The last few days

Well I havn't been up to much really. A bit of scrapping...

A bit of cooking on Saturday. My Mum stayed for dinner and we had a 70's styled prawn coctail with homemade lime aioli, roast beef with yorkshire puddings and veges (first time trying yorkshire puddings, they worked and were okay but I'd prefer roast potatoes) and for desert we had white chocolate fondue with fruit and cake.On Sunday Jack and I went to the double birthday party of Oliver & Nicola. That was great fun. Look at the amazing cakes their respective Mum's made them. Very cool. A few snaps of Jack...

...telling me not to take his photo.

Monday we went back to Ollie's place for a playdate in the morning. Tuesday was work of course. Yesterday we went to Jack's swimming class and well...he's had a staggering transformation swim wise. I think his swimming teacher was a bit stunned by his amazing turn around. It was a very impressive lesson. After swimming Jack and I went and did a bit of shopping. I got some bargains too, a Hulk mask for 15c and this cute fishy swimming cap for $1 along with some clothes for Jack. Jack had to try out his cap in the bath.So then today we went back to the doctors for Jack's 4 year old check-up. That was very straight-forward but of course the doctor suggested that we really need to try to get him to eat more fruit and veges and really I definately agree. It's just so hard to do. So I'm trying a few different things, ice blocks made from fruit and juice and some yoghurt and fruit ones. I also bought some vegetarian burgers and some nutmeat so I'll see if I can trick him into eating that. I have had some success with finely grated veges added to burger patties and the like but he's definately not getting enough of that food group in his diet. So I've been trying to be strong today, food wise, and after an hour long sobbing session this afternoon he's now fallen asleep on the lounge.

So tomorrow I'm off to hospital for an upper endoscopy. I've been having stomach pains every now and again for the last couple of years and they're tyring to work out the cause. So that's it in a nutshell, I'm off to watch America's Next Top Model.

Cheers

A photo post

Just a quick photo post of our post cruel-tramatic-large-needled-immunisation-visit-to-the-doctors trip to the beach. :)

Jack's swimming teacher would fall over backwards if she saw him in the water yesterday, being splashed in the face with water, even dumped by a wave. He's such a piker at swim class. He has been practicing in the bath alot lately though so maybe we've reached a turning point.

Scrapping and the circus

So I finally cleared a path to my scrap desk today and churned out 3 layouts. It felt good to be back paper scrapping and I've got a little pile of photos that I've got set aside ready to go.

So tonight we went to see the Great Moscow Circus. It was so cool to see Jack's reaction. He's seen circus' on TV of course and used to love watching G'ma's Cirque du Soleil DVD's. He was a bit nervous at the start when the lights went down but once it started he was really into it. He was on my lap and you could feel his muscles tense every time they did some acrobatics. It was a cool show, some very breath-taking moments, especially a near miss for one of the brazilian guys in the big spinning thing. I actually squeeled. The Globe of Death with the motorbikes were SCARY. Very wild.

Tomorrow we are taking Jack to the doctor for his 4 year check up and his immunisations. We've been discussing it with him and are using bribery in the form of an afternoon at the beach but I'm dreading the actual event. I hope it goes okay.

Some photos and a digi LO

It was little Charlotte's second birthday on Sunday and we went over Monday morning for a little birthday morning tea.
Isn't she just adorable. He she is lady-bugging it down the slide.With everyone's commitments it makes it hard to catch up as a group anymore (our mother's group). Jack had such a good time playing with Jared. Amongst the devastated screaming that lasted the whole trip home I got little sobbed sentences in between... "I love Jared", "I want to stray at Jared's house forever and ever", "Jared's my best friend", "I miss Jared"...it was woeful.

And here's a snapshot of little cutie Sofie having a snuggle on her Mum's lap. And the LO, another digi. I'm sure I'll be able to get to my desk some time this millennium to paper scrap but for the moment digi is going to have to suffice.

Well I'm off to play some more over here, it is a really cool online makeover program. LOL, I'm thinking of going nordic blonde. :P

Ciao

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to y'all!!

When Jack finally woke up this morning he went on a little easter egg hunt. That silly old easter bunny had dropped eggs all over the house, he was very clumsy.Here's a very happy Jack with his massive stash of eggs. He just LOVES chocolate so he was over the moon!!Especially when he saw that easter bunny had brought him some kinder surprises. It's Owen's last day of holidays today. We havn't got anything special planned though, if the weather wasn't so bad we were going to go to the beach. I guess we'll just have some family time, munging out on chocolate.

I've been watching some cooking DVD's lately, The Cook & The Chef and Bill's Food (Bill Granger) and I've been all inspired to cook so the other day I made some pasta from scratch for lasagne.Some home baked bread using this recipe. We all had fresh bread, straight from the over. It was a little sweet but a nice texture.And we have a prolificly producing lime tree in our vege patch so I also made some lime cordial. It's very yummy and easy to make, it's just sugar syrup and lime juice.

Speaking of the garden, check out this...

We have had this agave for yonkers. It's been moved all over the joint, planted, replanted, potted, knocked about, picked at by Jack and look at it now!! The spike is huge, over a metre for sure. The stem had babies galore all over it. I've been propergating it for awhile now, we have them throughout our garden. I can't wait to see the flower.

