Excitement!

I just got an email saying that there is a super awesome parcel on it's way to me!  Do you want to know what the best bit for you is?  It's for a FANTASTIC GIVE AWAY!

But that's all I'm telling you right now.

So, what else has been going on around here in my bloggy quietness?  Lots.  That is partly to blame for the quietness.  It's been a busy two terms at school and last holidays we were so busy with endless invitations to here and there that we didn't get much of a break.  Now we are in our second week of these holidays and I am feeling refreshed and ready to face the final chaotic term of school.  I made a purposeful decision to stay home a lot these holidays.  As much as possible to do things that included all of the kids and to spend lots of time just being together.

But, leading up to the holidays we did have a little bit of fun...

Lion's school does a school concert every second year and in the other year the do something on a much smaller scale.  This year they presented a Food & Dance Fiesta!  Each year level presented a dance and there was all sorts of food for sale and the year levels all manned stalls selling different things.  The year ones all had to bring in cupcakes to be sold at their stall which was a raging success.  Lion's class danced to "boot scootin' baby".  I was thrilled when the classes came out in lines and Lion was right at the front down the end where I was standing (I had Monkey in the pram so I could only get to the ends).  Then they decided to do a re-shuffle for some reason... Lion ended up at the back, in the middle, behind some rather tall kids.  I got rare glances of him and managed to get a couple of photos that weren't real good but hey, we got a record of the event.  After the first time through they had to come and get a parent to dance with them.  Unfortunately with Monkey in the pram (against his wishes) and Wolf at work, I couldn't be the one to go and dance with him.  He had taught Dragon some of the moves so I encouraged (bribed with an extra cupcake) Dragon to go and dance with him.  You can imaging how much of that I saw with all the parents of the kids in the front two rows dancing in front of my tiny little boys.  Oh well, I was proud of both of them for getting up there... even if I couldn't see most of it.

We went down to The Strand Ephemera to check out some of the artwork on the day before Father's Day.  The kids had a ball but I was suffering with sinus headaches from a horrid sinus infection that just wont go away.  Some of the art was good... some was just really really poor.  These are two pieces that the kids particularly enjoyed.

Last week (1st week of school holidays) Wolf had the Tuesday off so we took of up the the beach hut for the day with Grannysaurus and Cheetah.  We played in the sand, swam in the ocean, boogy boarded, went to Frosty Mango (Aunty Chimera and Little Bear joined us for that)... we had a generally awesome time.  Not many photos were taken because the photographer was having too much fun!  Mum did grab a few on my camera while I was in the ocean though.

I was so proud of my kids... and Cheetah.  We'll start at the oldest...  Cheetah had never ridden a boogy board before and was struggling to catch a wave.  Even after I explained when to push off.  I had a thought... I don't use the top of the wave to tell when to jump, I use the feeling around my ankles of the water rushing back out to sea as well as the look of the wave...  As the next lot of "big" waves were starting to roll in I quickly explained how waves work and at which point in the waves life you need to push off and all of a sudden he was riding like a pro!

Lion was dumped wave after wave.  He saw a particularly big wave coming and got a gleam in his eye... He caught it and it took him two metres and dumped him.  HARD.  His little head popped up from under the water, he spat mouthfuls of sand and sea water out and looked at me.  I thought he might be about to cry... his little voice spoke up... "that. was. AWESOME".  He grabbed his hat, wrung the water out of it, put it back on his head and took of to find his next wave.

Dragon is usually a one wave boy.  He gets dumped once and that's it.  He's sitting in the shallows and wont try again.  He was dumped over and over and over and he just kept going back for more.

Monkey is also a stick to what he knows kinda kid.  Especially in the ocean.  He got out there and was riding the boards with no one holding on to him (much to mummy's horror), he was jumping waves and pretending to fall over... he had a blast!

So there's a little of what we have been up to.  There's still so much more to share... but not today.  I hope there are still people reading this little old blog... it'd be a shame if there was no one to win the fantastic prize I'll have to give away soon!

Sunday Snapshot... a bit more holiday fun.

Summer is here.

It's HOT.

It's sweaty.

The kids STINK by the end of the day.

I have extra loads of washing whenever we go swimming.

What's not to love?

So this isn't really from today only... or even from this week only... it's a mish mash of stuff that I needed to get out of my brain and my photo files.

