The lazy and the busy

Christmas morning means a lot of work for Fathers! Ben and Simon both received presents that required assembly. Ben is rather lazy when it comes to putting things together and just watches while his father does all the work. So much for a nice bonding experience with your children. Even when you play trains with Ben you are the one that has to build the track.


Ella was happy with her present from Santa - a flower boat. After blowing up a multitude of floating toys for the pool I have now invested in a pump so inflating the flower boat did not require hyper ventilating for 5 minutes.


During the assembly period, which lasted a few hours, Sarah took Ella to the airport to fetch Aunty Rachel and her family who are visiting for a few weeks.

When Sarah and Ella returned we headed over to grandma and pa for a relaxing Christmas lunch. The children were well behaved and we did not have any melt downs.


Well that wraps up the Christmas day report.

She uses this line at every party.

Ben: you are good at blowing those balloons up.

Hala: I am from Lebanon, I am good at blowing things up.

She is three years old - going on 14.....

I have already told Sarah, Ella will be her responsibility when she hits the teenage years.
A few weeks ago we celebrated Ella's third birthday. She was excited for weeks before. Ella is the last one in the immediate family to have a birthday this year and she has had to sit through all the other birthdays since her birthday.

Ella was in heaven because Ella's favourite type of food is party food.



Sarah organised a mermaid jumping castle, some games and our friend Hala to do some face painting. Granny was requested to provide a chocolate cake. The face painting proved to be very popular with a large queue forming. Another friend Lisa stepped in to project manage the activity by issuing tickets so everyone knew when it was their turn. Ella of course couldn't sit still for too long so she just got a simple design.


The jumping castle proved to a be big hit, although Ella's main recollection of the jumping castle was "the boys ran over me". Ella is one to remember the negatives. There were a lot of boys at the party because a lot of Ella's friends have brothers.

Some party tips for others in relation to face painting:

1. Face painting and jumping castles don't mix well. The jumping castle can be cleaned afterwards with a wet cloth.
2. Face painting does not mean body painting. Painting feet and arms will leave face paint all over the bedroom carpets. This is still waiting to be cleaned off. Body painting will also mean more paint on the jumping castle - see tip 1.
   

Indian cousins

Found a photo taken when the Indian cousins were visiting recently. Included it to say we are thinking of them and Simon and Ben miss them.

Who said Ella was a tomboy

Yes. Ella has expressed interest in ballet lessons. We are trying to postpone them for another year...

Copying Mummy

Ben asked Mummy if he could have roller blades too like Mummy and Mummy foolishly thought he was ready for them. Once again the expectation did not match the reality.....

Great Aunt Margaret

Great Aunt Margaret came to visit and after being exhausted by Ella for about an hour or so she asked, "Does she have a rest now?" Of course the answer was no.

Future soccer star

Ben joined Simon on his first soccer camp last holidays and he loved it.

Winter hats

I know its not winter but these photos are just so gorgeous.

Outsourcing

As one of six children I always wondered how my mother managed but I think I now know the answer -- outsourcing. To older children that is. The problem with that is
that it only works when some of the children are old enough to actually help. Ours are a bit too close together and too young for this to have happened yet but
at least Simon can read to the other two now.

Happy Families

Simon has a friend in his class at school with a brother and a sister. The brother is older than Ben and the sister is about the same age as Ella. So ideally when you get them all together they would play nicely together. This is pretty much what happened when they came over for a family playdate recently.

Granny speechless

As already mentioned in this blog we had a surprise party for Granny Harris in October and it was a big success. The biggest success was the actual surprise itself and the chocolate cake.
Here are some photos.

So you think you can dance

Simon had a school disco at school today so I thought I'd publish a few of his moves.

How much longer?

How much longer can they all three fit in the bath?

The best excuse so far

Over the years Simon has produced an endless list of excuses as to why he cannot get to sleep. Last week he came up with one of his best ever:
"I can't get to sleep because my pants are moving around."

