Sunday, March 31, 2013

Yay we got the Camera back!

Silly camera... flash-bulb blew and it took about 3 weeks to get it fixed. Oh well, now all our memories don't need to look like we are all sitting in a dark room.

Today we visited with friends who live on a lifestyle block. They had a few chickens who had not been laying and they were bullying the younger chickens and wanted to get rid of them so Tane volunteered to get rid of them. Well... the kids were ever so fascinated and wanted to watch them have their necks broken, but it was too gruesome for me.

Here are a few pics of the kids since we can now take pics again yay!. Ella is slowly getting better at playing with Lily. Probably 70 percent of the time with supervision she is manageable. It's just if she discovers Lily unprotected, then she's in trouble.



We have been learning about the stars and moon lately. So as a fun project the kids made the phases of the moon out of oreos. So the kids had to separate oreos and then make the phases of the moon using the remaining sides. I think I distributed far too many oreos each and Joshua spent the first 10 minutes eating all the extra sides.


I think Ella Had more fun eating them...

Joshua explains his phases of the moon.

Joseph talks about his moon phases.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone. Today was one of the best Easter's we have ever had. Last night, Tane and I stayed up late and made resurrection eggs. We got little plastic eggs, and placed scorched almonds in them. There were about 20 of them, but in 12 there were pictures of items that represented part of the Easter story.
Resurrection eggs Courtesy of Scrapping Suzie QTT

Tane got up early and hid them in various locations around the garden, along with one larger egg for each child and a few marshmallow eggs.

The kids were up at 6.30 am and came running into our rooms pretty disappointed that there was no Easter eggs on their beds. We suggested  maybe they were in the garden as maybe the Easter bunny was too busy to come inside. The kids went outside and just kind of stood there for a while... there were no Easter eggs in sight.

All of a sudden Anna-Maria bolted to an upside down bucket and flipped it over. Sure enough, underneath were 2 little plastic eggs... And the game was now on... all of a sudden 4 children sprung into action, running all over the front lawn trying to locate more eggs.

Anna-Maria looked in the mail-box and to her surprise there was the first large egg. She was so excited, but the others became discouraged. We suggested that maybe there was more than just one large egg... so they carried on looking, finding the other large eggs in the bushes, the pumpkin patch and the woodpile.




 Ella was fascinated. Even when the bigger kids had enough of searching, she went back outside with a mouth full of chocolate in search for more eggs.








When the kids had gathered up their stash, they proceeded to divvy it up and opened all the plastic eggs to reveal the scorched almonds and the little pictures. As each picture was numbered and had a scripture reference, we could share the Easter story with the children as they ate their Easter eggs.

After dinner... a yummy cold roast chicken and salad, we sat down together and watched 'To This End   was I Born'. Anna-Maria showed a rowing understanding of the gospel as we discussed the movie. She said it made her sad that Jesus died. But then she said, but if he didn't then we would not live again after we have died. Such simple truths from her little mouth.

Celebrating Easter... the Resurrection of our Saviour was really Special!

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Little Gems

While walking down a friends driveway and having to step aside because a car was coming past, Anna-Maria exclaims with a big smile 'Great! I didn't get run over!'

I should think so!

Today was swimming sports. It was so much fun. Anna-Maria and Ella were in the 5 & under group. Anna-Maria was a little upset when she was swimming in her races, but the other kids were walking & therefore faster than her. However she did get first place in a few races. Ella had fun playing with the flutterboard until she had enough of the water.
Joseph came third in a few of his races. Josh struggles with speed but makes up for it in effort and enthusiasm. None of the boys wanted to get out at the end, even though the rest of us needed to eat as it was lunchtime.

Lily has been restarted on solids. Poor thing, she was really badly constipated and had to be put back on breastmilk only, but now things are fixed and she has her appetite back again. She gobbled up a small bowlful of stewed apple this evening.

Yesterday we went to the local library book-sale where they were selling off old books. We got some great books. Josh was straight to the bird section as he is wanting a lovebird. He found a book on lovebirds and one on budgies. I got a few travel books and and Italian cookbook for myself, and some war books for Tane. Ella-Rose got a book on the body and a Spot book (she really loves those at the moment). Anna-Maria found a really nice story about courage amid adversity (for kids - very beautifully written). Joseph got a dinosaur book and one about George and the Dragon. All-in all I think we bought about 40 books.

Friday, March 8, 2013

Random Videos

This video is from when we first moved to Australia last year... in fact the first few pics are from the airport. However unfortunately I only just figured out how to get it online so sorry its a wee bit late. It also has some pics from Ella-Rose's first birthday.



How cute xx



Friday, March 1, 2013

Random Pics

Ella-Rose having her own kind of fun!


She has all of a sudden developed a love of books... I think it relates to the fact that we have stories together each day for at least an hour and longer if the kids can convince me otherwise. So she always wants to be the first in line to have stories read to her. She also runs round the house finding the narnia books and running up to me chanting 'narnia, narnia'. She knows it is something cool, even if she doesn't understand. She even jumped on Joshua's knee today with Dr Seuss and requested 'read me', which he did as I was pre-occupied with Lily.

At the moment we are reading 'Cheaper by the Dozen' as well as 'The Silver Chair'. The kids are splitting their sides... it is extremely funny, and also interesting as we are learning lot about another time and another place (USA early 1900s).

Ella-Rose loves swings and the park. She is also even getting a little better each week at going to nursery. So far she lasted 30 mins without needing to be brought to me. Slowly we are getting there and she is realising nursery is much more fun than mummy's class.





Lily loves kisses, she laughs a lot. I laugh too. She is gorgeous. She is such a great baby. I think she's going to be a thumb sucker. She just sucks her fingers and is off to sleep pretty quick, she barely cries - yay. She loves food... she took to food more readily than any of the other children.

Wild Turkeys and Butterflies


We drove over to Thames to Butterfly house for a trip with the local homeschool group. We were off to a late start... waking up at 8am, which was the time I had sorted in my mind when we needed to leave, however having 2 littlies keeping me up overnight, I just kept on sleeping till the kids woke me up. So we were already running an hour late and jumped in the car at 9am. So we would have arrived there sooner, had the Navman been playing fair... it decided to take us on a nice big loop in the middle of the countryside for no real apparent reason.


On the way we also had to make a few stops for the kids to take pics of the wild turkeys that were congregating on the roads and flying over the car.  And unfortunately the camera battery died after taking copious amounts of photos of the turkeys.

When we arrived we made our way straight into the butterfly house. now I had imagined this to be much like an reptile enclosure at the zoo, with different butterflies in separate displays behind glass, with nice labels as to which they were. Not this place, as soon as we walked in, it was like walking into a hot house, and there were butterflies everywhere... it was very cool. The kids loved it and tried picking up a variety of butterflies. There were monarchs, owl butterflies which were blue but when the wings were folded looked like a large eye. There was even one species from the Phillipines called the Mormon butterfly (cute).


One landed on my hand as I was holding a blue dummy. I held it close to Lily's face and she watched it intently as it opened and closed it's wings... that is until Ella-Rose decided to chase it away.

After the butterfly house we went to the beach at Te Puru... it began to rain as we pulled up, but the kids still had a short dip. As we were just down the road from Tane's parents we were able to call in and have dinner with Nana Noelene and Poppa Monty. They put on a lovely BBQ for us.