Sunday Morning at the Clarke's.....

Yesterday morning I was up at 6am and showered and ready for when Mom and Dad came to drop the kids back..... then once everyone was up, Rob cooked bacon and eggs for breakfast for Megan & Colin (who'd stayed in the guest room after the reunion) - and for Steph (who got to sleep in Jade's room and play with her toys!!! - - - don't try to deny it steph - you know you can't resist ponies!)... Oh, and Jade had an egg too... (she's not into bacon)

Once we'd all eaten - Megan and Colin headed back to Rocky (as Megan's kids were due to be brought home as well....) - the rest of us headed back to the Motel to finish packing up... and once I was sure that nothing significant was going to be left behind - I packed the kids and steph into the Prado and we took off to visit Leeanne and her family out at her parent's property...

As soon as we arrived, Jade took off with Caitie to play with all the new toys (well - new to Jade)... Blake did some crawling around the new environment to see what was good to play with..... he found the liqueur cabinet!

"umm, what you lookin' at?? I'm not doing anything wrong???"

"now.... how do I get in there????"

We needed to keep him distracted after a while because it was the only place he wanted to go... and the doors weren't latched... so it could have ended badly...

Leeanne was running a car all over him - over his tummy, his head - around the back of his head, up his arms.. you name it - the car went there.. he thought this was the funniest thing ever... (easy to amuse an 8month old!!!)

He loves Leeanne.....

Unfortunately I didn't realise until after Steph went home that I didn't get any pics of Jade or Blake with Steph.... I'm going to be in so much trouble!!!

GSHS 15yr Reunion - 11th July 2009

It was a bit of a rush to get down to the motel for the start of the reunion... I'd said to Michele that we'd get there at 5pm so that we were ready for when people would start rocking up at 5:30.... - we still hadn't finished the poster that went in between the first year photos...

I ended up rushing through the shower... and when I did get in there - everyone had used up all of the hot water - so I ended up having a cold shower...

We had to go and drop stuff off for the kids at Mom and Dad's place - so that was another unpleasant part of the evening as both kids were screaming and wanting to come with us.... but they get over that kind of thing fairly quickly....

When we arrived - Rosemary was already there waiting... so she was our first attendee at the reunion....

Rose

Megan & Colin

Steph

Rob & I

Megan, Rose, Me & Steph

Desley, Cheradin & I

Pics of people gathered... I think at this point we were still waiting on about 20 people... but it was already looking reasonably full... by the time we had everyone I'd stopped running around with the camera and was running around doing a million other things.....

The other half of the crowd.....

Rob ran the trivia - as well as most of the MC type duties....

I got the "Agoraphobia Award" for the classmate living closest to the high school - I'm only a block away..... and the house we bought was a former classmates!

Cheradin got the "Post-Natal" award - for the most recent birth... Georgia is only 5 weeks old....

The Cake...

The classmates... there were a couple missing who decided that hiding at the bar was a better idea...

All in all it was a great night.... I'm absolutely buggered from all the preparation - and next time I think I'd be handing off at least some of the tasks to other people... but there wont be a next time... not for me anyway, next time I'll be just turning up on the night and enjoying someone else's hard work!!!

Everyone enjoyed the trivia (which took me about 3 weeks to finalise the questions of) - they loved the awards - which took more time to put the little trophies (glasses with lollies wrapped in Celophane) than it did to make up the awards to hand out.... and the music went down a treat... so all in all it was a lot of effort well worth it... :)

Anyway, gotta sort out dinner and kids and then I'll try to blog the rest of the weekend...

Setting up for the GSHS 15yr Reunion

Reunion weekend started on Friday... with Leeanne rocking up for Fish'n'chips dinner at 6pm - then Steph flew in at 7pm (her flight was a bit late... go Qantas!)

Leeanne and I picked Steph up at the airport and headed to Coffee Club for hot chocolate and cheesecake (well - Leeanne was an Earl Grey tea woman... but steph and I enjoyed the hot chocolate!). We chatted for a while before deciding that Saturday was going to be a big enough day without starting it with sleep deprivation (well - more than I'd usually have!) - so we headed home.... and Leeanne headed to her parents place....

