more excitement in our little cul de sac

Mark noticed small flames on our neighbour's roof this morning as he backed out of the drive way. So he called 000. The CFA were here within minutes and put the small fire out with an extinguisher. One of their solar panels had caught fire. We had four trucks here at one stage, not that they could all fit in our court! Two were in the court and two were in the street.They were very lucky the panels all didn't catch fire!

 

jam

Yum!  

From our very own apricots!

Our Productive Garden

Delicious!!!!

Juicy apricots!

Mmmmm Plums

Finally some lemons on our lemon tree!

Looking forward to our neigbour's figs being ripe and ready for eating! YUM!

It's begining to look a lot like Christmas...

We finally put up the little mantle I made out of scraps left over from the bed head I made for us ages ago, it looks soooo good!

I bought some cute new stockings (at BigW), so now we have a matching set instead of odd socks ;-).

I'm so excited about how it looks! It will be so nice to decorate the mantle for different events and seasons.

Printable Merry Christmas Bunting available through Mother Duck Said: "Let's Party!"

Printable Merry Christmas Bunting available through Mother Duck Said: "Let's Party!"

Now I can't wait to decorate the table. My parents are coming for lunch on Christmas Day, and then on Boxing Day, my parents, and my brother and his family are coming for breakfast.  I'm looking forward to using our Mini Milk Bottles and Stripey Paper Straws for breakfast smoothies! Can't wait!

Printable Merry Christmas Bunting available through Mother Duck Said: "Let's Party!".

you know you live in Australia when...

...you have an interesting visitor...

Mr Wallaby came to visit us on Tuesday morning. As Mark was leaving for work, he heard some commotion, thinking it must have been a pretty big cat, he was surprised to see a Wallaby! We think it must have come from the creek (about 1km away) and been chased by a dog and ended up in our little neck of the woods suburbia.  I called Wildlife Victoria and they sent out someone to dart it and take it away. The wallaby spent time between our front yard and our neighbour's, before jumping over our fence into our neighbour's back yard where it stayed until it was 'rescued'.

Tinker (our neighbour's cat) is NOT impressed
with the visitor who is hiding in her garden!

 

Peeking over the fence to see the Wallaby

Sniper Girl - had to shoot a dart at it so they could catch it

One very sleepy wallaby who will be taken away
and released somewhere more appropriate
for a wallaby to live

Auskick game day

The boys were so excited (and so were we) that they were going to play in the Auskick half-time games at Etihad Stadium.

Nath 'marking' the ball

Nath kicking the ball

take me out to the ball game...

well, not really - even tho we have been to one of those 'ball games', we're off to an Aussie Rules game of footy tonight.  The boys have been doing auskick, and tonight they will be playing in the half time games at Etihad Stadium. We're going to the footy with some of our good and wonderful friends. All our boys are playing tonight. Cam will be playing in the center or the ground and Nath and the other boys in the smaller games around the edges. I just hope my long camera lens is good enough to get in there and get some decent photos of the boys. 

May the Force be with you!

Nathan, being the Star Wars fan that he is, decided that once again, he'd have a Star Wars Birthday Party.

Thank goodness for google! Using google and pinterest, I searched for ideas for games and activities that we could use.

After all the children had arrived, Mace Windu (aka Mark) introduced himself and told the kids that they'd be starting their Jedi Training. First up they had to demonstrate that they could concentrate and be able to build their own R2D2 unit.

We cut out white card into an R2D2 shape and then provided lots of bits of coloured card (navy, royal blue, grey, purple and black) that we had precut into various shapes and sizes. Sticker dots were also available to be used for decorating too. I bought some cheap glue sticks and the kids really enjoyed doing this activity.

After this, the kids had to complete an obstacle course.

Stage One was to get past Darth Vader...

Stage Two - down the slide

Stage Three - navigate the stepping stones and try not to fall in the lava!
 

Stage Four - balancing walk

 


Stage Five - get past Darth Vader again.

Once each child had mastered the obstacle course, they were awarded with their Jedi or Princess Leia robes (with head piece too!).

I made the costumes using knit fabric (or jersey) because it wont fray. I cut the fabric for the boys at about 50cm wide, and the girls at about 80cm, and then cut a slit that was about 20cm across in the middle of the tunic for their heads. I made the belts just with strips of fabric. For the Princess Leia head bands I cut dark brown knit fabric into 5cm wide strips and plaited three together. Using my glue gun, I glued them while rolling them up, then glued them to a head band. Go to Mother Duck Said: "Let's Party!" for a tutorial on the costumes (coming soon!).

After they received their costumes, they had to show that they had the "moves" to be able to wield a light saber. I made the light sabers. There were a few options we could have used for light sabers. I had planned on using pool noodles, but since it's winter here, they are hard (and expensive) to find. Using balloons as light sabers we'd done at Nathan's last party three years ago - and one of our guests is allergic to latex - so no balloons. The light sabers didn't take long to make and they were certainly used to whack each other with - with no one getting hurt which was a big bonus! Tutorial for the light sabers at Mother Duck Said: "Let's Party!".