I can just see what we are going to hear in the future:

• I can't get to sleep because my heart is beating
• I can't get to sleep because I am breathing
• I can't get to sleep because a butterfly in the Amazon fluttered its wings
• I can't get to sleep because of global warming

The sleepover as described by Sarah

It wasn't all about the shopping.

It was about having no activities to organise to prevent the kids from fighting with each other. It was about relaxing and deciding "what should I do next?". It was about uninterruped television viewing on the plane. It was about not rushing. The shopping was incidental.

It was great. And we have planned another getaway next year. Except this time there'll be no shopping as befitting the forecast economic bad times we are going camping.

The Sleepover as described by Michael

This post has been delayed due to exhaustion. Last weekend Sarah went for an extended sleepover at a frend's place. Sure the friend was across the country in Perth and she went for two nights. Sarah bade farewell to us all on Friday morning and then hurried out the door to the taxi. Late on Sunday night she returned. She went with two other friends - it was really an extended slumber party. I don't really know much about what they got up to. I do know that there was significant shopping time involved. I haven't been told how much was spent although I expect that that the recession that is being forecast will probably be delayed several months in Western Australia.

On the home front I was left with three kids to look after for two days. I am only a father, looking after kids is not part of my job description. Knowing my limited capabilities in this area, Sarah organised for the boys to go and sleep at grannies on Saturday night. I thought with this arrangement I might be able to cope for the two days. However things don't always go to plan.

For the last few weeks Ella has been toilet training. This has been going very well and she is basically toilet trained. What has this got to do with a sleep over you might ask? One of the incentives offered to Ben the reluctant toilet user when he was toilet training was: you can go for a sleepover to grannies when you use the toilet. The boys had been repeating this to Ella. Well now she was toilet trained and she was going for the night as well. Great you are thinking. I would be free of all three children for the night and also part of Sunday. No! how wrong you would be!

Granny said she could cope with the two boys but if Ella came as well then I needed to come along as well for a sleepover. A sleepover with your parents how exciting!

It seems strange that you need to fly across the country to go shopping....

2008 -- A catch up

Yes its been a busy year and I know this is meant to be blog and not just a sad excuse for one of those Christmas letters. I thought if I wrote it in October then you wouldn't realise it was actually one of those terrible letters in disguise minus the cheesy photos. More about the absence of photos later.

2008 was full of numerically significant milestones in the Boyd/Harris family. The first occurred in January when "Pa Len" turned 80. This was celebrated "en famille" at good old Craigieburn guest house in Bowral. Len invited the whole family to stay for the weekend with a special birthday dinner and entertainment ( a blind piano player no joke!) on the Saturday night. Fortunately, good old Craigieburn has had a facelift since we stayed there when we were young. Its now very comfortable with a serious restaurant. Over the weekend there was some serious and not so serious golf, some tennis and lots of relaxing for most people. We didn't quite get to do much of the relaxing except when I had a one hour massage. The kids were in heaven with all their big cousins giving them lots of attention. They also enjoyed the breakfast each morning in the restaurant. Obviously this wasn't so enjoyable for us. However, we were in much better shape than our last visit to Craigieburn with Len for Mum and Dad's big wedding anniversary when Ben was still waking at 5:00 and being bottle fed.

The next big birthday for the year was my 40th birthday in February. I had a great party at home catered for by my friend Gwen. We also had someone to serve and help out so it wasn't hard work for us.

Michael's birthday was the next in March but he hasn't made it to 40 yet so we'll leave that blog post for next year.

We did have a great holiday in March at Hyams beach down south with our friends Penny and Alan and their extended family. There was lots of nice weather, beach expeditions and best of all sleep ins. (well 6:30 nearly every day). We were joined for a few days by Grandma and Pa and Deb brought Tom and Sam for a night on the weekend. Once again the kids had a great time. Sarah even got to go surfing for 2 hours with keen surfer Alan.

The plan was to have lots of photos for this blog post and that's the excuse I gave myself for not writing it earlier. However, our computer hard disk crashed and experts that we are we didn't have a back up. We are still trying to recover all our photos but its not looking good so you'll just have to imagine the smiling faces and posed shots.

