HOLIDAYS

I'm officially on holiday.  I have 23 days off.  The first week, is BUSY.  

 

Tomorrow is cleaning, swimming, last minute shopping.

Friday - Good Friday - the kids, dogs and I drive to my in-laws for the night.  We are dropping the dogs off for a holiday, having a little catch up time and going to the Nathalia Easter Parade.

Back home Saturday, have a quick catch up with the Dunn/Storer family.

Sunday - Easter Sunday - my sister and her kids come over for a visit.  We'll have an Easter Egg hunt and some lunch.

Monday - Easter Monday - packing, generally freaking out and probably several mad dashes to the shops

Tuesday (with no associated Easter attached to it) is fly out day.  Our flight leaves at 10.30, so I'm guessing we get there 8.30 - 9ish.  Then onto Air Asia for our long flight.  8-10 hours for a Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur, then a 4 hour layover then a 2 hour flight to Phuket.  Getting to our hotel at 9.30pm local time, which I believe is 1:30am Melbourne time.  

Can anyone say exhausting?

Walk for the Kids

Did the Walk for the Kids today.

Its part of the RCH Good Friday appeal, which is held every year here in Melbourne Town.  Supposedly they raised $2million.

We were in the "short course" of 5.5km in the white zone.  White zone is for walkers, prams, wheelchairs etc.  I went with Jo and her friend Keri.

Despite all of those people.  We were last for 85% of the course.

We had to stop for the other two to go to the loo, the line up was big, and there were only 3 toilets at this spot at we were at the back of the line, so 20 minutes later, we re commenced the walk.  Not another person was in sight at this stage.  Once we hit past Birrarung Marr, on a tollway road, a car was backing along the road.  Weird the roads were closed for the FunRun.  The bloke in the car said "ladies, anyone behind you"  Nope we think we're last... he said, that's a shame I'm meant to be last.  And then he super slowly followed us for 4km!  It was excruciating.

So many people cheered us on.  Some teased us for having an ambulance behind us.  Then we overtook a woman with what I'm guessing to be cerebral palsy and we ended up being 2nd last.  Managed to chat the entire way and it was very pleasant.

At the end we were part of the tens of thousands that were milling around The Myer Music Bowl and the atmosphere was happy and sweaty.

Afterwards Jo and I went out for brunch and that was also quite delightful - despite no butter.

Caught the train home.

Books and bedtime

I was a naughty mother, not a fan of reading aloud.
Recently I sang my little heart out.

The last two weeks, the boys have been obsessed with books.  Ryan has memorised some of the books and can "read" them himself.

They laugh at the jokes.  Make up side story lines.

So at bed time, we are reading about 4 books, two songs (the favourite being Humpty Dumpty), kisses goodnight,  they have their milk and then I do the blast off.

Stand at the door, hand hovers over the light switch.

Five

Four

Three

Two

One...


Blast off.


Light goes off, mum leaves the room.  Thanks for playing, we're asleep now.

Long day

Hi!

Just thought I'd share my day... you know, with myself.

Up to have a shower before the little boys wake up, who am I kidding?
Both boys wake up at 6:55 and need a cuddle.  Put Mickey Mouse Funhouse on my phone and they both hang out on my bed watching that whilst I have my shower (this is a normal start to the day)
Wake Marko up and kick him out of bed, didn't want to get up today.  Even Ben says to him "in the shower" in a very bossy voice.
Ryan and Ben want Weetbix and thankfully they pretty much feed themselves.
Open the garage door for Jamie to come home.
Have the coffee machine ready for Jamie to make me a latte :)
Little boys want a hot chocolate, so have to make them for them, in Mark's special double walled cups.  Awesome milk moustaches in tiny faces.  Teach them to use the cloth napkins that I have made to wipe their faces.
Mark sees that hot choc is on offer, so make one more!

Just to let you know.  Ryan is naked for all of this.

Get two little boys dressed whilst they think they are playing a game of chasey - its challenging.

Make my lunch, convince Mark to make his own lunch (I do interact with Mark as well, give him a morning cuddle and then turn bossy).  Put the dishwasher on, take all of the recycling out and then put all the kids in the car to head off to work.

Drop Mark off at the shopping centre and he walks the a block and a half to school.  Head to childcare and drop of the littlies.  Ben's class was already outside and Ryan's class was learning about opposites (using flash cards)... when I picked him up I asked him "how did you go learning about opposites" the reply "oh mum, learning is hard"

Work was busy today. Lots of health assessments, careplans, flu vaccines, trying to put some order into the recall list, I feel I'm losing the battle with the recall list, not sure how much effort to put into it.