Then the kids played a 'freeze' game. When the Star Wars music stopped, the kids had to freeze in a 'Star Wars Jedi Pose' whatever that is, but they seemed to know - ;-)

It was then party food and cake time!

The kids all got to take home their costumes and light sabers.

Nathan said when he went to bed that night "That was the best party ever!"

A new adventure

My friend Renée and I have just launched our new business providing party supplies, personalized invitations, decorations, party favours etc.  Come and visit our blog and our page on facebook so you can keep up with our latest news.

We have been quite busy, sourcing and ordering stock; we are very excited about it all and can't wait to stock our online store. We will have a range of fully personalized invitations, bunting, lolly bags, cake toppers and wrappers etc.

Run Mark Run

On Sunday Mark will be doing the Run Melbourne with our friend Mark, to raise money for Transplant Australia.  If you would like to sponsor either of the Marks, please click on the pictures below to be taken to their sponsor pages.

Mark Inglis

Mark Leach

A week in the life

This sounds like a fun challenge. I'm going to give it a go. If you'd like to join me, click on the logo to be taken to the project info page. Listed are lots of tips and suggestions and how to prepare for the challenge. There's also a link to see what others did last year. I plan to blog the pictures I take and do some digital scrap layouts of the photos too.

Due Date

Last November I discovered I was pregnant and tomorrow would have been my "due date". (You can read about what happened here). Wow, I can't believe that had things been different, I could already be holding, or about to hold, a little bundle of joy! Joy... the middle name we chose if the baby was a girl.

I can't say that 'so much has happened' over the past nine months. It's just been life as normal.

After losing the baby, we were told that if we did want to get pregnant again, we should wait 3 to 6 months before trying. I'm glad we had this time to decide whether we would 'try' to get pregnant. At the end of last year and the first month or two of this year, we pretty much had decided to have another baby.

As time went on, there began to be more days when we' d think 'I don't know', then gradually more days that we felt 'no'- well I'm speaking for myself here. Mark would happily have had more children, but said that ultimately the decision is mine since I'm the one who has to go through the pregnancy and delivery etc - mind you, Mark has always been a wonderful supporter and is always there for me and certainly isn't saying that I'd be on my own. He is realistic and knows that at the end of the day, I have to be able to cope with a new baby.

Such a hard decision to make - it was a no brainer when we wanted the boys - of course we were going to have children. Of course we were going to have more than one. Of course we were going to have number three - oh hang on - life threw us a curve ball just before we were going to start 'trying for number three' and I began to have anxiety attacks. We put off having number three while we sorted out my mental health issues...  which ended up taking several years and by then the question hovering over number three was 'How would I cope?' Since I couldn't honestly answer that question, we decided that since we had two beautiful children, why make things harder for ourselves and them and the rest of our family by having another baby if I can't cope. It was the unknown answer that decided for us.

And that was that. It probably took me about two years to come to terms with the fact that we were not going to have anymore children. It was something I grieved over. We consoled ourselves with the fact that we'd meet our third child (which would have really been our first) in heaven (I had a miscarriage almost three years before having Cameron).

So now? We decided once again, that we will leave our family the way it is with the two beautiful boys we do have. There are other factors now at play too, I work, do I want to give that up? Can we afford to give up my wage? Do we want to give up my wage? How will the large age gap work? I'm getting closer to 40, how would I cope if we did have a baby with Down Syndrome? (we wouldn't be 'getting rid' of any baby we conceived). Do we really want to have broken sleep when we've been past that stage for several years?

It was a difficult decision, but I'm glad we had several months to make it. Over time we went from more days saying 'yes', to more days saying 'I don't know', to more days saying 'I don't think so', to more days saying 'no'. There still are times when I think 'It'd be nice' but those times don't last too long.

Having said all that, I still wish that things had been different and that this baby had been growing in my womb. I still grieve for this baby (and the one before Cam - who would now be 13! Oh my gosh!) and I look forward to meeting this baby one day in heaven. I have two earthly babies and two heavenly ones.

Now we enjoy our friends' little baby, Eden - who is now no longer a baby, but is almost two years old. I call her my 'pretend daughter' and her parents call us 'her other parents'. She has helped fill a space in my heart that has always longed for a little girl, but we get the best of both worlds, we can usually hand her back when she has a dirty nappy! hahaha

Eden has always been a special baby to me. I don't know why - I've never got clucky over my friends babies, and when Eden was born and a little baby, I didn't really know her mum Renee all that well. But there has been 'something there' with Eden and I - some sort of bond.

April 2010

April 2010

July 2010

January 2011

May 2011

Over the past nine months Renee and I have developed a wonderful friendship, she was there for me in ways that no-one else was when we went through what we did, and I'm so grateful for her friendship and love. Over the past few months, we've discovered that we have so much in common - and that our husbands do too. Our children all love playing together, our boys dote over Eden as she does them. I've never had a friend whom I have felt so comfortable with. Renee truly is the sister I never had. God has blessed me wonderfully. Thank you Renee for sharing Eden with me and for being my 'sister friend'.