More family fun

This afternoon we went to Sandgate with my brother and sister in law and 2 of my cousins and their respective (and highly respected!) spouses. We had 3 toddlers and 3 big kids between us and the kids had lots of fun...

... most of the time!

Miri and her little cousin had a great time "scootering"!

We even managed to get all the kids sitting still(ish) for a minute or two - quite an achievement!

I think this is the first photo of us all together since June - thanks Alex :)

Christmas Day

We had a happy Christmas morning... got our annual "kids in front of the tree" photo then opened presents and rushed off to church.

Back home to assemble some toys and grab some food before we went to Lynn's for lunch.

Miri took some time out to look through our family photo book from 2011. She loves seeing pictures of her little cousins.

Playing Angry Birds is much more fun when your own Angry Birds are helping!

Christmas is alot of fun when you have a crazy playmate. The boys have been having a terrific time together.

And lunch was delicious!

There's nothing like a special Christmas Octonauts episode to make the day complete.

We all enjoyed the swimming pool....

... even Jeremy, who kept being shot into the pool by boys with water pistols!

The new car racing track was a huge hit with both of the boys.

Miri didn't seem so keen though!

Lynn, Jeremy and Phil enjoyed looking through and album of old photos that Phillipa had put together, before we took our incredibly overtired and overwrought children home for bed (no photo due to overtired and overwrought condition of children!).

We had a lovely day - hope you did too :)

Happy Christmas!

Jeremy's brother and his family have arrived in Bris for Christmas. We had a really fun day with them today at J's mum's place.

I'm mainly posting this photo to show how very similar Jeremy's and Jarvis' TV faces are - funny!

Last but not least, Nutcracker man says "have a happy Christmas or else"!

Trains!

Yesterday we went on the train ... to the santa train! Could a day begin in a better way? I think not!

After Alex, Katherine and Sam had to leave we wandered around for awhile and then went and looked at the Myer Christmas windows which seem to get more average every year. The kids enjoyed them though!

Family + fotography = fun

My brother's family are in town for Christmas and we had a lovely day with them today. Alex works in a lab that has a macro lens that I got to play with (mostly unsuccessfully!) today...

(This is my favourite Xmas tree decoration - made for me by some lovely ladies from church a few years ago.)

We went to visit the insanely mega-decorated Xmas lights house near us in the evening. Since our last visit they won first prize in the Xmas lights competition for my city. Fortunately we arrived very early - the crowds on the way out were out of this world!

(This photo is my brother photographing little Sam through some of the lights .. in case it's too dark to see!)

Happy Birthday Miri!

Wow - our little Miriam is 2 whole years old! Although if you ask her, she will insist that she's "seben". Her birthday co-incided with break up day at school so I'm sure she thought the big party was put on just for her! She was really cranky on her birthday (unusually for her) so these photos are from the following day when my Grandy and Jeremy's mum came over to have morning tea and a cake. Miri was so excited to get some dress up clothes of her own and be a "pretty ballet" complete with sunglasses. Quite a sight.

She has really got into the whole birthday thing and constantly sings the "happy birthday" song to random family members (present and absent) and inanimate objects.

Happy Birthday sweet little Miriam.

Christmas is coming!

I'm feeling like one of those craft-blog mums because we actually got round to doing a craft thing that I'd been promising the kids we'd do (unlike the 17 other projects I've been promising them we'll do that it is 99% certain we will not get around to).

We made salt dough ornaments, gluten free style.

Here is Xander, eyeing off the artisically lined up dough balls (told you I was a craft-blog mum!). I think he wanted to eat it. Actually I know he wanted to eat it, because he polished off a fair quantity before I intervened. Apparently it tasted pretty good, which is just as well because it was pretty darned crumbly, except when we added a bit of water, at which point it turned into a horrible hand-coating sludge.

I'm going to try a different recipe next time - one that adds hot water to cornflour (ie cooks the cornflour) and has some oil, because this recipe really wasn't that great. We had a good time though, and the kids persevered for quite awhile with it. Here are the ones Xander made completely unassisted - a very good effort for him! (You can see the crumbly mess the dough made on the table!)

And here are the ornaments in all their glory on the tree. They turned out pretty well considering the un-promising dough we began with. The kids are very proud of them!

Christmas comes early...

Last Saturday we farewelled my parents who will be spending Christmas in sunny, warm England this year. We will miss them alot, but the kids were very happy to get some early presents!

The Slip 'n' Slide has been a huge hit already, although our water pressure is so mediocre a bucket is far more effective than the fancy shmancy inbuilt sprinkler thing.

Seeing the kids having fun with the hose is great. We have had such severe water restrictions in the last 5 years or so that it's the first time they've been able to play with water outside. Happy times!

We don't often...

... go on a train, despite living very close to a station. Also it might have something to do with the fact that QR charge me $7.80 to travel three stations and back again. But I digress. Today I couldn't face the thought of being at home all morning in fairly unhappy weather, so we went to the park, on the train!

I've borrowed a lens from a friend and thought today would be a good day to try it out. Here are some of my favourite photos from the morning....

The jacaranda trees in Brisbane are truly amazing this year. We have been driving around on jacaranda-spotting excursions (even M now shouts out "jacadanda!") and we discovered the little park we went to this morning because it is right near some spectacular jacaranda trees. It even has one small enough for climbing.

I love graffiti that someone has put an effort into (ie not tags written by a 13 year old with a felt pen and too much time on their hands).

Sugar and Spice and decapitated B@rbie Dolls

I got to have a play with my camera and my very grumpy almost 2 year old this afternoon. It was fun, but I don't think Dr Barbie enjoyed it as much as we did.

Cute isn't she? :)

Holidays

Last week Mum and Dad were minding 2 of their friends' kids while one of the friends was having a baby so we had a couple of adventures with them. Goma was fun, but super busy and the ibises were very hungry and agressive at the cafe. They had a great sign next to the kids section though....

We went to Mount Glorious on Friday for a bushwalk. It was a beautiful day, and the kids had fun playing with H and S. Here are my older 2 children at their attractive best in the rainforest...

(she was VERY excited to have these ringlets - done with rags the night before old school style)