PASS THE EAR PLUGS...PULLEEEESSSSEEEEEE!!!!!!!

YES I"M SHOUTING...OTHERWISE YOU MIGHT NOT HEAR ME OVER ALL THE NOISE (Lets hope the neighbours are in a good mood today, hey?)

It all started about half an hour ago, you see SB had just left the building, the girls were starting to clean up while I tried to prize open my eyes while consuming copious amounts of coffee and checking my mail/blogs/facebook, the usual stuff. I called the girls to look at the utter cuteness of our little friend Sophia in her ladybug outfit and while we were gooing and gahhing over her, the boys came tearing down the stairs screaming some blood curdling war cry, well one of them was the other one was kind of making a noise like a squeeling pig.

My immediate reaction was to raise my eyebrows a little and say to TC, you wanna get that? She was all like NO NOT ME....I ain't goin' there. Fine, leave them to it. They circled the downstairs passed us by and went tearing back upstairs (both of them were armed...Zak had his bow which now had one side of the elastic hanging and he was effectively using it as a whip, Gameboy had a skull on a stick and was pounding his brother with it. (NO I still did not get up, I really am being patient this weekend LOL) TBF on the other hand decided it was enough and started screaming at them and chased them up the stairs to demand they STOP. Of course they then turned on her!


She had just turned her music on downstairs and demanded they shut up and stop running. They stopped running all right. Laid down their weapons in the spirit of turning on a new enemy. Gameboy turned on the playstation and started to play guitar hero 3 very loudly! Zak turned on the electric drum kit and started banging a tune only he could hear! A battle of the wills began! TC and myself burst into laughter, unfortunately TBF did not find it very funny...She and Zak are as stubborn as each other. There is never going to be a winner.... She stomped back downstairs, glared at us (taking with her, the headphones for the drumset??? That will get them won't it? LOL) and promptly turned the music up even louder!

So here mama finds herself on what was a pleasant, quiet morning, slowly going deaf trying to decide whether its worth the effort of losing that patience.......hmmmmm........nah.....I think I'll just vacate the building!



Have a great day everyone! Hugs and smoochies xxoxoxoxoxox

Blog Interferance!

Well, some of you may have noticed (those of you who do not follow, but just pop by) that I have been playing with changing the blog a little! So after checking out some great tips from blog friends I tried to change to a three column blog and ended up with a stretched out look with my extra blank column in the middle! (Yeah for those of you who only look at the pictures its "wider now"!

SB waltzed past and pointed out that I could change lots of things in HTML...I was like....go away...don't tell me! I want to do this myself! (He also pointed out if I put in fancy stuff it was a waste of bandwidth!!!! Blah Blah Blah! (Seriously, this is an issue in our house, we all try to hog the bandwidth!) So inadvertently he gave me a little lesson that I did not want! lol! So now while I may not have a "ahem" three column blog, I do fill the page a little better with what I have!

I am currently trying to co-erce TC into drawing a new header. Seriously! I looked at all the cute and lovely ones out there and as I'm not into "scrap booking" (no offense, its just not me!) and even the ones I kind of liked, I thought, they really are not me or us and I want something that portrays our family as a header. So that bits going to take a while! LOL!

Now blog business aside, I must go and check the rice I have steaming! Poor SB is stranded on the highway somewhere waiting for the NRMA to come and tow him to the Gas station....turns out the silly buggers that did the tune up this morning wasted a far whack of gas and he did not realise so got stuck. We are just getting used to the whole Gas thing after using Petrol for so long!

Tomorrow I am up for cooking a feast! TC turned 17 yesterday! (yikes) and she wants a Turkish Banquet for dinner! So guests and lots of food are the plan!

Hugs and smoochies, have a great weekend everyone! Mwah xxxxoooooxxxxxoooooxxxxoox

Baseball

Zak went to his first baseball game last night and had lots of fun. They lost 13-7 but that was not bad considering more than half of his team are new and they have not had a chance to practice yet so pretty much had no idea what they were doing. One of their players who actually had experience was "lent" to the other team for the game as they did not have enough players and would have had to forfeit. Apparently this is a new way of doing things so the kids get to have a game. They also due to lack of numbers have merged several age groups to make up teams so some of the teams they are up against will be older. The other team looked like they had been playing for years so our kids did pretty well I thought.



I was pretty amazed that they would start the season without a bit of training before hand, Zak was sick the first week and missed out but quite a few of the other kids did not seem to know what they were doing either, like the little one behind the batter who instead of stepping onto the base or tagging the kid running for home threw the ball back to the pitcher. Oh well, they had lots of fun and laughs.

