I wonder...

On any given day I do a lot of wondering.

I wonder when I will ever get to have another hair cut...

I wonder how many more massages I can get for my back before our health fund bonus runs out...

I wonder how I can convince my kids to eat more good food...

I wonder how I can eat more chocolate without the negatives that it brings...

I wonder if I can convince a cleaner to come to my house every couple of days and work for cupcakes...

I wonder how work at home mums do it...

I wonder how work outside the home mums do it...

I wonder if my kids are going to turn out messed up...

I wonder if my middle child will ever decide to wipe his own butt...

I wonder why we just can't all be well at the same time lately...

I wonder if peanut butter sandwiches every day for lunch is really a good thing for Monkey...

I wonder if I should get a worm farm or a Bokashi Bucket...

My wonders have a hierarchy, or perhaps a rating system would be a better explanation. Some wonders have a higher importance on one day than others. Today, my highest rating wonder is this...

I wonder if a worm farm counts as getting the kids a pet?

They did get rather excited about finding worms when they were digging at Grannysaurus' place a couple of weeks ago. They do get completely freaked out by dogs and I have said that I'm not buying a pet that needs toilet training until we are no longer toilet training children... and that seems forever away. The plus side is at least worm wee and poo is good for the garden, unlike the barkers eggs and dead grass patches that a dog leaves around. The kids have asked for a bird... but Monkey is afraid of anything with eyes so that gets rid of that option. It looks like our only real option for a pet is a rock or worms... and Lion gave me a pet rock for Mothers' Day and Monkey threw it out a hole in our window screen. I guess it's down to worms... or maybe that Bokashi Bucket...

Hmmmm, I wonder....

The Cuteness

It's no secret that I think my kids are just the cutest around! I thought I would share the cuteness with you a bit more...

The front yard was REALLY overgrown before Wolf got to it last week. To the point where Lion and Dragon were walking from the front yard through to the back and I was keeping an eye on them to make sure they didn't run back to the path of the whipper-snipper and I took my eyes off them for a second and when I looked back Dragon was GONE! My mummy heart did that skip a beat thing and then his little head popped up from the grass. He had tripped over and had completely disappeared! Well with a job like that you need more than your average lawn mower... a chainsaw is more Dragon's style.

There was a beautiful sunset that evening. Not in a position that made it easy to take photos of it though. There was the clothes line, the fence, the trees, the cubby house... you get the idea. I took a few of the brilliant colours reflecting off the clouds though.

We also took some photos of our non-scary garden inhabitants. The boys were playing in the sandpit and started freaking out about a spider... I start thinking bird spider strolling through the sandpit to devour my boys type thing... They came running to get me and took me to see the spider THAT THEY HAD SEEN ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE YARD at least 10 metres away from them that was just a St Andrews Cross Spider. It was a mummy spider with it's fancy schmancy egg sac all trussed up in it's web. The boys were quite intrigued once I explained that it wont hurt them and we can look at it if we want and it's little baby spiders are in that big white bundle and we had a chat about how it stitches patterns in it's web and helps us by eating the bugs off the heliconias etc. We grabbed the camera to take a few photos but it was seeming to get a bit agitated by then so we tried to find other insects to take photos of but they kept running away from all our noise and our garden boots. So any photos we did take were pretty rubbish.

Dragon had me in stitches this morning in church, tears running out of my eyes kind of laughing, IN CHURCH. I know God has nothing against laughter, he has proved to me over and over again that he has a sense of humor, after all he gave me 2 little boys. But laugh-till-you're-in-tears type laughter is hard to hide during a quiet church service. Kids stay in for the service in our church. Early in the service they do a kids talk and then the kids all grab a folder to take back to their seats. Each folder has a pencil, some crayons and some multi-age worksheets with puzzles, colouring-in etc. Dragon grabbed his folder and brought it back, after a bit he opened it up... The absolute shock on his face when there were no papers in his folder, just crayons! I had a giggle and told him to duck to the front and grab another folder... he started to leave but I said he needed to take this folder back with him... off he goes and grabs a new folder returning to excitedly open it and find... ALL it has is paper, nothing to write with! His little face couldn't decide if he should cry or laugh about it, ahh, perhaps it was a "be there" thing because it's not sounding so funny now... He then gave me an accusing look to let me know that he knew best and he should have kept the other folder here! I told him to just share Lion's crayons.

Lion wanted to wear his dress shoes to church this morning and that was fine but I told him he had to be careful of other peoples toes because those shoes hurt if you stand on anyones toes. He said he would be careful no to stand on his friends toes. I let him know that he needed to watch out for grown up toes too because ladies wear sandals to church and their toes stick out and get stood on too! He assured me he would be careful (yes, these shoes are THAT dangerous, I almost lost a toe nail). Half way through church he gets right up close to me and points to the lady sitting next to us "hey mum, THAT GIRL ISN'T WEARING SANDALS!!!" oh the scandal! I then had to explain that not ALL ladies wore sandals to church.

