Finally!

Its raining! This poor man here Has worked hard and long all week. There has been a big ole bushfire raging, and that means he leaves for work at 6am and gets back home any time between 9pm and midnight. Filthy.
And last night after getting home from battling the fire for Queensland Park and Wildlife services, his fire brigade pager went off. A tractor had caught fire. So he was off again.
Today brought some much needed rain, which means he has been home ALL day. And even managed to squeeze in a nap!

Remember this cute ball of fluff?

Yeah, not so cute any more....she was struggling with the QLD summer heat in that fur coat, so i took her to the vets for a trim....

And thats what happened.

She looks like a geriatric chihuaha.

Mick tells me that every girl needs a bad hair cut in her life.

I am guessing this is hers...we are probably going to invest in clippers of our own after this LOL surely our novice work can't be any worse???

I am eagerly awaiting this in the mail from Wicked Princesses...fingers crossed that it arrives tomorrow!?

And I have been chosen to stay on the Scrap The Girls Creative Team for the next 6 months! I am so excited!!! I love the girly girl challenges and seeing what everyone else does with the criteria! Thanks for asking me to stay on Kate!

And a sneaky at my LO for this month...look on the Scrap The Girls blog tomorrow for the criteria reveal for Feb!

And one more random rambly *thing*

Sam got in the car on Friday after prep, pumping his fists and jumping around...he told me excitedly "Mr Rowell (principal) said we had been SO good that we can have two whole days at home"

The girls (sophisticated women of the world that they are LOL) rolled their eyes and said "thats called the WEEKEND Sam"

Have a great week my lovely friends, and thanks for stopping by!

Friday Faves!

This week I realised how MUCH I love Google. I realised several time this week in fact! The first time was when I was helping Charlotte do her homewrok. They had to write 4 facts about Australia. I had had a loooong day, and all I could think of was that Australia was discovered in 1788.
So we googled, and cam up with three more AMAZING facts! Thanks Google!
The 2nd time was when I was using our work search engine yesterday to try and help a customer with a query. Its horrible. Doesn't look for items that MAY be related. Must have everything spelled correctly, words must be in the right order. Its horrible. I missed Google yesterday. I missed it cause after searching for 20mins I STILL couldn't find what I needed. And the [poor customer was still waiting.

P.S. If you 'google' Google, you WON'T break the internet. Contrary to popular belief! LOL

I love my electric toothbrush. My teeth feel SO clean after using it!
Hah! I had a Sumo wrestler show up randomly on my doorstep today!

My friend Claire drove 8 hours to dress up in this suit and surprise me! SOOOOO funny! She stayed for a couple of hours then went home...wish she could have stayed longer! The kids have made her promise to come back for a movie night :)

I am also loving my new 'wall'. I am slowly trying to make my house into a home. and I figure I will do it one spot at a time.

My new favourite wall now has the gorgeous 1m high canvas that my hubby got me for Christmas and my wall art. I love it...now just need to do the rest of the room LOL

Have a great weekend friends!

Thank you!

For all of your comments, emails and phone calls regarding Sam's first day :)
You reeeeeally helped this mummy out! Knowing people had been through the same thing and survived was great!

So, I sent these scrawny little bubby legs to school.... Attached to this grown up kid!

And his spunky sisters!

And they ALL had a blast! They like their teachers, they like their classmates and enjoyed catching up with their friends :)

I still miss them though!

We Are Ready...

Whether I want us to be or not.

Our shoes are by the door, ready to go (and fresh new socks are in the drawers) The bags are by the back door (with new hats inside-naturally no on could find theirs from last year *sigh*)

The shirts are good to go (as are the new shorts/skirts/skorts). I tried to get all new school shirts for the kids. The school must have been startled to discover that the new school year was imminent however and have not got enough school shirts available for the kids starting school!?!? I managed to snag ONE shirt for Sam. Surely they suspected that all the new prep kids would be requiring shirts??? I even ordered mine at the end of the school term last year. Imagine if I hadn't!

I am guessing a few prep kids will be showing up tomorrow in casual dress.

Okay. Rant over LOL

Where was I???

Ahh yes, the shirts are ready to go!

The books covered and ready to go! (I Looooove new stationary!)

And tomorrow, my 9 year long gig of stay at home mum ends when this guy starts his schooling adventure.

I know I should be excited for him, but experience tells me that as soon as he leaves the nest and starts school, I start to lose him.

For his entire life, I have been his 'go-to-guy'. The one who answered all of his questions. The one who explained concepts like gravity, and showed him how to cook, and crafted with him. Tomorrow, that ends.

Beginning tomorrow he will be coming home and telling me that "teacher said..." and "my friend says..." He will become the expert and I will be almost redundant.

I am heartbroken.

I have loved being a stay at home mum to my babies. Loved it, and it is all over. It went too fast! How can 9 years have gone by since I left teaching and started being the teacher to my own lovelies? I want it all back. I want to sing songs all day again, I want to be frustrated by the lack of adult conversation. I want to snuggle and read stories on the couch for hours on end.

I want my time back so I can truly enjoy my babies being babies again.

But its gone.

So many older women told me to enjoy my babies, and I smiled and nodded, and some days wished for them to be gone. But it is so true. It is a precious, but fleeting time. I miss them already.

I must go and enjoy my last day of being an important mummy. And find my sunglasses in preparation for the drop off tomorrow.

Its bound to get ugly :)

Cyber Cropping!

Krissy's first CC since taking over at Wicked Princesses has been a wonderfully fun one! if you missed out on Saturday's free class...its still up in the forum so you can get the step by step instructions still!

