A date with Ben 10

A week or so ago sebastian made a request that we could do something, just the two of us. Sometimes I wish I could anticipate these things, boys need one on one time with their mums, a time to feel special and a time to hang out and chat.


I hope these requests never cease. We went today to see what I thought was a Ben 10 movie but was just 2 episodes that we had already seen. But you know that didn't matter, we were hanging out


He dressed up as a ninja spider man wearing an omnitrix. He chose avocado sushi and strawberry milk for lunch



He chose to sit up the back with his mum. I took a photo for posterity as I'm sure this will be short lived.
I must remember to spend time with each making them feel special.

I've met the love of my life

2 days ago I started a love affair. My new love, is organized. My new love listens actively to my requests and tries to solve problems for me. My new love offers timely reminders, my new love is blue...

WHAT... Did you just say your new love is blue.

Um yes I did.

Here it is.




I am the proud owner of a new iPhone. Now my love for this gadget has sent me head over heels, so much so that when I picked sebastian up from school on Thursday afternoon we got to the car and realized we had left his school bag in his classroom. Really, that child should be more responsible.
It certainly wasn't my fault.

Insert scene of crazed woman shouting " siri remind me at8 am tomorrow it's dress red for Daniel day"
No not headless for spaniels day
Change that
Dress red for Daniel day at eight am.
What how could you not understand that...
Oh ambient noise, I see
Excuse me could you all be quiet. I am trying to talk to my phone.

puzzled looking child - do you mean on your phone

no I mean to my phone, it really understands me it gets me on a metaphysical level.
Um sebastian where is you school bag?

Mum you left it back in the classroom when you were talking to your phone

"Siri remind me to pick up Sebastian's bag when I am at school, Siri also remind me not to be a techno fool "

This may or may not have happened...I'm just saying.

Love you siri.


Disclaimer. The above mentioned person may or may not be related to Gary of the famous dragon dictation software. Genetics are entirely to blame for the above lunacy.

Sleeping like a dog

Carnaby turned 9 on Sunday. She is getting to be an old lady. The electric zaps from her barking collar may be making her more spritely( or taking years off her life hard to know)
She still loves food, and will go to the extent of chasing the chickens to get them to drop whatever they are eating


She also loves to sleep on Elliot's bed. I found her here last night in this Michael Angelo esque style pose.


Making herself comfy!

Swimmy mcswimster

Elliot has started swimming lessons. Here he is already to go. It is the pool at Sebastian's school. He is too little to touch the bottom. He drank a lot of water today in the trying. He is a kamakazi!


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If you look really carefully you can see sebastian on the other side of the pool.

I am no green thumb

But here is two gardening efforts just for you Ali. I divided my purple orchids and repotted, the have survived the afternoon so fingers crossed and here are the walking iris's or iri if you please. I told the boys that the walking iris's moved around the garden when we weren't looking. Had them going for quite a while! Lovely, thank you Enid blyton for developing their imaginations





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100 words and counting

Sebastian got an award on Monday at assembly for reaching his 100 magic words . He assures me that he actually knows 200. I think he might be right. He is loving reading.

New cupboard

Here's the old lady we picked up last week to replace ivar who had served us well but was a danger to all


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English books and sentences

Sebastian has run out of room in his English book at school.
Here is one of my favourite pages.

On the weekend I went out with my grown up friends.

This was a weekend he went to the beach with our friends Mitch and Maddie. I love that he has called them 'his grown up friends'.

Look at that writing! How exciting to be reading and writing. I tank personally I am getting as much a kick out of watching this development as I did out of his learning to talk. My inner speechie is watching how he is using all the skills in reading to attack words and decode them, no top down or bottom up approaches. It's a full on assault. Watch out words you are next!

He told me a few weeks ago that he can't help himself reading things


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Take one awesome staple gun- thanks Bek.
And 16 metres of Pirelli rubber webbing and you will find that a 60 odd year old chair is suddenly comfortable again... Now for that deteriorating foam cushions..






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Location:Fixing up the Parker

Another day at the office

It's pretty exciting at my work under the fluorescent lights.
Blog press hasn't been working so really this is just a test to see if uninstalling and reinstalling it has worked...


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I'm no Susie homemaker

And here is the proof. Apart from the packet mix satay I made when i was 14, this is possibly, no sorry, without a doubt THE worst thing I have ever made. The catastrophe began unassumingly at 3 pm, where upon I washed hulled and chopped 1.5kgs of strawberries fresh from the farmers market. "Here I am," I thought, "making jam".

"Wow look at me making jam".

I left the strawberries to macerate I think is the correct term for 2 hours. Where upon I put them into the slow cooker and thought I turned it onto high.
"There," I thought, "strawberry jam by bedtime, toast and fresh strawberry jam for breakfast, what a nice way to ease back into term."

At 10.30 when I felt that the jam should indeed be Jammy enough to be received by my freshly sterilized jars, I checked and realized I had not been cooking the jam but merely gently warming it for 4 hours.

It was 11 pm, I was past the point of no return. I put the slow cooker on High and went to bed, somewhat mistakenly- I now see, assuming that 6 hours in a slow cooker there would still be something that resembled a strawberry to put into a jar.

Pretty much every hour I was awoken by the sickly sweet smell of strawberries cooking or the rattle of the glass lid on the slow cooker, but I thought at 6 there will be lovely jam. So I soldiered on.

At 5.30am when Elliot woke us up I had had only 2 hours sleep, and half an hour to go before I had to get up to go to work. Something was not right. The sickly sweet strawberry smell had changed, to a burnt sugar, charcoal smell.

I got up

I had burnt the jam to a charred sticky paste. Yet at that time I didn't think " this is inedible, I will throw the whole lot out", no I persisted and now have 5 jars of black burnt strawberry jam in the fridge. It has set so hard that I don't even know if I will be able to get it out of the jars to use them again.or if the burntness of the jam has so infused itself into the glass that anything else put in there will have that smokey carbon after taste, Or if I should just call it a day and chuck out the whole lot and say to the world and Maggie beer. i Am no jam maker.









Scones anyone?