Grow Your Blog Party

Today I am taking part in a "Grow Your Blog Party"

Vicki over at 2 Bags Full knows many people via her blog and has some wonderful friendships because of this, well electronic friendships anyway, and they are sometimes great ones to have.
So she is holding a party to enable others to find some new friends and followers, maybe even some new interests in crafts, books, places and even tips on how to blog and what to blog about etc.
The main purpose being to Meet-Greet-Grow your blog.

So today is party day and welcome to my place.
Please don't worry about your shoes as you come through the door, I am not fussy, although I have just been redecorated however the carpet is old!
I like to keep my blog background up to date with the time of year, although here in New Zealand it is summertime so I have just changed from my Christmas background to something a little more suitable.
If you like this background then you can check out more free ones over at Leelou Blogs, she is always happy to share a few freebies with friends.

If it smells nice that is because I am cooking some chocolate brownies to take with us tonight to a dinner date with some friends.
I can offer you some tea or coffee however due to the gorgeous weather we are having I thought maybe some peach ice tea with ice cubes would be better suited to the day....help yourself.

So who am I?
I am a wife and mother, oh and in my spare time I get to play nurse at the hospital.
I have been married for 4 years although we have actually been together for 13 years.
We are very lucky to have 2 adorable sons who are 7 & 9 years old.

I am English and moved to New Zealand just under 15 years ago, on my own on a one way ticket!
I decided that I had a one year visa and if I didn't like it here then I had to work hard at my nursing job to raise the money for the ticket home.
15 years later and I am still considering raising the money to go home!

I started blogging in 2005, although I only managed a few posts. I got back into it in 2006 and I haven't looked back since.
I started blogging to keep all my family overseas up to date with what the 2 little bundles in our life were up too. I didn't want to keep writing out separate emails to relatives with heaps of pictures attached, which in turn would take up time and space on their email (we are talking pre broadband, so most were on dial up at the time!)
Since then, several of my family have moved from England to New Zealand and so now I blog as a memory of life and what the family are doing. Even though my mother only lives 1 hours drive away we still manage to keep up with what the other is doing by checking our blogs!

I like crafts and have been cross stitching since I was 7, however along with most craft things, it has been on hold for a few years whilst I grew the 2 young boys in my life. Although I am suddenly gaining more time for myself and can now get my stitching out for at least an hour before someone interrupts me for something, so hopefully there will be more time for it coming my way soon.
I have also just started getting myself organised to do digital scrap booking.
I am working my way through the pictures on the computer, organizing them and also getting to grips with the scrap booking programme I am using. Layouts are very few and far between at the present moment but I am learning and hopefully more will start appearing as I get better at it all.

So this is me, this is where I can be found and I am so glad that you dropped by.
I would love you to come back and visit anytime you feel like it.
You may find I will be sleeping when you visit due to the time difference (New Zealand is so far from anywhere!) but feel free to look around and make yourself comfortable whenever you feel like it, just remember to turn the light out when you leave.

Party Time

Last weekend was a holiday weekend here in New Zealand.
For some reason we are lucky enough to sometimes, due to when certain days fall, to gain 2 long weekends 1 after the other.

So we, as always, went to the caravan.
There we had a big joint dinner with the other permanent campers, but to add some fun to it we classed it as a Toga Party.
All the food was in that theme as well.
We had hummus and feta cheese, moussaka, a lovely chicken casserole with tomatoes and olives, beautiful salads etc and wonderful chicken kebabs and mince meatballs. Everyone worked hard on preparing the food.

However everyone worked just as hard on their costumes.....yes that is right we all dressed in Togas for the evening.

As you can see, everyone got in on the action, even though we had had a very hot sunny day.
My shoulders are pink and so are Alex's cheeks!
But for just a little while we had a warm evening, sadly by 7pm we were all dressed in jeans and jackets as the temperature dropped.
A good night was had by all.

Our next joint party is at Easter time and we are having a "mad hat party"

Judo End of Year

As you all know by now, Judo is playing a large part in this family currently.
So it was with great pleasure that we were able to swing a few things to be able to attend the end of year party. It was held the day after the Wedding in Rotorua, so we drove back for it the next morning!

It was a day of fun and laughter.
The kids played loads of fun games like egg and spoon race, throwing and catching eggs (un cooked of course) and multiple others, that involved water, balls and chocolate!
A BBQ lunch of sausage sizzle was provided and everyone was in a relaxed mood.

The end of year party was also the time when all the trophies were given out for the year.
So everyone sat around and cheered as people got awarded trophies for all their hard work throughout the year.

Ben and Alex were no exception and both managed to walk away with a trophy.
Ben got awarded with 'PeeWee Judoka of the Year'
Alex got awarded with 'Most Promising PeeWee'

They both deserved them and have worked very hard over the last 9 months so we were very proud of them.

All those trophies to be awarded

Way to go Alex

Way to go Ben

Jared is slightly taller, but the boys love him, shame he is moving to the next class up this year! He will be missed by the boys

One tradition that apparently happens at the end of year party is slime. Yep, good old fashion slime that you run through, roll in and slip and slide around with.
So several large buckets were made up, one very large tarp was put down and several kids had a right old time slipping and sliding all around the place.

hose needed as slime was made with soap and stung when got in an eye!

What an awesome way to end the year of very hard work by everyone.