In the Harris family April was the next big birthday month with both Ben and Simon's birthday parties. We decided to break the trend and give them separate parties this year as Simon was getting old enough to have his own party. We were all booked in for a magician for Simon's party and then his wife rang 10 days before to say he was taken to hospital. At the last minute I managed to organise a sports birthday party for "the sporty one" Simon which turned out really well. Ella even participated in the sports games.

For Ben's party we had the old faithful jumping castle and some preschool friends (we think. It was hard to work out from Ben who from preschool we should invite.)

April also saw a 50th birthday for Anthony which was celebrated with afternoon tea at Lindfield.

We were a bit partied out after this effort so we had a bit of an entertaining break.

July saw the arrival of the Indian contingent with the favourite cousins visiting from India. We went away for another family holiday to Lake Macquarie with Vince, Maz and Darcy and Grandma and Pa. Angela, Liza and Francesca also joined us with guest appearances from some Darling Point Boyd women -- Pam, Alice, Jessica, Margot and Annabel. All enjoyed the heated pool and the parents of young children particularly enjoyed the kids club for 2 hours each morning.

August and September were very quiet months and Michael was particularly busy with work unfortunately. If you already do a five day a week job in four days its a bit hard when you get busy.

The next big milestone in the immediate family was a 70th birthday for Granny Gwenda who definitely did not want a fuss. So we decided to organise a surprise birthday afternoon tea. Much to everyone's surprise we managed to make it a surprise and it was a great success -- especially the chocolate cake.

And the final event of the year entertaining wise will be the 3rd birthday for a certain Ella Harris who already knows her birthday is next and she is having a jumping castle. She is busy instructing me who she wishes to come along with all the other instructions she issues each day.

We are currently in the throes of working on one of our goals for the year which is to be nappy free (during the day at least) by the end of the year. With the help of some lollies, chocolates and Dora underpants we are quietly confident that this will be achieved. Mind you there is nothing quiet about Ella herself who will not go gently into any good night unfortunately but as my friend Penny says "you get what you get and you don't get upset."

Happy Birthday Grandpa

a 2008 goal achieved

Yes one of the goals for 2008 that I stated earlier in the year has been achieved.
Today all 3 children slept past 6:30! Hooray! The worst offender, Ella, didn't cry out for Mummy till 6:45... She has started sleeping better just in the last week with a few 6:00's and 5:45's. Let's hope it continues. If it does we might even be able to contemplate watching a 9:30 TV show!

We miss you

Last Wednesday we farewelled Maz, Vince, Vince and Darcy. The cousins are off to Bangalore, India for a few years. Simon, Ben and Ella loved spending time with their cousins.

We had a good old lamb BBQ to send them off in style.

Next time Mazzie visits, Ella may even give her a hug

Latest movie release

The latest gadget purchase after the bike was a new video camera. So now we can start making home movies. Simon is planning a Lego Star Wars movie. production should start sometime in 2009 when he finishes building all of the ships.

Willoughby Beach

Sarah recently bought herself a new bike. It arrived partially assembled in a box. The biggest attraction for the kids was not the bike but the box. Simon decided that we needed a beach in the backyard. Ella who seems to love taking sand out the sandpit was more than happy to oblige.

Thank you grandpa.

Hi my name is Ben Harris. I am 3 and 2/3 and my parents are letting me write this post because I am very advanced for my age. Yesterday my grandparents took me shopping for my first lunch box since I am starting preschool next year. I had a great time.

While we were shopping Granny left us alone for a few minutes and Grandpa and I went off by ourselves. My Dad tells me that when he was younger Grandpa wasn't allowed to go shopping by himself because he can't help buying stuff. Luckily I was accompanying him and we headed off to look at the toy trains. Under my careful supervision Grandpa bought us each a toy train.

Thank you very much Grandpa you are so generous and despite what I say sometimes, I do love you.