So proud of Lexie...

The recent Victorian Bushfires have been so horrendous and Duncan and I have required the tissue box just to read the newspaper. In case you've missed it, Jane's blog gives some idea of the devastation. Lexie's school has held a casual clothes day (much to her disgust - she loves her uniform!) and we have donated tinned food and made our own donations through each work and the internet. We have tried to shield the children from the horror, but they are well aware that people have lost their houses, toys and some their lives.

For my birthday on Friday, I was given a very groovy heart-shaped muffin tin by Lou and an even more groovy cupcake stand by Monica. Lexie was keen to try them out so a batch of choc chip muffins was quickly made on Saturday. Earlier in the day, Lexie had wanted to have a "lemonade stand" (thanks ABC TV) but realised we had no lemons. She decided we could sell the muffins instead. After a short discussion about how much the muffins might cost, we asked Lexie what she might do with the money. "Use it to buy toys? Add it to my pocket money? Oh! I know! I will give it to the children who lost their toys in the fires!".

Our darling girl managed to turn 12 muffins selling for 50cents each into $23! We are so very proud of her. And our generous neighbours...

My baby girl starts school!

How quickly does the time fly? First my baby boy turns three years old and now my baby girl is old enough to go to school!

Lexie started school a few days ago and it has gone amazingly well. Not much of a surprise really, as she was sooo ready to start! The tantrums when she discovered that Neave started in Septmeber were quite incredible: "but she isn't five yet Mummy and I already am! I'm OLDER than her and I can't start yet. That means she's going to learn how to read first and its NOT FAIR! Why can she start now when I can't?!" Ahem... So we started on sight word sheets back in September and she now has a fair few words under her belt before the start of the year.

She seems to be enjoying everything - the uniform and school shoes are a particular favourite and she was almost disappointed when it was a casual clothes day on Friday. She has chosen to wear her school shoes on many a non-school day and it was a struggle to convince her NOT to wear them to Angus' birthday party! :)


She is in a class with ALL of her ballet friends, which is an amazing stroke of good luck. She has Jasmine, Elise, Jana and Tahlia in her class and has already made friends with a few more of the girls. Sigh... not so many boys at the moment. Unfortunately we seem to be at that 'divided' stage.


My new timetable is great and I have every Monday off as well as Tuesday mornings. Hilly has been particularly wonderful. She is looking afte Lexie every Wednesday and is doing ALL of the other drop-offs and pick-ups at the moment. Next week Lexie will attend after-care for one day to ease in, and after that she will be there Wed, Thurs and Fridays. It will be a fair juggle with TWO drop-offs and pick-ups, but I'll manage.

And whilst Lexie is having a ball, Dunc and I are counting down the days until she acclimatises! She is desperately tired and the arguments and tantrums have escalated. Part of the problem is the fact that we have had busy weekends and nights (what with it being 'birthday month' in our house) and she's just not having as much rest as she needs. Hopefully that will all sort itself out soon.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this picture. Think she likes school much?? :)

The big boy turns 3!

How quickly time flies! Our little boy turned 3 this week, which is just a formal recognition of the massive growth spurt and recent developmental leaps. He's really matured over the past couple of months. We now have a little chatterbox who has lost a lot of his insecurities with strangers and new situations. He's really blossomed! So to celebrate we had a Dinosaur birthday party, complete with enormous birthday cake:

Gosh I love Google! I stuffed up the first batch of fondant for the "bony backplates", so had to make a second lot of very blue, sweet, edible playdough. Gave the first batch to the children to play with and they had an absolute ball. Lets hope they don't try and eat the horrible salty stuff next time!
The look of absolute glee on Angus' face when he first saw the cake was so heartwarming. It made every minute spent making it worth it. The 44 degree heat I could have done without - the poor butter frosting couldn't keep up and the dinosaur got a little too tired to hold his head up until candle time. Oh well... he looked good for most of the party!


I copied another mum's idea with strawberries and mint leaves. They are so easy to make and look amazingly effective. And the kids and adults seem to like them. The 22 children (good gracious!) who came were enjoying themselves so much that at first I scrapped the idea of doing the party games. But then the girls were getting a little too keen on the idea of a concert, so Pass-the-Parcel was quickly re-instated and I'm so glad I did. Angus thoroughly enjoyed it. Three years old is the PERFECT age for these games and all of the children enjoyed their little chocolate and dinosaur. Luke, our little winner, was very keen to get his, and a bit put out that it was taking so long. He was extra excited to GET a present at someone else's birthday party.
Now I have a whole 6 months to prepare the next party - how sensible we were to space our children across the year like we did! :)