Alphabet Baby....

So, the usual night time ritual includes taking Jade to bed and singing a few songs before she goes to sleep.... tonight I said that she should sing the alphabet....

She sung the entire alphabet, not skipping a single letter and then got to the end... "Now I sing my ABC, next time you should sing it too".....

Ok, the words are a little off... but she's not quite two and a half.... that's not a bad effort..... :)

Yay!!

The mailman came today and left us a little parcel!! Yay for the Mr Men and Little Miss books, we managed to buy the entire collection from ebay ... 79 books in total... this is going to keep Jade amused for a while... she loves sitting down and reading and these have all the bright pictures in them... so she'll be happy with that....

Not really old enough to be reading the words yet... but she likes listening to them - and they're a good size for her.....

Not sure if we'll give them to her now, or wait til her birthday... I'll wait til Rob gets home tomorrow before we decide... but if she gets them now - it'll only be one book at a time... so it'll still take a long time to get through them...

Anyway, back to sorting out dinner.....

So not like her mother!!!

When I was a kid, the only time I played with Dolls was when I was given one and had to hold it up to have a photo taken... (ok - that's probably a lie - because I do have a cabbage patch kid and a Riggadoon.... however, I wasn't a real girly girl......)

Jade on the other hand, found a baby carrier (one we were given but could never work - we ended up buying a Kapoochi)... and she put her baby in it... she came up to me (while we were still at home) and said "Mom, look at my baby backpack!".... she had the baby - upside down in the carrier and had it on like a backpack (with the baby dragging on the ground)...

But, the concept was there, so I showed her how to do it properly, we put the baby the right way up... and then "we go show GRAN!!!!"... so - we got in the car - and off we went.....

She did get bored with her baby soon, dropped her on the ground and went off to eat grapes that Grandpa gave her.... but she's got a real fascination with dolls and the whole "baby" concept - so I'm assuming this is just going to get more interesting as time goes on....

Greg's a rep boy....

Well, Greg made the Rep team... so now he has proof (there will be a team photo... but he only had that taken yesterday).... his Rep Team t-shirt... there is more - but i'm not going to get him to model everything just to take pics.. and he's still half asleep.... (up at 6:30am so that he's showered and ready to be picked up to head off to Bundaberg today for another game..... - he played for his local team last night - and they won ... so he's all excited...)

And this is the photo that he obviously didn't think would make the blog... but you wanna pose funny... deal with it :P (this is how he practices for when he sees his gf! eheh)

Renovation Update.....

I had kind of hoped with all the banging and clashing that the stairs would have been completed today.... but they're nearly done.... this is where they're up to now....

Once John has finished, I'll get Terry back and get him to paint it all just a glossy white or something.... it's not a permanent feature to the house - once we can afford to do the verandah extension - then this will be ripped out and new stuff added... so we aren't too stressed about it...

but it's still nice to have something that isn't rotten... and that Jade can't climb through or fall through..... (Yay for a part of the house that isn't 40yrs old!)....

I like the timber decking... it's making me reconsider tiling the verandah when we do complete it, but given we're planning on enclosing the verandah - tiles make more sense....

Happy Anniversary to Us - 3 Years!!!

Tonight we celebrated 3 years together.... we actually managed to spend the entire day together.... although - it was working for a fair bit of it, but it was together - and that's all that really matters at the end of the day :)

We got to spend most of the day in Rockhampton...

Once we got home from Rocky, Rob had to do some more work at home, so I got in the car and headed to Mom and Dad's place - Mom had picked up Jade from school because I wasn't going to be home in time - so I went around to play play-doh with her....

Everyone (Mom, Dad, Jaime, Damian, Xander, Frank, Shayne) joined us for dinner... and cake :) (Thanks Jaime!!!)

Anyway, Jade is still awake, we've only just got home - and I'm jsut trying to get her settled before shoving her in bed for the night... (only an hour and a half past her bed time - but she'll be fine....)

Time for me to go, else it'll be two hours past her bedtime!

Easter Hunt......

The Easter Egg hunt went off without a hitch this morning...... Jade managed to sleep in til 7am (I got up at 5:30 to get everything ready) - she got straight out of bed, we put her Dorothy the Dinosaur slippers on (because we've got some bindies in the grass and I didn't want them getting in her feet - still trying to kill them off...)

