Happy One-hundredth birthday to our Ma

Mum's grandmother turned 100 years old last week. We drove down to Koo Wee Rup for the party which was attended by about 80 people.

It was a good weekend, although the drive down to Melbourne is the most mind-numbing you are likely to encounter; ridiculously low speed limits combined with over the top enforcement of said speed limits by a combination of police, speed cameras and point-to-point speed cameras. When will the government wake up to themselves that fatigue is killing just as many (if not more) drivers than speeding is...yet one is an easy fix, and the other is much more difficult. Anyway, I digress; we stayed at the Big 4 Dandenong in a lovely new 3 bdrm cabin and the kids were just excellent. The Mondeo went beautifully, easily getting to Melbourne and around on one tank of fuel.

The party was extremely well catered for, with an over-abundance of food. The kids had fun grabbing the electric fence (with a bit of encouragement from Dad), running around the property, playing in the cubby-house and on the huge slide, and feeding the calf some dinner.

A letter from Lizzie!

2 yrs old, 4 yrs old and 100 yrs old!

Carter loved the slide

Linc looking far too grown up!

Welcome Ollie, the newest member of the family!

No, we haven't secretly popped out another human bean, but we have just procured another member of the family; meet Ollie [edit 17/4]. He's a pure-bred sealpoint ragdoll kitten, about 10.5 weeks old (born on 26/1/13), white with grey ears, tail and paws (and a little bit of grey above his nose, as you can see from the photos). The kids love him, and can't wait until we pick him up - which will not be until next weekend, unfortunately!

Happy Easter

A hectic weekend this easter loooonnnngggg weekend, with lots of fun (and chocolates). We started on friday night with a gathering at Aunty Chooks house, then saturday we did some shopping, then sunday we had a street easter egg hunt, followed closely by another easter egg hunt at the AFP K9 training centre at Majura! Then today we  had another easter gathering (and easter egg hunt) at Aunty Chook's place before heading to Murrumbateman for Linc's friend Hayley's 4th birthday party. Can't wait for the weekend to have a break!

All of the kids had a barrel of fun!

The AFP K9 team's office dog Flint

Linc and Carter go to Jackson's birthday party

Jackson is Linc's best mate at school. And we hear a lot about Jackson. The upside is that Linc and Carter got invited to Jackson's birthday party at the Reptile Centre; it was actually very cool (even for big people) as they had a number of lizards, turtles and snakes for everybody to touch. Linc and Carter did really well and behaved for Dad (as Mum was at work) and didn't break anything (I think).

A python that looks very much like a brown snake. The kids were quite shocked to see it crawl out of the bag.

One kid was so shocked at the snake, he literally fell off his chair!

Jackson showing the boys a baby crocodile

Making the most of every second weekend!

Over one month since the last post, so time for a blog update!

Life is in a pretty good routine; there are still the odd surprises (like, 02.04am when Linc comes in - "Mum, my feet are wet"...), but Linc is loving school, Carter loves going to Gran's house, and we're finding that we make more of the weekends where Mum doesn't work, such as going to the Arboretum, feeding the ducks, or going to Cockington Green for a train ride!

Feeding the (very assertive) birds at John Knight Memorial Park

Riding on the train at Cockington Green

Canberra day long weekend at the Rose Gardens

Linc's first day at Pre-School

Once upon a time (about four years ago), I used to be able to fit this kid in the cradle of one arm.

Now he's at Pre-School. Mum was a bit emotional, but that is to be expected; Linc had a ball and didn't want to come home. Today was only 2.5 hours, tomorrow is 8.45 to 14.45; we'll see if he still wants to stay at Pre-School after a full day there!

Linc progressing to a big boy bike already!

As you probably noticed from the last post (photo) Linc is already quite big for the bug bike; and, since he's done so well pedaling on the bug bike we decided to get him a new bike today. He wanted to leave the stabilisers on at first, but he seemed to struggle with them as he was used to balancing on the bug bike - so off they came, and away he went, pedaling like a champ up and down the street. He can even take off on his own as he gets a bit of speed up before putting his feet on the pedals.

We are so proud!

Giant Animator 16"