Passionfruit Birthday Sponge

I don't know the history to this sponge, but it's been around my whole life, that much I do know.

For every birthday of my brothers who passed away, we do the passionfruit sponge. That's 3 times a year every year!

And now that Grandma Julie is part of that 'club', she gets the sponge too. Lucky we love it, well I do at least. My family actually isn't quite so keen.

Hokey Pokey Bikkies

If there's a smell and taste that can take me back to being 4 years old, this might just be it.

Gran's Hokey Pokey bikkies.

I've thrown away my old recipe book with the intention to put all of the tried and true favourites on the blog....in time of course!

End of 2017

Now that I won't be working full time I should be able to be a bit more frequent with my blog posts....should! 

Since I've been doing it so sporadically I find that when I finally upload pictures, sometimes I can't remember what we were doing at the time....hence adding captions is a bit difficult. If these don't have captions it's cause I have no idea why I took the picture!

I can't remember why I got the kids juice boxes from Countdown on the way home from school because I NEVER do that, but anyways, this guy decided it was such a novelty that he'd just plonk himself down in the carpark and have it right there and then...no worries!

The big girls reminded me that I used to do 'ice-block Thursday' back in the day, when Faith was still in Year 0 and 1. So we started it back up again and Dalls became acquainted with Bubble-o-Bill.

For Halloween this year Ella was stricken with the chickenpox so we couldn't go to the ward trunk 'n treat but they were more than happy to play my silly games on the trampoline for treats instead.

Someone obviously had a vivid in the room at bedtime that night....sooo annoying!

Ella had a visitor in her room come in and talk about panning for gold and he gave them all some kind of 'precious' rock

1st ever project....so proud of her!

Mummy Bear is such a treasure in our home. She's so dusty and a bit worse for wear these days and we have some almighty arguments over whose turn it is to sleep with her. Sometimes it gets so intense that I take her off all the kids and sleep with her myself!

This little tutu was always going through things of mine and Britt's in our office and he was super chuffed one day when he found this domino that matched his reading group

Winky and Baify

This kid lucked out when his Mum tried about 20 times to win something at the school raffle thing and they finally got it

A lovely trip to the temple with 7 of our Young Women. Can't wait till I can take my own girls....and boy.

I wish I had more pics of our laughs, but this was a goodie. You had to be there so I won't bother explaining it, suffice to say....we're hilarious!

My not so sunny man getting a big telling off from Miss Britt about sneaking into our office at morning tea and eating the number 7 from her advent calendar

A great afternoon trip to the Zoo with the Tira family

Our family 'out' evening at Wonder

T-shirts that we got made for the Young Women's in Excellence Evening 

These 2 super cute ladies specifically came to our evening because they'd ordered a Personal Progress book and were excited to find out more and get started

We had a class Christmas potluck dinner and Dallin made great friends with this Mum of a little girl in my room. She's got a gift that girl!

Our 3rd annual carolling activity at the Carnavon Hospital/Resthome. It was extra lovely this year to take the Faith in God kids so they could be part of it as well.

Seth got the Sports Excellence Award for his class

Ella got the Sports Excellence Award for her class

And Faith got the award for Outstanding Citizenship for a year 1-5 student

Straight to the mall for McDs afterwards where we saw about 30 Summerland Families doing the same thing

Ella's choice of free book for her award the night before.....So Ella!.  I didn't get a pic of the others but Seth got a Lego Ninjago book and Faith got a Killer Shark book.....my kids are so predictable!

One of our first days of school holidays....hallelujah for the deck on a rainy day....and 5 minutes of playing cards nicely without trying to kill eachother

A couple of little clay gems that Faith made but were far to bulky to keep forever

Occasionally we sneak past Joe's worksites and this was one of those days cause he was just down the road in Glen Eden. Waiting for concrete as usual. I'm sure he spends half his life waiting for concrete cause that's usually how our phone conversations during the day start.

10 Year Anniversary - Melbourne!

In September we celebrated a big marriage milestone...well, small if you think of marriage eternally like we absolutely do, but still something to celebrate nonetheless.

Amazing Aunty Nae and her boys so kindly accepted to challenge to stay at our place for 6 days and look after the Heke offspring, so the 'hottest man ever' and I could jet off on a 5 night getaway.

What an amazing time we had.....as did the kids back at home!

My Friday duty bud

 How cool is it that I work at the same place that 3 of my kids go to school! I was able to quickly round them up for a hug and kiss before I gapped it to rush home and pack. I felt a bit bad that up until that morning they thought they were coming with us, but I eventually told them (when they couldn't ruin the surprise for Joe), that it was actually only him and I going, and they were going to be staying at home with the Leones. Huge 'yuss's' as soon as I divulged that info :)

Child-less at the airport a few minutes after I finally told him where we were going....we got all the way to the boarding gate without him having a clue where we were off to

10pm Kebabs

Super happy with the car but almost a marriage breakup over the carpark.
He was actually so super happy with the car, more excited than when I said 'we're going without the kids' and 'we're going to Melbourne'

The view from our hotel room on the 36th floor

All the trams are pretty cool, but the road rules in the city because of them are whack!!!!

We made it just in the nick of time to do our September temple session

I didn't get any pics of the outside of the church building, but it's one of those weird wards that are in the middle of the city in a random highrise

We're so not shoppers so we didn't really make the most of Melbourne's famous shopping spots. The Chadstone Mall was so huge and fancy in one particular part that we felt really out of place

My good ol' Grilled Burger. Love that place!

I didn't buy any of these but was pretty excited by the sight of them all

What I wouldn't give for a nice big bowl of this right now. And we bought it with no spoons when were were heading on a 2 hour drive so it was kind of wasted

The outside of our hotel

The extent of our shopping.....lots for us but probably a lame effort for everyone else

Late one night we walked for about 20 minutes to find a Krispy Kreme....duh, trams are free, we didn't think about jumping on one till we were almost home.

Tram to the Melbourne Star....a big ferris wheel thing

View from inside one of the capsule, viewing deck thingys

I think the whole rotation took about 40 minutes. It was quite cool, but mainly cause we didn't have to share our room thing. Would be kinda stink to be in there with 20 other people

The afternoon before we left we stumbled upon Luna Park at St Kilda...a pretty iconic sight.

Burgers again at the Grand Trailer Park I think this one was called. 100% burgered out after this, which has since well worn off!

And there you have it. Melbourne has been well and truly ticked off my bucket list. Gosh it was good to get back to the kids and have the holidays to kick around with them before Term 4 started.....which was so crazy busy it was insane.

Sometimes I can't believe we've been married for 10 years and we have 4 children. It's raced by and been so so so good that sometimes I have to stop myself from worrying how long this can last....not as in, I wonder if our marriage will last because I never have any doubts about that, but 'what will tomorrow bring?' I feel like I'm living a dream life and everything's just how we want it. Can I stop time and keep things like this forever...except maybe the part how the kids do terrible behaviour at bedtime and keep very messy rooms!

How did I get so lucky to catch this man of mine. The one who will give me all and everything he has and still try to give more. The man stops what he's doing to listen to my (probably very boring) work stories told in extreme detail, the man who gets up early, works late, cooks, cleans, plays, drives, lifts, basically does everything I need and/or want....sometimes without even being asked!....My man!!!

Bring on the future 'hottest man ever'. Love from the 'hottest wife ever' (our phone caller IDs for eachother)