So far this morning....

I have a horrid head cold at the moment so keeping up with my two whirlwinds of destruction and mayhem has been challenging. Thus OPERATION EXHAUSTION began: Baby was set to work picking up all the fallen camelia flowers (flafla's as he calls them):



Captain was sent on a superhero mission (instructed to jump as high as the sky):

A quick wardrobe change allowed for some home maintenance (cleaning up toys):

Followed by repairs to the volcano (our current Make and Do project, will blog about it shortly):

A quick swim before lunch:

OPERATION EXHAUSION a success: baby asleep, Captain watching a documentary about volcanos, Project Manager about to have a lie down. Hurrah! Please let this afternoon be as straight forward!

Make and Do: The Volcano!!!

Inspired by nature (and a few other clever Mamas who have made these for their broods recently) we built ourselves a volcano. The Captain was put to work ripping up bits of paper for the papier-mache volcano and valley.

We then borrowed a bit of plywood from Daddy's supplies under the house to use as the base of the volcano. An old tin can was used as the volcano crater and some take-away containers helped pad out the rest of the volcano. We used a basic papier-mache recipe of flour and water to construct the rest.

All our hard work completed the volcano was set to dry out in the afternoon sunshine.

We were so proud of ourselves and then disaster, in the form of a very cheeky brushtail possum, struck. Very late at night we heard unusual sounds on our back deck. Ross, sent to investigate, discovered that a possum was eating our beautiful volcano! The culprit was caught on security camera and further invesigations are pending!

In the morning we surveyed the damage to our volcano and decided it was repairable.

Repairs underway:

After another day in the sunshine the volcano was ready to paint:

Finally, it was ready for the Captain to take to Pre-School for show and tell. His pre-school teacher helped him mix the ingredients for the chemical reaction.

The eruption!

Apparently the class loved it!

Baby upgraded to Team Pirate for future Tours

The little one is no longer happy to ride around on this...

It was left abandoned by the side of the bike track and replaced with a newer, swifter model. (Undoubtedly, the best toy that we have ever bought). Nevermind that he had to tippy-toe his way around the track as his legs barely touched the ground and that he frequently over balanced in his attempts to keep up with his brother. Lucky daddy got to follow him around attempting to prevent a peloton pile up...


I guess I should hardly be suprised. The Captain went from the wood bike to a pedal bike with hardly a hiccup (well, training wheels for about 2 weeks, just after he turned 3) and now is a force to contend with on this bike! Looks like Ross can start grooming them both for the Tour now!

Anzac Day Weekend

We have just had a lovely long weekend away in Canberra visiting my parents. We visited the amazing Questacon, where the boys just had the most marvellous time. The very first exhibit that we saw were huge robotic dinosaurs. A mama Maiasaur with her nest of little ones, a Stegasaurus and of course no dinosaur exhibit would be complete without a terrifying Tyrannosaurus. They were half-size (but enormous to little people) animatronic dinosaurs that were moving, roaring and even blinking. The dinosaur loving Captain was totally enthralled, but the little one was quite frightened by them. He stood motionless, pointing at the T-Rex model absolutely frozen with fear. Naturally I took a photo of this before I rescued him, mean Mummy! The Captain was very impressed with it all though, especially after our previous dinosaur exhibition disaster... aged 3 we took him to see this, after looking at various fossils he asked to see the "real dinosaurs" what do you mean we asked... "you know, the alive ones" he explained, looking at the pair of us as if we were stupid! Poor old Captain, he was devastated when we explained the meaning of extinction to him. Well, Questacon now has a lot to answer for as he has now been announcing to anyone that will listen that "Canberra has real dinosaurs!"

I think that the Baby was much more impressed with "Mini Q" than the dinosaurs. Hours of fun to be had!

Loving the time spent with Grandma.

I have not seen a rainbow for what feels like forever and then suddenly saw two this weekend. Beautiful!

We rode our bikes, all of us (Grandma, Grandpa, Daddy, Me (plus little one on my bike) and the Captain, from my parents house to Manuka, for coffee and babycino's. Then down to the lake and we did the bridge to bridge loop. I was so proud of the Captain riding all that way. We did have lots of stops, including a lengthy playground visit and time spent watching model yachts meander lazily around some black swans, but it really is a long ride for a little boy (probably around 9k) and he loved every minute of it . Perhaps Ross' plans for him to be the next Lance Armstrong are not in vain!

Baking a Dolly Varden

My sweet little niece recently had her 4th birthday and in our male dominated household of helicopter, pirate ship and digger cakes, I thought it would be a lovely change to bake a Dolly Varden cake for her. Foolishly I thought that this would be much easier than it actually was. It all started out well and I felt quietly confident as I popped the cake into the oven and sat down to drink my tea... after first stopping to admire how nicely my Cornish Ware pudding basin matched the mug... hmm clearly should have been a bit more focused!

Uh oh! Total disaster... husband came to the rescue and opened the bottle of red in the background.

After a glass of red, a bit more oven time and an urgent phone call to sister-in-law seeking advice on where to amputate Barbie's legs. (We went for a full leg amputation). I then wrapped Barbie's pelvis in glad wrap to keep things neat and tidy (ie. no cake inside Barbies bits... that sounds bad but you know what I mean!). The end result was not as catastrophic as I was anticipating. The clothes peg in Barbie's hair was to keep her hair out of the way for icing.

Happy Birthday Miss Zee!

School Holidays

The boys have had a fabulous time...

The holidays started over Easter which we celebrated with their first "Egg hunt" in the garden. They literally raced around in their pyjamas shrieking...



We explored galleries...


To inspire us in the future...

and created elaborate duplo constructions (this one was called "Emergency Cool!")...

Wheely bugs! Fortunately we have a suprisingly hardy floating floor...

We visited the zoo and found out that Meerkats like the smell of rye cruskits, there were a dozen meerkats salivating on the other side of that wall...

Explored some marvellous playgrounds...



Made a necklace for Grandma's birthday (you can see it blowing in the wind), she wore it proudly while we ate lunch (at a rather smart cafe!)...

Rode our bikes...

and started potty training this one... (his idea not ours!)

All is well at pirate HQ!

Book worms - hurrah!

I adore books, I collect them, I read them voraciously (and have done since I was a little girl), I have even insisted that we investigate the local library options before any house purchases! So when I see the boys are starting to share a similar love of reading and books it makes me feel tremendously good!

It truly warms my heart to see them cuddled up together enjoying a book.