One of the highlights of 2009 was our farmstay long weekend with our friends Deb and John at a hobby farm near Foster on the north coast. I organised the holiday with stringent requirements from my friend Deb. For some strange reason she didn’t want to share a house with us so we had to have separate cabins. And she also didn’t want any other visitors at the same time as us. So I dutifully found somewhere that fulfilled these requirements even though this made it slightly more expensive. It was worth every cent. We stayed in two lovely cottages on the property each with a warm open fire. there were plenty of things for the kids to do – animal feeding, tractor rides, horse and pony rides and paddle boats. The ‘farmer’ also took the kids out a few times to give us a break and they really looked after us. Check out the pictures.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
What we did this year – Volume 1 – The sub continent visits.
This posting and the next few are a lame attempt to to catch up with blogging. I gave Sarah a list of topics a few months ago but she has not had the time or energy to post about them. Running a household with three active children and a demanding husband plus juggling a job seems to tire her out a bit.[ed. yes it was a bit of a tiring year especially since we did it without a nanny!]
In July we hosted the tour of the Indians with their latest team member Claudia “Bluey”. The kids just loved seeing their cousins and they really miss them when they go. They enjoyed playing video games with them and doing science experiments.
Once again Auntie Mazzie tormented me with gifts of Indian Cricket Team t-shirts to the boys. Her excuse this time was to improve relations with the sub continent. I am still working on a revenge gift for her next visit.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
The end of an era - the last Retriever Poker Night
Yes Michael has left his job at Retriever for new horizons. Here is a picture of the last Retriever Poker Night he hosted.
Dress up clothes from Clare
My sister-in-law Clare kindly passed on a whole bunch of dress up clothes she had for her boys. And Ben has made the most use of these. He just loves dressing up! Here is one strange outfit he designed. And he has never seen Michael Jackson!
Thursday, July 09, 2009
85 and still going strong
Recently we celebrated Joss's 85th birthday with a wild afternoon tea at our place. There was no alcohol but quite a bit of chocolate and nougat... The photographer was a bit slack so sorry there aren't so many photos. But pretty much the same people came as to Gwenda's 70th party earlier in the year so you can refer back to that blog post. The skies were celebrating too with a double rainbow outside the party.
Joss was looking very well and this article suggests why.
Why I don't need to shop for Ella's clothes
I rarely have to shop to buy Ella's clothes. That's because my friend Lisa passes on all of her little girl Imogen's hand me downs. And they are top quality stuff. Here is a picture of the latest batch. Ella enjoyed 'sorting' them out.It used to be a treat for me to shop for Ella's clothes until I took her recently to Kmart. I swear I was shopping with a teenager! Everything I chose was automatically rejected and there were tears... I bought the things I wanted and they were popular in retrospect.
Dress ups with Imogen
You know how they warn teenagers these days to watch what they post on the internet because when they grow up and apply for jobs prospective employers will find incriminating photos of them doing regrettable things. These are such photos of Imogen Spence and Simon and Ella %% Harris. (just to trick the search engines Lisa)
record sleep ins
All I can say is after 7 years of waking up before 6am its about bloody time.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Question: what month is ripe for bad gorilla jokes?
Answer: 'Ape'ril (courtesy of Simon's latest joke book)
This post is just about what happened in April.
There were two big birthdays -- Ben turned 5 and Simon turned 7. We had a combined birthday this year which was pretty successful. We had the sports guys come and entertain the 20 or so under 7 year olds attending.
Other developments:
Ben and Ella started a weekly dance/drama class called MovenGroove. This was instigated after getting sick of dragging Ben into the swimming pool for lessons and deciding I needed a break from swimming lessons. 'Unfortunately' Mums aren't even allowed in the room for MovenGroove. I thought 'Humpty Squad' was good where I could sit and have a cup of tea while watching on the sidelines but this is even better. They do open the class occasionally for the parents so tomorrow I will get to watch them moving and grooving. Theyalways seem to have enjoyed the class but aren't that enthusiastic about it. Its not cool for Ben to be enthusiastic about that sort of thing but it was very hard to find a class they could both do together. Maybe next term we'll do Tae Kwon do for preschoolers.
They have also decided the gym creche is fun so I am trying to take them there once a week for a bit of Sarah time. Are you sensing a theme here? This is just the sort of win-win situation we like. Happy mother. Happy child. Happy family.
Simon's big discovery this month is "virtual lego". Lego has produced a virtual designer which you download and you can build lego in software. There is a huge collection of bricks and then when you've build it you upload your creation to a website and have the opportunity to "buy" all the bricks in your creation. They will even customise the packaging for you. Simon is desperate to buy some until I explain the shipping costs. You can also upload pictures of your real creations as seen here.
Monday, March 09, 2009
The weekend business report.
On Saturday, we discovered we had a budding young entrepreneur in the family. Last year Sarah bought Simon a book about making paper planes. He has been busily making planes for the last few months and has a big box of them. Despite the global financial crisis Simon decided that he would share his creations with the world (for a fee of course)
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Wet Weather Guide to Port Stephens
Two weeks ago we had a weeks holiday at Anna Bay in Port Stephens. We were all really looking forward to a nice summer holiday at the beach. The previous week had been really hot and we hoped the weather would continue. We had a shaky start to the holiday.
We left on Sunday, the temperature was predicted to reach 40 degrees C. Packing for holidays is always stressful - there is a long list of things to bring for the kids besides just their clothes. Sarah was also bringing about twenty books - I don't know when she was expecting to read them. Sometime Sarah forgets that she has three kids that need to be entertained. Besides remembering all the things to bring, the other problem is fitting it all into the car. Despite having the Odyssey (aka the jumbo), there is limited boot room with the third row of seats up. So on Sunday morning I had crossed off all the things on the list and managed to fit it all in the car and we set off as planned at 10:30. It is about 2 1/2 hours to Anna Bay from our house. We arrived there seven hours later!.
