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)

In other news we went to the school disco (aka fund raiser). Ella won a prize for "crazy dancing". There was not a lot of uptake of the paper plane offer but Simon is determined. When we returned from the disco he arranged for Emma from next door to come over and view the exhibition. She left 40c poorer but much happier as the proud owner of two Simon Harris originals.

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.

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.

Sarah and Michael will miss:

• the ironing and the washing
• the clean house
  
• the chicken schnitzel dinners
• having time off, knowing the kids are being looked after so well.

Goodbye and thank you Lizzy.

The first day of the rest of my life

Last week, preschool started. This year Ella is joining her brother at Children's Cottage. This Wednesday Simon is starting school. Ever since I started working 4 days a week (4 years ago) I have been dreaming of the day when all three of them are in school and I'll get a few hours to myself. Poor Sarah will have to wait another two years for this to happen to her. Although I am swapping my first day off with Sarah just to give her a taste.

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

Whenever Sarah is baking in the kitchen, Ella likes to lend a hand. Mainly because there may be the chance to lick the spoon. Since it is summer at the moment, the idea is that you do the baking in your swimming costume so you can jump into the pool while the biscuits are in the oven.






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.

There were three in the bed, then.....

Another wacky sleepover story.
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.

Having a lovely summer.

Wow what a start to the new year!

Yesterday they all slept in till 6:15 AM

Today no one made any noise until 6:30 AM

What more can you say.

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!