You see the other team were teasing them as they ran round the bases. Zak was on Second base and said the boy on his base was being smart and saying stuff like " Wolfs eat Wild Cats!" "We are going to thrash you" among other things. From the sides, to us it looked like they were having a nice little chat and being friendly, there were big smiles all round, well mostly from our kids.



So when Zak told me the other kids were being horrible and not friendly at all, and one in particular was not very nice, I said "Well, I hope you did not retaliate, that's not very good sportsmanship! Besides he is just being a weirdo, ignore him"

Zak smirked and told me "Hehe mum, we were the ones being the weirdos! When he started teasing us, I started singing "I like to move it, move it....." (he starts dancing around showing me how he did it), and then the two players on his team behind him joined in. The nasty kid apparently went very quiet and could not wait to run away! LOL! What can I say? That's my boy! When faced with an adversary, flash your dimples and show em a little song and dance!

I need a change!

For the past few months I have been looking at this blog and thinking "I really need to give it a face lift". I want it to look happier or something, I don't know. Finding the time to do it however has proven quite a challenge, I mean I am finding it hard to even blog most of the time let alone re-decorate.

Today I had a little look at the settings and can't for the life of me work out how people spread the blog across the whole page or have a nice backdrop even. Its probably easy as pie, but it is totally beyond me. So Gameboy is looking over my shoulder..."What are you doing mum?", Oh Im just trying to work out how to do this...blah..blah..blah....

He looks at me with this incredulous look on his face and asks

GB: "Did you even set up this blog mum? Dad did it for you, didn't he?"

K: NO he did not, I did it all by myself (okay he resized the picture, back then I did not know how to do it but I did the rest).

K: "I am NOT totally useless you know!"

GB: "SNORT!"

Still alive....

Just in case you were wondering that is. Its been the usual busy week down here. After our water wise day out, we spent some time at home. (well just one day) The boys started a new unit of work on the Human Body and we spent the morning looking at cells in our microscope and making funny noises by clamping our teeth on our tongues and learning which parts of our mouth help us to talk. There was lots of giggling.

I organised a tour for our homeschool group at the Lighthouse, we will go on the 17th of November.

We had a trip to the library.....I really need to stay away from there, our book wish list is getting longer and longer. This week we borrowed a book called Paper Galaxy, it teaches you how to fold paper in some quite complicated ways (a bit like origami), to make stars, rocket ships and even an alien, and really ties in with what Zak was learning about tessellating shapes this week. So its been added to our book list as there are far too many projects to do in a fortnight, and considering we also borrowed three Usbourne craft books (even though we own heaps of them already) and want to make some things from them, we really need to buy them all! LOL!


We also went to the post office, did some shopping, took a couple of trips to the beach (lucky because it has now been raining heavily and cold and windy for two days) and of course the kids went ice skating on Friday.

The water at the beach is quite warm at the moment and as the flags are now out and the beach patrolled there are more people hanging around enjoying the water.

TBF came ice skating with the boys this week and managed to get some shocking blisters on her poor feet. They are healing now but she is still hobbling a bit. It did not help that she had to work on Saturday night and was on her feet for 4 hours.

I have so much to do around here, its not funny! I need to sort our books as we have far outgrown our bookcases and move some of them into my craft room. Gameboy has been learning to write computer programmes and is going to write one for me to catalogue all our books. He is doing really well too and has earned himself a new computer for his efforts.

This Thursday is TC's birthday, and the home school inpsector is finally coming to visit on the same day, she will be at school anyway so its ok. TC opted to have a Turkish Banquet on Saturday night so I will be cooking a lot. The boys also want to go trick or treating so it will be a fun night for all. They are really loving the idea of Halloween and will be doing lots of craft to decorate the house this week. GB is enticing his big sister to make him an outfit. Zak is still changing his mind every day.

Anyway the topic over maths right now has gone from Halloween costumes to "Mum, if a boy has no balls will he die?" Okay, this sounds like a visit to a harem time! Oh I love this natural learning! They are now talking Eunichs while Zak is using a big screwdriver as a baton (yes he is twirling it rather dangerously!) Time for me to go! Hugs and smoochies xxoxoxoxo

Are you Water Wise?

Yesterday the boys went to a Water wise course at the local council to learn a little about how to conserve water and look after our waterways. It started with a presentation and pictures of different water saving ideas and then the children were divided into two groups.

The younger kids sang songs while the older kids went outside and were each given a sheet with a small story to read out about regarding different things that pollute our waterways and then they added small vials of each substance to the water to see what happened. As you can see some of the kids were quite fascinated with this.


Ahem, somebodies kids however, found it boring and wanted to go home.....


Next they went back inside and watched another film, while the little ones learned about water in the bathroom, then they came back outside and watched the same show.



