Our weekend at home.

This weekend we stayed home pretty much the whole time. We did pop out to see Granny and Pa on Saturday arvo for some play time though!! We didn't do a great deal this weekend, some more spring cleaning, tidying, cooking and normal cleaning!!

This is our Jacaranda in full bloom without it's foliage yet.

This is my clay pot, my mil gave this to me for my birthday, and i finally found a recipe to cook in it that is designed to be cooked in a clay pot. Its called Turkish Lambcooker, more or less it's a stew. But an oh so yummy stew!! Would be great for winter. Luckily yesterday was very overcast, rainy and cold so it suited perfectly! Here is the link for the recipe, it is so very easy, 10 Min's prep and 80 Min's cooking time in the oven.

http://www.cookadvice.com/recipes/turkish_lambcooker-48686-recipe.htm

I love the idea of putting everything together in one pot and cooking, so easy and the flavour's go through all the food yummo!!


Yesterday we finally got some rain, we need alot more but this was a start. Our cowboy was so excited to see rain, no matter what we said he would sneak outside to play in it.. Cheeky!!

This is the view from my kitchen window, looking out at our vegie garden and jacaranda, and into our neighbours side yard. I love watching the rain, its even better when i have something nice to watch the rain hit like our vegies!!

I gave our cowboy the umbrella to play with out in the rain, seeing as he wouldn't stay out of it, best idea ever, he had a blast!!

Having lots of fun mum!!

Sunday was a rest day for us, Ben spent most of the day in his bar watching Bathurst, playing computer games and napping hehe. I forgot to take a photo of him asleep but i got one of him multi tasking. Watching the car race as well as playing games.. And who said men can't multi task... hehe

Honey who is winning the race????? "oh i think Holden is in the lead, i can't remember" hehe Love you Honey xo

This is a geisha girl after our rain, wasn't sure if the photo was going to turn out, I'm not as good as Ben at taking plant photo's. I just use the Auto on the camera, Ben fiddles with the settings. I know you get better photo's with that, but usually i take photo's of little boys and they need to be taken quickly!!

Speaking of little boys, while we were playing after the rain, our cowboy wanted to have a go at taking some photos. He did a pretty good job, he took heaps. I will do a post this week with some of his photos in it. Here is a sneak peek. He likes to be like daddy and take photo's of the plants!! Budding cameraman and gardener i think! Hope you have a great start to the week. I've done some more sorting of our cupboards so i need to go and move it all to where it now belongs (bin, Vinnie's, or try and sell). xxoo

Loves his gumboots, got a few good shots of them, hehe.

What my boys get up to..

Today is Friday, after very long couple of weeks i am a little worn out today, so i thought i would post some photo's instead of trying to concentrate on typing a heap of words i will most likely miss spell.. lol Good news is we are all finally over the bug, took our cowboy a bit longer but he is much better!!

Yesterday we made some choc chip cookies and i had lots of help.

I seem to always make the mistake of showing the boys what i use to do as a little girl, and of course they love it..

Problem is they seem to get messier than i use to lol

and they seem to make up some of their own tricks all on their own!! can't let any go to waste!!

They decided to pull up stumps in front of the oven to wait while they cooked. They love these cookies to bits. Such an easy recipe and makes almost 80 cookies!! YUM!!

Here they are. Yummo!

(will post the recipe another time, its so easy)

So as i said today is Friday and my boys seem to get away with alot on Fridays, but then again i seem to instigate alot of their playtime as well. Cowboy wanted the mattress moved, so i moved it half off so they could roll down it. Which is another thing i use to do as a little girl... Lots of fun as you will tell by the photo's!

They are having so much fun, cowboy is moving his reading books onto the mattress, so he can relax while reading!! Very smart little boy!! Well i hope you have a great weekend, i think we are going to try do some more things in Ben's new bar, which we should actually do a post about, we are slowly putting up walls!! xo

Another Reason

Last week i did a post on my cowboy, so this week i thought i would do one on blue eyes. It is also another reason why i wanted to start a blog in the first place.

Talking to granny on the phone!

Blue eyes gets his beautiful eyes from his wonderful granny!


