This and that

Since the arrival off Baby Butterfly we have been a bit overwhelmed. Now there is a bit of a reprieve from the constant busy-mess of life and we are feeling a little more relaxed I thought I would share some photos of what we have been up too.

Mummy made a very colourful baptism cake for Butterfly, the boys thought it was very yummy.

The boys climbed a 'Mountain' with Daddy and still had energy to be silly.

Monkey has taken charge of his new baby sister and thinks he is her protector, but sometimes she needs protecting from him.

I took Monkey out for a treat the other day, he wanted ice cream, he did a good job of finishing his and half of Daddies. He was a champion because he pushed through the pain of 'ice cream headache' to complete his task of eating more ice cream than Daddy.

Monkey also discovered that he likes turkey, he liked the size of the drumstick and asked if there was any bigger drumsticks available. I said maybe an emu, but he didn't think he would like to try emu.  You can find a picture of an Emu drumstick here.  Yum.

Mummy complains because she doesn't get in the photos, so here is one of her and her baby girl.

Speaking of food, I went out shopping the other day and saw an good special. 2 for $4, however my favourite must be everyone else's favourite, can you guess which flavour?

And finally this one taken today. Butterfly the fairy.

They say a picture is worth a 1000 words, so this should be a Treatise.

Yummy home made green ice blocks.

Wonderful Wolf was trying out the online animated gif maker,  it works pretty good and the subjects make it even better.

Sunday Snapshot

By the thousands of emails* I've been getting I can tell that Sunday Snapshots have been greatly missed so a snapshot of one day from our week is offered for you this Sunday night...  (because that is all I can do after the bedtime routine fell in a stinking heap tonight).

"It's all in the Genes"

Why, yes, we do make cute kids around here.

I dragged the boys to the beach for a few (4) hours on Friday.  Aunty Em was getting her hair cut at about 2pm so in the interest of working on my list I thought we would meet her for an icecream lunch before her haircut.

It is at this point in the conversation that I will point out that it's mid-winter here, and we were going to the beach for icecream!

It was lovely weather, PERFECT beach weather.  Crazy southern folk would probably even have gone for a swim but not us, way too cold for us tropical frogs!

Anyway, once I started thinking about heading down for icecream I figured since it's holidays I might as well take the kids for a play for the morning.  So after Monkey's nap we took off and had a great morning.  The boys took two army men and a plastic tree each and dug trenches in the sand and played wars or something.  Dragon buried his men at one point and they were never able to be found again.  Lion kept his but as we were finishing up on the beach and heading for a playground he was washing one in the ocean and let it go.  It was whisked away by the tide and he wasn't able to catch it.  I agreed with him that it was sad but I wasn't in on his plan to come back that night and walk the ENTIRE LENGTH OF THE STRAND to see if it had been washed back up.  He eventually gave in to my offer of going down just before we leave to check where it washed away.

This was how Monkey would concede to experience the sand.  Well, like this up on his tippy toes and fingers or standing holding on to my legs like in the top photo.  I guess he just didn't wan to get that cute Dalmatian nappy dirty.  Although, every now and then he'd look at me in disgust with sand on his hands as if pleading with me to do something about them.  I just dusted them off and he went back to grabbing handfuls of sand to eat.  I have never had a kid that just wanted to eat sand, its gross and inevitably ends up in sandy puke all over me.

Dragon had to come running over to us every now and then to remind us that he loves us or to remind Monkey that Dragon loves to annoy him or to accidentally flick sand all over us...  He was having a great time.

Eventually we wandered down to find some public loos.  I decided I couldn't wait until icecream time to eat so I started talking lunch thinking I'd grab a scoop of chips for us to share but Lion told me there was a man down the end with a caravan that sells stuff.  Turns out it was a hotdog guy with a cart... probably the only hotdog guy in our town.  I got one plain one for the boys to share and one for myself and tried to turn off that little voice in my head whispering screaming FOOD POISONING FOOD POISONING FOOD POISONING!  Oh, and the little voice telling me that it's just wrong to have a naked hotdog... seriously, I like my hotdogs to have skin on them!  He was marketing them very much "American Style" all with names of US or Canadian cities, American flags here and there, so is this the way you guys do hotdogs? Skinless?  Naked?

Anyway, the boys did like theirs! (mine was yummy too, I enjoyed it more retrospectively when I decided sufficient time had passed for me to be safe from food poisoning).