Well most of them did...



Hehe! Well in his defense, he says he was not feeling well.

All of the children were also given a plant to take home for their garden, a water timer for the shower and some stickers. We chose chives and lettuce for ours.

I thought the presentation was quite good, although the talking bits were a bit long for some of the kids.



After dropping home for some lunch, we went out again to the local lighthouse. I forgot that the carpark had been fixed up and now consists of a tarred surface. I had no shoes and managed to burn the bottom of my feet. We trekked on and spent some time down on the rocks checking out crabs and fish etc then Zak built a sculpture in the sand.


He also climbed the rocks and the big signpost that was on the rocks. We were supposed to be meeting friends there but they changed their minds and did not come. We waited till 3pm and then headed home and planted our new plants and built a bean teepee in the garden (we got this idea from the presentation in the morning). I then finished planting some other herbs I had and laid down more sugar can mulch, all the time walking on my very sore feet. It was not until I had brought in the washing, cooked dinner, went to the shops, and made two trips to pick up the girls from work that I finally hopped in the shower to scrub then and realised I had tar melted to them! No wonder they hurt!

And even though Zak feigned indifference to the whole day, he did actually learn quite a bit. "Mum, did you know that if a toilet holds 20 litres of water and you flush on the full flush, you are wasting 20 litres of water?" Just one of many observations over the course of the evening! So a full day of learning afterall!

Relay for Life!

Today in our neck of the woods there is something going on! Yes people are spending the night walking round in circles in an effort to raise monies and awareness towards cancer! My darling SIL got a team together and named them "Little Angels" and not only did she aim for the walk but she fund raised along the way! (This would mean, she got the family working as well!) Yes my friends, she tortured us, she did! She gave us big boxes of chocolates to eat ahem...sell, she coerced us into coming along today and paint faces for a donation (which was fun by the way!) and as it seems Zak was totally into it!


Not only was he into it, the whole 10 years old of him decided he wanted to stay and see it out! Yes he first conned his mama into letting him "sleep over" and then he wanted to join the walk (bless his little heart) So tonight while his mama kinda fretted over him camping out all by himself (well not really, he has his aunty there!) He was off to walk his little heart out! His mama is so proud of him!!! (And while she was a little scared about him camping out without his mama, his big sister decided to go clubbing and get his mama worrying about her instead! LOL) Seriously, who does one worry about the sweet caring little 10 year old or the norty tipsy, funny, silly 21 year old? Hmmmmm???? Well the Aunty will be looking out for Mr 10 and mama will be watching out for Miss 21! And I mean really, Mr 10 kinda looks a little scary so maybe he is safe????? (He totally walked around all day with his Hulk face, purple hat and a sign on his back promoting face painting! LOL) He was all for bringing in the business and most horrified to inform us we had competition in the form of the "childrens tent" who were also doing face painting! However, they were charging much more than us! LOL! So we might just have it made!

TC...looks totally bored! She was so going to paint faces and decided painting was NOT her thing?????? Hello!!!!!!! But Mum, I draw! I don't paint! (Mum begs to differ...the girl can paint as well as draw! Fussy artists!!!!)

Thankfully, her big sister "The book Fairy", had no such worries and got on with the job at hand! She was very into the face painting and what a good job she did too!

And NO we don't always dress so strangely! (Well mama might but not the rest of us!) SIL demanded we dress up for the occassion! TBF was dressed as a Gypsy, Barbie came as Minnie Mouse, TC opted NOT to dress up as did mama, she was feeling lazy!



Mr Yakka came as Alladin but he did NOT like his hat! Oh NO! Take it off already! He means it!

Ahhh Yes Nanas hat is much better thanks! He he!

Gameboys effort was having his hair painted blue...taking a nap in the tent and eating some yummy food....he opted to go home with mama and get on his computer to play Rohan!

The highlight of Karisma's day was petting this beauty! Just look at her! Isn't she lovely? She is a baby weighing 20 kilos and will grow to 120 kilos at full size! Oh my!

Ahhh! Nana's hat is so hip is it not????
(I wonder if I could get a few more chippies out of them? Hmmmmm???)

Aunty Karisma say's she don't think so! How about you?

Welcome to the world....

Liam and Lucas

One of my many cousins children became a daddy yesterday. The second set of twins to be born in my Aunty Maureens clan! Congratulations Nana! Wishing the boys and their parents a long, healthy and happy life! Namaste.

Lets spin something besides our hips!

Ok so the purpose of our trip to Sydney the other day was to visit the Childrens Festival which is held at Redfern and that is just what we did before we wandered off into the city and discovered the Gardens.

