random catch up photos

because I've been such a slacker and haven't really been sure what to write

One of the new roses in the Rainbow Bridge garden

Tim Tam, "Where are you going mum?"

Hopie and Luka at the dam

Lily at Ballarat comp

Luka on his birthday! :)

Lilypillie, my smiley girl

The interesting attempts to draw with small children around! LOL

Hopie with the ribbons our club gave her at the end of the year. She was more impressed with the biscuits but I thought they were nice. LOL

La demonstrating his weird abilities to sleep in the most bizzare places...

Hope at a recent comp

Hope, Sierra, Luka and Rin at the dam

Nilla playing sneaky stealth ninja bunny

and demanding a pat from La

Haha, - such shy timid little wallflowers hey!

Christmas

Lots of photos, it's been a weirdly busy-and-at-the-same-time slow past few days. ;-)

After several attempts this is the best photo of all dogs and child. I'll give you three guesses WHICH one wasn't holding the sit-stay and couldn't resist making the girls sniff for bikkies. First two don't count!

One of the little red poppet, clean and dry and NOT covered in water and mud for a change. (She is OBSESSED with digging in the little pool and dam!)

Decorating the christmas tree at home

Cheeky little beggar... he's grabbed one of the little gold musical instrument decorations from the tree and is pretending to play it, complete with hummed not-quite-in-key song tune.

The tree, stockings and such. The gold wire tree on the mantle holds our special breakable baubles, we choose a new one together each year to add to the collection.

Random La photo (Hey look at that! He CAN hold still! Photographic proof folks!)

I asked him to do nice photos for Christmas. "But mum, I want to RUN!"

Pensive critter. While he's mister smiley a lot of the time, we're definitely in THAT stage of things where he's old enough to know what he wants to do, not old enough to do it all and immensely frusterated with that fact.

After he'd been curious about the Santas in the shops for weeks we took him to Melbourne's city square to meet one there. Following in last years footsteps (where he pitched a tanty over having his merry attempts to catch pigeons interrupted to see Santa) he wasn't really clued into Santa's cued speech of 'what do you want for christmas'! We don't really do the "Santa is a magic person who flies around with reindeer and gives you stuff you want if you're good" thing so much as the tale of the original St Nicolas and that the Santa's now represent a visible wish to continue the spirit of using our bounty to help others, the needy and share our love with family/friends.

Poor Santa... really not what the guy was expecting, though we did get some high fives in.

He loved the big green tree... it was TALL and has BUTTONS you press to make NOISES...

One of him with Nic

And with me

Before turning into a ratbag, flipping upside down to watch the pigeons and carriage horses.

Why is this black and white? Artistic liscence? Nah... it just looks nicer when you can't see how muddy the bathwater is after "helping" garden all day!

Can I just say I love weekends???

I LOVE WEEKENDS! Saturday we had a nice day working in the garden all day and then in the evening attending a poultry meeting and catching up with folks. There is something very nice about productive days spent with growing plants and watching the garden be born.

Today we took Sierra and Hope to Hastings & District Obed club - I think I've finally found a club I'm happy with, though I wish it were a smidge closer at just over an hours drive each way and that I'd found it sooner. Hope did well and got her first taste of agility equipment. Sierra got to play a bit of agility also - she remembered more than I thought for not having done a lick in 4 years and went absolutely gaga when she saw it set up - whining and shaking with excitement. ;-) Gee... I think she might've missed it!

We came home and did more gardening before deciding to just let dogs and child hoon around because I'm beyond tired atm. (We've had roofer and electricians over the whole week, coming over at absurdly early hours so that neither Laurent nor I got much sleep.) Between this we had cuddles and kisses, at which point La wrapped his arms around me and told me, "Mum, youse my BESTEST friend!" Cute little thing!

Nic snapped this one of me Sierra (on her back, tummy up) and I watching Laurent, Verity, Hope and Cami at the dam while they played with the tennis ball.

A close-up of the rare Australian Retriever in it's natural element after it's prized tennie-ball.

