New

Some good friends of ours have just had a most spectacularly gorgeous baby girl. She is seven days old today and I was very fortunate to spend the morning taking photos of her. Here are some of my favourite shots.

(she very obligingly modelled some hats for me!)

It is so lovely to finally meet this precious little person. Welcome to the outside world little R!

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)

Octofriends

My kids are completely obsessed with the show The Octonauts (even Miriam has started calling out "no-nauts" when the show starts!). My friend Jacqui has a little boy who is possibly even more obsessed than Xander (which takes some doing) and she asked me to make him some Octonaut toys so she could swap them for his dummy. I had a great time making them - it's been ages since I made any proper woolly projects and working on something cute is always great! They're finally done - let's hope they do the trick and little E transitions to the world of no dummies without any hassles!

Look! Here comes a new year!

Another wonderfully crazy-busy day. Caught up with old friends in the morning and then had a BBQ with my cousin, her husband and their two boys in the evening. Xander had a fabulous time with Liam, playing with their new hose / slide contraption. Holidays are great!

Now I'm off to be completely tragic and go to bed, hours before midnight. Sleep is too precious to waste it staying up and watching fireworks! Happy New Year everyone. :)

Family + friends = fun

We had a lovely morning this morning at my sister-in-law's 30th birthday party.

It was great to catch up with some old friends and meet their cute kids. Katherine very kindly made sure most of the food was coeliac friendly - it was a real treat for us to be able to have lots of options in the food department! The kids were so excited about the chocolate dipped cherries (YUM!) and ate ....um, let's just say... alot. I'm not sure Xander's hands and face will ever be de-stickied!

This afternoon we really enjoyed having an early dinner with some good friends who are going to be moving overseas soon. The kids had a fabulous time together. We'll miss them!

Fun with friends

Posting this a bit belatedly... Our church had a post-Mark-Driscoll-breakfast-for-blokes a week or so ago (they may have called it something different though!) and JoJo, Xander and I had great fun playing with our friends H and A (as well as S, who came after the pics were taken) so their dad(s) could go to the breakfast. Playdough was a big hit with all the kids - the boys found it hard to move past "roly poly, ever so slowly" but the girls made some spectacular creations! It surprisingly civilised having the kids so early in the morning (pre-8am) - they were all fresh and happy. We'll have to do it again soon!

Some more pics...

A photo of X with Grandma at the park the other day. I'm sure Grandma found the demonstration of how to pour water very helpful!

We made muffins for Jeremy to take to work and the kids were very keen to help (ie lick / eat everything!). The photo is of JJ trying to kiss X to make him feel better after he had been crying (it was his own fault - he was pulling JJ's hair and she was understandably unimpressed!).

JJ and some friends at the playgroup morning tea at the park yesterday. We had a great time until X hurt his arm - he was really sore and I was pretty worried about him. Dad was able to work out what the problem was when I rang him, and he told me a magic trick to fix it - much to Xander's and my relief!

Fun with friends

Some fabulous friends came over on Saturday to help set up our trampoline (which had been sitting in a box in the garage since approx Oct!). The kids had a fun time playing - the box was a big hit as usual!

Gingerbread painting

This pic is a couple of weeks old, but I've been meaning to post it, and I'm determined to try harder at this blogging bizzo, so here they are. We had some friends over to paint gingerbread men - a good time was had by all!