We arranged to meet at the station and catch a train at 8.42am. Not realising the train that pulled in terminated and went back we waited and hence "missed" the train. The next one did not come until 9.30am. So we grabbed a drink and sat down to wait. We arrived at Redfern station at around 11am and quickly realised there were no signs or directions telling us which way to go, so we asked a friendly policeman and he told us which way to walk. Everybody else hanging about followed us and we somehow managed to get there without any fuss.

The first thing we saw when we walked in was this........


The children could take strips of rubber and weave them into the snake to create a work of art. I kind of looked like the kids had given up on the weaving and were just throwing the rubber pieces on. It was nice and colourful!

I was a little disappointed at how small it all was. It sounded far more in the brochures but the children had fun and we did too so I can't complain too much. (well just once okay? The food was shocking!) I had not been shopping so had to buy food there and all they had was junk and it was so expensive. I thought I would buy the boys a sausage roll for $3.50 each and it turned out they were the little party ones. I would have had to buy them at least 4 each and a drink and they would have been hungry again in no time. So I went off and asked the people at the door where else I could get food for the kids. They directed me to the pub across the road, which turns out had a lovely Bistro completely separate from the bar so the kids could sit and eat a proper meal and get full. They had chicken schnitzels and chips with gravy and mama settled on a prawn and avacado salad which turned out to be a lovely salad topped with about 12 large garlic prawns...Gameboy helped his mama out with those.

So back to the festival and the kids watched several shows and hung out a lot in the circus room doing this.........

First spin some plates.....

A little diablo...

Watch out you don't drop it!

Next, pass it to your friend while still spinning....

Woops!

Ahem! Gameboy!

Thats better!

Or you could have gone with Mr C's theory and made a run for it....the paparazzi lady is not very fast you know!

They also tried out the hula hoops, juggling and other magic tricks. They liked it so much that they came back again after watching another show. There were various craft activities set up but not much for them to do other than that. We thought we would leave a little early but the boys decided they would like to go through the maze so we waited till 3pm as that was the only time they could get in. There was apparently a scary dragon in that maze that chased the children out at the end.

Aunty Karisma! If you don't stop playing paparazzi, I am going to whack you with this stick! I don't need to look at you to do it either!

Now mama! More dancing please!

Yes there was also lots of music, 80's music at that. The kids were pretty astounded that we knew the words to the songs! All up it was a great day!

Anything Karisma can do...

We can do better.......Well Isaac can....

Ahem! Its not as easy as it looks........

Anna...takes the floor.........

Yeah yeah, swing it Karisma!
(You totally did not keep it up this long! yee hah!)

'Woops' Wasn't me!

Well, wot eva! Bet ya can't do this.....

Yeah well, mama! Bet you AND aunty Karisma can't get away with this.....

Whack, whack, whack.....wot? was 'nt me?
I am totally dancing the day away and having a most wonderful time!

Yeah! Bet you all can't stand up as good as me!
Well, you are all seriously not as cute now are you?

Wind? What wind?

Mother Nature unleashes her fury upon us.....

Normally, one would see sand and rocks far out in this picture!

Well, it has been a little windy and a little cold even....

Honey! Step away from the cliff...puleessseeeeee!!!!!!!
Seriously, we are blowing away here!!!!!!

Yes! Normally we would look down upon some rocks and sand here!

Okay...who stole our beach?
The tide really "does not!!!" come in this far!

And around to the other side......Ahem not much is different!
Where are all the rocks and sand?

Well, I guess you can see my friends, the ocean is NOT always nice to us! No sirree! It has been a little out of control this week! No surfing round here! Ahem! Almighty Huey! (the surf god) some people really need to catch some waves! Seriously! Us passive types can only take so much from denied Surfie junkies! Bring on the clean waves! Please???????

Some Sydney Shots

My favourite pic!
(Just one of the many herbs to be found in the Sydney Botanical Gardens)

Probably the only thing I like in the city are the trees!

The highlight of the children's trip....a mulberry tree that has grown into a cave!

Yep we love trees!
Especially ones you can climb!

I took lots and lots of pictures of trees and herbs I discovered while in Sydney on Wednesday but I guess some of you (who may actually like the concrete jungle) would rather see these...........

Sydney Harbour Bridge
(Taken from Circular Quay station around 6.30pm when the storm was just about to hit, it was actually raining already but not too heavy)

The Army Barracks

The Cathedral

The War Memorial

I have to admit as far as buildings go, the army barracks and the cathedral are quite beautiful. We planned to go visit but we were a bit late. The purpose of our trip to Sydney was to visit the Childrens festival at Redfern and we had been there most of the day. I will post some pic's of that next. Hope you are all having a great weekend! Hugs and smoochies xxoxoxox