*********

Please pray also for Mary C. She is one of the older ladies of our congregation and she has had a long list of things preventing her from attending church recently as her dementia and other medical problems have been having good days and bad days but the last few weeks she has been able to come along! It's been great to see her there and although she doesn't act so spritely anymore she has been doing better. This morning she had to be taken to hospital in an ambulance when she had some troubles towards the end of the service. Thankfully we seem to have medical type people all through the church and she was well cared for until the ambo's arrived. She is a grandma type figure to a bunch of the "kids" my age since her grandchildren didn't attend our church she loved to "grandma" all of us when we were growing up. Please pray for her today!

Well that's logic for ya.

Wolf is outside whipper-snipping again... Our yard has NEVER had the edges done 2 weekends in a row... although he is just keeping going where he left off last week since it was more than one weekends worth but I'm not complaining. The boys wanted to go outside and help him but since Wolf was on the snakey side of the house I said no they couldnt go out with him. Dragon burst into tears "BUT I WANT MY DAAAADDDDYYYYY"

We did go out after Wolf scared off any snakes in the side yard. After that passionate plea I couldnt say no.

I just weeded the sandpit for the boys. It's not so hot now so they are enjoying staying outside for longer stretches and I felt guilty for neglecting their sandpit for so long. I got all the weeds out and all the broken toys and all the dead grass that was flicked in from last weekends whipper-snipper extravaganza and I got it all looking nice again.

I finished up and went to go back inside to grab some washing for the line when Lion asked if I could help him and Dragon build their roads. "Not at the moment, I have to get some other stuff done" he kept pleading... "We didn't put in a sandpit for mummy to play in. It's for you boys to play in"

"Well, if Dragon and I bought a sandpit for you to play in WE would help YOU build some roads in it!"

And for all those that may need a reminder (like my little Dragon)...

THIS

is why we don't leave our boots sitting on the patio.

YUCK, toad's will make their home anywhere.

Wolf's Birthday Post

Tuesday 12th was Wolf's 39th Birthday. We didn't have a present that morning for him because I wasn't sure he had any books in mind to buy with his usual Angus & Robertson gift voucher (I know it would mean more if I bought the actual books he wanted but I would NEVER manage to get the right ones) so I thought I would let him know it was just money to spend this year.

The boys made him some lovely cards and I wrote the required messages in them. We went off to playgroup and Wolf went off to watch Star Trek. I didn't want a hurried birthday dinner for him and since he had a meeting that night we decided Wednesday would be his birthday dinner. We had a lovely steak, salad that he found in a magazine and wanted me to try, bread rolls and of course... the Birthday Chocolate Pie.

I NEED to decorate cakes, so a birthday PIE causes me some problems. I decided that I would reduce myself to cream in a can and we could just cover it with that and I would try to convince myself that it was decorated. We chucked on some candles (he didn't want 39 for some reason) and the boys thought it was super yummy!

I know it wasn't as good as his mummy makes, I know it never will be. People try to encourage me by saying that "your boys will do this to their wives one day" but I have come to realise that no, my boys think that poo on toast made by a grandparent beats anything mummy can churn out. Not that any grandparent has or would serve them poo on toast. But I happen to think it was a pretty good batch this year and I do think I got some bonus points by making my own crumb crust instead of buying a pastry shell.

Now, it may not be as good as Nano's but I think these two enjoyed it!

Then today we went to the Stihl shop to pick out his birthday present... it was a little more expensive than a few books but we are practical with presents around here, if you need it then there's a good chance you'll get it as a present.

So I found out a lot about "nippa-nippa's" today. Whipper snippers come in bent shaft or straight shaft. There is a maximum cord size for each type and only the straight shaft have interchangeable heads. We were leaning towards the biggest of the bent shaft until we mentioned guinea grass. Mr Stihl man said guinea grass would trash one of the "little" whipper-snippers so we needed to go for at least the smallest of the straight shaft and very likely use a blade on the end. So, we are now the proud owners of a guinea grass eating straight shafted whipper snipper with an extra blade attachment. My edges look so nice and tidy. At least the 70% of them that got done before it ran out of the complimentary fuel that comes with it.

"Eat whippper snipper cord, guinea grass"

The Stihl man was so very impressed with the kids behaviour that he gave them some super cool hats (he said some mums let their kids run feral in a shop filled with chainsaws and other assorted bladed power tools... WHAT????) the boys were so thrilled with their hats and so were we, they are really good quality hats that they didn't take them off all day! My sweet boys even took along their wallets and offered to help pay for some of daddy's "nippa-nippa". I have such lovely kids!

I wanna be just like my Daddy!

Daddy said to keep my toes out of the way!

So Happy Birthday my WONDERFUL WOLF!

Got a big job ahead of ya?

Australia's Stihl Workin'

Guess what Wolf got for his birthday? More to come on all things Wolfy soon...

and if you haven't seen the Stihl ads on TV then the title and my caption probably don't make sense... I might try to track them down, if I have the song in my head then everyone should have the song in their head!