Happy on Holiday

Happy on Holiday, yes well now we are, but the holiday break started with a bit of a hiss, as the door of the utility was unlocked to a hor-rid-able smell. The power in the whole utility had been 'tripped' and so the freezer had been turned off since around labour weekend. Decomposing fish bait makes for a bad, bad smell. Still, we dealt with that calamity, had two others - caravan canopies ripping etc and finally made it to bed that night exhausted. Day two - much better, kids playing in the sand, friends and family visiting, Coromandel FM on the radio.. now it really feels like a holiday.

The Day After

The day after Boxing Day.. the recovery

• finding the kitchen bench after yesterdays cooking
• finding the lost parts of toys ..already
• finding the patience to listen to crazy frog 'We are the Champions' for the 20th time this morning
• finding the keys to the boat lock thingy, so we can take the boat on holiday
• finding the Mylanta to combat all that rich food I ate yesterday

Yep, 'spose it's a fairly typical Boxing Day here.

We had a great Christmas, you can't beat your four year old pulling you by the arms out of bed at 6am screaming 'come on Mum, you gotta come, you won't believe this, you won't believe what is in the lounge ..truly Mum, come on.'

It really felt like Christmas for me when I heard that.

Pete and I did the big splurge and got the boys a 50cc motorbike. Cam says 'This is the best present I ever got in all my seven years Dad'. Aaron has one comment 'Yea-ass' which I think means pretty great.

We had breakfast with Peters parents, then late lunch/dinner with mine. Lovely company, lovely food, great day.

Best present: DH and I got a Digital SLR ..pretty darn cool

Noisiest Present: Kids got these screaming monkey things that you fire like a catapult and they scream monkey screams as they fly through the air .. umm lovin' that present, we have three of them as well, one for each of the boys. Thank you Aunty Lynne.

Best cooking success: New recipe for Curried Mango and Chicken salad went down a treat.

We are off to the beach early tomorrow morning, setting up camp, awnings etc for most of the day tomorrow, then pure beachin, boatin bliss for 3 weeks. Yeeeha

Christmas is coming closer

and closer and closer. My lack of organisation is showing. I am feeling very overwhelmed.. so what is a girl to do.. scrapbook of course. I spent three whole hours on one card for a challange at Scrapbook Outlet. Three whole hours, cripes, this model isn't going on the production line!.

I used the beading dimensional magic idea from Nic's blog and had to use non-christmas colours to make a card. It was a good medative workout gluing those beads on, I chilled out heaps and went to bed at 2.00am in the morning - a happy little scrapper.

The card won the competition too!, and was sent to a very special lady who has made so much home baking for my dad and our family lately. A very special lady indeed.

Scrapcamp

Scrapcamp was cool, the best part was getting away from home and all the jobs to do there and just 'Be girly, with the girls'. Shopping with Sonya and Jennifer at Tirau, all the little shops your husband would never stop at, gotta love that. In the theme of a girly weekend (vs life at home with 4 males) I even started a mini album on the topic. The suggestions on 'How to remember to be a girl' from all the other ladies at our table sure were good for a few laughs, and Nic thought of a good title for it too..Out of the Mud.. I like it. I really enjoyed the challenges etc and this is the page I completed in 1 hour from the Saturday night challenge using Sassafrass Lass papers. The photo is my sister Haley and her new fiance on their engagement announcement. I was pretty stoked with how the page turned out - was really buzzing completing it - literally, (go the V drink) and was also pretty chuffed when it was chosen as the winner. Cool prize too from Scrapbooking by Design, a cigar box from Cosmo Cricket and some other little things.

Biggest Laugh of the weekend, the walk that I went on at 6.30am to catch up with the others. I didn't find them and kept switching between paths trying to see where they were. In the end it seems they didn't go walking, but went scrapping instead, and they didn't let me in on the joke for ages too.. very funny, as I am not normally a morning walker either.

Mothers of Boys

Mothers of Boys may relate to this, I went to school today and checked the lost property box and there I found no less than SIX shoes belonging to my son Cameron. SIX SHOES!, two of them aren't even a pair! ( had the other unmatched ones at home). How does this happen? more like how OFTEN does this happen?

Days of threats about bringing home shoes, hats, lunchboxes etc fall on deaf ears. Often you hear in our house "Yes Mum, I did check the lost property, for sure, and I just couldn't find my shoes/lunchbox/hat/jearsey/etc.

As a last resort today Cam had to wear his big brothers shoes (he had none left himself) . As he was walking to the bus he tripped over in those big shoes and grazed both knees badley. We heard the cries from the house (our drive is 350m long) and went and helped Cam. We waveed bye to his brother on the bus and then took him home to clean up his knees. I drove him to school and sent him in with no shoes at all. ( I always said I would never send my kids to school with bare feet). Cam was so upset, scrapping his knees, missing the bus and having no shoes to wear to school. I explained in vain again that this is what happens when you forget your shoes, and that because HE forgot his shoes HE had to wear bare feet.

As I leave the classroom I have one last look in the lost propery box and there to my disbelief (as I have looked there many times already) I find his new sandals - on top - which makes my think another child must have taken them home on accident and then brought them back. Once I found the sandals I decided to look through the other stuff incase there are any jearseys etc, and that's when I found the total of SIX SHOES ( and a pair of soxs).

Oh, I can see this is as a never ending saga, boy and shoes just don't seem to gel, I am up for a heck of a lot more lost property visits before this saga is over!

Boating Days

Boating Days are good for the soul.

A couple of weekends ago, after the stress of our PTA Gala (we raised $15,000) we finally had a family day out. There was a noticeable lack of wind, and the Manukau Bar (pictured) was very flat. I had not been out to the bar before, so it was great to get out in the boat and just cruuzzz the water, without too much fishing on the agenda.

We went right to the harbour entrance, and I was very inspired by the rugged coastline on one side contrasted with the bushy hills of Huia and Cornwallis on the other side.

There is nothing like getting out on the water, and viewing natures splendor to restore the soul.

First Time

Yep every blogger has a first time,everyone has to do it, take the plunge and start their own blog instead of reading everyone elses, so now its my turn.

Today was pretty cool, I got compliented on the tasty dinner, and all three children (and dad) ate it without complaining or needing threats, (not what super nanny would do). The computer man came today and improved my home network heaps, and tomorrow is Friday - always a great day in my books.

This week the kids had a trikeathon at kindy, big laughs, Cameron on a Pony (we are so not a horsy family), Ben the red devil blitzing the other kids on the bike track, and showing great potential for awards in Road Rage for 2006, and Az on the Magic Carpet ride, which is not even a carpet, rather a 4wd motorbike pulling around a wheelbarrow tub, OSH would have loved that, but there is too much goody too shoes and OSH stuff these days and it was great to see flagrent abuse of regulations and good old fashioned fun had by all.

The boys are really improving in swimming lessons, which makes the often unappreciated taxi ride everyone gets worth it! I see if I can upload some photos.

Cheers for Now

Megs