Now to my post. Blue eyes is now 18 months old, and he is cheeky, naughty, funny, smart, a worry, rough, fearless and so many more things!! Now just after his 1st birthday blue eyes got one of his first ever temperatures. Up to this point he had hardly ever been sick. The odd snotty nose and cough but nothing that needed strong medicine for. Unfortunately with this first temp, he had a febrile convulsion. Which means his temp spiked to quickly for his little body to handle which results in the body melting down and convulsing. Both Ben and i were at work at the time. Blue eyes was at daycare (my mum's). My poor mum had to deal with the first one. Thank goodness my dad was home and my brother turned up at the right time.

So far blue eyes has had 3 convulsions. He had a follow up convulsion the day after his first one. Which put us in hospital for the day to find out why he was having them. Children aged between 6 months and 6 yrs are prone to having these, they are more common than what i thought. I had never heard of them before blue eyes. But the doc's at our local hospital new exactly what it was (they were fantastic by the way). Normally a child will have a convulsion before or during a sickness, infection or virus.. But no our blue eyes has to be different.... Very different. As i said earlier he hardly gets a temp. Since having his first convulsion he has had 3 temps, all from teeth, the third temp being his third convulsion. So he only needs a temp from teeth mucking him up to go to meltdown... He does not get sick in any other way after his convulsion, which to me is the scariest part.

After his third one, which was very mild. I took him for a doc visit, just to check everything and make sure he was going well (he was great, running a muck in the waiting room, wouldn't have thought anything had happened to him). There was nothing wrong with him, his temp had settled a little, but there was no virus or infection to worry about.. My doctor told me about looking for blogs to see other families living with children who have chronic convulsions. problem is i can only find blogs of families that have a once off convulsion. I have found a blog which explains in more detail how convulsions work etc, it has alot of info for me to read. Which will be helpful, the more info we have the better prepared we are. So that is Another Reason why i thought a blog about us would be a good idea, so then i am putting more information out there for someone else to find.

Now blue eyes may never have another convulsion, but there is a very very good chance he will. We just don't know... So to better prepare ourselves, i have a little bag that goes everywhere with us, well blue eyes anyway. It has an ear thermometer (best one ever takes temp in a second!) and medicine. The doc suggested to keep suppositories because they work faster than oral medicine, and if he is not feeling well he may throw up the oral... so they are in there as well. 2 different types, one for his age group which is 125 mg and then the age group above him 250 mg or could be 200 mg. I can't remember they are with blue eyes at daycare today lol. And his normal nurofen as it last longer than panadol and has always seemed to work better on him than panadol. We also have a magic number... The temp at which to keep him under. 39c is the magic number, as we didn't take his temp when he had his convulsion (didn't have a good thermometer, but we do now!) this is what i remembered from our last hospital trip when we arrived there. so when he gets sick he has 4 hourly observations. so when it happens again we know exactly what the magic number will be.

As scary as a convulsion is to watch or have happen to you , i think at the age he is at, he doesn't really know what is happening. It is not a nice thing to go through whether being a mum or grandma, as there is nothing you can do, but to have him in the recovery position and wait.. Not a nice thing to have to watch. I would not wish this upon my worst enemy. But we as a family (the whole extended family) have learnt from this and we are all aware of it and have this knowledge to share with our friends.

So blue eyes is watched with a careful eye now, always feeling him checking his temp, both Ben and i have become quite obsessive at checking his temp when he wakes or if he is sleeping longer than normal. And it has affected his night sleep, mainly on our part... We don't want him to over heat too much so most times instead of letting him try get himself back to sleep we just put him in to bed with us, its safer i guess, knowing his temp is good and he is safe between us and we can keep an eye on him. Although he is a horrible sleeper, he gets the tossing and turning from me. He sleeps with his head on me and feet on daddy... This is something we have to try and curve, but i am finding it hard to just let him settle himself, the crying i handle its not knowing how hot he is and if his getting too hot... ahhhh we will work it out. eventually!!

Well that is alot of info about our lil blue eyes, hope you enjoyed and it and learnt something from it. Thanks to my children i am always learning something new, especially how you can love someone so much, and they can't even talk to tell you how much they love you, but they give you a look and you know exactly how they feel, i love it just love it. Hope you have a great day xo



First time on cowboys slide. (Before his haircut!)

