Movember.....

We can't stop cracking up every time we look at The Lad! We're so used to seeing him with his goatee that we just dissolve in fits of laughter every time we look at him sans facial hair. Ah well, what''s a husband for if you can't ridicule him every once in a while:


Here he is as we're used to seeing him, before he went all nudey on us:

A Variation On The Washing Mountain.....

I know I need to fold the washing when the kids start saying things like "Let's go jump on the washing mountain!" or "I've got no (whatever)'s" - because we all have a million "whatever" 's - pairs of underpants, socks, singlets, t-shirts, shorts, skirts, dresses, long pants, jerseys, etc.. And these days it's getting a bit harder to find a home for said mountain, especially now we don't have a spare room (whose Big Idea was it to have all these bloody kids?), or even a spare bed for that matter, and now that we're down to one two-seater in the lounge suite stakes (does it count as a suite if there's only one item? - honestly, we're like the beginning of The Simpsons when the TV gets turned on, when they all sprint to the one couch and try to all fit).

The girls have a new washing basket in their room and they empty it into mine once a day (well, it saves on actually picking your clothes up off the floor and putting them back in your drawer!), and when mine is full we get a Washing Tower. Joy of Joys for me - a Tower of dirty washing patiently waiting for me to magically turn it into a Mountain of clean washing. Every Bloody Day.

Balagan Farm.....

Brownies was at Balagan Farm this afternoon, and the other kids were a bit lucky that I was on Mother Help so they got to tag along too!:





There were loads of new babies up there to feed:





And cuddle:



And pat:

Brann's Farm.....

We picked L9 up from Guide Camp today. She'd spent the weekend out at one of our fave places for the summer, Branns Farm, so while we were there we took The Lad on a bit of a tiki haere. There was Thomas and Harold:


This *very* cute Highland calf:


This very handsome ;o) Highland bull:



And the very cool and funky log cabin we are definitely going to stay in next time we're there:

Minden and L'Anson's Bush.....

H7, L5 and I set out on a bit of a wander mission this morning in our quest to see a bit more of this region that we live in.

We started at one of the Minden walkways:




This tree looked a lot more imposing that it does in this photo - it definitely looked like a very climbable specimen and we thought we might try it on the way back to the car:


L5 was complaining that his legs were getting itchy from all the grass - not too surprising really, when you see the height of some of it along the way. It made us wonder how many people frequent this particular walkway:


Then we hopped in the car and drove down the road a bit to have a jack-nohe round L'Anson's Bush. It was very cool and definitely worth another visit, perhaps with a picnic and some food for the ducks:





I didn't have the zoom lens on the camera, so it's a bit hard to see this patchy sheep in the paddock across the stream:



We have made a bit of a habit of meeting new canine friends on our little soujourns lately - today we met Rastus:

Kitchen Cupboards Back.....

After waiting for a week to be able to use the kitchen cupboards and drawers again, it's almost like having a new kitchen. The dark chocolate brown colour might take a bit of getting used to, but it's amazing what a lick of paint and new handles can do:

Sparkler Fun.....

Nush gave L5 some sparklers in his birthday pressie and he's been waking up in the morning saying "We forgot to do the sparklers last night AGAIN!".

This morning, he put the sparklers under his pillow with his jamies so that he would remember when it was bedtime and he'd get to stay up late (because it's daylight savings now) till it was dark.

Yay, it worked, and we had some pre-Guy Fawkes fun:

XBox.....

A11 hired out an XBox this week, and we ahrdly got him off the couch. One good thing that came of it was that he got all his jobs done lightening-fast of a morning ;o)

He had a mate over to help him conquer one of the games, which they managed to do the day before he had to take it back:

Happy Birthday Mykel.....

We gathered at the park after drama to wish our friend Mykel a very happy birthday:


Him and his Mum Kerry are regular after-drama-park-dwellers with us, and very cool peeps:



My first cuddles with the gorgeous Kinsee - I managed to make her cry a total of five times before her mother stole her back ;o)

Tui.....

We've had a bit of a flurry of Tui lately, L9 and The Lad were enthralled with three of them in one tree singing to each other outside her bedroom window:

The SandMaid.....

We went to Memorial Park with some of our mates today and the girls spent ages making a mermaid in the sand, she had glorious curves, a sea lettuce tail and sea lettuce hair, a sea lettuce necklace and shell faacial features:

Iris'.....

I love Iris', especially purple ones. About 4 years ago I got these bulbs from a friend and planted them in this pot so I wouldn't forget where they were - and then promptly forgot all about them.

Then all of a sudden, all this time later, they appeared! Who ever said I didn't have a green thumb?:

Summer's Coming Again.....

With visitors (who came bearing Banana Bread - yumm!) who were keen to get wet 'n wild, we didn't need much persuading to get the togs on and the water buckets on the tramp:



But we needed a more constant supply, so Caleb was in charge of the hose:


Remember drinking from the sprinkler in the backyard when you were a kid?:


And 'skipping' with the water from the hose?:


Roll on summer!