Mini Golf

The boys have mentioned Mini Golf a few times recently and so at the end of last year, whilst in Auckland for a weekend, we had a family day out.

Everyone had such fun at this mini golf that had a pirate theme to it, there was some really good control of the ball from everyone and even 1 or 2 hole in ones!

come on mum, it is only a game

who's idea was it to play on stairs?

nice swing

the boys loved playing the hole on the ship

Fun was had by all and we can't wait for our next family day out

Santa Time

This was my first Christmas at this place of work so was interesting to see some of the things that took place. One of the usual things was a Secret Santa amongst the staff that wished to take part.

As usual our name was duely placed in a hat and you got to draw a name out.
A $10 limit was placed on the present and away you all went, having 2 weeks to come up with something good, but fun.

Now I am not sure what got into my head, maybe I was having end of year itus, maybe my brain had decided to finally turn to mush or maybe I just got enthralled by all the wonderful things I saw on all the blogs I follow, but this is what I gave as my gift

I got inspired by Heidi over here, so I do have someone to blame.
I saw what she had made and decided that I could adapt it in true Kathryn fashion to something.
The receiver thought it was lovely, so that was good. Me I was just amazed that I remembered what to do seeing as it has been ages, and I mean ages, since I last did any craft work.

Santa was also very lucky this year at our house. Whilst out Christmas shopping one evening I came across this lovely plate set for him.
So the boys had great fun filling it up for him to snack on whilst visiting us.

Think it is actually meant to be used as general stuff but it will make a nice tradition in our house to put Santa's plate out each year.

The cat also got in the Christmas spirit this year.

Not sure if she was hoping that if she stayed there someone would leave her a present or if she was hoping Santa would take her with him when he had visited?

Flower Show

Towards the end of last term at school, the boys came home with a notice to annouce that the Junior School were putting on a Flower Show.
Oh help thought I?

It got a little confusing towards the end, with regards to exactly what they needed to take to school, unfortunately our 2 are not the biggest on giving you much warning about when things need to be there and usually inform me like this "Mummy, I need to take X Y & Z to school tomorrow please" usually at 6pm when everything is now shut apart from the supermarket!

However, we did manage to round up a fair amount of flowers, from a garden that is void of most flowers! We even stole some off the street!

The boys had to do several projects throughout the day.
Ben choose to do the following:-

A small collection

An aqua jar, which in fact turned out really well. He received a placing for it but I can't remember what!

A sand saucer presentation (think this was last minute decision)

Alex decided to do the following projects:-

A Sandsaucer

A fruit / vegetable Creation. It is a snowman in case you were wondering!

A Buttonhole

A Lid Presentation (think this was a last minute decision as well)

They both did really well and from what I can gather they both enjoyed it. Although earlier in the day Alex had annouced that he wasn't going to school that day as what they were doing was silly and boring. He said he had already done something like this at Kindy earlier in the year.
I gave the teacher full permission to push him into it with no holds bard. She happily agreed and then said later that he was all enthusiastic and loved doing it!

Sandcastle Time

Once again we have been lucky enough to get to spend some quality time at the caravan during the Christmas Holidays.
Everyone just loves it there as it is so relaxing.

The boys spend day after day zooming around the camp site on their bikes, which by the way, they are getting so good at using. They always get so confident on their bikes when there. It is great.
They are in and out of everyones tents and caravans as they play with all their friends and in fact sometimes we can go hours with not actually seeing them, but we are not bothered, as they know the rules for the boundaries of the camp and we know they come back when tired, thirsty or hungry.

It is a relaxing time for us as well, because of the boys not being in our face. We get to sit and think for more than 5 minutes before someone is asking for something.
There is nothing to actually achieve whilst there so no rush to actually do anything!
Just our kinda holiday.

However this year the new owners of the site decided to assist with it being a family friendly site and planned loads of activities for the children.
There have been planned cricket games, T ball games, sandcastle building, art fests and crab hunting.
The kids have loved it all.

Alex in particular enjoyed the sandcastle building. He got right into this, dragging daddy down to the estaury with bucket and spade and proceeding to design his dream building, well if you can call it that.
It was however all his very own creation and that is what I love.

There were many children there with parents, who stood back and watched their parents build their desired creation, not sure if the kids or parents enjoyed this activity more. The children occassionally got sent on hunting missions to find a desired piece of wood or some seaweed for decoration. But other than that the children stood by and watched their parents become kids again!

It was a well attended competition and everyone had a lot of fun in the mud sand!

Challenges

It doesn't seem that long since I started my 100 Challenges, but suddenly we are heading to 2 months past and only 10 more to go!

I have of course completed Challenge #1

Notebooks brought to record the year with

So yea to me, my first Challenge cross off

I have also completed Challenge #45 (Start to collect something you like)
I have decided to collect Snowmen ornaments for the tree.
Just the right time of year to start this collection too.

And I have gone through and noted things towards several challenges that I am working on. Please do note that we are currently in our summer here so things that involve long dark nights etc will have to wait until winter kicks in in June.

Challenge #43 - Our veggie garden is currently growing and when I have something to give away I will with pleasure. We are currently growing lettuce, eggplants, courgette, corn and tomatoes.

Challenge #31 - Walk on the beach at night - I wanted to do this whilst we were away over Christmas but unfortunately we had to wait until 10pm before it was really dark enough, so I have decided that we will make this a family event later in the year, say maybe Easter, then it will be darker earlier and we can all enjoy this one.