Mummy Daddy time with the DOG!

This afternoon before going and picking up our boys from daycare, Ben and i decided to do something different than our normal chores around the house. At first we thought about fishing in our local river. But Ben was a lil tired from work and me a lil tired from blue eyes having yet another restless night.. So instead we took our doggy Bruce down for a swim!! Which we haven't done in ages. Actually i think years 3 to be exact.. Well before cowboy was born.. Poor Brucey doesn't get to do as many fun things with us anymore. The photo's were taken off my phone, so are not as good as could be..

Bruce waiting for something to be thrown to him.

These next few are Bruce mid flight/landing/splashing in the water.

As we drove down the very dry, dirt road to the crossing, Bruce was getting a little excited. The crossing has changed many times over the years and has alot of rocks from where the river bed use to be. So as we drove on them he knew where we were... He ran straight into the water! His favourite thing to do is to chase rocks... smart dog lol.. We throw rocks in different directions and he chases and launches through the water. We took his ball for a play but he chased it once and let it drift away in the water, he just wanted the rocks!! He is a very funny dog. Being a border collie you would think he could swim really well.... um well he can swim but he has a heavy bum, he looks so awkward swimming like he is sinking all the time.. He tries his hardest, even when Ben threw a rock into the deep, it had already sunk being a rock. But he kept swimming and swimming trying to find it, we had to throw another to get his attention to turn around before he completely sunk... lol

This was only a very short play time for us, but we don't know why we haven't thought of it before. So we are planning to try and do it more often and get some more time without kiddies, that doesn't involve something to do with the house, even if it is for 30 Min's or an hour before having to pick them up at day care. It was well worth it. And maybe when we have had a lot of rain and cleared out the crossing, we might have a swim with Bruce as well!! xo

Our Weekend

Now that our whole house is just about over our sickness, i feel good enough to sit at the laptop long enough to type a post! Before we all got sick, we had a wonderful weekend with our friends and family. We did a little fishing and playing on saturday with our close friends (forgot the grab the camera out of the car for that one) Boys had a blast swimming tho. We also went to Ben's cousins engagement party on saturday night. Which was great. Got to see all our family and have a couple of cocktails!! YUM!! We went to bed early enough saturday night to get ourselves organised to go fishing on sunday. We went a little further up the road than we usually do. About a 50 minute drive from our house so not too far. It is a bay area so when the tide goes out it's definitely out!! But none the less it is a beautiful area and being school holidays we were quite surprised buy the lack of people out and about on the water.

This is looking back up towards town (not a huge town) You can only see handful of people, nice and quiet!

It's not a very sandy place, Rocks, mud and sand mixed together, but it is very child friendly. We also had a few fish biting. I caught my first flat head. And lost another huge one, got a little too excited about catching a fish haha.

This is the 4 out of 5 boys we have combined with our close friends!! There is never a quiet or dull moment when the 5 get together, or shall i say when their daddies get together.... The daddies went to school together so these 5 click just as good as their dad's do!

Here are our 2 with Noggy, cowboy loves to call him noggy.. They are checking out the yabbies we pumped earlier in the day. Just making sure they haven't died yet... They got checked up on alot!!

Here is blue eyes playing in the water with our friends youngest. Just a couple of months separates these 2. They had a blast just sitting and playing!

This was taken not long before we packed up, It's pretty much high tide now. I love blue eyes in this photo, just laying in the sand legs apart having fun!!

This is our friends youngest boy, getting a little tired and grizzly at this point of the day, but sits still enough for photo's!!

And my favourite photo of all, the 3 big fishermen!!

Just love this!!

Can't wait for their next photo when they all have a rod and a fish on the end of it!!

Proud Mamma

Today i was going to do a post on our wonderful weekend with our family and friends, but my lil blue eyes is sick. He has a tummy bug which has been going around. I'm not proud he is sick, but i am very proud of his older brother our cowboy. I now know that when it's really needed my cowboy will listen and follow instructions 100%. So i thought i would base my post on our cowboy. While blue eyes is having another nap.

Here is blue eyes having a blast in the water on the weekend.

This is my cowboy doing what he loves best, helping me in the kitchen!

