Another Friday, Another Birthday

It's my birthday!! Prep Brown sang me Happy Birthday in English & Indonesian while I wore the special birthday hat (shaped like a cake). Ingrid made banana muffins (1st pic) for me. Yummy!
Off to ballet - the mums sang me happy birthday again! Off to pick up, the lovely Deb brought me flowers - yellow, my favourite! Then the lovely Renee brought round a cake AND balloons. Spoilt! Another round of Happy Birthday!
For dinner the Purchase & Boden gangs brought pizza and an icecream cake (another round of Happy Birthday). Lovely to have such beautiful friends!! Looking at the pics it's easy to see why I had such a strong sense of déjà vu! !
The next pic- well Paris and Nikki dropped in of course. And finally the children put on a play! With approximately 3 directors and 5 lead roles (among 5 kids) the 7 minute long performance (of 5 simultaneous monologues) ended in tears and it was home time!!! Wish I could post the footage of the play, it really was quite adorable!
The lovely Ianthe and Geoff left the kitchen spotless, which with a dishwasher on the blink was perhaps my favourite part of the day!
Oh and Arthur and Finn had a bath. Arthur thought Finn was the funniest bath toy he'd seen and laughed and laughed and laughed the whole time. Very cute :)

Ughhh. It really is winter this time...

This year we had one of the best summers the southern isle has seen in a long while. Why even last Sunday the kids were bouncing on the trampoline with the much loved visitors (aunt) Kate and (uncle) Dan. They had shorts on. SHORTS. In May. You wouldn't have caught me dead in shorts but the sun was shining and they hadn't stopped galavanting around in hours.
We've had plenty of cold nights so far, but by mid morning the sun has shone and the world has been ok. Not today though. This photo was taken at 9:30 on the way home from school. (Ingrid took the photo of the spider web on our neighbours fence "mummy, I think it's too cold for the spiders too"). The fog didn't lift for another 2 hours. No vitamin D today...and then there were the 3 loads of wet washing.... Oh well. Arthur was snug as a bug in his lambs wool lined fleece pram liner all tucked up in the chariot. Nice for some....

Happy Birthday Arthur!

This week our littlest turned one. Gosh it crept up on us!! We had a small afternoon tea (which turned into dinner and a few Vinos for the grown ups). Here are a few pics:

Introducing the Talented Laurence

Afternoon folks. Today I was lucky enough to be invited by the lovely Laurence to view her pieces at the current exhibition put on by the tafe art students (running til the end of the month at the tram sheds, for you yokels). And what's more I managed to squeeze in an hour and a bit without kids!! All the students used the Cateract Gorge as inspiration- and the array of interpretation was astounding.
Laurence had some beautiful pieces on display (the first 4 pics) and she had obviously put a lot of effort into them- they are amazing. I couldn't decide which I liked the best-maybe the long piece of hand weaving? The 'Don't Graffiti Nature' piece was great too. As was her map. Ok so they were all good- too hard to chose. She was also lucky enough to have picked up one the watercolours by a fellow student. (See the large painting of the rocks in the 5th pic). It really is beautiful.
I also loved the detailed outfits (pic no 6). These were hand woven and dyed before being constructed. Finally the wall hanging by the tafe teacher was really something (last pic). The muslin is hand dyed to represent water levels on the rocks, and had also sewn added rouching and texture on. Between the creases he had painted faint silhouettes of people enjoying the Gorge - kids playing, people walking dogs etc. These were very faint and you didn't notice them unless you looked really closely. I could've stayed and gazed at it for hours.......
Only problem is that I have now added the course to my wish list of things to do in a few years in the 'time to get my life back on track post kids' phase that I'm hanging out for!! That list is growing and I'm gonna be busy!!
We spent the afternoon reorganising the house to give me a dedicated crafting space....watch this space.....

