Craft Time.

This afternoon i thought it was about time to do something crafty with the boys. I'm wanting to make them an advent calendar this Christmas and really need to get my bum into gear to get it made.

I got them to paint some paper and cardboard toilet rolls, i have an idea in mind on how to make the calendar, but will see how it pans out lol.

This is some of our boys master piece's!

After a while blue eyes got a little distracted and decided to paint the cement instead.. Oh dear sorry daddy..

After painting i washed the brushes so they could still play with them, they like to clean and pretend to pain the walls for daddy!

This is or was my rosemary plant... It is in a pot and was situated where our gazebo's were. But they have now been pulled down because of recent storm damage. And i think it didn't like the harsh midday sun it was now getting. It still has some green parts on it.... sort of... I have moved it, to somewhere i hope is a little shadier for it.. Fingers crossed it gets better, it was doing really well.. Time will tell.

Frogs

Last night our boys both ate all their dinner! YAHOO!! And daddy was at work too! I was quite pleased with myself and the boys!! So as a treat i took them out on to our front veranda and we went looking for our Froggy Friends. We have lots of little and big frogs living in our garden under the veranda. The big frogs mainly come out on the path and the stairs to scare the hell out of us. But the little ones come up top for a visit!

The boys love to try and hold on to the frogs, i try to catch them and then try to pass them on to the boys for a quick hold. Although being frogs they are mighty fast and jump off the veranda before the boys get to hold them!

Our cowboy searching for frogs.

Blue eyes was a little more interested in playing with our shoes..

This is the first frog we found, so cute!

POSITION VACANT

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POSITION VACANT

Job Description :- Dinner Sitter

Duties Include :- Playing, keeping an eye on 2 little boisterous boys while mummy cooks dinner. Helping their mummy getting them to eat their dinner, while daddy is at work.

Hours of work :- 5 nights a week every second week between 5:30pm and 7pm

***FREE MEAL INCLUDED IN EVERY SHIFT***

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We are only halfway through this week and i am already not looking forward to our dinner time rituals.. Normally i have a good routine, i love routine when it comes to my boys. My cowboy thrived on it when he was younger, My blue eyes however has always been different and never taken too anything... So since he was born, we have been spending alot of energy trying to get a routine happening for 2 boys.. It sort of worked, the food routine was set in and working great. But lately dinner time has kinda fallen apart... When my wonderful husband is home for dinner during early shift work, dinner runs so smoothly, but when he is on lates, nothing sticks. All you can hear from our house is 2 little boys either laughing their guts out cause they are being very naughty and getting into things or fighting and wrestling under my feet in the kitchen, so all you hear from me is a very cranky mummy.. Not much sleep at night hasn't helped me either, i used to half get dinner ready while blue eyes had his nap so it wouldn't be as bad in the late afternoon, but now all i do when he sleeps is sleep as well, i do catch up on some sleep, but dinner time is not as fun as it use to be... I'm sure it will work itself out, or I'll end up with only 1 boy again after all the fighting 1 is bound to get seriously hurt soon. Could be me as they play under my feet while cutting and cooking at the stove. Oh dear...

I do love my boys to bits, but it's hard when they are hungry and something needs to be cooked and watched and you can't really just drop it to go and play what they want you to play.. I know they will understand in time. But right now I'm extremely frustrated...

Some Good news...

Our Blue eyes slept solidly last night from 1am to 5.30 am!!! Finally, i got at least 4 hours solid sleep in. And he was pretty excited to wake up in his own bed... Of course i made a huge deal over it, big smiles and cuddles for him. I hope it makes him want to stay in it again tonight all night long!! And he got no temp whatsoever with his needles, so happy about that. Now it's just a waiting game on his bottom 2 eye teeth to see what they will provide!!

Hope your all have a great hump day! xo

Busy Bumble Bee's

We had another wonderful weekend at home, busy doing lots of little things around the home. Cooking, gardening, playing, pulling down the other gazebo. And one major thing.... We sold our second car. Our lil Suzy has now left us.. We had been talking and thinking about it for awhile, and with a couple of days of Ben mentioning to the fellas at work, he had someone who was really keen to buy it. On Sunday afternoon he came for a look and said yes. We are now going to be able to save some money. Not a great deal, but it's one less rego to worry about, Less on our car insurance payments and a little less fuel (will see how that one goes after using the main car more frequently over the coming weeks). Ben was going to purchase an electric bike. It has a little electric motor on it but if that runs out you can convert back to pedal power. Only catch is they cost a little more than we had thought. So instead we purchased a mountain bike and if need be Ben can buy a conversion kit to convert it to electric as well as pedal!

Tonight will be the first night that Ben is riding his bike home from work... Ben works a 2 week roster. 1 week he starts early, 2nd week he starts at lunch and works until late at night. So the plan is on earlies he will ride to work and i pick him up when he is finished. On lates i will drop him to work and he rides home. If something happens (heavy rain) a work mate may be able to drop him home or i will go pick up or drop off.

