Pencil sharpeners on planes?

Does anybody know if you can take pencil sharpeners in your cabin luggage? Or are they considered a prohibited sharp item as they have a removable sharp blade?

Oops

While taking the rubbish out this evening, I managed to brush the bag against my leg...and there was a bit of glass in there. So... I now have a few stitches in my leg. The cut isn't too deep but was enough to require about eight stitches.

Snow Holiday 2011

Last weekend I took a day off work to make a nice long weekend to go away and enjoy some fun at the snow. We just picked a fairly random weekend after the school holidays, and it happened to be a very good one: the week before was the biggest cold snap of the winter and one of the coldest in years... which means lots of snow! The forecast for Saturday was "cloud, clearing", so we decided
not to hurry down, rather having breakfast at home and getting down to Whakapapa for lunch before heading up the mountain for the afternoon. By the time we got to the village, there were thousands of people around, because of the sunshine and recent snow. The road up the mountain was closed because all the carparks were full, but we were let through to get to Scoria Flat - roughly halfway up the mountain. It's usually a spot where you can fit chains if required, but was being used as a carpark so they could get more people up the mountain. We had lunch there and then caught a shuttle bus up to the top. The weather was perfect, so we got a few toboggan runs in. The sliding area this year was much longer than last year,

and shaped reasonably nicely - it was also faster than last year. We tried to get Ben to go by himself on the toboggan, but the first run he did, he got smashed in the ribs by someone else on an out of control toboggan. So he didn't feel like sliding again by himself. The kids also made a snow man with a carrot nose that had been specially brought all the way from Hamilton!

Sunday morning was fine and cold (got down to -7.6C in the village where we were staying apparently!) so after some breakfast we headed up the mountain again. We were early enough to get a park this time, although we were down in carpark #10, so it was easier to catch the shuttle bus up from there than get the kids to walk up! There was a light breeze blowing, which made it rather icy. After a few toboggan runs

the kids were feeling rather tired - a combination of the cold and not-particularly-good night's sleep. Ben and I went for a little bit of a walk up the other side of Happy Valley to explore, and then it was time for some lunch. Everyone was exhausted, so we just went back down the mountain to have a rest in the cabin. After a rest, we went for a walk down to the stream behind the holiday park (where we had a snowball fight!) and a short walk around the village which we'd never done before.

Monday morning was time to pack up - we'd had a much better night's sleep, so we got packed up and back up the mountain for yet another day of perfect sunshine, this time without any wind. Being a weekday, there were far less people around, so we had some nice quiet runs on the toboggan (this time Ben did go by himself, although he still fell off each time!). Mel was feeling a bit weary after walking back up the hill a few times, so I took all three kids for a walk again. Ben said he would show Joanna how to climb the icy mountain, because he was a big boy! We all managed to fall over and slip a little bit on the way up, but got to a nice spot to look down on the ski slopes. And then Ben decided to keep exploring and then found that he could slide down some of the nice smooth icy stuff on his bottom. Joanna thought that was a grand idea, so she joined in.

And Naomi in the backpack on my back was bouncing up and down, wanting to join in. After that we just had lots of fun climbing ever higher, finding nice spots to slide down on our bottoms! We had a couple of final toboggan runs before heading home (and Ben slid the whole way down by himself, without falling off!).

After lunch, it was time for the drive back home, along with a stop at Over the Moon Dairy in Putaruru to get some yummy cheese... and some rest to recover!

The flickr set has lots more photos, and the videos on there are also pretty funny!

BP#3 Construction Birthday Party

We did this one for Ben's 2nd birthday. The original plan was to have the party at our local park, but it was raining on the day so we had to have it at home instead.

Invitation: Was a photo print of a dumper truck with text on it.

Decorations: We didn't have any as we had planned to have it at the park.

Food: We timed the party for the food to be a brunch meal. The food was pancakes, croissants with ham, cheese, maple syrup and jam for the guest to put on as they liked. We also had some cut up fresh fruit.