Belated Mothers Day

I got breaky in bed today. Pancakes with maple syrup. Yummola. It was a belated Mother's Day breaky as Sam was away last Sunday.
Last Sunday Grandma Gandy, the kids and I went to Trevallyn Dam for a picnic/BBQ. The kids had a lovely time collecting firewood for the fire. Now, Grandma's are known for feeding grand kids too many lollies. And this Grandma is no exception. Only on Mother's Day she thought she would teach George how to light fires instead. George thought it was fantastic, and achieved the task without physical injury! Besides, Gandy bought THE most sensational chocolate cake - whats to worry about? In fact we all had so much fun we are taking Daddy for a BBQ there tomorrow, and meeting another family also. That way Arthur can spend another day crawling around eating his weight in wallaby poo!!!

Brotherly Love

Poor Ingrid-in-the-middle has been copping it from both sides, or brothers. She had already declared that "If the next baby is a boy I'm going to live with the Dennis' ". The Dennis family have four daughters.
On George's 3rd birthday he received a plastic dinosaur set. I can't remember the exact sequence of events, but somehow, later that day George used the stegosaurus as weapon against his younger sister. The spiky creature had perfect aim and landed exactly on the bridge of the victims nose drawing an instant dramatic rush of blood. I do remember George didn't even wait to be disciplined, and voluntarily scampered off to the naughty spot. To this day Ingrid has a scar on the bridge of her nose.
This morning we were all having a cuddle in bed. In a jealous act Arthur turned and bit poor Ingrid!! Where? On the snoz of course. It wasn't until later in the day that we realised that her snout was swollen and sporting a set of purple tooth marks. Ah. Brotherly love....

Base Jumping Baby

When George was a baby he had a particularly bad week of accidents. By the end of the week he had a black eye, split eyebrow, an egg on his head and had put two teeth through his lip. I remember having to go into town to do a heap of jobs and, worried that people may be concerned about George's well being I had the shade cover firmly stuck over the pram!!!
It really shouldn't have taken me by surprise when Arthur took a head first dive off our bed. After calling friends to help determine if he was concussed and required medical attention (which he didn't-though he had a HUGE egg on his head). So far so good. Til bath time. Arthur had the luxury of having the bath all to himself as the big kids were having a shower to wash their hair. Arthur happily played with George's bath toys - especially the motor bike which was carelessly discarded in the bottom of the bath. All going well, til Mummy Bear tried to wipe Arthur bear's face. In an attempt to avoid having the extremely large red bump on his forehead touched Arthur launched himself forward only to slump down - bot on bike - with great force. And after extracting the bike from where the sun don't shine, I thanked goodness there wasn't any major damage. While consoling the poor little man, who was understandably sore from top to bot I couldn't help but think "geez. How would I have explained that one"....

It's ok Mum

"It's ok Mum. I've got my safety glasses on."
"Yes darling, but you need to have them on your face, not your head".

Building...

School goes back on Tuesday and I was asked yesterday at a birthday party what we had done. Well not much really... Arthur was sick for the entire holiday with left me feeling tired and cranky too. So we did lots of drawing and lots of building with blocks. George has made some amazing symmetrical creations (including the Faraway Tree which we are reading about at the moment) and they worked together nicely to build some amazing creations. Enjoy!
Ps. Talking of building I am the undisputed family train track guru. Sam can keep the leggo championship but I reign in the Thomas department.

Hello Jack!

On Thursday we had our first frost. And I'm cross with Jack. Why? Because the frost killed my basil (which along with coriander is my favourite herb), drooped my tomatoes and burnt the punkin. I know we've had such a good run this summer but it was such an abrupt end to it all.....
And guess what? The next day we had a hail storm. A true blue Queensland style hail storm. In Launceston. In May. The kids asked if the "hail-pops" would still be there in the morning? "Oh no, they will have melted by then" says Mummy Bear. Nope wrong again. Another frost and the ice was still there when we left the house at lunchtime - the next day!!

The big kids have been busy building dinosaur models during all this weird weather. They were sensible enough to not let Arthur (aka Destructo-baby) get his paws on it.

Honestly, that child. I've no idea how I'm going to put up with him inside all winter without having to batten down the whole ship!