The whole 1 car family situation has got me thinking about when i was young. We only had one car. Mum didn't work until my brother and were both attending school, even then she did home day care (still does). I remember going with mum to go pick dad up from work at the local newspaper, either at the office arranging the layout or at the printing press. If it was really late we would have to wait in the car, if it was early we could go in and see dad at work. I can't remember it in great detail i was quite young, but i will never forget the smell of the chemicals wafting around the place. It was so much fun to go and see what my dad was doing all day long ( in my eyes at the time what he was playing with hehe).

This is the only photo i could find of the suzy or zook. You can probably tell by this photo she was put through a lot of things... and proved herself through every one of them!

Late yesterday afternoon after a relaxing but busy weekend we decided to be naughty and get take away for dinner... We hadn't had takeaway in ages so we had been really good. We went and ate it at a park, the wind started to pick up though and the boys didn't get to have a play. So i promised to take them today after daycare. And i did. I thought we were going to get washed out, but no of course the rain didn't come our way :(

This is a playground at our local sporting fields. I love it, big ovals and hardly anyone comes to it!! (and lots of shade!)

Our cheeky cowboy showing off.



Blue eyes trying to work out the spinning drum.

The boys had a blast, they love the slides, Blue eyes walks up to try beat cowboy climbing the ladder. They meet almost at half way have a collision and slide down together, with loads of laughter!

Today Blue eyes had his 18 month needles.... I gave him some nurofen before going to the dr's, so if a temp was brewing it wouldn't be as bad. He was really good, didn't even cry for the needle, very tough boy. I almost cried for mine.. Anyway he went really good, mum said he slept for almost 2 hours, but the good news he feels fine no temp!! I think he wont get one. But to be safe i gave him some more nurofen before bed tonight just in case. I really do not want another febrile convulsion. I know another one is on the cards, but would like it to be quite a while after the last one.. Will see how we go!

I hope you all have a great week :-) xo

Growing up.

Over the last few days, I've noticed our little baby boy is not so much a baby anymore. But a full blown TODDLER!

Our little blue eyes after he was born.

This is some of the things I've noticed blue eyes doing, tyring to do up clips and getting very frustrated when he can't! And wearing daddy's hat! He loves to wear it.

He has also worked out to press buttons to turn things on, one being TJ bearytales who tells him a story.

So blue eyes goes and gets a book (doesn't matter what book) and he reads it with TJ!

He has now learnt not to eat play dough too much anymore, but he loves to cut it, and he is pretty good at it as well. Concentrates very hard while doing it!

I've found him starting to use his thinking side of his brain, not just leaping into something but stopping and thinking about what he wants to do. And time is slipping away from me, my little baby has always been smart but he is getting ahead of me. I've now realised i have to start helping him with his thinking and do some learning games with him to help steer him in the right direction. I'm glad we took lots of photo's of the boys as baby's as they grow way to fast for my liking!

Hope your all having a great weekend. xo

Why i shouldn't experiment without BEN!!!

Today I'm not feeling the best (think I'm getting a head cold yuk!). So to try make myself feel better i decided to do some cooking. I pulled out one of my 4 ingredients books and found a nice sounding cake recipe*. So i said to my cowboy we would bake a cake while blue eyes is sleeping. While i was getting it all ready cowboy suggested to do cupcakes (muffins as we only have a muffin tin be he doesn't mind, more to eat!) and i thought what a wonderful idea. Even though i had never made this cake before i thought why not. And then i asked cowboy if he wanted to make it different colours, that went down with a loud yelling YES!!! Off we went making the cake putting it in the muffin tray. All going well so far even with a little helper..

Here they are before going in the oven.

After a few minutes in the oven, i had an after thought.... i think they might overflow... Cowboy and i checked them, and what do you know they are starting to overflow...

Usually when i want to experiment Ben is here, and he is my voice of reason. He talks me out of doing things that he knows instantly wont work. Me on the other hand am not thinking about what happens in the middle to get to the finished product, just the fun idea of multi coloured muffins!! Luckily i made it in time to put a tray on the bottom rack so i wouldn't have burnt mixture and smoke all through the house, my brain works sometimes lol..

Once they had finished cooking, not as much at dripped off as i thought was going to.

How they looked upon coming out of the oven. Not burnt either cooked just perfectly!

The offcuts after trimming.

The final result after trimming, they looked pretty good after alot more work for a pretty simple recipe!

Now to something i made this morning that had no problems with it!

Pasta Salad! We love pasta salad. I think it works out every time i make it because pasta is easy to cook and so are boiled eggs! I can't really fail with it!

Tonight we will have roast chicken with the salad, i was going to do this today as well. But after the muffin incident i think i might leave it to Ben when he gets home from work!