Challenge #63 - I still haven't decided on a cookbook to cook through, but will attempt to secure a book soon now that the holiday is all over with and life is getting back to normal.

Challenge #3 - knit a scarf for a friend - I have the wool and am just going to wait for the winter evenings to come in as this is definitely one for those long winter evenings.

Challenge #78 - send picture to friend - I have found a picture that I love and will get it printed on my next day off and get it sent off.

Challenge #73 - 7 places to visit - I have started my list, but have visited some many places that I actually need to review and decide on the Top 7 so I can write about why I want to visit each place with the children.

Challenge #88 - Eat by candlelight - again something that the whole family will enjoy but will have to be planned for winter time

So that is where I am up to with my 100 Challenges.
I have thought long and hard about how to make it easy for everyone to see where I am at with the challenges. Yes you can check out the challenges page at the top, but felt there had to be something more visable without having to travel all over the blog, so have decided to add it to my monthly picture on the top right hand side bar, this way it is always visable when ever you come and check out a post.

Have you got any challenges you want to achieve?
Let me know and I will pop on over and check them out.

Holidays and Sickness

Our Christmas holiday has been great. We all had such fun.
Alex desperately wanted to stay home for Christmas this year.
Turns out, that with having the caravan, we have gone away for Christmas every year and he decided that he wanted to have a Christmas where he could come downstairs and see the presents under the tree.
We really couldn't argue with that at all.
So Christmas morning was spent at home.

By lunchtime we were on the road and heading to my cousin's house for a family day.
Alex didn't actually seem to mind that his vision of a whole day at home had suddenly been abruptly cut short and now we were on the move again.
I had to make a dessert to take with us, so opted for a traditional Kiwi one and made a pavlova. Alex had strict instructions not to drop it and hold on tight.

We had an awesome family day, with 30 others, drinking, eating and being very merry.
We then spent the next 2 weeks at the caravan and there are many posts on the blog about the fun things we got up to.

Unfortunately that wonderful time has now ended and we are back to work and holiday programme, well at least 3 of us are.
Me, I am off sick, yep that is right, first full week back and I am off for the first 2 days! I was at work last week for 2 days so have been back since Christmas.
Turns out my insides don't want to play the working party game and have been churning and cramping for 36 hours now.
Steve was concerned this morning and decided I needed to see a Doctor, which I had already decided myself at 3am!
So he happily came home from work at 9.30 and took me to my appointment.
I already had a feeling in my head that maybe I had Irritable Bowel, although we can not pin point any particular food that I have eaten that may have sparked it off, in myself I feel quite fine, although a little tired. So had looked the symptoms up on the internet, like all good medical personel do before going to see the Doctor!

The doctor sort of agreed with me and explained nothing I didn't already know.
He has given me some anti cramping pills and it is now a waiting game to see if they do the trick, although he wants to know tomorrow if they haven't.

Currently 3 hours after taking them, they haven't worked yet, although he did say a few hours. So hopefully by tonight things may have settled.
He has told me to stay away from food today, although I can't say I have eaten much this last 24 hours. I don't actually fancy any food but have had the odd moment where I feel rather hungry and I have eaten something because I know I will feel worse if I don't, but it has not been much at all.

So that is the start to 2011, let's hope it doesn't last long and that everything settles really soon!

Warning, When I am Old I will Wear Purple

My mum loves this poem

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple

with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

and satin candles, and say we've no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired

and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

and run my stick along the public railings

and make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

and pick the flowers in other people's gardens

and learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

and eat three pounds of sausages at a go

or only bread and pickles for a week

and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

and pay our rent and not swear in the street

and set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

By Jenny Joseph

Sadly I can see she has the type of spirit where she will darn well wear purple with a red hat too.
Unfortunately, she has been beaten too it by a group of ladies I met in Hamilton Central one evening.

They were all at the Carol Singing Evening that we attended and they looked so great in their purple clothes with red hats that I just had to ask them for a picture as I knew mum would love to see it.

Wedding

Just before Christmas my cousin had the pleasure of marring her wonderful boyfriend. They had been planning the wedding for over a year. It just seemed to take a long time coming round.

Of course all the family were there for it.

My 3 guys

Me and my boys

Looking good, looking good

Me and my mum

Crazy group of people!

Nice family picture

Whilst in the church Alex kept Grandad busy by reading the bible with him. Now Alex has not had anything to do with churches and Dad is a sworn Atheist, so to watch these 2 together was just awesome. I got some wonderful shots of Dad and Alex in deep conversation.

The main conversation was to do with the maps that were in the bible, as we have lived in many of the countries being shown and Alex thought this was wonderful.

Lucy and Gareth got married in Rotorua and had their reception up the Skyline Sky Ride.

Beautiful Bride

Handsome Groom

Their reception was actually held half way down one of the luge tracks in the venue that is hidden in the forest. Of course there were only 2 ways to get there, yep that is right, you could do the boring thing and sit in the van and get driven down OR you could be wild and adventurous and luge you way to the venue.

Bridesmaids

Father of Bride

Bride and Groom

Guess which way most people went? Yes a lot of fun was had just in the sheer pleasure of getting there. The kids all thought this was awesome.

The venue was a devine marque in the middle of the forest and the food was, as always, lovely. Loads of fresh seafood which the Skyline always offer.

A wild party evening was had by all and everyone had a great time celebrating the happy union.