Saturday morning we dropped Blake with Mom and Dad and headed to Harbour City Motel to start getting everything set up for the reunion.... Leeanne and Caitie met us there....

Jade and Caitie were straight to the Bar to play their DS's while we got to work getting stuff ready....

Michele and Cheradin turned up to help get things done.... Cheradin with her magic bottle of Helium.... and Michele turned out to be the best serviette folder!

putting the posters together to put all of the Grade 1 photos up.....

Entry table set up with everyone's place cards....

Michele doing her serviette folding.....

Riley (Michele's youngest - he's 2months younger than Jade)

Brice - Michele's oldest (he's 6 I think....)

All set up!

Other side set up

Rob at his table... with all of the prizes set up on the table....

Jade went to help Rob

All finished!!!

The selection of Grade 1 photos (some photos were a bit older... but mostly are first year primary)

Jade's first trip to the dentist......

I had planned on taking Jade to the dentist in the next week or two - whenever I'd booked myself in for my 6 monthly checkup.... Unfortunately her visit came a little earlier than planned....

About a week and a half ago - maybe two weeks - Jade fell out of bed during the night (or early morning) - she was really sad because she'd bumped her mouth.... we checked at the time and one of her teeth was a little wobbly... but with kids this can settle again....

I'd been keeping an eye on it... and it didn't seem to be a problem.... until Saturday... I checked - and the gums under her tooth looked really red... - she didn't say that it was hurting and she wasn't worried about it at all... so we left it and would check on it later... by Sunday (yesterday) - it was more swollen, so we made the decision to get her straight into the dentist....

He has confirmed that the tooth is dead.. he figures that it's probably cracked... there's no reason to remove it as they want it to stay in as long as possible.. so for now, we're just hoping to keep an eye on things and make sure it doesn't get infected again... she's got antibiotics... her first ever!! (not too bad... 3yrs 9months and never had anything other than nurofen, panadol or demazin)....

In the Stylish Green chairs!! (the entire surgery is done out like this - it's very new (in the last two years) - one dentist and two rooms - quickest service I've ever had .. and he's a good dentist)

After we'd finished (we were only in there a few minutes for him to check her teeth and write out a script... ) - we headed to the Library which is across the road and played some ABC computer games for a little while before heading home....

Back to work tomorrow for me.... I have all the lunches made and ready in the fridge (Greg's out of the house by 5:45am because of his new apprenticeship - he's on a working week this week) - and it's just easier having Jade's lunch done the night before too.... (even Blake's lunch is done and in the fridge.... ) - - Just one load of washing to hang out in 5mins and I can head to bed... (here's hoping for earlier nights in future!!)

Park with Bec & Emily......

This seems to be becoming our regular thing rather than morning coffees at Bec's place... I guess with me going back to work next week - this is probably the only way we'll be able to catch up in future....

We met at our usual park today at the Marina... but there were quite a few bigger kids there (hooray for school holidays I guess! only one week to go and they're back in school)... Anyway, so we decided to head to the new park at the duck ponds... when we arrived there were only 2 other kids there, but after a while more arrived... (probably other parents trying to avoid the Marina too!)

(You'll have to excuse the photos... for some reason most of the pics ended up blurry... so Rob's done a reset on the camera and hopefully that's fixed it....)

Jade on the See-Saw (Emily is on the other side - but all of those photos were blurry)

Blake's first fun on a slide!! (he wasn't overly impressed with it!)

Jade hiding from the camera...

Miss Emily in her QLD'er gear!!

Jade wanted to be involved in the swinging Blake process.... so she's doing up his belt...

Kisses for Blake...

Jade got bored with pushing Blake and got on the other swing....

Emily back on the see-saw

taking it all in.....

We had a great time at the park - the highlight of Jade's afternoon was travelling from the first park to the second in Bec's car reading books to Emily in the back seat... I'm sure Emily was happy with this arrangement too! :)