Family Jam Packed Weekend

Over the weekend we had a whirlwind and busy busy busy trip down to Hamilton. We were there from Friday at about 3:30pm to Saturday at about 9:30pm and we had a blast with our family for the whole 30 hours.

We started off at Millar Place where my 3 babies spent a couple of hours with their beloved Aunty Sarah and the boys while I went to the temple. Treated to pizza and playstation - they loved it!!!! I didn't get my camera out there which is a bummer cause it would be cool to have pics of how they hung out together.

Then we went off to Aunty Natty's for a bit before we called it a night. Ella got to stay there for a sleepover and boy was she chuffed with herself, if not a little nervous that Faify wasn't staying with her.

Faify came with me over to Aunty Bex's to chill out with Riyan and Naya and much to her delight they got to watch DVDs late into the night.

Saturday was the temple for me and Daddy Joe which we both thoroughly enjoyed + an afternoon hanging out at the Willoughby's. We loved it, I hope they did too! And we finished it off with a trip to Kmart and the night markets. Doesn't get much better than that! But actually it did - Aunty Crissa and Aunty Tan and all her boys happened to be there. Brilliant timing!

Oh and I had a great visit with the Pogais too. Always good to touch base with them and see what everyone's up too. Bonus to get a whole rubbish bag full of 2 year old clothes for Seth from Hunter. Getting all the clothes was exciting and it also made me long for the day when I know I'm finished having children and I can give away the 8 or so boxes of clothes sitting in my garage!!!!!

Loving watching DVDs with her cuzzies

Riyan had had a big day at Kindy so he didn't last long

Princess Naya

Bubba Jordy doing what he does best, lazing around with movies or games on. This was lunchtime on Saturday!

I hadn't left any clothes with Ella so she had brunch at a cafe on Saturday with boys jammies on and crazy hair....no worries!

Te Ironui neighbourhood crew

This was Ella's get up for the night markets. She was really chuffed with what she chose (not sure what she's whinging about), but it took her about half an hour and 20 changes of clothes before she got this perfect outfit

Kyky got a haircut at the markets and the girls stood right there watching the whole process. I know they really want to get their hair cut, but it grows at a snails pace so they might be 10 before that happens

He loves having his hair cut. Boggle the whole time

Jordy hates having his hair cut, grumps the whole time!

The best shoe bargain ever

A couple of weeks ago I raced around doing some night time shopping. It never happens so I went crazy and bought 2 pairs of jeans, 2 belts, 3 tops and 2 pairs of shoes!!!

It turns out that although everything was bought in a rush between 8 and 9pm on a Friday night, I'm so happy with everything I got. I've never had such good jeans in my life, and the shoes are the best!!!!

This picture doesn't really do them justice but trust me, they're amazing. Perfect fit, so comfortable. And they can be matchy matchy with my tops or add a pop of colour to a plain outfit. You know what I mean aye Aunty Beezy. I'm actually thinking about trying to get more cause 5 is enough for now, but I'm already scared about what I'll wear when they die cause I've worn nothing else since I got them! Don't worry, that whole picture above only cost me $25......5 pairs of the best shoes for $25!

I'll save the best jeans ever for another blog, suffice to say that everyone is commenting on how I look really really nice. Maybe it's because I'm not in my grey trackpants every day anymore!?!?!?

Nursery Harvest

As the nursery leader I get to play around with little toddlers for nearly 2 hours every sunday. It's a fun calling and I think I'm realizing it will be as good as I want to make it. And last sunday I made it fun. I cleaned out the toy cupboard (yay!!!!) taught a lesson on 'I can be happy!!!!!' and read books about animals again (they can't seem to get enough of animal books). We even had our Primary music leader come in and do some songs with us which was really cool. Really neat that because Ella's the oldest and knows the songs, she was the little helper that started all the songs by going 'I am a child of God   1, 2, sing....'

And it all became more meaningful yesterday afternoon as I took the girls to visit 5 homes of children in our nursery class. Nevermind the fact that only 1 was home :(

 I really felt the spirit of caring and reaching out to others, and I'm excited to meet these little children who are on my roll but I don't know. I'm going to make some kind of treat for them and try again to do visits over the next couple of weeks. We had 5 children in class today but I'd love to have the 12 that I should have so we can all learn and play together.