"Ah-WHOOOOOO!!!!!!!" The victory howl... Hope's trademark upon fetching a ball.

Her other trade-mark... shaking half the dam onto the child...
Repeatedly. Every time she fetches the ball. ~_~

And it was bound to happen eventually - we've warned Laurent time and again but he always figures the dam must be so fun given how much the dogs love it. He managed to step a bit too close today and splashed into the edge. He was less impressed than he thought he'd be... *snickersnort* Bad mum that I am, I just snapped a picture before he got hauled into a warm bath.

What to do on a warm day

when your mum won't let you "help" her transplant young plants and asks you to go play instead. Fill up the pool, shovel in some dirt and DIG THE WATER!!! I'm not sure if Cami taught La or La taught Cami but either way they had a grand time splashing and digging in the water like mad between hysterical laughter!


The big girls simply DO NOT GET IT... the dam is so much more fun than a little bitty pool!

Little man is THREE!

While I was snapping pictures of him I also noticed it was blooming from what was previously a rather unassuming little mass of leaves... and it rather amused me that it happened to be a green flower in blossom on his birthday, given green is rather his favorite colour. (I'm sure no one has noticed... LOL)His birthday started out as a rather lazy morning - having to get the dogs, cat, poultry etc taken care of before we could get a start in on any other plans. Meanwhile from the moment he woke he was asking every 10 minutes about his "bunny cake". Things taking the time they do of course means while everything is being done, one must play and getting oneself good and grotty. I asked him what he wanted to do on his birthday, since his birthday falls on a weekday and we weren't having the party until the weekend at least. (As one person is due to have her bubs, Nic's cousins are up in the air, I'm in a No-Fuss-We'll-Get-Together-When-We-Get-Together frame of mind of pregnancy and I'm sure La won't mind having multiple celebrations!!! LOL) Did he want to go for a ride on Puffing Billy the Steam Train, to the zoo etc?

He was pretty set he wanted to go to the zoo - he wanted to see crocodiles like Gator (his stuffed croc... and yes I've tried to tell him it isn't a gator several times but 2 year olds follow their own peculiar brand of logic and apparently this is a croc named Gator you see... imminently logical really) , pretty snakes, butterflies and helicopters. I did try to point out that helicopters aren't traditional zoo exhibits but again with that lovely sense of logic! *G*

At any rate, after a train ride in to the city (which took twice as long as driving, thank you Connex) we discovered the connecting train to the Zoo was somehow glitched and so I asked if he'd like to go to the Aquarium instead. Meanwhile he did get to see his helicopter - one flew fairly close to us for several stops getting to Flinders St which thrilled him no end.
The aquarium was a fair hit, though I think the most impressive bit for him was the fact there were several other little boys around with almost as much energy as him and they spent the time making fish faces, having hopping contests and pretending to be divers while running madly about.

(Fish face... note the pursed lips... Blop blop blop)

Part of the kid-sized walk through exhibit in the basement
After we made our way out we visited a few places in the city and he got to have a bit of junk food as he requested pizza, a snake lolly and a drink. Caught the train back, by that time tired.

Of course that just meant it was time for the most important part - the chocolate bunny wiggle cake with fires. After he blew out his candles, Nic lit a sparkler for him which he was delighted with even if it was difficult to get a decent pic!

After eschewing chocolate on his first birthday party and not being so sure of it on his second, he seems to have gotten over his distaste for it by the third. LOL The use of forks was quickly forgone for more... erm... 'effective consumption techniques' shall we say...The resulting mess after licking off the frosting and only nibbling on the cake resulted in a birthday bath and change of clothing...

I wanted to get a few non-grotty, non-wildchild shots in if possible so I plopped him on a kitchen chair and started asking him questions as I snapped.

"I wanna go OUTSIDE for my special photo!""How much longer is she going to keep snapping pictures?"

Apparently Newly Being Three does not confer any better skills at sitting still and not wriggling all over for three nanoseconds. ;-p Of course after a full ten minutes of sitting still we were rather over it but still... mum wanted one last one... had to get the girls in after all... poor La, can you tell he's rather tired here?