I completed Krissy's sketch challenge....complete with lots of individualised little flowers. And I do mean lots.
Bit of a back story with that...I was using the ribbon to stitch a circle, and ran out of ribbon 3/4 of the way around...so I covered the rest of the circle with flowers LOL

heh puppy...awwwww!

My challenge was to create an organizer...

Any organizer!

Something to keep you on the path to being organized. A path I am ALWAYS trying to keep to, without much success LOL

And I have just posted my mini challenge....

Create a set of at least 2 cards that are for celebrating something 'new'.

There is heaps of time left....challenge entries aren't due until Wednesday, so you could have a scrappy Australia Day (Mick is working, so no family fun times here :( )

Head on over to the WP forum to check out the CC, complete a challenge or two and maybe win yourself a wicked prize!

Friday Faves!

Oh wow, looks like this year is going to fly by as quickly as last year!!! Another Friday?!?!
#1 fave this week is nana naps...with Mick having been home with us since Christmas, I have managed to have a Nana nap more days than not LOL Soooo good! #2 is my puppy. I am trying to enjoy every silly thing she does, every cute little noise she makes and her nice puppy smell, but it is FLYING by!!! She is already so much bigger than when we first got her!

#3 My gas hot water system. Perhaps living without hot water for several weeks made this even more amazing, but I am loving having limitless hot water!

#4 The movie 'Up'. Such a sweet start and such a cute story!!

#5 Seeing my hubby and the kids spending a HEAP of time together these holidays! They have been bike riding every day, swimming, and built Lego cities that stun and amaze! Basically we have all just loved having him around and all of the extra family time it has given us...a real gift :)

Have a great weekend!

Cyber Crop This Weekend!

Over at WP This will be Krissy's first CC since taking over at Wicked Princesses, so come on over and help us celebrate!

On Sturday night, I will be teaching a class for this...



Using a collagey technique type of thing...
I'll pop up another peek at my other challenge later on today

I would love to see you over there!

11 years ago today...

I married an amazing man :) We looked a whole heck of a lot younger, and I was a whole heck of a lot thinner.... (how the HECK did such baby faced people manage to convince someone to actually perform a wedding ceremony!?)

It was a fun day, and its been a fun (but awfully busy) 11 years!

I love you Mikey..thanks for marrying me and sticking with me through thick and thin :) You are my most favourite husband ever!

And one more, because gosh darn it...look how cute I used to be!

No wrinkles!

Friday Faves!

#1 lamb kebabs. YUMMY! Mick made dinner three nights this week, and he found a yummy recipe for Weight Watchers lamb kebabs with hommus dip. So good! #2 I was so excited to discover the first show in the new season of Big Love when channel surfing the other night!

#3 I have a secret love. Covering school books. maybe its being the daughter of a librarian, but I love it, and this is the perfect time of year for it...three kids, start of the new school year..Heaven!

#4 Jurlique citrus handcream. mmmmmm. Smells so so good, and feels INCREDIBLE! I tried some a while back and was lucky enough to get a tube for my birthday from my sis. It is gorgeous gorgeous stuff!

#5Having my gorgeous husband on holidays with me and the kids. Its so cool to just hang around at home together....and nice to have someone else to build lego towers and go for bike rides around the block ;)

I am going to miss him when he goes back to work!

Boy vs Backyard.

I may have mentioned before, that my kids are absolutely obsessed with Man vs Wild (in fact just putting this pic on my blog brought them all running to check out what I was looking at Bear Grylls on the computer for LOL) My mother was horrified by the kids obsession. I think she objected to the eating of animals. Admittedly, not my favourite part of the show LOL

Anyways, watching the show has inspired The Boy.
I got home from work the other day to find this in my back yard.


A Bear Grylls inspired possum trap. 'Primed' (A direct quote from The Boy himself. Stolen by himself from Bear HIMself LOL) with a mango for bait.
What self respecting possum could resist???

Sadly. All possums could resist.

He was devastated.

For a minute.

Then like a good survivalist, he dusted off his hands, and built another trap.

I'm thinking I am going to have to go outside tonight and nibble on an underripe mango and leave some sort of possum type disturbances around.

(P.S. How proud am I of my husband for taking these awesome action shots of the trap building??? Warms a scrapbookers heart!)

The Christmas Puppy - An Update :)

Remember our puppy? She was the kids Christmas present...we called her Daisy.

She continues to delight and infuriate us, all at once LOL

She loved the beach and travelled SO well in the car for all of our holiday driving (we probably spent about 14 hours travelling over a Christmas day and Boxing day).

She is however definitely NOT the Princessy/lap dog type....

She likes to get stuck in and DIRTY.

She delighted in antagonising mum and dad's dog Molly.

They were just a smidge wild...

(I know..look at those teeth!)

The kids think she is wonderful...they don't mind that she is not house broken yet.

They don't mind that she won't come when she is called.

They don't mind that she wants to sleep on our bed at night, and barks at us until she is allowed *sigh*

They are pretty excited that she finally learned how to walk on a lead! They also think its pretty funny when she tries to dig in her heels and refuse to walk. LOL thinks she is pretty tough does this puppy!

And given that cute face, most of the time I don't mind most of those things either;)

But look how much che has changed already!

She has put on about 1.2kg since she arrived. She loooooves chicken wings (raw of course!) and will chew anything that sits still...our skirting boards seem fairly popular of late! She seems to be quite stubborn, but the joy that she has brought to our family kinda cancels out anything negative. She is making my kids and my husband smile and laugh like they haven't for quite some time.

So there ya have it! Our growing-too-fast Christmas Puppy!