After work, picked up the kids and then dropped in home for a change of nappy and some spare clothes, then off to Connie & Paul's for dinner.  The boys love playing with Toby and looking/cuddling Zahli.  Had a super delicious dinner of schnitzel with a cornflake & parmesan cheese crumb, it was the best schnitzel I've ever had.  We ducked out for icecream and the boys were covered in chocolate creaminess.

Finally home at 7.45pm.  Boys went into the shower and Marko played his xbox. They are metrosexual kids, they like body wash of the puff rather than soap!  Then it was another game of chasey whilst getting them in their pjs.
Read three stories

 

Sang the usual songs - Bananas in Pyjamas, Twinkle Twinkle little star, Humpty Dumpty, If you're Happy and you Know it.

Milk for the fellas and then they went to sleep.

THEN... 4 loads of washing done and hung out. Marko emptied the dishwasher. I attempted some Easter craft, don't think it'll work, so I think it'll be a papermache basket for the Easter Egg hunt.

Of course I've also been Facebooking and writing this mammoth blog post.

Things I notice about today - no Jamie.  He came home from work at 7.30am, I left at 8am.  He left for work at 5.30pm, I got home at 5.35pm... yeah that works, thankfully that only happens on a Friday.

Now its 11pm, I forgot to have my Sifrol at 8.30, so the Restless Leg Syndrome is starting to kick in.  We are at day 6 of a heatwave, and its not due to break until Wednesday or Thursday of next week... every day over 30 degrees and its March.  I for one am sick of it.  Insomnia is easing, but I'm still not sleeping very well.

Ryanisms

"I'm not happy"
"I need a big milk"
"I need the blue one" in regards to the colour of his cup
"Benny needs you"
"I don't like it" in regards to anything that resembles healthy food.

Facebook

This is what my Facebook status feed would look like today if I wanted to piss everyone off.


- Swimming today.
- Benno tried to fall asleep in the pool, lay on my shoulder looking very cute.
- Awww Ben fell asleep on my shoulder after refusing to go to bed.  First time since he was atiny baby.
- Community Service Announcement for those in TUllamarine. Sky the one-eyed wonder dog is missing. Let us know if you find him.
- Sky walked up the drive way - he's home.
- Procrastination +

Challenges

I plan to do a photo a day, actually two if I can.  First is a day by day challenge with a word prompt.  The other is my boys - out of respect for the eldest, its of the little two, but hopefully Mark will join them in more than one throughout the year.  So without further ado, here is the first two days.


01 Jan 2013

Prompt: Today - The boys sitting together having lunch.

The two of them, looking through the bottom of the trampoline at the dogs

02 Jan 2013

Prompt: New - new haircuts.

 The two of them, being cool with their cousin Toby.

FOOD

Grocery shopping today.  I do love to grocery shop.
If my printer was plugged in, I'd have a full menu plan.  Why did I not just hand write it.
Tonight it something delicious that I am going to find at LaManna

Some things I need to make, summer veg and haloumi salad.
A roast of some sort
I need to finish that lemon slice.

OK time to get the boys up.  Daycare today.  A free day for me.

30 December 2012

Tomorrow is New Years Eve.

I don't care for NYE, never have.  Its not my thing.  I don't drink more than two drinks in any sitting, I hate (HATE) seeing drunk people, I'm not a fan of crowds and to be perfectly honest, fireworks are BORING.  We sort of want to go and stay in town, then the boys can see the fireworks and we don't need to be in a crush.  But I feel this is yet another pipe dream.  One we talk about but never actually do.

Funny stuff

I put a box of Favourites on top of the fridge.  Mr 3 is jumping up trying to reach it "I'm too little"

Adventures in grocery shopping.

I almost always shop alone.  Fast.  Relatively daily.

Today, I ventured out with my two youngest children.  Ben is thankfully still happy in the trolley.  Ryan now walks (he is 3 you know)

Made Ryan help!  He collected the carrots, cucumbers, picked the fruit.  He's still quite a bit short for a lot of things, but he loved helping.  He does this gorgeous thing with his hand "ala The Price Is Right" when he wants me to look at something.

Once we got home, I wanted to put up our "Santa Please Stop Here" sign.  I tried pushing it in.  Ground is too firm.  So I said "we need a hammer guys" inside we went and Ryan went rushing off.  He came back with his toy hammer, bless his little heart.

Its confirmed.

My youngest son is completely nuts.