Last Saturday we went swimming at Cheetah and Little Bear's house.  The kids had a great time and I eventually remembered to wash the swimming gear.  Just in time to go swimming with some friends yesterday.  I'm right on top of this domestic thing.

Dragon looks super brave there.  Thing is, that's how he spent most of the afternoon, on the edge of the pool.  Little Bear really was turning blue... she's a little cold frog like her Aunty McTavish.

We really went around because we weren't able to make it for Cheetah's birthday the weekend before so we took some Milk Arrowroot biscuits, some leftover icing from the fridge and some sprinkles and made some birthday cookies to celebrate all over again!

Monkey, who was wearing a sweet little toweling robe and was being called "Heff" all afternoon, LOVED the iced cookies!

*****

Do you need a new oven?  Are you concerned that you current oven is using too much electricity? That it's damaging the environment?  That it just isn't the "in" thing?  Well let me introduce to you the Simpson Recycle.  Based on the ever popular Simpson Evolution oven only using 100% less electricity we think it will be a winner in your house. 

Lids of  "take and toss" containers for the hotplates, nappy box for the oven, old rice cooker for them to cook up a storm.  They loved it and played with it constantly for three or four days and on and off since.  Thanks to a friend of a friend for the idea.

*****

I recently made a purchase that I have been intending to make for a while.  Almost all our face washers are 6 years old... or more.  They are VERY well used and are looking a little worse for wear.  I haven't really bought many myself, they were mostly baby gifts when Lion was born (we got a LOT of washers) so they have had 6 years of babies learning to feed themselves, 6 years of cleaning up kids coming inside from the dirt, 6 years of cleaning up spills, 6 years of bath times, 6 years of tending to scrapes and cuts... most of them need retirement.  Washers are annoying, their very use lends them to getting stained and discoloured quickly.  So when I saw Target had 10packs of ALL WHITE washers I jumped.  My friend that I mentioned my plan to thought I was insane.  YOU HAVE ALL BOYS!  YOU CAN'T BUY WHITE!!  YOU'LL REGRET THIS!!!  But I bought them anyway.  Because the one thing I've learnt with boys is black is a great colour for clothing.  Brown is a fantastic colour for furnishings.  But for washers and towels and things you can't go past WHITE...

Because after it's been through a bucket of bleach it looks like new again and again and again.  So here's to 10 years or more from my 30 new face washers... yes, 30!

Oh, I do have brown ones that wont be retiring... they are brown to make their use very clear... and it's certainly not for cleaning faces.

*****

Dragon woke up one day on the school holidays and decided he wanted to be a scientist.  Always happy to encourage science I tired to think up some experiments we could do.  We did a few little experiments with weight and volume in a tub of water.  Mostly I wanted to make sure I was giving him 'speriments to do so he didn't do what I heard him chatting to Lion about and "go and do some 'sperimentin' by myself".  I figured bang for buck you can't go past a few teaspoons of bicarb and some vinegar.  so I balanced a pinch bowl on top of an upturned cup, used some foil to make sure it didn't tip over and added some food colouring to the vinegar and we had a great time making blue volcanoes!

Monkey got a bit freaked out and didn't sit there for much longer after I took the middle photo.  I am sure if I had let them the boys would have gone through my entire stash of bicarb and vinegar.  And because I did it all on a tray the clean up was so easy.  I took all the mess inside, rinsed everything off and put it all in the dishwasher, that's my kind of  'speriment.

*****

So that's a little of what we've been up to along with 12 month needles, sicknesses and teething just for a bit of fun and excitement.

Mr Maker...

You may recall that many moons ago I lamented that my oldest child was not setting high standards for the others to follow when it came to your "traditional" creativity.  Being a fan of the visual arts myself, I have tried to encourage all of the kids to get a little more creative on that side of things.  It hasn't really worked.

Lion still prefers to scribble when he draws and colours in and I choose to believe this is an emotional outlet for him because he CAN stay in the lines and he CAN draw intricate illustrations he just prefers not to.  In his words "Ugh, but Muuuuum, Mrs P makes me draw properly at school so I need to do this now so I don't have to do it at school".  Well okay then.