When we were about 30 minutes away from Anna Bay, I realised there was one thing I had not put on list - the keys to the house. I asked Sarah if she had packed them. Well the answer was no. So we turned around and headed back home. Luckily the kids slept most of the way back. At about 3PM we headed off the second time, finally arriving at the holiday house at about 6:30 with two stops for MacDonalds at the same Macdonalds.
The next day, Monday was nice and warm and we all headed down to the beach to see Sarah's friends Mark, Tim and Mia who were also staying in Anna Bay. The boys splashed around in the water and played on the rocks. Ella and Sarah went shopping for food. We couldn’t really swim because there was an onshore wind that was slowly covering the beach in blue bottles. I popped a few for Ben and then a few more…after a hundred or so I pointed out to Ben that the beach was covered in them and he didn't need to keep showing me each one.
Tuesday, the weather was not looking good and we headed to the local fun park - Toboggan hill. The boys each had a go on the climbing wall, although Ben was a little bit scared once he had got a few metres off the ground . We all had a few runs on the toboggan and then the kids had a go on some kids dodgem cars. Everyone had a good time.
Wednesday was pouring rain so we visited Fighter World at the local air force base. It was a bit of a rush through as the children darted between the planes. The main attraction turned out to be some old arcade games. We didn't last as long as I hoped there. Our next door neighbours have friends that own a play centre down in Charlestown about an hours drive south through Newcastle. We drove down to check it out and have some lunch. The kids were pretty happy - Simon especially when he found that they had a playstation.
Thursday and the weather was looking slightly better so went to another beach called "One Mile Beach". It wasn't that warm but at least it wasn't raining so the kids could spend some time digging holes. The other reason for going to this beach was that it had a different orientation to the ones that were still covered in blue bottles. Just our luck though, the wind had changed and this beach had even more blue bottles on it. There were so many they were in piles a few cm high. We went back to have lunch with Tim and Mark. Now Tim is a bit of gourmet - makes his own ice cream. What a shock I had when we had chicken nuggets, mini sausage rolls and pizza for lunch.
Fridays was looking bleak again We couldn't take it anymore so we decided to come home a day early.
Not our best holiday ever although I am sure the kids had a great time.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Bye Bye
With Ella starting preschool this year, it is time for our 4th child to leave home. Busy Lizzy (aka the craft nanny) will be looking after the children for the last time on Friday. Lizzy has been with us for 3 1/2 years. While she has been with us Lizzy has given us a taste of things to come in 15 years time. Lizzy is studying part time at university and Sarah has been helping her with essays and assignments. Lizzy sleeps over occasionally and we worry when she goes out and isn't home by the time we go to sleep at 9:30PM. Hopefully we will be staying up later when the kids are older so they don't have a 9:15 curfew.
The children will all miss Lizzy terribly. They all love:
- the shopping trips to toys r us where they plan their birthday and christmas present lists
- the fantastic chicken schnitzel dinners
- the coffee shop trips for the baby cinos and cookies
- the painting and other craft activities. Whenever the children get a craft present, we say "you can do that with Lizzy"
- the fun times.
- the ironing and the washing
- the clean house
- the chicken schnitzel dinners
- having time off, knowing the kids are being looked after so well.
The first day of the rest of my life
I know you are not really interested in my ramblings, what you really want to know is how did Ella go. Did she cope at preschool? Did the preschool cope with Ella. Well everyone was happy. On the first day she stayed to 12:30 and on the second day after telling Sarah to go in the morning, Ella and Ben stayed until 2:30 and the teachers even got Ella to have a sleep. Hopefully things will continue on like this.
Working together
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Producing this blog takes a lot of effort so I have started training Simon in the fine art of blog writing. Although he does use the computer, he seems to spend most of his time playing online games rather than writing insightful and funny blog articles.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
There were three in the bed, then.....
Last night was meant to be the night! The night - you know what I mean - the night that all three children slept somewhere else and we had a night off. All three were going to spend the night at grandma's flat. Everything was going well, we dropped them off, got their dinner organised, gave grandma a long list of instructions (bringing up six children and looking after numerous grand children, would not prepare you for looking after our three wonders).
As soon as they were settled in we dashed off and had an early dinner and then headed home for some hard core Wii action and a DVD. We were too exhausted from the weeks activity to contemplate a late night.
Just as Sarah placed the Wii remote on her wrist for a another tennis marathon, the phone rang. Grandma was ringing to say Ben wanted to come home, it was about 7:45. We were fine about that. Ben did the same thing when he first went to a sleep over at Grannies. Sarah returned about 30 minutes later with a very tired Ben and Ella. Ella had also decided that she wanted to come home when Sarah arrived to pick up Ben. Once these two were put to bed, we settled down on the couch to watch the DVD.
Just as we started watching the phone rang again, Gandma was bringing Simon home, he was missing Ben - Who would have known those children were so close to each other! They are arguing about some silly toy as I am writing this entry. More likely Simon thought he was missing out on something at home. We had a quick chat with Simon but failed to convince him to stay there for the night. Sarah couldn't face another trip across the bridge that night so Grandma kindly returned him to us. Poor grandma got breathtested without her license on the way back - luckily she was let off.
So after such a promising start we had all three back with us. The only plus side was that the boys slept in until 6:15 and Ella slept till 7:15. It is now 8:15 and they are all busy arguing - situation normal.
Wish us better luck for next time.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Friday, January 02, 2009
Wow what a start to the new year!
Today no one made any noise until 6:30 AM
What more can you say.