I'm now aiming to do a new special activity each week so the children have variety in their nursery time. There's only so much colouring in and playing with blocks you can do right? So far we've done race tracks for the cars, putting pipe cleaners into a metal colander, playdough, making castles with moon sand (flour mixed with baby oil). It would be much easier to get the same old toys out every week but I'm sure there's things for me and them to learn in our 2 hours together so I want to put in more effort than that.

And my biggest goals for the children while they're in nursery with me is for them to know that I love them, and know that they're children of God and he loves them.

This is the moon sand I made a few weeks ago. Made a huge mess (easily cleaned up with vaccuum!) and the girls loved it, Next time I'll do it when it's nicer weather and we can go outside or put it out on a tarpaulin so they can play more messily with it

I'm going to drop this prayer chart off with the children when I take a little treat to their home, which reminds me I better get some stickers for them. If they're anything like Ella, they'll love doing something for a sticker

Me and Faithy K K when we got home from visiting

Blog revamp and technology gratitude

I started this blog 2 year ago I think, and got off to a slow, or more like stop/start kind of beginning. Last year after seeing my sissy Aunty Nae documenting their fun family times I really saw the value of this kind of record keeping. And as I catch up on reading blogs every day or 2, I love the ideas and teachings I learn from others, and just plain happiness from seeing other people have fun times with their loved ones.

I've stuck to text and pictures and recently added one video which was very exciting (Seth's birthday slideshow here). This week I decided to learn more about how Blogger works and it was so fun. So my blog has had a bit of a revamp and will probably change a bit while I figure out what I want on it.

At this point I'm excited to have figured out how to put a link to the lds.org website and I've got 'past blog posts' and 'blogs I read' down the sidebar. 'Woohoo!' Not really rocket science but Seffy had a pretty lonely day they day I was figuring it out cause I kept saying....
'Mummy's busy, go and play'. Oops :(

And while I was playing around on it I felt so much gratitude for my job at Sherwood and all the things I learned to do on Apple Computers while I was there. Nothing I can do is super fancy, but it's just what I need to know to be able to make family movies, birthday slideshows, scrapbook pages for the kids Books of Rememberance etc, and that's all I need.

It seems that I spend so much of my time on the computer these days looking at

Maybe that's why when I can hear the girls calling me but I'm not answering them, I eventually hear one of them say something like 'Let's go, Mum's busy checking her messages again!

Aunty Beezy and Uncle Pete have gone back to Oz :(

Aunty Beezy went back to Australia a couple of days ago....soooooo sad for us :(
It felt like someone was missing as soon as Uncle Pete left and now it feels like that again cause this time it's Aunty Beezy. We are so incredibly grateful that they came to live here for a year and that we had so much special time together. It's going to be weird not having them around anymore, especially when weekends, birthdays and family get togethers come around. No more Stoners!!!   :(

Very grateful for Skype, Facebook, blogs, phones so we can still stay close and connected!

The afternoon before she left, she came over for one last Ranui visit and she had some exciting goodies in her bag which  made the visit even better for the girls. Not that it had to be better. Faith's been telling people for a while now that her Aunty Beezy's going on a place back to Australia and her and McKay are going to go over there soon when they're 8.

Ella was in heaven immediately with a special little lipgloss tower

Faith looking in Aunty Beezy's goodie bag

The girls got $2 each to go to the dairy and then we went to the park for a few minutes

 I'd ummmed and aahhhed for a few days about going to the airport, only because I didn't know if Seth would be grizzly about it and have a little catnap in the car and not a proper sleep in his bed. But I knew I couldn't just do our grocery shopping knowing that Aunty Beezy was at the airport. So of course we made the trip out to say Au Revoir, or A bientot?!?! (it's been a while since I did French!)

Out of all the things in the Timezone, this is what she chose when Aunty Beezy gave her $2

Was cool to have one last play around and goodbye with Ah B

Faith was in the right place at the right time. The man servicing the rides gave her this big stash of lollies

When we picked Ella up from Kindy she was chuffed to show me that she knew where Aunty Beezy went on the airplane.

And this is where we live. She gets really excited when she finds NZ on the globe