Skinnamarink

My cute chubby, dainty looking daughter has a voice like a foghorn and a personality to match. She loves to sing all sorts of songs but one of her favourites is "Skinnamarink", esp since we've been watching ALOT of Sharon Lois and Bram this holidays. Enjoy :)

Family

I have a very cute,

cheeky

and funny nephew.

And we are absolutely loving spending time with him and his mum and dad :)

Xander is 5!!

Our dear boy is a whopping 5 years old!

He's as crazy as ever :)

He loved his Octonauts cake....

... and his Lego man cake!

I've never really got into the whole fancy cake thing (mainly because I never seem to have time - my own fault really for having ALL my children very close to Xmas!) but this year I thought I should get my act together, at least for the older 2 kids!

Five things I love about Xander:

* his great enthusiasm for music and books

* the way his voice gets higher... and higher ... and higher the more excited he gets

* his concern for people who are sad or hurt

* the way he thinks his "amazing" physical feats are actually amazing

* his very crazy and funny sense of humour

Happy birthday big 5 year old boy - we love you!

300 photos in 366 days ... can I do it?

I've set myself the challenge of taking at least one photo (and hopefully uploading it onto some kind of electronic device) 300 days of this year. I know I can't manage a photo every single day, but I think this might be doable. I'm hoping to stretch myself a bit and learn more about photography by giving myself a project to do.

Here are some I took today...

The enormous excitement of the garbage truck's arrival.

I just love how all of our kids adore books. Xander in particular will drop whatever he is doing and run to look at or read whatever book is going.

Toddler feet are just so cute!

It's not quite her birthday, but we had a family party tonight to celebrate :)

Catching up...

I've been meaning to write some kind of "year in review" sort of post in an attempt to round off 2011 and move forward into 2012 (and start clearing my backlog of photos) but I'm realising I don't have time.

So, in a nutshell, 2011 was hideous sucky and awful and I'm hoping and praying that 2012 is going to be a huge improvement on last year.

Year in review over, on with the photos.

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 :)