Party review

I had meant to do another post soon after Joanna's Birthday, reviewing how various things went (in case you need any ideas for kids birthday parties, or also just a reference for me next time).

Highlights:

• The kids really enjoyed the dinosaur dress-ups and cave (made out of a few large boxes taped together, which they could crawl into play, plus draw on/put stickers on to decorate it). It was a good activity for them all to do while everybody was arriving - and they all enthusiastically played dinosaur roll playing games.

• Having kids all sit up to table to eat, really cut down on the mess on the floor (especially as it was wet and rainy and we all had to stay indoors) - it also creates another 'activity' to add variety to the party.

• The favourite food for both the adults and kids was the 'dinosaur bones' - pretzel sticks that had been dipped in white chocolate and then put in the fridge to set. The second favourite was the 'teradactyl wings' for the adults (chicken nibbles covered in marinade and then baked) and the 'dinosaur eggs' for the kids (small balls of ice cream rolled in hundreds and thousands).

Would change next time:

• Except for my kids, none of the other kids like fizzy drink (ages ranging from 2 - 7).

• Eating time took a lot longer than I allocated, so I ran out of time for any games/stories. Not so much of a problem for a 3yr old party, but will have to factor this in for Ben's party as he will expect/want some games.

Complicated

Trying to complete our Aussie tax returns - our financial lives are complicated and the ATO makes it even more confusing.

Accepting defeat...

I've called a roofing specialist to come and find the source of our leaking roof problem. (Hopefully it doesn't result in a leaky bank account!)

Going to Aussie

I am making our annual trip back to Aussie (that is how NZ's refer to Australia) in September. I'll be back with the kids for 4 weeks (1 week I will be marking QCS papers - it pays for the airfares), and Peter will be back for 2 weeks. So now that Joanna's birthday is past, this is another thing that I now need to spend time planning for and packing for. We are looking forward to enjoying some nice warm weather and sunshine!

Turf cutting

Now that preparation Joanna's birthday/party is over and the weather here is turning more towards spring (warmer, sunnier days)...I have managed to get out in the yard the last couple of afternoons to prepare for spring planting (which is what I will want to get into when we get back from Oz). At this stage, this means creating some new garden beds, so I actually have space to plant stuff. So each afternoon I have removed the turf from a 3m x 0.85m area, to convert into veggie garden beds. It takes me about 1 hour to cut the turf for a bed this size. I think I want to make one more bed, which will mean a total of 4, plus the existing garden bed along the fence line that was already there when we moved in.

New couch = making money

We got a new couch (modern look, leather, 3 seater) last week for free! We had been talking about how it would be nice to get a different one as our old one didn't fit nicely with the shape of our new lounge room(the chaise part just cut the room in two). So thanks to Freecycle we have a suitable couch for free (although we wouldn't have chosen the colour if we'd been buying it), and thanks to TradeMe we were able to sell our other one for a price we were very happy with!

Joanna's 3rd Birthday

Joanna turned 3 last Thursday. Thursday was just the usual family affair - opening presents before breakfast, special dinner and birthday cake for dessert. Joanna was really excited when she came out and saw her presents on the couch. And she showed a lot of appreciation for all her presents.

On Saturday morning, she had her 'Dinosaur Dance Party'. She 'loved' the decorations and all the kids had fun at the party. Playing dinosaur games (dressed up with the dinosaur tails I made), going in the dinosaur cave (including torches to use in the 'dark' cave), and doing the dinosaur egg craft. They also ate lots of yummy food - Bronto bites (meatballs), teradactyl wings (marinated chicken wings), dinosaur bones (pretzel stick covered in white chocolate), chocolate sinking mud (chocolate custard), dinosaur jelly cups, dinosaur eggs (ice-cream balls rolled in hundreds and thousands), and of course the dinosaur cake!

Waikato Cultural Centre

The Stadium! Ben and I had some father-son time enjoying a game of rugby. Waikato ended up losing (to Taranaki, 33-23), but that's just because the ref sin-binned two of the Waikato players just as they were coming back into the game. Or maybe I'm just being a one-eyed local :)

Ben enjoyed the game - he liked the bull (Taranaki mascot) and the cow (Waikato mascot) best.

And I think Waikato Stadium two-thirds empty makes more noise than Suncorp Stadium with 50000 watching a rugby game - have a listen to the video: that's the boo-ing and cow-bells as Taranaki line up a kick.

One other weird thing - Waikato have a guy up in a cherry-picker, just outside the stadium, revving a chainsaw. Just because.

Sneeze and cough into the bendy part of your arm...

It is what I've been trying to teach the kids over this winter colds and flu season. But now I've found an entertaining way to try to get the message and habit to stick - Elmo! (instead of my nagging repeats)



(Thanks to Nicole)

Beware the table saw.

It bites.

End of marathon...

Ok, so it was more like a sprint. But Naomi has woken up from her nap, so off I go...

Outlet for my creative side...

It's Joanna's birthday next week and she is having a Dinosaur Dance Party. So I have been busy making dinosaur dress-up tails for the kids to play with at the party (and to take home with them afterwards). It's been fun to create them (I got help with working out the making process from here - why waste all that brainpower, when somebody else has already done the thinking), to have a deadline and concrete reason to get out the sewing machine. I really like planning and creating things for the kids birthday parties each year - it gives me a purpose to direct my creative energy/inspiration into. I've also been making paper pompoms/flowers to decorate the room with - Joanna and Ben think they look 'cool' (idea from the Donna Hay kids magazine, actual instructions from here).