This was taken on the weekend as well.

Now while blue eyes has been sick today, our cowboy has helped me by getting me some towels and wipes while i kept blue eyes calm so we could clean him up. Cowboy has also tried to keep blue eyes happy while i cleaned up some mess as well. And as we speak cowboy is going through all our toys trying to give each one to blue eyes to see if he wants to play... awwww cowboy is trying so hard to make his brother happy. When it comes down to it the good things they do definitely out ways the bad. I'm so proud to have such a wonderful 3 yr old. Now i wonder if cowboy is able to cook dinner, not sure how that will work out tonight. Toasted sandwiches might be the go i think!!



Who couldn't love that face, such a cheeky boy! xo

Wishful Thinking

Over the last few weeks, my wonderful boys have been trying my patience quite abit which has lead me to do quite alot of wishful thinking and here is some of it.....

First of all some results of my boys fighting..

A bite mark on cowboys cheek, doesn't look so bad in a photo.

Pay back i think this time was a bitch, cowboy got a good one on blue eyes with my kitchen spatula.

Now some wishful thinking..

I wish i could spend more time watching my boys playing and not fighting.

I wish my boys could actually sit and play without me there so i can watch peacefully.

I wish i could have as much energy after a horrible nights sleep like blue eyes has.

I wish i could watch the news at least once this week.

I wish that Ben and i were able to have a conversation once a day or every couple of days without interruption.. (haha i always laugh at that one, even if its screaming the boys have something more important to say!).

I wish it didn't bother me as much that the boys want to help me with my crafty things (this is why i pretty much no longer do adult craft only kiddie craft, as i spend more time cleaning up after them and less time enjoying myself and de-stressing).

I wish i could get loads more cuddles/kisses and snuggles from the boys instead of them hitting/biting/ jumping and pulling my hair.

Every time i go to bed of a night i wish that blue eyes will sleep at least till 3 am so we can get at least a few solid hours sleep.

When we eventually rise and shine of a morning (when it's finally daylight) i wish that maybe today i wont be as cranky from tiredness as the last.

I wish my boys wouldn't play on my tiredness and crankiness as much as they do.

and finally one more to add to the last one,

I wish my boys wouldn't out smart me as much as they do, Shows me just how much they have grown and how they keep growing up way to fast!!



Today i did some cooking, which is another thing i love to do, sometimes helps me to de-stress. Only tho when my boys don't want to help. Today was not a de-stress day. Both pulled the chairs over to help. Blue eyes did not want to let go of the spatula for me to be able to cook our fritters..

Cheeky turkey, he is a great mixer, fritter mixture everywhere!!


The end result Zucchini and Parmesan fritters.


These fritters are a huge favourite in our house, you can practically put anything in them. The boys favourite is cheese and bacon.. mmm yum!! The recipe is so easy, i will add it in below for you!. Time for bed again. I'm trying to read before nodding off to sleep lately, it's going ok so far! I'm not a huge reader, never really have been. But over the last few years I've been trying to read some more to get some quiet me time. Hasn't really worked. You see I'm still reading the same book i was reading when i fell pregnant with Angus..... Problem is i only get time to read when the boys are sleeping which is usually when i need to be sleeping as well!! So we will see how it goes. I'm really wanting to finish the book I'm on so i can start a book one of my really good friends got me for my birthday. Hopefully in the next few weeks i will be reading it!! hahahaha i make myself laugh!! Goodnight. xo.



Best and Easiest Fritters Ever... (recipe originally from my Mummy)

Ingredients
1 cup s/r flour
pinch salt
1 tbl spoon melted butter or oil
2/3 cup tepid water
1 egg white

Instructions
1. Sift flour and salt into a bowl.
2. make a well in middle.
3. pour in oil or butter.
4. Stir flour gradually with the back of wooden spoon.
5. Add water a little at a time.
6. Beat into a smooth batter.
7. Add extra ingredients you wish to add.
8. Beat egg white stiffly.
9. Stir it in very lightly last of all, just before using.

I have found that when cooking these you need alot of oil in the pan, seems to help them rise a little better (not quite so healthy tho). And if you make the fitters to big they will not cook very will in the middle. Hope you enjoy making them as much as we do!