Auckland Anniversary Day

Yesterday we went to Long Bay for Auckland Anniversary day for the Aeroview Ward picnic. Sensational!

I'm so bad at taking photos on days like this! And today probably even more so cause I remembered Renee saying that her phone dropped in the water when the boys were playing in the waves at the Mt. Couldn't risk that happening so I have no pics of the kids LOVING the water. Especially Seth. He really is the most fishy baby I've ever seen!

Before we went I told Faith that Long Bay is the beach where Uncle Matthew died and she really wanted to write about it

Not sure why it was lots of Dads vs Lots of Kids + Uncle Stanie

My Lil' Joe Dirt

This little critter spent the whole 5 hours eating!!!! In this pic the chips weren't even open but he'd walked past a few chips on the ground so he just stopped and ate them for good measure!

When I asked Faith why she wasn't playing with the other kids she said pretty matter of factly 'I'm not into playing anymore Mum' as if she's so over that now that she's 5!!

The 2 little solo players plonked down side by side when they were supposed to be following us back to the car

Mint Choc Chunk Cookies

Mint Choc Chunk Cookies (or 'Hulk' bikkies according to Daddy Joe and 'Grinch' bikkies for Faith)

Ingredients
2 cups of all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
3/4 teaspoon of salt
3/4 cup of room temperature butter (170g)
1 cup packed of brown sugar1/2 cup of white sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 C of chocolate chips (I cut up white and milk chocolate melts into little chunks)
3tsps Peppermint Essence
some green food colouring (optional)

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Grease cookie sheets or cover in baking paper2. Bowl 1: Mix together the flour, baking soda and salt.
3. Bowl 2: Cream together the melted butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended. THEN beat in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk until light and creamy. Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended.
4. Add peppermint essence and food colouring
5. Stir in the chocolate chunks by hand using (Don’t throw them in the mixer if you are using one!)
6. Drop cookie dough onto the prepared cookie sheets. Cookies shouldn't be too close together as they spread a little.
6. Bake for 14 to 17 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely. This is because all of the chocolate needs a few extra minutes to harden, or else they will cool formed with ridges from the wires on the rack.

Pretty darn good if I do say so myself!

I've just brought strawberry and orange essences so I'll try a different flavour and maybe colour next time

More holiday pics

School starts back sometime next week (I better check on the exact date so Faith's not late!), so over the past week we've done a couple of cool things together.

 The girls with Mum's wig on. It looked nice on Mum, pretty rough on the girls!

The beginnings of Daddy Joe's home gym. He pulls it all out in front of the garage when he's working out, but this was late at night last week when he did a workout at about 10pm

My regular shopping helper

January Date night at Hunger Games 2

We had a cool time with the Leone boys at Extreme Entertainment where they got one hour to play on timezone games and then another hour or so in the Chipmunks style playground

Impromptu date night with my girlfriends after a trip to the Dr to check on Faith's sore ankle and Ella's scabby face sores

This is how I find the hallway when I walk to my room late at night....booby trapped with toys (at least it's not lego pieces to step on, but it's still darn annoying)

 And the room's no better. So after this night when I took photographic evidence to show them, the girls got told they can play games and read until they're tired (they go to their room at 7:15pm), but before they actually get into bed they have to pack away what they had out. I've told them I'll do a midnight room inspection and they'll miss out on something the next day if it's not ship shape. They think it's quite funny that I check their room while they're asleep so it's working well.

Yesterday we had a fantastic family day with the Halls and Leones up at Campbell's beach (Bex's parent's holiday home). It was soooooo fun to relax and spend the day together. The kids loved it and were asleep within 2 minutes of getting in the car at nearly 11pm to drive home. Ella slept in until 9am this morning and Seth slept in until 10:20am!!!!!! Now that's a sign of a good day before!

Wish I could eat like this every night! Delicious!!!!

Daddy Joe's spread

 There were a couple of moments of down time when the kids watched a movie and looked at books, literally moments though!. Other than that it was all go the entire time, running, fighting, laughing, chasing.....cool kids memories.

Now I'm thinking how can we buy a piece of land and tent on it until at some point (probably 20 years down the track) when we can build a batch of some sort. Family times, especially outside in the summer sun are the best!

Mystery illness and miracle recovery

On Thursday morning we woke up to Seth crying in his cot. Not an entirely unusual start to the day, but it's always nicer when I wake to hear him talking to himself rather than crying. As it turns out there was vomit all through his bed (lovely!) and we had a sicky baby on our hands. We cuddled him, gave him a bit of fizzy to settle his tummy and cleaned him up when he sicked up. By lunchtime I'd decided to take him to the drop in clinic at our Doctor's surgery at 2pm. By 12:30 I really felt he was too sick to wait so me and the girls packed him up in the car and took him down to the hospital. In triage they knew there was something wrong with how limp and unresponsive he was so we got taken through straight away (what a blessing because I'm guessing the waiting room had about 4 hours worth of people already waiting).

His first obs weren't very good so we went through to the children's ward and got admitted for tests. Daddy Joe relieved me of the girls after about 2 hours which was exactly that....a relief!!! They were good but with my hands completely tied up with Seth I couldn't keep an eye on them going back and forth from the toy room.

After the girls were gone I could focus on Seth and his limp, sleepy body got me more and more and more worried by the minute. The 2 doctors that were overseeing him were a bit stumped so after about 5 hours they went ahead with blood tests and got ready to give him IV fluids. He didn't even look at what was happening when 3 people stood around him to put the needle contraption in his arm cause he was too lethargic too care! When they tested for sugar suggesting it might be diabetes I was pretty concerned. Negative to that thank goodness.

And then within about 45 minutes of having the blood test, he just opened his eyes and looked up at me and started babbling and trying to crawl off me....the first deliberate movement he'd done for hours. So nice to have my baby back, and I pretty much got the all clear from the Dr, dressed him and half an hour later we were at home with Seth playing with his big sissys (who were both so excited to have him back!)

So there you have it, from sick, to in hospital for 6.5 hours, to home with no trace of illness. Thanks to the Drs and a Priesthood blessing from his Daddy I'm sure.
It was so terrible to see his lifeless body and especially his eyes looking so vacant. He's definitely back to 100% energy and feistiness now (if that's even a word!)

He was supposed to be getting fluids in, but he wasn't interested in their sugary drink or iceblocks

Nurse Faith loved being called my nurse helper

Ella was all up in the syringe and electrolyte drink

And suddenly awake and alert

Pretending to be asleep when I said 'sleepy time'

All over, waiting for the Dr to discharge him

And incidentally he'd just had his 15 month immunisations (+ chicken pox vaccine) a week earlier. Poor little guy!