Week 4

Tuesday. The kids are at school today. Before they even left Tyler hit Caden twice - don't know what is up with that. I scrapped most of the day and read my Merry Gentry novels again! Picked the kids up and then whammo the big thunderstorm hit! just as we were leaving the kids school. so once the hail and thunder had finished and the rain was a little drizzle the kids went out to jump in puddles!

Wednesday

Kid's are at school again today. They are having a water play morning so they went off in their swimmers! They weren't too pleased to start with but when I dropped their towels off they were having a ball! I went for a drive this morning past the tip and kept going until I saw this cool looking old house.IT was a great chance for me to try some landscape settings today and some of them were pretty good. I edited them in lightroom and got some great results. Daz slept most of the morning because he was up pretty much all night with his gout in the foot playing up again. Once he went to work I scrapped a bit more, picked the kids up and went to the park. We had a great time the kids just love the swings there. There was this little bird on the swing just sitting there (got a couple of photos!) There was one of the big gum trees  that had come down in the storm. Caden said that one of the chain saw men had come to cut it down! Dinner was a stew done in the slow cooker today. I am so going to have to cook more in that because it really talked the hassle out of dinner. Despite this and the new rewards chart for the kids they still didn't eat dinner. on a better note for Tyler he was good at school today and wasn't put into the timeout corner. thank goodness. Also we are able to keep the boys at 2 days for a couple of extra weeks now which is really good for us financially as I don't know what is happening with work yet. that is about it, There was a Wednesday challenge today in the now we're rocking course and I managed to do 2 layouts tonight. I was happy with both of them!

Thursday

We had a good morning. the kids are home today, Grandma and papa came over and the boys and I went shopping. G'ma and the boys found these really cool light up footy's that Caden hasn't stopped talking about. We had yet another huge thunderstorm in the afternoon with flooding to the front porch again! so out we went to jump and ride bikes and of course grab photos! The kids crashed really easily tonight! I started a mini album for being thankful for things tonight as part of the JS course! I am actually learning or consolidating a few techniques already that is really nice!

Friday.

It wasn't a bad day to start. I can say that we really did a great deal. The long weekend is coming up and Daz and I are looking forward to that. I took some photos of the roses this morning for after rain type shots. I got a great one using my long 75-200mm lens. It has been revoltingly hot at the moment and unfortunately I was very grumpy this afternoon particularly with the kids. It wasn't until they went to bed that I could calm down and by then I was feeling very very guilty! I did some scrapping. the boys had a huge bubble bath today and Caden loved it but Tyler would put the bubbles all over himself and want to get out! They played with some of their old baby toys today as well. they are really enjoying the little simple things again.

Saturday.

Daz and I took the kids to Noah's Ark today. they had a ball  going down the slides and climbing everywhere. Tyler loves the ball pit. After dinner we want for a little walk letting the kids ride their bikes on the road. they are getting really good at them!  Caden has figured out how to do the twisty swing (twirling around and around).

 

Sunday

Today we had a special Cargill party today. As there are over 70 new Chinese migrants working at Cargill now and today was Chinese new year. We were invited to celebrate with them. We went to the Jasmine Village Chinese restaurant for lunch - which consisted of a banquet meal with soup, spring rolls and prawn toast, fried rice, king prawns, pork, chicken and beef dishes of various taste sensations. The boys had a great time. We were given the opportunity to wish our children a happy new year in Chinese tradition with the giving of money to each of the boys. these were given to us in a specially prepared envelope in which there were two pieces of Chinese currency in side. the tradition behind this is that the senior members of the family (grandparents then parents then children are handed the coins and wish a happy new year. the elders do the giving and wishing and the recipients reciprocate with their wishes as well. Then the supervisors were asked to present their employees with the same thing. All of Darren's employees were wonderful and were so pleased that he could give them theirs. Another tradition that we saw was that families are celebrated again by gift giving. we received a gift bag containing a lantern, some whistles, a poster, a couple of envelopes again containing money. Then after the food the games began. we had to try and pick as many marbles out of a bowl of soapy water with chopsticks as you can in a certain time limit - Tyler used a spoon! The boys absolutely loved it! T kept going back again! They then had the chance to pop a balloon that contained a sheet of Chinese writing for the opportunity to win a grand prize. we didn't get the grand prize but C was pretty pleased with his poster.

The Chinese just loved the boys and we had such a wonderful experience. I am glad that Daz has been given this opportunity to be able to work with these wonderful people and get us a glimpse of a different culture. Since the boys crashed and woke up so late we decided to take them for a picnic in the park for dinner. we stopped off and got KFC and went to the 'duck' park (aka victory memorial gardens). after dinner we hit the playground, went on the swings, climbed on the climbing stuff - you know all the playground things! we all had a lovely time.