Dragon is also a fan of the "fireworks" style of colouring in.  He does love painting but his attention span is limited to one sheet of paper and once that is done he considers himself all painted out so he stops.  Box construction is more his style, just like Lion but he doesn't have the eye for making working models of things like Lion can do.  I would have to say scissors would be Dragon's craft tool of choice.  He can make an awesome jigsaw puzzle... as long as you don't mind having five million white pieces that you can't figure out where they go.  No, he does do a great job of jigsaw puzzles, he just needs to be reminded to stop cutting before things go too crazy.

Monkey... well, Monkey likes to eat textas and crayons.  I think there's hope for him yet.  He does get creative with a whiteboard pen on his highchair tray... until he sucks on it so it doesn't work anymore.

image credit here

Enter Mr Maker.  Have you seen that show?  It's the one with the slightly manic guy making junk out of junk and calling it craft.  Anyway, it's given my kids more of an interest in craft so it can't be all that bad, can it?

Well, it's meant that I've had to step up and actually do some craft with my kids.  That's not a problem.  I've got to do the craft that they specify or put a really good spin on the craft that I want to do so they change their mind.  Now, since I rarely want to make anything they see on Mr Maker and it usually involves 15 paper towel tubes and special yellow beads formed by feeding yellow sticks to monkeys and collecting their poop while it's still soft and forming that into beads... and y'know, other items that I just happen to have hanging around here but I selfishly don't want to let the kids use because I'm just mean.  So anyway, that means I have to convince them to do something at least a little more interesting.

Craft Project 1.

The boys saw beaded metal bookmarks in a bookshop and wanted to buy one each.  At $7 each I said no way!  "We'll make them"... it was out of my mouth before I could catch myself.  But it'd be fine, I envisioned a piece of ribbon with some knots and beads and that'd be good.  I ran the idea by the boys and it was turned on its head.  Nope, they wanted to make some JUST.LIKE.THAT.  We went to Spotlight and beads were picked, I found the right bookmarks and we crafted...

I think they turned out great and we made three with heaps of beads left over for the price of one in the bookshop!

Craft Project 2.

Last week Kate over at Picklebums, as well as being perfectly imperfect, tweeted this link to Filth Wizardry and I checked it out... It seemed simple enough, so I picked up some plasticine for $2 and got some hand me down stamp pads and away we went... It wasn't that easy.  They just couldn't get it together.  I couldn't get them to understand that they had to follow certain steps to get anything worth printing.  Lion eventually got it a bit but he would copy the things I had made.  But we had fun, Monkey ate plasticine, we got covered in stamp ink, the boys got plasticine stuck under their short stubby fingernails.  We made a few cards with our stamps and the boys ran off to play while I scraped plasticine off Monkey's hands and packed away the stamps before he could paint himself with one.

I think if we do it again I will spend a bit more time making patterns in the plasticine with them before we even got out the stamps.... I'd also probably make sure Monkey was not involved.  The space in the middle of the cards is supposed to be so I can cut it out and put a photo behind it so it's a frame card but they also had trouble following the instruction to leave that part empty.  I can't remember if they had had a nap that day but boy did they have trouble focusing and following instruction.  Always fun for craft!

There you have it, a couple of our more exciting craft activities these school holidays. 

The Road to Nowhere

We've been there...

and back...

and eventually...

I'll blog about it...

Something to pass the time...

Just walked in from our time away and instead of doing a proper post or anything I thought I would give you opportunity to laugh a little at our expense... and I am hoping that the new computer will be able to be collected tomorrow so I want to wait and download the photos onto that insted of the work computer.

It's all multiple choice... the answer is Wolf, Mummy McT, Lion, Dragon or a combination of those...

a) Which McTavish locked themselves inside a toilet stall at Lake Barrine?

b) Which McTavish had to crawl under the door of said toilet stall to rescue increasingly panicky McTavish?

c) Which McTavish couple celebrated their 8th wedding anniversary while away?

d) Which McTavish couple spent their 8th wedding anniversary in separate single beds?

e) Which McTavish miscalculated the day of their anniversary? (call it forgot/miscalculated, whatever)

f) Which McTavish pooped in their togs on the side of the resort pool and just walked away when the nugget fell out the leg of their swimmers?

g) Which McTavish was so incredibly relieved that they were the only ones silly enough to be in the pool and frantically found something to clean up the nugget and had to then carry the nugget wrapped in a napkin up to their room while dragging along the soiled McTavish who claimed they didn't need to get cleaned up?