Hope your having better luck with your baking! xo

* 1,2,3,4 CAKE

• 1 cup of butter
• 2 cups of sugar
• 3 cups of self raising flour
• 4 eggs

Preheat oven to 140c.

Using electric mixer, cream butter and sugar for 5 minutes or until pale and fluffy.

Add eggs one at a time.

Beating well between eggs.

Fold through sifter flour.

Spoon into prepared pan and bake for 1 1/4 hours (cover with alfoil if cake is Browning to quickly.) Cool in tin before turning out.

At our house today..

Here today, it is oh so nice and quiet! The boys are at daycare (Nana's house). So today while i don't have any little helpers, i got stuck into finishing organising our cupboards. I had the bathroom and the boys blanket box to do, and was surprisingly not as big a job as i thought! Last week Ben and i did the cupboard in the toy room... Oh my i had stuffed alot of CRAP in that cupboard over the last year (and only year so far of us living in this house). There is still alot in there. Alot of books that i am not yet comfortable with the boys playing with as they are still in rip mode while reading... We got 2 big piles out of there, rubbish and Vinnie's bin. Alot of toys went to Vinnie's, mostly toys that the boys are to big to play with anymore and wont miss. But don't worry i still kept alot of their toys!! We also have alot of blankets i need another cupboard for (hint hint honey) to free up the blanket box to then turn into a toy box. As of the moment i have about 3 or 4 different little baskets keeping all the toys together and they are sitting on the old baby change table. Doesn't look that neat.. We will get there, my first step was to get rid of the CRAP we don't use/need anymore. I think i can successfully say i managed that!

While sitting and typing this, it is so nice and quiet here, i can hear the birds singing... Now with the boys being away, i could put my own tv shows on i want to listen to while working, or music for that matter. But there is always something going when they are home. So when they are not here i like it to be as quiet as possible, and to be able to hear the birds (the odd car driving by as well) its bliss!! (i can think for a change!)

~~Now to outside of our house today~~

Today Bom (Bureau of Meteorology) says we are to get to 30c, at the moment we are sitting on

27.5c and 38% humidity, doesn't sound to bad, but the sun is very damn hot! I now have to start remembering to put sunscreen on before going out, especially with a big load of washing to hang.

http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDQ60801/IDQ60801.94566.shtml

Being spring, we have alot of flowers out, Ben will shoot me, but i can't remember the variety of Jasmin this is, but it has finally flowered. last year it didn't give us much. Hasn't really grown much either, considering the other variety is about 3/4 over the arch. But it still smells lovely!

And yes again, can't remember the name of this plant either. (why i choose to do garden post's while Ben is at work is beyond me..) It is pretty though!

Our veggies are taking off. The pumpkin is starting to get runner's off it and we think there are some flowers coming up off it already! And the corn has doubled in size!

Ben's potted lemon has gone nuts this time round, it has at least 10 lemons on it! I'm going to have to find some lemon recipes! YUM!

This is a very blurry photo, but it is of the tomatoes we have growing in pots with native trees. Now we are not really sure how they got there. There is alot of little tomatoes appearing, some a different shapes, oblong like Roma and normal round shape. We think there could have been seeds in the potting mix Ben topped up the native trees with. Doesn't matter a great deal, we get tomatoes out of it anyway!

The 3 native tree pots with the tomato plants taking over!

This is a view to the very back of our yard. Over the last couple of weekends the neighbour's have been doing some extensive pruning.. You see the whole of the fence line did have alot and i mean alot of shrubs blocking the view to our yard. Nice and private. Well not anymore. they have pulled everything away, what they have done is all along the fence line, so i'm hopeful they might being doing a new fence.. fingers crossed. They have always been busy out in the yard so i haven't wanted to interrupt them and be a busy botty neighbour and ask them what they hell they are doing with my privacy screen... Nobody lives there at the moment, haven't for quite awhile, so its probably a rental house. They may sell it after doing it up who knows..

We have 2 houses backing on to our back yard, the fellow in this house has also lost some privacy screening, now we can see directly to his house..

Hope your having a great week, I'm off to tidy up the toy room! xo

Camping weekend away..

Ben and i had a wonderful weekend away, camping, fishing and having a few drinks!!

We did however have a bit of trouble finding a camping spot. There was alot more people out at Rainbow Beach than we had anticipated.. Especially camping at Inskip Point. We had a couple of mishaps trying to find a camping spot and setting up the tent. We got bogged the first sandy track we went up, misjudged how deep the soft sand was, (all the strong winds and hardly any rain has made almost all the tracks very very soft). So we drove around for about and hour trying to find a spot. We finally decided on one we had chosen as a last resort, which turned out to be a pretty decent spot, as the wind was really blowing we were far enough away from the beach that we were covered from most of it.

