Lucy's birthday

Lucy's birthday and party were today. Everything as expected. Lots of excited children, happy adults, yummy food, a very cute birthday cake and a gorgeous birthday girl.

All the cousins.

And earlier in the day, I sent my kids to play outside. This is what I found them doing. Which is hilarious if you are aware what I spend much of MY free time doing!


Last week I put all the kids hair in little tiny buns to try and make it curly. Even Ryan wanted in on the action. As you can see, it worked! For a while anyway, until it reverted to its normal dead straight.

Celebrities

We are currently local celebrities, being stopped in the streets for autographs and just so people can gaze upon us.
Well perhaps not quite, but lots of people have commented about our latest appearance in the local paper.
Sophie and I appeared near the front of the paper in relation to a Cycling and Walking Plan that I was involved in developing
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Bethany appears in the photo accompanying the writeup of the school production. It's a bit hard to see but she is just to the right of centre in the front row. You can also see the back of Ella's head in the audience as she watches.

A Hannah funny

Hannah is on the SRC at school - they have two children from each class and Hannah nominated because she knew Ryan was already on there. At SRC they decided to have a charity fundraiser to raise money for the people of Burma. She was so cute for a while trying to pronounce Myanmar. After I explained that the name Myanmar had been imposed by the violent ruling junta, we decided that we should refer to the country as Burma. Anyway, the fundraiser they decided on was Spare Change Week. She's been reminding us for weeks that Week 10 is Spare Change Week for Burma. We are just about to enter week 10 so she was trying to work out exactly what to do. 'Do we wear our school uniforms?' she asked. I explained that it wasn't Wear what you want day so yes she'd have to wear her uniform. 'But when do we get changed?' she wanted to know. Bringing spare change to school of course meant a spare change of clothes! We explained what was meant and she gave a little laugh, 'oh THAT kind of change' (although I don't think she's probably ever heard of coins referred to as change before.

New mountain bike

As you can see by the pic (and probably deduce from the title of this post), last week I did buy a new mountain bike. An Orbea Sherpa. The child I already owned.

As much as I love it, there is a whole bunch of buyer's remorse associated with it. Of course, there is the fact that it is NEW, to start with. Not to mention I spent approximately 50% more than my budget. Oops. And then, there is a whole lot of other buying of things that is required for a bike. For example, I need a bottle cage for it. I pilfered one off a child's bike, but it is too little and won't fit a fullsize water bottle on. I also need a bike pump holder (I can swap the pump from bike to bike though). And it didn't even have a rear reflector (illegal to ride on the roads). I pinched that off an old child's bike too. I knew there was a reason I had a shed full of bikes!
And I'd really like a bike computer for it. So I know how fast I'm hooning down hills and how far I've travelled. While I'm wishing, I'd actually like a GPS for it. Well, it is a MOUNTAIN bike.
Seriously, it would come in useful. Today my mountain-biking friend Amanda and I went to Cudlee Creek National Park, where there are lots of trails. We cruised around for a couple of hours, having no more than a vague idea where we were at any one time. We randomly took a turn that actually ended up right back near the start, but we could just have easily roamed around in the bush for days.
And a way cool mountain biking story, especially for my overseas readers. Well, I thought it was very cool, the kids were a little less excited. But then they'd been at a circus this morning so I guess they were over animal antics.
While we were out in the middle of nowhere today, Amanda nearly got knocked off her bike. By a kangaroo! Well, three of them actually. I was ahead of her and saw them hopping along to the right of us. I stopped at the bottom of the hill to wait for her and watched them still hopping along. They caught sight of me and changed direction, right across the trail! They jumped down off the hillside, the first one in front of Manda, the second over her head and the last one behind. I guess I'm glad she didn't get knocked off, but what a cool story she'd have to tell about her injuries.

Little drummer boy

For the last I don't know how many weeks, the kids have been working hard at school on a drama production. The school is extremely lucky to have a very talented drama teacher, who is well known for his large scale spectaculars so we were all awaiting this one with anticipation. The performances were today, and the show lived up to the hype.

Bethany was a love dancer and had a quite complicated dance to remember.
Ryan was a sprite/drummer and had, well, a drumming routine that we all got to remember very well after he's practised it on every surface over the last couple of months.

Even though I've heard the drumming over and over and over and over and over again recently, I was amazed during the actual show, about how great it sounded. And totally totally amazed by my son. Up there, playing the drums, holding the beat, enjoying himself. I was so ridiculously proud it's kind of embarrassing. But at least I was sitting next to Paul, who was possibly even prouder than me.
Bethany did beautifully as well, remembered most of her dance and smiled at the audience.



Bethany before the performance.



Ryan and friends at the wild, crazy after-party. That's right, playing chess.



Bethany dancing. She's pretty much bang in the middle.

I'm being an indulgent proud mama and putting up three videos of Ryan drumming. These were taken by my mum at the evening performance (there were three performances in total today, although the kids tonight were quite buzzing and were hopeful they'd get a chance to do it again tomorrow).

I willn't be two any more!

Sophie turned three! I guess I need to stop calling her my baby now, huh? She's a big girl, and we better not forget it...
The usual extended birthday celebration ensued - dinner at the Gawler Arms on Sunday night with 'cousins' and nana and papa, and then dinner at Fasta Pasta with Paul on Monday (her actual birthday).
The winner present was the trampoline. I was going to get her a bike, but by chance, the chef at our cooking class this week was talking about this way-cool tramp she bought for her little girl, so in an unusual bout of acquisition lust I rushed out and bought one straight away. I set it up in the lounge room and it has been jumped upon many times. Although we haven't yet set up the slide from mum and dad, and that might come close.

Sophie was so ready to be three. She is incredibly precocious, but fortunately incredibly cute with it. Her current favourite thing is to sing the national anthem, first AND second verses.
Most of her cute pronunciations have disappeared over the last little while, but there are still a few around - 'willn't' instead of 'won't' is my favourite.



Sophie and Charlotte with Sophie's icecream cake at the Gawler Arms.



All children assembled for a photo. Business as usual...



Sophie with her daddy, and her 'three balloon' which came to dinner with us.



One for Adam and Eva: Lucy meets Huck for the first time.



Sophie on the trampoline!