h) Which McTavish found that they were surprisingly freaked out by the skyrail pods?

i) Which McTavish tried to break an old ladies hip by tripping her with a rather weighty geode?

j) Which McTavish was so tired that when they dropped their icecream on the ground they kept licking at thin air?

k) Which McTavish claimed there was positively no crocodiles along the esplanade but freaked out when they went down on the sand and Mummy McT called to come back "or the crocodiles will get you"?

l) Which McTavish has absolutely fallen in love with the family friendly dining at Outback Jack's?

m) Which McTavish was ogling all the blond European chicks?

n) Which McTavish was the sexiest in Cairns? hint... I just asked Wolf to give me one more that he was the answer for.

Have fun with this... You know, I'd offer a prize but I doubt I would actually post it to you within the next 6 months so just enjoy laughing at us and wait upon the answers and stories to elaborate on them!

My God ROCKS!

I'm not sure about our blog readers but the McTavish clan believes in ONE omnipotent (all powerful), omnipresent (He's everywhere), omniscient (all knowing) CREATOR GOD. He made the world, He has it all under control, He made us and He cares for us more than anything because we are made IN HIS IMAGE.

So a trip into the rainforest is a great reminder of just how powerful He is... This stuff was no accident of cells and time and evolution and stuff. This is design, creation, the work of a powerful God...

We took a day-trip to Paluma. A rainforest villiage at the top of Mount Spec on Tuesday... If you talk to Lion we were Butterfuly hunting, Dragon says Dinosaur hunting, Mummy McT says family time, Wolf says... well, I havent actually asked him but I'm pretty sure he probably thought it was punishment for something horrible he did.

Anyway, I tortured my family by stopping every few metres for a photo of this, that or the other and there were so many I thought I would share the rainforest ones in a seperate post to the family ones. The boys learnt so much about the rainforest by walking through it, noticing things themselves and asking questions. It was a great way to show them how God has created the plants to fit their environment, animals to be sustained by the plants and in turn look after the plants. How a fallen tree is a home and a source of food for animals and other plants.

So here is the rainforest series...

See that tree, the one hidden in the back there with the strangler fig wrapping around it? I couldnt get closer than this but it was so intricate and fancy schmancy.

I got a few photos of this one but none of them seemed right... I just wanted to get a little lower. I wasn't about to lay my very pregnant self down on the rainforest floor, I kinda thought they might just leave me lying there and walk off. So I held the camera at what I hoped was the right angle and *click*... IT WORKED! I know that the strangler figs eventually kill the host tree but they are so beautiful the way they wrap themselves around their host like ribbons.

Just a fun photo... No need to wonder where they developed the faces for the trees in the Lord of the Rings movies... Do you ever get the feeling you are being watched? Or perhaps someone is sniffing you?

The paths you walk along are not covered with boardwalks, they are natural and winding and covered with leaf litter. This is in one of the more open sections where the trees are letting quite a bit of light through.


Okay... these were tiny so look close... no, closer... see those little red spore do-dad things on the moss? They were so itty bitty and tiny, 2mm in length tops.


I loved all the moss and lichens and ferns and fungi growing on the trunks of the trees. Like a little miniature forest growing within the forest.


So delicate and soft. We explained to the boys that you don't just go touching every tree because even the trunks of trees are homes for other plants and animals.



This particular tree had this little fern growing up in it's branches, at least 3 different lichens on it's trunk, 2 different sorts of moss that I could see, 1 or 2 other ferns high up in it's branches, it was supporting so much other life.


It's like some kind of abstract art on the tree trunk.

These guys are the size of a dinner plate. They were in a REALLY dark section of the rainforest.


This one was BIGGER than a dinner plate. I loved it's layered edge, each layer was a slightly different tone.


This one was not so huge... only about 2cm across. I think his little white edge was something that was growing on him. It was kind of hard to tell but it seemed to be a type of lichen growing on a fungus growing on a fallen tree... *sings* I get by with a little help from my friends...


This delicate fern is growing up the trunk of a small tree. The tree trunk was less than 2 cm across so each of these leaves were teeny tiny.



I loved this red trunk with the green moss covering it. It's got hollows all over the place where I am sure little animals take refuge. You could see all around it where the scrub turkeys have been scratching around looking for food.