This coming week I'm going to have to switch my attention to preparing in advance as much as the food as I can (so I don't have to do much on the day) - this will include making Bronto bite, pterodactyl wings, dino egg ice-cream and chocolate sinking sand.

Weaning...

Now I know this another kid development related post (feel free to skip if you aren't interested in this stuff), but a lot of it has been happening in our house lately. This time, the news is that Naomi has decided to wean herself. She has been eating 3 good meals a day for a while now and decided milk from Mum was no longer required. Which frees me up a bit, but does mean we have had to buy some formula to give her (in her sippy cup with her meals), to make sure she's getting enough dairy etc. It was a bit unexpected, seeing as we have had to initiate the weaning process with the other two.

Nappies for 1

Related to the previous post...When I found out it was possible Joanna was going to start kindy sooner than I had anticipated, I quickly had to take the plunge and do the whole toilet training thing. Thankfully she was ready to make the transition and it only really took a week for her to get the hang of it and there wasn't really any frustration from either side. The thing that has suprised me is she is already able to stay dry during rest time and also at night as well (we are up to at least 5 dry nights in a row - I've actually lost count).

Kindy kid...

Joanna has a definite date for starting kindy! The first day back in Term 4. This is a whole term earlier than I was originally anticipating a few months ago (at that stage kids were only getting into afternoon kindy at 3yrs 4months or so, which would have meant Joanna not getting in until the new year). It will mean that Ben will be at morning kindy and Joanna at afternoon kindy at the same time for just over a month. It also works out well, as we only get back from Australia during the 2nd week of NZ school holidays, so if she had got a start date any sooner, we wouldn't have been able to accept the place and would have had to wait until term 4 anyway.

Blogging marathon

I feel like I've been really busy lately and so haven't had time to blog much...Which is not to say that I haven't had stuff to blog about...So I have a free 30min now and I will try blog as much about stuff that has been happening as possible (and that I still remember!).

(the posts are in no particular order - other than the order that my memory recalls them in)

Egg stash!

Our chooks had been slowing down laying eggs over winter. Or so we thought. Then the other day Mel noticed that they definitely were getting in under the house, past our makeshift barrier... and one of them had been looking like it was running off to the loo when it went there. So, the kids and I crawled in under the house to see if we could find any eggs... and this is what we found: 22 eggs, along with at least two that were broken. I think eggs are back on the menu!

(I've now finally got around to making a gate that actually fits the gap under the house, to make sure they don't get in again!)

Jet setter...

We received Naomi's passport in the mail today - so we now leave...I mean arrive in her country of citizenship. (We find it a little ironic that as part of the application process, they ring up Peter to check that he gives his permission for Naomi to travel overseas, when she is already living overseas!)

Quick trip to Auckland

Naomi and I drove up to Auckland on Monday to apply for her passport so she can fly back to Brisbane in September. Because it is her first passport, we had to apply in person at the Australian Consulate. All went well and we should receive her passport before we are due to leave. Here are a few comments about the trip:

• We spent twice as long travelling, as we did actually in Auckland. (90min travelling there, 90 min in Auckland, 90 min travelling home again)

• They have funky lifts in the Price Waterhouse Coopers building - they are just labelled A-G and you go to and information board, press the number button for which floor you want to go to and it tells you which letter elevator will open and take you there (now I don't know if this makes me look like a country bumpkin, but I'd never been in a building with lifts like this before).

• I felt like I was going to the 'Big Smoke' - even though the population size of Auckland is less than Brisbane (1.4 million vs 2 million approx.).

• Naomi travelled very well - slept 1hr on the way up and the whole time on the way home.

• I really like the NZ countryside - nice and green, lush, rolling hills.
  

Garden progress

We managed to get out in the garden last weekend - something we've been wanting to do for a while (we thought we might get out there a bit more over winter, but between the weather and other jobs around the house, we haven't had the chance). We dug over the herb garden and replanted the herbs that we had transplanted from our old garden. We also developed a new barrier to keep the chooks out the garden beds - it seems to be working. I got around to weeding our raised bed (it was at the stage where there were more weeds than edible plants!). And during the week, we have also managed to plant our garlic (just in time! - we are hoping it sprouts this year, last year it didn't).

busy, busy, busy

Between sicknesses and other extra activities in the last couple of weeks, I haven't had much time to blog. There's lots I'd like to write, but haven't got around to it.

How do YOU vote?

After seeing Simone's post the other day about the "Christian Values Checklist", it got me thinking about how people vote generally (not just Christians). The media often seem to think that people vote very selfishly - that whichever party promises to give the biggest tax cut, or the best schools in their area, or whatever directly affects them, will win their vote.

But is that really how people vote?

If a party was promising someone in your particular situation a 30% tax cut, but said tax cut would probably cause the economy to fall apart, would you vote for it? I would think probably not.

If you'd finished having kids, would the parties' policies on the baby bonus affect the way you vote, even if it had no direct bearing on your life?

Of course, if people don't vote perfectly selfishly, it's a lot harder for the media to proclaim what effect policies might have on voters, which would make it harder for them to sell their product. Poor media companies - life's a little too complicated for them to put it in a headline.

Nathan Campbell also has a good post on similar issues.