Drink: There was milk and juice for the kids and tea and coffee for the adults.

Cake: Was a toy dumper truck filled with edible dirt. This was made with cubes of chocolate cake, scoops of chocolate self saucing pudding and chocolate biscuit crumbs. This is the easiest cake that I have made. Just throw it all in the back and it looked great!

Activity: We had planned to take some diggers and dumper trucks for the kids to play with in the bark chips at the park.

Thankyou gift: Was a small construction vehicle (digger, bulldozer, roller) that the kids could use in their sandpit at home.

BP#2 Am I a Kiwi or Am I an Aussie? At least I know I'm turning One!

This was Naomi's first birthday. Fairly specific, but there are a number of families who would have a similar situation, with parents born in a different country to the kids or kids living in different countries to which they were born in etc.

Invitation: Was a photo print of Naomi, with NZ and Oz flags on it and the text.

Decorations: Thanks to when my parents had visited just after Naomi was born, we had a packet of Australian flag balloons, we then got some black with silver fern balloons from the $2 shop here for the contrasting NZ theme. We hung them on the curtain rails and light fittings inside and around the edge of the market umbrella on the deck (The black NZ progressively popped over the morning as they got too hot in the sun!).

Food: For food we served food which BOTH Aussies and Kiwis claim to be theirs: lamingtons (the first time I've ever made them - apart from some fuzzy memory of making some in class at primary school), meat pies (the mini party variety), BBQ sausages on bread and pavlova.

Drink: We served 'Lift' (the aussie lemon soft drink) and 'L & P' (the kiwi version of the lemon drink).

Cake: It was two simple rectangle chocolate slab cakes, one was iced as an Australian flag and one iced as a New Zealand.

Activities: We had a gumboot (for the Kiwis) and thong (for the Aussies) throwing competition. It wasn't a distance competition, it was the person who got it closest to the target.

BP#1 High Tea in the Park

This is what we did for Ben's first birthday. We held it at Roma St parklands (on the grass between the lake and the ringroad - for Brisbane people), and had people bring their own picnic rugs/chairs to sit on. As with most first birthday parties, it was a mainly adult gathering, with a group of one year olds, as well as a group of toddlers.

Details of the party plan are a bit sketchy as it was a while ago now and I didn't record my plan like I do now. But this is what I do have:

Invitations: We think it was a photo print with text on it. It asked guests to bring a plate of food to contribute to the 'High Tea'.

Decorations: We strung a few balloons in the trees we were sitting under, mainly to help people locate exactly where we were in the park.

Food: As I said we asked the guests to bring a plate of food, so I didn't actually make anything. I did get my mum to make some smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwiches.

Drink: There was hot water in a thermos for the adults to make tea (a selection of fancy flavours), as well as juice for those wanting a cold drink.

Cake: It was a Noah's ark cake. I got the directions from here. Instead of baking the cake myself, I ordered slab cakes from Woolworths and cut to the appropriate shape (I used 2 layers of cake for the ark). It was a pretty ambitious cake to make, the royal icing animals were a fair bit of work - lots of different colours and detail.

Activity: For the older kids we had crayons for them to draw/decorate their party bags and then filled them with a small ball and a small box of dried fruit.

Party thank-you: As I said, each child got a small ball and box of dried fruit.

Finally starting the series

After promising a few weeks ago to do a series of post on my party plans that I've done for the kids birthday parties, I post the first few today. The earlier parties don't have as much detail or pictures as the later parties, but I hope people still find it helpful/inspiring.

Tax returns done!

The usual fiddling around because we have stuff here and there, but only took a couple of days. Just in time for me to pay more tax and wait another year to get it back.

Fashion marathon

Got both the girls to try on all their clothes for this coming summer...worked out what fitted, so now I can choose what stuff to pack for our holiday!

Can finally do my tax!

Got the last piece of paperwork I needed in the mail yesterday. Now I can do my tax and Peter's tax and then look forward to the nice chunk of enforced savings to show up in my bank account!