The buttress roots were just as spectacular as when I was little. Lots of support for the MASSIVE trees that they are supporting.


The butresses end right at the top of this photo, they are taller than me by a few metres. Hopefully in a few days I'll have some family photos and some of the buttress root ones have a small McTavish child in them for comparison.

I am hoping to go through some of mums photo albums to get some comparison photos from when I was about Lion's age before I post the family photos.

My biggest lesson for the day was that photography trips to the rainforest should be taken with other photographers, not husbands and small children.

Day One.

Today is the first day of the rest of our lives... um, nope, well it is, but isn't every day? I never got that saying.

Today is the first day of....

4 WEEKS HOLIDAYS

I am just a little excited. Wolf hasn't had any significant amount of time off (like, more than a day for anything other than being sick) since January last year... 18 months ago! I will have Wolf home for 4 weeks straight!

We'll see if I am still this excited by Wednesday.

We have lots planned, I am hoping we do at least one day trip each week and the last week we are hoping to head up to Cairns/Atherton/Port Douglas/Somewhere North of Here to have a real get-away-from-everything holiday (our anniversary falls in that week too... second honeymoon with kids in tow maybe?... maybe not). The last time we had a holiday that was just a holiday and didn't involve Wolf visiting one of the other stores to fix/train/placate something or someone or wasn't visiting family was... well, I can't remember, it was pre-Dragon days I'm pretty sure, possibly pre-Lion days! I am so looking forward to getting away! We had so much holiday time owing that we got/will get paid out for some of it so that helps to pay for actually going away for a bit.

Other than that we are cleaning! Monday is 10 weeks to baby so we have lots to get done to make room for person #5 in this little house. Wolf and I have quite different cleaning styles. It makes us want to kill each other causes lots of "discussions" when we clean together. One thing that needs to get done is the double garage needs to be cleaned out (we only need one side so the other is storage). Hopefully Wolf will just reverse the ute up to the roller door and leave me alone to start throwing things out. At one stage (getting ready for baby #2) I got a ute load ready for the dump but we never got around to borrowing the ute to take it so it has integrated back into the rest of the chaos. The ute now (and has for over 12 months) lives at our house on semi-permanent loan so we can do this any time but it's a BIG job. Thankfully not a back breaking one so I can do it without too much interference help. It'll only be once I get to the section that has been our home office (yes, in the garage, we are all class and a little strapped for space) that I'll need to get Wolf to move boxes of books and such. Once that is all figured out hopefully I can start looking for a small second hand chest freezer to store leftovers and bulk meat and stuff... shh, don't tell Wolf... we are yet to discuss that one.

So, where might we head to on our day trips??? Paronella Park, Balgal Beach (maybe a night or two in the family beach hut) Charters Towers or Ravenswood to let the boys go feral in the dirt and try to find some gold that they missed back in "the rush" or explore the gun hides from the war, I am sure there will be a visit to Frosty Mango for some icecream somewhere in the 4 weeks. I have an invite to a ladies day at Magnetic Island next Sunday with the girls from my mummy group. We met at antenatal classes with our firsts and have just kept catching up and adding to our families as the years have passed. I think I might be spending my birthday money on that one since it's not like I'm popping out for coffee with the girls, there's the ferry across, bus pass once there, my friends all married "well" and many of them have gone back to work so lunch wont be at the local fish'n'chip shop, they are classier than me that. Me, well, I pick and choose which things I go to, moderation is the key:) This one sounded like a lot of fun though!

There are some little repairs that need to happen around the house too... things that when we were talking of moving I made a mental list of what we would need to fix up before we could sell... we then decided that we can't sell up at the moment and we'll just make do but I though "you know what, why should we be living with a screen on the laundry and servery that don't unlock anymore, bathroom fittings that are yellow and breaking and yucky, etc... We deserve to have doors that work and fittings that look nice so we should just do them for us! Why fix them for someone else and ignore them for us?" So those are my small goals... about $100 worth of fittings for the bathroom in something that isn't white plastic, a locksmith to fix the two broken screen latches, doing our darndest to try to remove the dodgy screw from the shower screen to replace the broken bit with the new bit we have had sitting there for ages but can't put in because we can't get the old screw out to stop the screen opening in the wrong place. Geez, one of them is even free, next to impossible but free none the less.

So...

Holidays here we come!