Saturday, October 22, 2011

Birthday Party Day!

Long time since Monday, and Eden's been really looking forward to today! Mostly catching up with special people we haven't seen for 3 months! She's been designing and redesigning her cake for months...rainbow, lots of pink, pink flowers, bluebirds, so many ideas...and after smoothing concrete for a day, buttercream rose-swirl icing seemed more fun! 6 layer chocolate cake (but only two batches, and plenty of offcuts that didn't go to waste!) apparently two of the hardest cakey things, graduated colour icing, and peonies...I'm always up for a challenge or two!


I don't think the colours have photographed well, it was more pinky...) Yummy raspberry and white chocolate muffins on the side, with a few decorations to match


I had to do something while watching last nights game! I was soooooo thankful that the All Blacks beat the Wallabies in the semi final, it would have been really hard to have an Aussie themed party the day after and AB bronze final and the day before an Aussie final...yay All Blacks! We didn't take down the 7 All Black flags we have out the front, even though I hung an Australian flag on the gate for the afternoon!


The party had to be moved from the "planned paved party place" to the back porch as we had typical Labour Weekend weather!





Another sparkler 5! (that's all I brought back, now I wish I'd brought heaps back!)


The glorious chorus!


And the part the birthday girl has been waiting for! Eden did a great job of cutting right down one side of the cake!


The pop the balloon game is always fun, harder though in a confined space!


Wahoo, mini chocolate bars all round! And Eden wearing the dress she designed, she really wanted an Australia flag dress (so I bought a large cotton tea towel) but I was worried I would have time to make a dress, so we also went shopping at Myers! I got the dress finished (with a broken bobbin no less, which made it very hard) then she decided she didn't want to wear it...until bike riding time, very hard to wear a maxi dress and ride a bike! So that explained change one, change two was just because Aunty Cathie's been clothes shopping!


Great day, no rain, awesome company, pretty tasty food, if I do say so myself! And now Toby's staying the night, very exciting!

And great news, now I've caught you all up, even blogged TODAY'S photos, TODAY!!!

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Saturday, October 22, 2011

Eden's 5th Birthday!!!

The present ring


Getting stuck in to the biggest one first, of course!


Some of the goodies, a Zhu Zhu house (is at what its called?) and a new Zhu Zhu friend, and Daddy dressing Barbie on her new gymnastics outfit!


A lovely day, including a trip to the river (as she didn't want to go to Ocean Spa, too far to drive, but she did want to go to the beach, as long as we didn't have to drive too far...), then lots of playing outside, followed by a dancing demonstration at a local rest home, where all the big dancing girls sang happy birthday to Eden and she even did a solo demo of the first fling step (taught by Lily in Australia!), finally went out to lunch at 3pm, more playing outside (think they missed their bikes, scooters, boards, etc while we were away!) and when Nannie and Grand-da turned up at about 5 and I hadn't even started dinner, we had pavlova for dessert (yes, before dinner!)





It turns out you can get fireworks through customs! Although this is just a candle, right?!?! Very cool sparkler 5!





And as Eden requested pizza for dinner, her and Lachie made some and we had a late dinner (but we're still kinda running on WA time!)

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Saturday, October 22, 2011

Rangitikei/Manawatu Champs

A few months off lessons (well, they trained themselves!), still not a bad day out in Marton...roll on new outfits!


Eden's glasses from her goodie bag!


All the dancers, two little ones front, left of centre are ours. The boys came to watch this one too. Not sure any of them want to see too many dancing days! But when Mike gets the bill for the new outfits, he'll probably want to see his investment in action!!


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Saturday, October 22, 2011

Happy little boy (and a Mummy!)

Zara picked Cooper a new t-shirt when Lily, Eden, Zara and I had a girls day out. He LOVES it! And that afternoon a digger arrived! And then the hail arrived, opps!


The digger man couldn't unload his truck so was about to call it a day...until I had a great idea! Forget taking the dirt away, but could he please clear out the space for the concrete truck to come the next day...thankfully he did (although there's still a couple of big dirt piles waiting for him to come back!


Next day...concrete! Well the sky looked ify for a few hours, but finally they decided it was worth it...and as he arrived the sun came out, hot! It looks here (again, one of Cooper's masterpieces) like I was just supervising, but I did do a lot of the shoveling (til I had to look after the kids who had had enough of being locked on the back porch!)


Exciting!!!!!


And yay! The neighbours washing won't get dusty this summer, and we won't be driving through a bog ever again!!!
Mike's been hard at work before this too (me too, but that goes unsaid, lol!) with the car pad area by the old shed now paved (and the pile of pavers that have waited almost 5 years for a new spot, now gone!)