Time Flies

This time 7 yrs ago I was huffing and puffing my way around the living room as I tried to convince Steve that this was no longer Braxton Hicks contractions and could just be that the little person inside was trying to get out.
It is now 9.30pm and 4 hours from now Ben was born.
I always (as mentioned in posts before at this time of year) love this day, as I get to reflect on the lead up to Ben's birthday before his actually birthday takes place. I always get all day and then a sleep and then we celebrate and of course this year with him turning 7 we are not allowed to forget it!

I think we have had a running countdown to this special day for the last 23 days!

Today he had his party, well not that he got one, he was allowed to invite 2 friends to do something special. So we went indoor rock climbing and then to McDonalds for lunch.
They all had a blast and I got some awesome pictures of them all up walls hanging and climbing. I will get them loaded tomorrow.
Tonight Grandma was a round for dinner so we did the whole birthday thing with her here. Banners up on the curtains and lights out as the candles were lit. It was great.
Although presents and cards are ready for tomorrow morning, got to have them on the main day.

Tomorrow is also Father's Day here in New Zealand, so 2 things to celebrate.
We are actually going to see a production of 'Joseph' tomorrow afternoon which should be a lot of fun. I love the music and have already played some of it to Ben and now he is familiar with some of the tunes, think we will have a great time at the show.

Have a great weekend folks. If you are celebrating then have fun and enjoy.

Party Time

We have just had a long weekend here, Queen's Birthday.
But with Alex's birthday then it has been a long weekend of party time.

Alex was lucky enough to get 3 cakes this year, but then it was a special occassion.

He took a cake to Daycare on Friday as this was his last day. Apparently he ended up with several cakes there, because they made one for him too.

Because his party was going to be on Saturday, then I made sure we had a small cake after dinner, just for the 4 of us.

Just a little ice cream cake with a candle.

Then at the party on Saturday he had his main cake.

Of course the party theme for this year was his dream party, Ben 10.

To say he likes this theme is putting it mildly, he gained t-shirts, jackets and even Lego of Ben 10!

He was in heaven and had a great day.

6 Years Old

Yesterday was a manic day, I was so tired by the end of it. I fell into bed at about 9pm and didn't surface again until the cat disturbed me at 4.30am.

Ben however had an awesome day. He got boiled eggs for breakfast just like he wanted. I really like getting into the tradition of letting the birthday person choose what meal we have for dinner, but as we were going out to his party and it was going to be a long day, plus I had a feeling he would ask for homemade pizzas, we let him choose breakfast instead this year!

He was a very lucky boy and got some lovely cool gifts.

And a home made birthday cake

Then he got to take 9 school friends to the local museum for 2 hours of fun and games.

As mentioned previously, we are only doing a birthday party for their 6th birthday because it is their first one at school with new friends, from now on he will be allowed to bring home 2 or 3 school frinds for dinner / McDonalds / Mini Golf etc until his 10th Birthday when he will have a party again.

It will do my head in each year if we have to find the time, money and effort to do a big party each year, plus I do not think they appreciate it if it happens every year.

Happy 6th Birthday Ben, I know you had an awesome day.

Stamping

My good friend Wendy, asked me the other day if I wanted to go to a stamping party with her? I love crafts so why not.

Had an enjoyable afternoon actually.

Not about to rush out and start stamping as a craft, but interesting to see what other people are so hooked on.

We had the wonderful pleasure of making 2 little projects at the party.

A little cover for a wee notebook and a card.

As the lady hosting said, 'even though we are being directed in what to do, it is amazing that everyone has put their own little twist on things, so everything looks a little different!'

Here are pictures of my efforts for the afternoon.....

A little summer card

BlogHop

I am always interesting in finding new blogs to check out.

See how the other half are living, how they are changing the world, one little word at a time.

Find out what works for them and how I can instigate that idea into my life.

I already have some amazing blogs that I follow, but this is a big world and there are others, so this week I have taken part in the Bloghop.

This is a blog party that allows you to go out there and make new friends.

So if you want to connect with some new people, then hop on over and say hi to everyone.

For everyone visiting me, well hello from New Zealand and welcome to my world. Please stay a while and see what my family have been up to recently.

I keep you up to date with what we have been doing, anything I feel like blogging about and just lots of fun things.

Leave me a comment if you visit because I love to visit people too, so I will come on over to see you later.

Birthday Party

We have decided that we are not going to have parties for the boys birthdays each year. It gets very difficult to come up with something new and different each year.
And I have already decided this and they are still so young!

So we decided that we would celebrate their first 5 birthdays, they will then get to have a small gathering for their 6th as this will be the first birthday they will get to celebrate with school friends and then that is it until 10, then 15, 18 & 21. For all the ones inbetween they will be allowed to invite 3 or 4 friends from school to come home to dinner or out to a restaurant or an outing of some kind etc. We will have a cake but there will be no big party with goody bags and games every year.

So this year we already ran away from the house decided that we would have Alex's party somewhere other than at home. We ended up going to the local museum.
It was awesome.
I paid for the little ones and their mum's to get in and then we got to go round 2 of the kid friendly exhibites and have cake and juice in a room the museum supplied for us. They also, free of charge, provided a nice young man called 'Scott' to look after entertain the kids for an hour.

It was so worth it. No mess, no worries about property, no damage. All I did was supply a nice cake, some juice and some little party bags to take home. As we held the party at 2pm till 4pm I didn't worry about other food. It was awesome.

Alex now wants his 5th birthday there and Ben wants his 6th in September there!

Everyone had an awesome time and the kids loved it. Yea for other places to hold birthday parties.

On another party note, this post is my 700th.

Yea for me, another milestone under my blogging belt.