Finding the first egg
See daddy?? easter eggs!!!

Counting to see how many eggs we had left to find....
The last egg.....

waking up Greg with his egg...

Not so awake....

Easter Eve....!!!

As most of you would probably know, we haven't really done too much to introduce Jade into the whole Easter concept before now... We really didn't want to have to worry about the amount of chocolate involved etc.... but this year, she's a bit more aware of what's going on... so I went out and bought her some hunting eggs (10)... as well as a Dora bucket (that had 5 pink eggs in it - slightly bigger than the hunting eggs)...

We figured the bucket would be good for jade to put the eggs into as she finds them... so I wanted to test and make sure they'd fit into the bucket... so I've got everything ready tonight... and here's the proof that it fits.. and the cute bucket....





Now, since Greg has got right into the whole NRL scene... we got him an NRL football egg.... figure he doesn't really want to do the whole easter egg hunt.... so this is the easier option... :)



Now we're just hoping to get photos tomorrow during the hunt....

Harbour Festival - Raft Race.....

Dad's work puts in a raft into the local easter raft race each year, this year their boat was... umm... interesting... it was more like a .. oh - what's the word... hook, line and.. umm.. oh you know the word I'm looking for.... SINKER!

But having fun is the aim of the game... and it looked like most people had fun out in the water.... (good day to be in the water!)

The Hosking Pool Raft Team....
Mom spectating...
Local Plumbers... and their Thunderbox... (apparently it had a huge red back toy spider in the thunderbox - but I didn't get to see the front of it at all....) --- and yes.... that guy is wearing a "mankini"... luckily he didn't take his shorts off.... so it was all just left up the imagination....

Local construction company....
We dragged Greg out of bed to come and watch....


Robyn & Theo

and their off.... and the back of the Hosking Pool raft is under water... apparently they were planning on undertaking other rafts - rather than overtaking.....

the State High kids put a raft together - that tipped as soon as they took off... so they ended up paddling it upside down....



See?
all the white stuff is either hoses that people are spraying water, or flour bombs.... poor Rhonda from Dad's raft was covered when they made it back to land....

The Pony Club's Pirate Ship..


Queensland Rail's "train" raft... :)
The Hosking Team called it quits without even completing one lap (and they were supposed to do two....) - but on the bright side, they were the first raft home!!! (not that I'm sure that counts!)



The Winners!!!

After the raft race was over, we headed off to check out the festival... but Jade was getting really tired and it's been a really hot day... so we called it quits and came home at about 12:30 or so.....

I was going to take pics of the kids on the rides, but we didn't end up going on any... we may try again over the weekend - Rob has just let me know that he'll be home tomorrow night - so he'll be here Friday - and he and I can take Jade down to the festival and have another look around... :)

Dorothy the Dinosaur's dance party.....

The big build up, all week, to tonight was the fact Dorothy the Dinosaur was coming to town... anything we needed to do, she had to do or else she wasn't going to see Dorothy... and it worked... (although - I wasn' t the only mother using that tactic.... another mother at the festival tonight told her daughter that Dorothy couldn't come until she'd done wee's....)

We decided to arrive early, knowing that the night was going to be packed... we got some seats - and put blankets down on the ground for the kids..... apparently this doesn't actually mean anything to any of the other indecent mothers who turned up late and pushed the blankets away and then sat down....

Waiting for the show...

Jade looking really thrilled at the whole waiting process.....

Marcus always seems excited!

Xander and "Damian's" glow sword...

Dorothy the Dinosaur

Captain Feathersword...
Henry the Octopus...
Waggs the Dog...
Jade attempting to smile for the camera...

Xander managing to smile....

Captain Feathersword and the Dance Party Singers...

Marcus, Jade and Xander dancing....
Xander & Damian
Jade dancing on my lap.....

We ended up resorting to all 3 kids dancing on people's laps so that they could see... cause more and more people just kept pushing infront of us - and standing infront of us (adults too) - some people just have no manners..... but the kids didn't really care at the end of the day.... Jade managed to do most of the dances on my lap... and she was happy with that.. and every now and then she'd sit on my chest.... (yes... apparently i'm a chair!)

Anyway, it's been a long day - and I need sleep... signing off....