Eventually after another play in the park we headed back to meet Aunty Em and get some icecream (I had caramel swirlysomething and vanilla) and then popped back down to the beach for Lion to check for his army man... IT WAS THERE!  Yes, it really was!  After I spent the morning preparing him to never see that army man again it had washed back up and nearly 4 hours later it was sitting there waiting for him.  Dragons were gone for good.

On the way home we Dragon whispered "I love my Aunty Em" "Yes, Dragon, I love your Aunty Em too" "No, Mum, I love my Aunty Em" he whispers again "Yes, sweetie I know you do" Louder this time... "NO, Mum, I love my ARMY MAN, I'm SAD that he is LOST".  Okay, not the touching moment I thought we were having.

*okay, lets call that creative licence, it may not be thousands... or any at all... but I know you have missed it.

Excitement PLUS!

It's a cut throat world this blogland... I have been meaning to catch up with posting photos from things we did over the last week and a half but I've had to skip over all of that briefly to post some photos of what we did yesterday... See, Grannysaurus is taking the boys to do the same thing today and well, her photos will probably be better so I want to get mine blogged first. Then hers are old news and no one will care, you'll all be like, "yeah Grannysaurus, we've already seen them do that" and I'll be all like "nyah nyah Grannysaurus, my blog is better than yours" and she'll be all like "oh, it's not bad" (um, sorry, inside joke I think).


Well maybe... anyway, Wolf is away, Grannysaurus has taken the boys out and I figured I'd better blog something while I have the chance.


They have been building a new motorway near our house... I know, it's exciting isn't it. It's taking about 10 minutes or more off any trip north we do, Whoopee! Well, the boys thought so. We explained that it would make the trip to Frosty Mango shorter for us and when it was opened we would go to Frosty Mango so that we could take a drive on the new road. Well it opened on Friday. Lion did nothing but "ring-road" associated play at kindy that day and checked with all his teachers if they were going to Frosty Mango now that the ring-road was opened. So Saturday morning off we trot to Frosty Mango, It's about an hours drive north in the middle of almost nowhere but well worth the trip! Do you think they like it there?
So, our Icecream choices were...


TWO scoops each.

Lion - Mango/ Mint choc-chip

Dragon - Dragonfruit/Vanilla

Wolf - Passionfruit/Ginger
Mummy - Tiramisu/Cappuccino

I may or may not have influenced their choices of icecream to compensate for the fact that I can't get all my favourites into one 2 scoop cone... maybe...

I think that was a good way to test out the new road, don't you?

Ice Cream - You Scream

Lion pleased that the new Bash-Kins has opened.

The Boys have discovered the joys of ice cream. They liked it before but now it's becoming an obsession. Every Friday when I take Lion to 'kindy' we drive past a highway being build and he says 'Daddy, when we can drive on that superhighway you will take me and Draggy to 'Frosty Mango' for an ice cream.'

Frosty Mango is a fair hike, a long way to go for an ice cream and for a while there I thought it was because he was anxious to get onto the new highway, but now I know it's just for the ice cream. For a time we had a Subway Sandwich Shop nearby which included a Baskin Robbins Ice cream selection, and whenever we went within spitting distance of it he would ask to go in for ice cream. Then the inevitable happened... Baskins moved out to open a shop in a new area of town and his world came crashing down.

Lion: 'Let's go to Bash-Kins for an ice cream Daddy'
Wolf: Sorry mate they aren't there anymore
L: NOOOO! they ARE!
W: Take a look for yourself (I take him into the shop and show him the empty area where the ice cream selection used to be.)
L: oh no, they are gone. Daddy they're GONE! (Bursts into tears)
Mummy McTavish has to consol him then and tell him that the new shop will be opening soon and we will go there one day. And as you can see from the top photo we did and Lion was very happy.

One of Dragon enjoying an ice cream at the new Bash-Kins

Dragon loves to share, even if it is food (Lion wouldn't let Draggy have a lick of his)

At least we know what his 'hot button' is to make him behave. And its been working because we have visited almost every ice cream shop in our little town as a reward for him being good.

Some more Photos from last night. Lion was exceptionally good for Mummy McT yesterday even when she wasn't having a good day. So we had a treat.

'What's that in my ice cream?'

'It was just a chocky sprinkle not a bug... I hope'

'It was yummy whatever it was.'

-Wolf McT