been easy in the work for this sprint and last sprint for me and so I really needed some time on that.
As well as coding over the weekend we had a pretty busy weekend, with the kids all catching up with friends, having catch up drama classes, and also a some what challenging picnic on the beach on Monday night. We are all pretty shattered going into next week which of course promises to be just as busy.

Week Fifteen: 23rd October to 29th October

I started this week being a bit stricter on myself with the things I had not done that were well over due but I had blocks on them that had me finding it very hard to get the work done. I decided to make a rule for myself that I needed to defeat those tasks and also do some more work on some of the written tasks that I don't feel like I had given enough time to before I could get back to the code. And by Tuesday I had done a big chunk, which was great. I still had a bit to get through but it was great not to have some of that work sitting on my shoulder like that. The Human Skills session this week was really good, it was lovely to get to see the others again and sink into a human skills space, I definitely find these a great help for getting into the work and feeling connected with the others on the course.
As is often the case the end of the week got very very busy with personal life tasks. I slowly chipped away at some of the course work but lost a lot of the momentum that I did have due to the amount of other things in life with outings with the kids etc, and then the weekend was similarly consumed unfortunately. Balance between doing the course work and the time needed to be there for the kids in the ways I want to be with their busy lives and wants for time is tricky.

Week Sixteen: 30th October to 5th November

This week started with me very much feeling overwhelmed with the list of life! There was a lot of house things to catch up on, getting through some course work before big projects and being a little behind on assignments, and preparing for the kids show next Monday(we needed to make props and practice lines). While I did manage to get all the things done over the course of the week it was pretty tricky on my mh and brain space. I am pretty pleased as don't feel the stress that I felt bled into things for the kids(which was pretty evident with the amount they asked to add to the list I think!)
I managed to get some of the coding aims I had for the start of the week done, and then used the course time I had available in the later part of the week for project work. This project we have a brief given to us which is really nice as it saved some of the time early on when planning what to do, and coming up with team names etc. It is another bigger group this week with 4 of us in the team which is nice, it provides interesting challenges in organizing work amongst more people, and more opportunity to be in code or online working together with others which is nice.
Mum visited on the weekend which was lovely, managed to have a balance of doing some code work, some time with the kids, some time with Tanya, and some time with mum. We mostly just had time around the kids activities as there was a bit on this weekend.

Week Seventeen: 6th November to 12th November

This week started with finishing up work on 'Lost and Found' which was more time in code with others figuring things out, and more good chats and getting to know others more which I enjoyed. Once that was handed on it was on to thinking about some of the assignments that I didn't manage to get done before projects started.
One of those was debugging which was interesting to write as I found it hard to think on things that would count as debugging or that sounded big enough to be worth writing about. I ended up having some chats with cohort mates about this and realised that I was really over thinking and needed to just wind back my expectations and pick something and get it done. Once I got it done I felt like I had just repeated myself but with the feedback from projects mates I had really realised that I have some great techniques and strategies so figured that I was probably alright.
The start of the weekend was getting into my full stack. I was really looking forward to this as was the first time of doing all of the things all in one all myself. The working out exactly what my idea was was a bit of a stumbling block but once I had bit the bullet and got started it went pretty smoothly which was great. Then I finished off the weekend with a day out in the garden on sunday which was great also.

Week Eighteen: 13th November to 19th November

The start of the week was a lot of making sure I had all my human skills work all done and handed in seeing as I was done all of the tech assignments, and getting prepared for the two weeks of final projects with food and child prep activities.
Wednesday was the big day for assigning project groups, everyone had such awesome ideas so I happy to go on any of the projects and just was looking forward to getting into it. I really happy with my group, it was people who I had worked with a lot and had already got pretty strong relationships with and knew we had pretty similar styles which was great. It was super interesting doing a longer period of planning but giving how often we had stumbled on other projects due to having not done the needed planning I can see why that was a great idea. We created a lot of user stories and used figma to help plan out what we wanted for each page and how users would travel through the pages. We had some good challenging conversations when we started heading off to other topics or getting into code before we had quite met the brief for planning, and these had the potential to create challenges in the group, but we really did very well working through these, listening to each other and working together to get through them and get the needed work done so we could get on with coding.
It was a lot of work balancing life and coding with my desire to be involved and love of doing the coding having me wanting to be available as much as possible but needing to make sure I was making time for the rest of my life as well. My team mates were great at being supportive which did help me find balance.

Week Nineteen: 20th November to 26th November


This week was a very busy and full on week of coding, I was often doing some work during the day while also supporting the kids, and then jumping on with those who were only available outside of work hours in the evening and working on things with them. I did take times off as needed with the girls having things on, but it was very much an exercise in having boundaries with myself! There was a lot of great learning building all of the bits, I had not used custom hooks in my other projects and so really wanted to see if I could work that out, and we also were using auth0 while also wanting to have user details in our database for use to use, which we were not sure how to do so there was some great learning trying things out there and doing some research.
This weekend was a weekend off for me! it felt strange having a weekend off in the middle of our project but it was booked in months ago and is our first time having two child free nights in a very long time so was very much looked forward to. We had a quiet one just chilling and enjoying down time watching and playing games and eating delicious foods. I did jump in code a little on my own to fix a couple of things and do some simple tasks that it would be helpful having crossed off on monday as we have some big aims for what we need to get done before code freeze on Tuesday.

Week Twenty: 27th November to 3rd December

Showcase Week! I was pretty nervous about getting all that we wanted to get done by code freeze time on Tuesday at the start of the week, but it was pretty incredible how we got through it. We had some times of hitting our heads against the wall with things not working and feeling like we were going in circles trying to work out what was going on, but it was so good to crack what had happened and get it working. Then there was a super fun experience of going to work on one last feature for it and having Mark joke about how it would us 15minutes to have it done, and it actually took well under that and done within about 10 minutes with time for a couple of dad jokes in there also! There is a lot of stretch that we would have loved to have got to to keep going, but maybe we can keep working on this together over Christmas to keep us all in code.
Our group had such a great time building this project together. It was really great to have so much time in code together working on things and I am really proud about how we opened up to each other and supported each other in tough times.
Showcase day was a pretty crazy day for me, we had musical stars until 5.30 and as we have a performance next week it was a big rehearsal, then we needed to get on our bikes and get home for the 5.45 call time for zoom, we walked in the door a little late but it was all good. One of the kids then started to feel her feelings after a very hard rehearsal for her and so I was needing to do some parenting through the start of the showcase. Once that was done it was a lovely and fun evening.
It feels a bit strange being in a break before getting to careers skills, I have a lot I would love to go back on work on, and a lot I would love to keep working on, plus projects I can't wait to start. I am feeling a bit sad about no longer having set projects with my amazing cohort mates but I am sure we will keep in touch!

Study Break: 4th December to 10th December

It was quite fortunate this week was a study break for us post showcase and before starting careers next week as the girls all had prize-givings for their activities, plus they had shows and despite doing somme work on costuming last week I hadn't got to finishing the last of the littles skirts. As it turned out we got hit with the gastro bug going around and so had two days where we missed evens, and then the little missed show day in the end. Thankfully mum was down and we were able to tag team and go to one show each.
I did manage to have some time in code this week which was great, it was mostly jumping in with others as they worked on their projects either just to help give them company while they worked, to help with problem solving or with AJ as he worked on his personal project and I watched along learning from him. This was a great way to keep my brain in code while also having some decompression time and to be able to sew as was thinking about and reading code.