Freedom (day) in the forest!

Today was the last day of a 4 day weekend. It is Freedom day, commemorating the first democratic elections 16 years ago. Yesterday was a school holiday making it a nice long weekend.

This afternoon we went walking in Tokai forest with Lisa and Mitchell. Bryce and Matthew were bike- riding in the forest too but we ended up in 2 different parts.

We really don't make use of the forests enough, they are really on our doorstep. I have no excuse we just don't and what a shame, it was lovely. A beautiful autumn afternoon.

Some pictures:

Beauty on our doorstep.

Running free and having a rest.

Little bits of autumn all around.

Niave found water! Her goal for the outing achieved!!

(Mitchell did so well on his bike. He is going to take after his brother for sure! We passed a family who were leaving just as we were starting who commented that they had carried their toddlers bike the whole way - Well not us !! Mitchell rode every step of the way negotiating rocks, snakes, bumps and bends - he had a ball.)

Dwarfed by the tree giants.

We simply HAVE to do this more often.

George's marvellous medicine.

On Monday Abigail started reading George's Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl to Niave.

I didn't think she'd really understand it much but she does actually seem to follow and has LOVED having her sister read to her. They have almost finished the book and already past the much anticipated part where George's horrible granny shoots through the roof! (It is Roald Dahl after all!!)

Anyway, I had to chuckle last night when I overheard this part of the story:

"you're a nasty little maggot" (this being the granny talking to George) "you're a lazy and dis... dis... - MOM, what does this say? (at this point after having heard the last 2 insulting phrases I suggested "disgusting" but hadn't actually checked the word in the book). As I made my way over to see which word it actually was Niave pipes up "disobedient Abby" - and she was right!!! I was amazed that she could actually pronounce the word and that she got it in context!!

The sentence reads "you're a lazy and disobedient worm" - such endearing sentiments from a grandmother!!!

Juice!

We hadn't used the juicer for a while so we decided to make some vitamin C packed orange and Grapefruit juice. It was a little sour, a little bitter, but really rather nice, and as nothing is added and nothing taken away it's SO much better than store-bought juice and beats chewable vitamin C tablets for kids!!

YUM!

It's been a while!

So, it's been a while since my last post, not much happening here except routine stuff - back to school and all that.

So I thought I'd post this picture which I have been meaning to do for some time.

This is me (left) in sub B - 1982 and Abigail in the equivalent, grade 2 - 2009:

Quite similair, don't you think??!!

Easter.

For Easter this year I decided to make Resurrection cookies that I'd seen on my friend Taryn's blog. Simply they are meringues with nuts in them and each stage of the baking process has a verse from the Bible attached that connects it to a particular part of the crucifixion or resurrection. The idea is that the meringues bake overnight and are beautifully hollow like the empty tomb on Easter Sunday morning. SO here's what we did:

First we crushed the nuts into small pieces:
Then we separated the eggs and beat the egg whites and sugar together. The recipe said to beat for between 12 - 15 minutes but after about 9 minutes Abigail said "mom, there are blue flashes coming out of the mixer"! So we stopped there!

Then there was some licking:Some were a little over-enthusiastic!

Then we folded in the nuts and placed dollops of mixture onto a baking tray, after that it goes into the hot oven which is then turned off.

The next morning we removed the meringues from the oven and found that they were not hollow at all!!In fact they didn't taste very nice, had a slightly burnt flavour. At that point Niave announced "I don't like these boomerangs (boom-meringues!)" and went off to find some Easter eggs! Thankfully though, unlike our cookies, Jesus had risen and the tomb was empty on that first Easter Sunday morning.

Next year we'll try again, maybe by then I'll have a mixer that can mix for 12 minutes without exploding!

Niave is 4.

Today Niave turned 4.

(0 - 4 top left, bottom left, top right, middle, bottom right)

She has been waiting a lo-o-o-ng time (365 days to be exact) but to her it has felt longer, she is the last of her group of friends to turn 4, so she has been desperate!!

We had a busy day, it started with present opening at home, about 2 and a half minutes after she woke up!!Then it was a trip to Canal Walk to get the other half of the present: a Build-a-bear, also - desperate to have one like her sister - it's been a long wait.

Making Poppy!

Then we went to the Magic Castle at Grand West for some fun rides, pizza and birthday cake with cousins:

Yum-yum!

I remembered that the times we've been there before have been a lot more stressful because Niave would be dashing off at every opportunity and I'd be dashing after her. But today she managed to sit when she needed to and it was my sister-in-laws turn to be dashing around after my nephew who is just entering that phase, I am glad to be on the other end of it!

One again I don't have any pictures of her blowing out candles as she was too scared.

We tried twice.

Oh well, maybe when she's 5.

She wanted to know this evening "how many minutes till I turn 5?"!!! That was too much for my brain at that stage of the day.

Niave was really spoilt with lovely gifts including a brilliant personalised Noddy book from Bev that she found at penwizard! Looks like a site I'm going to have to spend some time browsing.She was also given a beautiful fairy dress and Beaky's dad so now we have the whole family and we are overflowing with ducks!!! Really, she has had a wonderful birthday, in fact I think she has received either birthday gifts or Easter gifts or both everyday since Thursday!!

Now everybody is finally in bed and asleep so there is peace and calm again - until tomorrow!!

Make way for Noddy!

On Tuesday Niave turns 4.

Yesterday we took a trip to toyland for her Noddy party, here's some of what we got up to:

Noddy waiting for the party to start.

Some toyland friends, a couple of Tessie bears, Mr. Plod and of course Big Ears!

We kicked off with "parcel parcel" - also known as pass the parcel - for obvious reasons!

There was loads of tree climbing inbetween - Niaves favourite occupation.

The feely box game: by only feeling an object they had to guess what was in the box.

Then it was cake time and here it is: (I only relized when I looked at the photo's that he doesn't have any ears!!)

Niave tried blowing out her candles but is afraid of fire at the moment so she wouldn't go close enough

but we had some willing helpers - look at her terrified expression in the background.

Then the time I was dreading: the puppet show!

I don't do puppet show's, I am not very confident about it because I am not very good at it. I don't even like puppet shows, not even as a child, but it went off fine. It was just a very short "story" about Noddy's basket of Easter eggs that went missing, he asks some of the characters but no-one can help until the always wise Big-Ears realizes it must have been the naughty goblins. At that point Noddy and Big-Ears go off to find Mr. Plod and the children go to find the basket of eggs that the goblins have hidden in the garden - which they did:

The last game was the "Mr. Plod game". I had 2 signs - "stop" and "go" and the children had to walk towrds me when I held up go and stop when I held up stop. Most of them got the idea but I'm not sure what Mitchell was doing (bottom right), I don't think the game lived up to his expectations!!

When I was finished playing Mr. Plod, some of the kids had a turn:

It was actually a lovely party. I felt very relaxed. Usually I am very stressed and running around like a headless chicken but for some reason I didn't feel like that this time. I even sat, and chatted some of the time!!

So party is done and now we wait to turn 4!