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Saturday, October 22, 2011

Final Australia Photos

Saw this beautiful sunset as we left Kambalda to come home. I got Mike to pull over, ran across the road and took off my sunnies to take the shot, then I noticed the sunset was quite bland and boring...it was my sunglasses making it look stunning! So I took this photo through my "obviously rose tinted" sunglasses!!


Drive through coffee caravan...and they give out bubbles! Bonus! Took them to Kings Park to do some blowing!











Cooper took this portrait of his lovely parents! (and his lovely finger!)


Beautiful day in Perth, great place to see the city


Whoever took this shot should have waited until that lady walked past...oh wait, the photo took itself!


Spent the afternoon at the Museum, they had a Lego building activity space for kids (and big kids!)





And upstairs was a kids space dedicated to being royal!


Including making treasure boxes


Stayed a night in Perth and took the many huge suitcases to the airport first thing! Was much nicer to drive round with only our hand luggage in the car! We went back to Ikea for another look-see, but this time we put the big three kids in their creche! Saw this tree at the bottom of Kings Park earlier in the day but Cooper was asleep. Went back on dusk so the photos look a bit dark.








Went to Skippy and Suz's place for a few hours after dinner as the flight wasn't til 10.30pm. Cooper (and Mike) were asleep before the plane even took off! We all slept most of the way to Brisbane and woke to a beautiful sunrise!


Unfortunately we didn't get to see Nath and Eilish at the airport, and the wait wasn't too bad. The flight from Brisbane to Wellington was great, maybe because of the personal tv/game screens!
Was so nice to see Aunty Jayne, Kate and Sophie as we arrived back into Wellington, and one crazy, excited dog waiting in the car!!

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Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Winding up our Holiday

Next time you hear from me we should be on NZ soil (or waiting in Perth or Brisbane airports). Here's some of the last shots of our time here.
Eden's class had a pirate party for the end of term party. We found a pirate headband at the chemist and made the rest of the outfit from her wardrobe (well Lily's boots) and a tinfoil and cardboard cutlas of course! Can't believe I didn't take photos of the pirate cupcakes I made!


Cooper had a go at digging for gold nuggets on the sandpit too!


Bouncy castle fun at Aly and Lexi's party





Cooper wanted a "meeting" with the chairs this day, sometimes it's a bus or a car or a train when I mop the floor. This must have been really comfortable.


All ready for the last day of school, Footy Friday (as the AFL final was the following day). Best we could do was Magpies hats (the Collingwood Magpies, who then lost in the grand final, but thought we could get some use out of their gear!) and All Blacks tops...Lachie didn't want to say we think the AB's could win the AFL final as well as the RWC, but Lily said she would!


Final basketball game...8 weeks ago the girls couldn't dribble...now they're pro's! And Cooper is too! Lachie's great at tackles and shooting (his dribbling was always pretty good)








A train...not sure if it's easy to see or not, but the iron ore trains go through here without slowing down, 2 engines at the front, 2 engines in the middle and I took this photo so I could count carriages, I think there's 60 after the middle engines! So 120 carriages! Lucky we don't have to wait for those in Waipuk when we're heading to town!


Not to scale, but close on my iPad! He'd be the size of the old 50c piece (or the size of an Aussie one). We had two living between the glass and the mesh on the kitchen window, easy to watch what they were up to, but had to leave their homes intact while I washed the windows. So unfortunately they both had to die as I didn't want them to find their way inside!


A twenty-eight found the seed bell first...


Followed a couple of days later by a galah, then more and more! The galah's took turns and shared whereas the twenty-eights fought over it!


Lily's highland skirt is getting a wee bit small (time for another one Daddy!), so Cooper figured it would fit him now! It will do one more competition for Lily next weekend.


I took the kids swimming then a trip to the SuperPit lookout again.


It's a bit windy up there!


Stopped off at the giant nickel pots for a photo on the way home.


Last trip to Hammond Park...kings of the castle...


Lachie finally got to pat the friendliest kangaroo.


Taking a walk home after dropping the car at the panel beaters...finally! Took 3 days and came back with the lock not working and the door not even aligned properly. He had another go and now claims its not his problem! Don't go there local people! And certainly don't pay in advance!





Must have exhausted Cooper! His favourite book, the Perth map book...


Holiday camping in the lounge!


And as you can now tell, I didn't get this posted online after I did it, and now we're home...stay tuned for the last pix of Aus...

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