He's the busiest person in the family.

a whole bunch of piccies.

A cute one of "the middle child"

 Mum, Dad and Ben

Mum, Mark, Ryan and Ben on the miniature train.

A bit closer of the same, poor Benny is a little squashed.

Action shot of the littlies

A super cool Ryan

Sophisticated Ben (unfortuanately he wouldn't give up the dummy for this photo), but on closer inspection, is this Roy or is it Ben?

Cuties in their toy buckets.

The most gorgeous bub in the whole wide world.

Photos

For some unknown reason I have stopped taking photos.  Haven't taken any with our real camera for months and months.  This is a bad thing when you have teeny tiny children.

But I do use my phone camera quite a bit and it goes everywhere - and I mean everywhere - with me.

I wish my three boys would sit nicely together somewhere so I can get a shot of them.  Maybe on the slide at the park.  That'd be a fun photo.

Appointments

I finally took Ben to the Maternal & Child Health Nurse today for his one year old check up (he is 16 months old).  This was the biggest waste of time I have almost ever experienced.

Firstly she didn't introduce herself or have a name tag on.  She coughed most of the time, fair enough you have a cold, but go get a drink of water to pretend you are doing something about it.  Was much more interested in her computer, sending an email to transfer us to her centre.

She got me to fill in a piece of paper about stuff I'm worried about.  Wasn't very interesting, but covered the basics.  Then we (I mean Ben) did a strip, had his fontanelle checked, checked his little balls were in the right place then a weigh and measure.

Although he is not yet 10kg, I am not to be concerned about his lack of height or weight, he is a small version of normal.

I said I thought he was bowlegged, but that is normal for developing walkers, after a bit his legs will go more knock-kneed, then straighten out to normal shape.

Ryan was reading a book, and was identifying all of the pictures in the book.  She said that was really good.

So I felt rushed, and pushed out.  Not at all what I was expecting from my local (Victorian) MCHN.

Olympics

I've always had Olympic fever.  Love it, become an expert on everything.

Not much of a fan of the coverage, was watching the womens 400m IM this morning and when Stephanie Rice was scraping in second last the commentary was still all "she's making good ground", not gee the Chinese girl Ye is going awesome.

I loved the opening ceremony and as a rule, I don't like them.  But English history is so amazing, so full, so rich that its ok.  The musical montage was great.  Also, as shown before, MR BEAN is fantastic.

So, tonight, I'll be enjoying some swimming, rowing (lots of row row row your boat - to get the boys enthused), hopefully some gymnastics.

Olympic Swimming Photos - Swimming Photo Galleries | London 2012

Olympic Swimming Photos - Swimming Photo Galleries | London 2012

Need to relax

I'm not convinced the title will live up to what I'm posting about, mainly because I don't yet know what I'm going to post about.

Everything is getting the better of me these day, my fuse is short and I don't like it.

STUCK

After a long time, Ryan is finally talking.  We have discovered he is a complete chatterbox with his volume set to 11.  On the way home from daycare in the car from the back seat I heard.

"Stuck, stuck, stuck"

"What's stuck Ryan?"

"ME"


Well duh, that is kind of the idea.

I like hosting shin-digs

Today we had our dearest little chap's first birthday party.

Just so hard to actually believe little Ben is one year old.  In some ways it seems so much longer.  This last year has been very, very intense.

Today was a "Milk and Cookies" themed party, which in all honesty didn't really take off.

When we lived here 9 years ago we used our back door almost exclusively as "the door" but this time around because of now having two dogs and two little people, its easier not to have to tackle the back gate and just use the front door.  Connie still uses the back, but she is the only one.  The sliding door is hard to unlock as well.  What does this have to do with the party you ask?? Well I set up the "dessert table" to face the back door, it was quite visually exciting, I had bunting, a balloon centrepiece, a cupcake stand and other deliciousnesses. It looked great when approached from the back door.  But everyone came in through the front!  SO when you turn around the corner it was nice, but not the WOW factor I was after.

We had sausages in bread, hamburgers and coleslaw for the main course.
A pretty spectacular cake (if I do say so myself) done in the shape of a 1.
Heaps of cookies, cake pops, m&m's and jaffas.
Sugar overload, let me tell you.

Presents were great too...

Nan & Pop = clothes
Margie & Frankie-Pop = coat
Dunn family = Tonka truck
Geary family = Moon car (to go with the rocket we already have)
Holloway family = Trike with a trailer
Pulcifer family = clothes.
We got him a tractor that makes an awful amount of noise.