So we got the tent out and started getting it ready. Ben then called our friends who had come out for an afternoon drive, while Ben was on the phone, i discovered that we had left the pegs for the tent at home... and upon putting the poles through we found that we had mixed up the poles as well.. That's what we get when we keep tent pegs and poles from old tents lol. The tent was sleepable, not as spread out as it normally would be, but it was only for Ben and i, it didn't matter a great deal, it stayed still and the airbed fitted perfectly!

It doesn't look too bad from this photo, but it had a funny lean to it!

This was the beautiful sunset at Carlo Point. Lots of people turned up to watch, so we sat in the car and ate our dinner. Ben had a seafood basket and i had a chicken burger.


We then went night fishing at Bullock Point. This is where the barges are laid to rest of a night.We fished off the boat ramp in between barges. Ben caught a little brim, and i managed to cast far enough to catch a barge. The Fraser Explorer to be exact, it may have even been The Fraser Explorer II can't really remember lol.

Here is Ben fishing next to the Manta Ray Barge, he wanted to hope on and it fish off it, as it was right next to the old jetty, but their sign says video surveillance and he didn't want to risk it lol.
After fishing awhile we went back to our campsite and had a few drinks and played some cards, Ben taught me yet again how to play poker and seems as though i am pretty good at it when i remember how it all works lol

This was when i woke up Sunday morning, looking from our campsite down to the beach! Great view.

After packing up camp we went back to Bullock Point for a cooked breaky and some fishing. We caught a small brim and whiting, i caught a gar fish (actual fish this time!). 2 sting rays tried to chase Ben back to shore lol! During high tide Bullock Point is a very busy place, everyone using the boat ramp, fishing off the very old falling apart jetty, and a family turned up with a jet ski, a very nice jet ski at that!

Some of the cars parked around the place.

This is part of the jetty, there is a big steel fence at the start of the jetty to deter people using it, but they still climb over.

Break time for brunch! we had another fish after this and then packed up and went home.

We had a fantastic weekend, it was nice to get to the beach and not have to chase little boys away from the waters edge and to fish without worrying about where they were running to! And of course to spend some quiet time with Ben was great, we actually had conversations without being interrupted!

Hope you all had a great weekend as well, i know the boys had a blast at granny and pa's house, they wanted to stay 2 nights not just 1 lol.

Hope you have a great week! xo

All you need is LOVE.

Today is our wedding anniversary, 5 years of wedded bliss!! Although we have been together for almost 9 years! Due to money having to go else where at this time of year, we have decided not to give each other presents. So instead our boys are going to Granny and Pa's for a sleep over. Which gives us a night to ourselves! Now we could go out to dinner but when trying to save as much money as we can that doesn't work for us, and for me, i don't really enjoy going to dinner unless we have a huge dinner party with all our family and friends. When i get to spend time with Ben on our own i like it to be somewhere quiet where its just us. So what can we do besides staying at home that wont cost us much but still have a really enjoyable time. We are going camping for the night and fishing. Camping cost's us $10 and we will take all our food, we also need to fill the car up this week anyway so it works great. We both really love the beach, and it will be great to go and not have to worry about little boys running to the water! It will be relaxing i think can't wait!

I also thought to myself, seeing as we are not doing the present thing why not write a love note, a very public love note to my love! (prob wont be very long, I've never been good at writing them lol)

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To my wonderful Husband,

5 years have past since we had our wonderful wedding day, it seems so long ago. But when you think of all we have achieved as a family, we have in fact been quiet busy for our 5 years! Our 2 gorgeous boys growing so much, making us laugh in every way possible, naughty sometimes yes but oh so cheeky about how they do it. (one is on my lap right now helping me type this!). We have managed to get a house to call our own, i think something to be very proud of, although we have many dreams for our house and future houses, they will all come in time. We will one day have the money to do the things we want. But for now, we are a very loving happy family, and that's all we need to worry about, enjoying our time as a young family with little boys who in an instant wont be little anymore so we need to cherish their cheeky naughty ways. their big squeezy cuddles, sloppy kisses and most importantly their Innocent laughter.

I love you so much my dear, i could not imagine my life without you or our boys, there is not a thing i would ever change. We have started a wonderful journey and i can't wait to see where its takes us as a loving couple. :):):)

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxo

This seems so long ago! But one of my fav's from our wedding day :)

Our budding photographer.

On the weekend our lil cowboy wanted to join in with taking photo's. So i showed him how to take the photo's and off he went. He is going to turn into a good photographer. Some turned out pretty good, others are a little blury...

Bruce's mouth.

Daddy's plants.

Oh look mummy my gumboots got in this photo!

Artistic photo of mummy!

Artisitc photo of the beloved swing.

Daddy's flowers.

More of daddy's plants.

This turned out really well. I'm very proud of our cowboy!

And lastly trying to photograph ants!!