We took Jack to the movies the other day to see Monsters Vs Aliens. We've been waiting for something decent to be released to take him to because he asks when he can go everytime we drive past. Owen and I found it a little slow, Jack seemed to like it but he had a few nervous moments and did make some comments afterwards about monsters. He had been given a Bob for his birthday so I think that made it a little less scary for him. Owen took a photo with his phone of Jack with the big box of popcorn. It was nearly as big as him.

Well I think I might go and bake something.

See ya.

Shiver me timbers, it's a pirate party!!

Well Jack's pirate 4th birthday party is over!! He had a fantastic time, running around, playing with his friends at the park, playing party games (except when he lost and had a little tantrum), opening his very generous gifts (thanks everyone) and blowing out his candles.

He looked adorable in his little pirate outfit, as did I (LOL, just kidding although I was dressed as a pirate). Dad piked out of the costume part but did wear a this t-shirt (got to love those Vista print freebies)... And Dad also got into the spirit of things by decorating the back of his ute (and I'm the one who gets paid out for wanting to decorate for everything :P)...

Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of him in his full costume but he's worn it before(see the end of the post). He did look very piratey and turned quite a few heads with his cute pirateness.I had done up a some piratey signs for the food (thanks to my brother Kev for cooking the parrot legs aka marinated chicken wings)We also had Seagull Egg & Algae and Shark Sandwiches (egg & lettuce and tuna), Pirates Reward (crunchie slice), Hidden Treasure Crackles (white chocolate crackles with mini m&m's and marshmallows), Fat Fingers with Blood (cheerios & tomatoe sauce), Treasure Map Treats (tortilla roll-ups) and a couple of other things. I made little pirate face cupcake toppers which turned out great (Flickr has some great inspiration)We played a few games, Dig for Buried Treasure, which was a great one. I made a treasure map for the kids to follow. The great burnt edge paper came from HEREO & Jambin hid some gold plastic coins in the sand and the kids had to dig through to find them. Thanks to JG for being the treasure area bodyguard (apparently there were a few non-pirate kids eyeing it off). This game went down really well with the kids and took a decent amount of time to play, the winner was the child that found the most coins obviously.Lauren was the early leader but was beat at the post by Patrick.Then we played Pin the Pirate on the Treasure Map. Here's Ollie having a go (note his tattoo, I wonder who did his pirate make-over?)We had a treasure chest pinate. Last year the pinata was inpenatrable so this year Jack and I made a papier mache one. I was sure it would bust easily but alas no, the kids all got about 4 turns before it finally gave way. Of course the string broke off first so the kids had to whack in on the ground (note the pinata whacker, my pink mop handle)We also had a quick game of One Leg Jake, where the kids had to stand on one leg with their eyes closed to see who could balance for the longest.

Then we had the cake!! Jack was really happy with the cake, he loved the little fish and the treasure.I took a photo at home because I didn't think it was going to make the car ride there. It was a bit precarious and had about 10 skeweres holding it together. It looked alot more derlict than the original design and I'll think twice before I let Jack choose a design next time. It took a LONG time to make.Then Jack opened his pressies. He got some fantastic stuff. Jigsaws, games, remote controlled Rory the Racecar, activity pads, some cool clothes including a Ben 10 hoodie that he loves, a personalised art smock, a dolphin playground and heaps of other things. Here's the thank you card I made for his loot bags.

So everyone seemed to have a good time, I know Jack did. It was a great party.

Four years ago...

We were anxiously awaiting the birth of our long awaited first child. Tommorrow night, four years ago, at 10.40pm we met our beautiful son, Jack.

Four years on and I am filled with so many emotions. Our beautiful baby has grown into such an amazing little boy. He is outstandingly polite and so bright and funny. He's so affectionate and mostly gentle (apart from when he's being a Power Ranger or something similar). He loves to help me do everything, the housework, whatever craft I'm doing, cooking. He really loves to cook. He loves his family and his friends. He loves music and dancing and his new found favourite thing to do is play computer games. He's a chatterbox, a real chatterbox.

He's excited to be growing up. He was showing me tonight just how long his legs are getting. I love to see the changes in him, the way he learns so many things. He's already excited about going to school next year. I'm not too excited about that at all. I'm sure all mother's will understand. I'm going to miss him. He's my little mate and I love him.

So, my little man, Happy Birthday for tommorrow. I hope you have a great birthday.

Today, I've been party prepping, well in between helping Jack every 10 minutes with his new computer game. It took me forever but I made the cutest pirate cupcake toppers today and some of the decorations for his cake, plus finished off the papier mache on the pinata and started painting it. I've started making his daycare cake for tomorrow and will finish decorating it before bed tonight. Tomorrow night I'll finish off the pinata and then Saturday start baking for his party on Sunday.

I also did a digi LO this morning. And one last night.

I got an email tonight to say that my camera is still going to be weeks away!! Which SUCKS!! I was really hoping to have it back before Jack's birthday but it's my own fault for waiting so long before I sent it. I'm going to ask one of my friends if I can borrow her camera. My old point and shoot is driving me insane. I bought a new xd card the other day and it's corrupt already. The same thing happened with 3 of our old cards and the only card I have left, I've lost!!! Grrrrrrr. Anyhoo, it'll be fine, I'll work out something.