Merry Christmas!

Speccy specs!

Hoho..oh

Another year, another santa photo. The major difference is last year there was Jack and me and a bump nicknamed Ruby Sparkles. This year I'm out of the shot (thank goodness) though Jack is laughing at me and he is joined by smiling Sam who seems to have been snapped the only time he wasn't smiling. Still, at least he's not screaming.

Xmas baking

I may have overdone things last year in the gingerbread department. Actually I think I didn't eat it for almost a year. I appear to be back on that particular spicy horse or maybe that should be reindeer. For some reason (brainfart) I tried a new recipe which can only be described as poo. A tablespoon of bicarb? madness! I chucked it out and started again.
I got these funny cake tins from andrew. They make funny looking horse cakes but are pretty good for reindeers. The kids at preschool thought so too.

Congraduations

We are a family of graduates now (actually Sam isn't and probably needs to lift his game). Recently Jack 'graduated' from preschool twice in one week. He only wore the cap and gown once which is lucky as it proved to be a oh&s issue for some of his fellow (shorter) graduates.
Yesterday S became Dr S when he received his phD. I'm not sure what the ceremony was like (long) because we were at the national dinosaur museum. That sounds uncaring but graduates only get two tickets so Noel & Diane got a guernsey and we turned up in time to celebrate.
Hooray or as Jack says,"congraduation!"

Gumbies

Every one should be in possession of a pair of gumboots. Clearly Sam agrees and luckily Jen from work could not resist these when she saw them. He just needs to start walking and er, sitting I suppose.

Solids

And so somehow Sam is 6 months old and it is time for solids, and I use that term very loosely. We got off to a bumpy start with farex but now we've moved onto yoghurt he's going great guns. Pear and yoghurt, sweet potato and yoghurt and well that is it so far. Stay tuned for more adventures with purees!

Happy Birthday S

S recently turned 40 (shhh..he doesn't want too many people to know) so we celebrated by going to milawa for lunch at brown brothers and stayed the night at lindenwarrah which is just across the road. Needless to say we ate well and came home with delicious bread and cheese.

Chocolate is good for you

We do seem to have a bit of a problem with chocolate, though if you ask S and Jack the only problem they have is when it runs out. As we are on holidays we have indulged aided and abetted by ben & jerry, cold rock ice cream and the delightfully evil max brenner. We only found his willy wonka like chocolate cafe a day or so ago and somehow convinced S to go. We chose waffles with fruit (so healthy) and may try the chocolate pizza next time.

Zorb

Jack spotted these at a local shopping centre and was keen to give them a whirl. Ummm...no.

Park

There are quite a few things about the gold coast that I am not keen on. They do however do excellent playgrounds for kids (Tumut council take note). We thought the little one with the swings and rowboat was fab but there's a new one that is fantastic. Two flying foxes and slides and a twirly thingy and even a swing for babies. Jack loves it but Sam remains unconvinced.

Battle boats!

Jack's fav part of seaworld was the battle boats in castaway cove. They are boats with water cannons so you can shoot other boats or people "on land". However the landlubbers (mostly grown men) also have water cannons. These have a much better range than the shipboard ones as I found out. Not the day to wear white. Jack didn't want to leave. Apparently neither did the men whose wives were running out of patience and planning their revenge (shopping, facials and massages).

Dinosaur island

Ever since Ganma told Jack about this new attraction, he's been looking forward to seeing it. We all laughed about how scared he was a few years ago by the animatronic dinosaurs at questacon. He bounded in the door, past a scared boy and ground to a halt near a large apatosaurus. Too large and lifelike. I tried telling him the dinosaur was a) extinct and not real and b) a herbivore but no dice. Instead we looked at some cool fossils (including dinosaur poo!) And headed to dinosaur island which was more of an islet really. The dinos were pretty realistic though so it was another quick look. After Jack took on the battle boats he obviously felt braver so he went back for another look. Luckily not at the gift shop.

Seaworld

The day after we arrived here we decided to go to seaworld. We were tired but with lots of catchups happening Jack didn't want to miss out. We caught the bus there and after handing over large amounts of dosh, made a beeline for the penguins, then onto dinosaur island, then the rays and onto the sharks. In fact between S and Jack we kepy t up a cracking pace till we got to castaway cove. More on that soon. The aquariums are pretty fab and I'm always keen to pat a ray. I couldn't wait to instagram the lovely fish and a shark that seemed to be posing for me.

Holiday craftiness

As I may have mentioned we are library tarts. We like to visit three libraries near us, especially when they happen to be next to a cafe like ajanta in coolamon. The nearness of cake pretty much guarantees weekly visits.
As school holidays approached I decided that we needed a plan. Some scheduled activities to get us out and about, not inside and bonkers.
I saw that they were doing a picture frame workshop at coolamon so on wednesday morning we set off through the fog. I wasn't sure how jack would go, but he was reasonably engrossed for about an hour and he did a pretty good job too. Sadly, there was no cake.
Today we went to see the bugalugs bum thief (a crack up) and tomorrow ajanta for cake.
Do you think we are obsessed with cake?

Instagram

For mother's day I got a smartphone and a gym membership. I haven't accumulated a large number of apps or even as many games as jack would like, but I have been playing with instagram. Beautifying the already beautiful sam.

Licking the beaters

Is it just me or is this the best place to do this?

Jack the Knight

Jack, like all kids I suppose has phases where he becomes absolutely obsessed with something like Cars 2 or Thomas the tank engine, Dinosaurs or sharks. When a friend invited him to a costume party recently he was desperate to go as his new hero Mike The Knight. 

Mike is on a newish show on ABC2 and has inspired in Jack a love of all things Knightly. When my brother got Jack a light saber for his birthday he proceeded to use it as a jousting stick. So I agreed to make a Mike costume with his help and together we made armour, a shield, helmet, shoes, tunic and a sword. Blue metallic cardboard worked better than expected. I'm not sure what people did before the interweb, but when it came to the helmet I googled knights helmet from cardboard and up popped instructions including a template. Giddyup! Jack was thrilled, so much so that I feared the costume would wear out before the party. However the day of the party arrived and his costume was a hit. I had prepared him for possible armour annihilation but somehow it remained pristine. Then it turned out that there was a dress up day at preschool. true it was a disney dress up day but we bent the rules so he could be a knight again. He was the only knight amongst a sea of woodys (tehe), buzz lightyears and pirates. And the armour survived!