Following in the Footsteps...

of your whanau ahead.

More beachy stuff. (Sans seaweed for Aunty P67!)



It was then that I realised,





while splashing through the water,

that, y'know how everyone else's feet look, well weird and kinda wrong after spending so much time staring at your own? Even your sibling(s) have sort of strange ambulatory appendages?

L5 has my feet! Completely right feet. All toes in size order as I expect. What a revelation this was to me.

He was just interested in the black sand patches. Iron sand. Magnetic, he informed me. We had to carry a bucketful home, of course.

Spent a glorious day with Grandma J at the house of Aunty D and Aunty C, relaxing and being thoroughly spoilt (thank you both!). This just one view from the deck that runs completely around their house, which I include to tantalize all you English rellies, and mostly to taunt my lovely cuzzie Q to save his pennies and come back and visit us sometime soon. I'll take you here to visit, I promise. ;)

Meanwhile back in suburban land...I love my chickens. I even love my chicken poo, as I believe it is gonna do wonders for my garden. But I do NOT love the flies that said poo attracts. So I bought one of these:

which I just have to believe in, because it was invented and sold to me by a good, keen, kiwi bloke called Gordon. Will let you know how it goes. When I went to place feedback, Trade Me offered me some other items which it thought I might be interested in, so obviously being a farming type, bothered by flies.

A Build Your Own Possum Plucker or perhaps the ever-useful Artificial Horse Vagina, oops, no sorry, that did make me giggle like a rabid hyena, but in reality it was a Horse Artificial Vagina which is so very much more pragmatic, and apparently 'very expensive to buy'. I still declined.

Hitting Holiday Mode At Last

(Edited to add - this stupid blog is not very well-behaved when it comes to paragraphs. Sometimes it just won't let me add a break, so you'll have to sort that out yourself in your head. Okay?)

It still seems a bit like there are never-ending jobs to do, and the recent rain hasn't helped, but today we did get a glimpse of proper holiday mode.

We escaped the house armed with our raincoats, and set off to Shakespear Park for a walk in the drizzle. The car WOF was due (blah), so first we spent a whole hour waiting. I rejoiced that my children are no longer babies and we could just about cope with an hour waiting in a stinky, tiny waiting room without going completely bonkers. I even got to read trashy mags. (One about the woman who was convinced her face looked like a mutant tomato is particularly memorable. Truly.)

NZ rocks completely, because by the time we got to the park, it was hot enough to be beachy. It felt beachy, but the clouds do look rather daunting in the pics. Wasn't really like that. I just left the camera in the car, so these are mobile phone pics. I also had come only armed with raincoats, remember? Excellent mothering skills in order, undies and tops it was. I had the foresight to remove their trousers, so they had *something* dry to get into after getting soaked to the skin and sandy in all kinds of other places. If only I had the kind of mind that thought of togs before you headed off to a beach.

Did they care? Not one jot.

I have included these last two to remind me of the quirks of my children as they grow. If you know P2, you can almost hear her say "That was fffffffffunny eh?" with this face. I only hope the gap lessens over time, just because it gives me terrible headmistress flashbacks.





Last in my [supposed] single photo of the day is this shot which somehow reminds me of L5's special run. A more hoppity-skippity boy would be hard to imagine. I don't want him to ever grow out of it.

Or possibly he is levitating.

More Wholesomeness

Made jam (or possibly sauce if it doesn't set soon) which involved a lot of boiling, bubbling and mess.

Testing for setting of jam involved much licking.

And a wee bit more mess.

But we got there.

So now I'm gonna have to work on some drunkeness and perhaps a few more tattoos to rectify the harm all this has done to my rock chick image.

Wholesomeness

Knitting, while Blokey Husband and L5 work on meccano.

Growing cabbages WITH HEADS!




Discovering our first (green) blueberries.

So wholesome I have even been looking into jam-making in the illustrious

Dairy Book Of Home Cookery.

Looks remarkably like another Dairy Book of Something or Other I grew up with, but this one is courtesy of well-read nova's de-cluttering ;) efforts. Found this lovely part about MILK:

Middle age spread can be prevented by knowing which foods give you the nutrients you need without adding extra Joules/Calories to the diet. Milk, cheese and yogurt are also valuable in a weight-reducing diet where the proteins, vitamins and minerals must still be included while the energy intake is reduced.

See I'm all for that. I often scoff loads of cheese in a bid to counter my middle age spread. Excellent advice. I love it.

But when Blokey Husband pointed out a recipe for baked cabbage and cream, my tolerance for wholesome 70s life came to an abrupt end. Nope. Not going there.

Best Christmas Toy Name

Introducing....

FANG

Boxing Day - Christmas By L5

I entirely failed in my bid for pictures today. Luckily enough, when at Mutti and Bunce's L5 is allowed control of Bunce's old digital camera. While it feels like a relic from the sheer weight of it, it is actually not that bad. The speed at which things become obsolete is ludicrous. Me included.

So here it is - 3 out of 3 of L5's pics. No cropping, no trickery. I think he did rather well.

Presents

Tree

Toasting

When he emailed this through, Ol' Bunce was magnanimous enough to say that L5 was trying to photograph me. Well since I'm not even in the pic, I have to say I disagree. Bunce plays a huge part in L5's life, spending many an afternoon reading him stories, watching him ride his bike, helping to build lego, make pirate gear, or just chatting about the world and more. Bunce, I think he captured just what he wanted. He adores you. We thank you for the part you play in his growing up.

Christmas Day

It is about the beautiful children.








And it is certainly about the presents too.

Remember this from our holiday....

well ooo ahhhhh.....ta da!!

(It is a painting from the talented and lovely Iz in case you were fooled!)

A taonga. A treasure.

But mostly it is about generations of family.

The Twenty-Fourth Day Of December

Countdown over. One sleep to go.

I am so happy I don't have to take any more pictures of the advent calendar!

Would you believe there are two bikes hidden in there somewhere?

More stuff

L5 now. Cannot miss the similarity - soon enough he'll be this guy... (You have to watch to the end, okay?)

The Twenty-Third Day Of December

Well it's entirely the wrong time of year for it, but we had a really lovely, quiet and peaceful day. L5 and I dug the garden

prior to planting a bunch of basil seedlings we have raised. And pulled out out huuuuuge parsley plant.

We will miss him - the best parsley plant ever - now gone to seed. I thought you weren't supposed to be able to grow parsley unless you were pregnant? Complete tosh, obviously.

We also dug up the new potatoes for Christmas dinner. V. excited, because I had two patches of potatoes growing in tyres - one thriving, and one failing dismally. This is the failing dismally bunch. Hurrah! Happy enough with that.

The Twenty-Second Day Of December

MMM... steamed dumplings for lunch. And a challenge:

chopsticks. Child-initiated I promise.

Works with Nutra-grain too, if you are funny about dumplings. *sigh*

Some things you have to put up with, but when your children play really nicely together, but manage to create an ENORMOUS mess

(everything in the entire room and cupboard was placed under the bed - a hahahaha...ha...ahem...or not)

well, it's just better to keep them in a box. Each.