Another Year Older

Happy Birthday to me!!!

I had a lovely day......

It began with breakfast at the beach with family........

A little down time in the middle....

and concluded this evening with good friends....

Thanks for travelling the road with me ...thanks for checking in and cheering me on....thanks for the encouragement you give me in  friendship and love.

Happy New Year.

Where's we been?

Oh after such a busy year and lead up to Christmas I have been enjoying a change of pace if not for only this week.....

so we have been

• Enjoying Christmas gifts

• some bike riding

• enjoying some alone time

• hanging with cousins

• Some jigsaw doing...

• some geocaching  of course...

• enjoying an intriguing book

• but mostly trying to stay cool...

and sadly the time has come to remove all things that remind us of the Christmas that was......

for tomorrow we must celebrate....

My Birthday!!!

Twas the night before Christmas

The reindeer food is out......

Santa's midnight snack is out...

The presents are out....well nearly all of them.....

Was this week full of fun and merriment?

Is my house all ready for the dinner for 20 tomorrow?

Did we do all the Christmas traditions?

Probably no ,but we did arrive here at Christmas Eve and are looking forward to a few days of kicking back.

So Merry Christmas to all who may follow along with this little corner of the world and may joy, peace and the true meaning of Christmas fill your homes.

Lemonade anyone?

(these are just from the ground collection tonight)

It is a shame I don't have any time for lemonade making...oh well we have plenty of family and friends who will love some lemons...

Maybe I will be making lemon Meringue pie instead of the Pavlovas..(except the eggs are stacking up in the fridge)

Busy Elving

The elf in this house is working overtime this year.....some last minute requests fulfilled and going out the door tomorrow....then some finishing touches on family gifts and we should be done.

Can't stop

Can't stop to chat tonight my list of gift making seems to be growing.....so thought you might like to check out here instead while I am busy.....

U2

This had to be the most awesome concert /production I have ever seen.....

The visual show with mind blowing...

I had forgotten how many of their songs were real anthems and  that when sung by a 55,000 audience filled the arena with an amazing sound..

Geocaching

I have shared our adventures of geocaching before. This morning we ventured up to 
The Baldivis Children's Forrest for a geocaching event. 

It was an opportunity to meet up with fellow cachers and swap stories or in the case of the kids run around wild with friends.

It was organised by some good friends of ours along with some help from my sister and her husband. We met up with friends that we haven't seen for a while and also discovered others that we didn't know had been caching.

While there, two new caches were released and open for finding ...interesting when done on mass!

If you are looking for something outdoors and fun for the whole family check out the world of geocaching...free to join and never a dull moment.

WooHoo

The cards are written and in the post.....

Happy children just wanting to hang out....

No more lunch boxes to prepare..

School uniforms washed and packed away....

School bags emptied and put in the cupboard...

School holidays have begun.....

Edible Gifts

I have just finished wrapping the last of the teacher gifts and some treats for my co-workers.....

We settled on some edible gifts for Meg's male teacher....

Some Hedgehog Slice and White Chocolate Rocky Road Slice..

I sewed up these cellophane bags and attached tags.....

Then put the final touch on the rest of Mr V's pressie......

My co-workers are not getting the reindeer treats they were saved for Mr V.....I am sure they will cope fine with the other chocolate fix.

Christmas reading

I feel a bit behind this year.....tonight was the first night we have read some of our Christmas books....

These books go away with the Christmas things each year and then come out to surprise us. I do try and add a book each year..this year I bought...

Tags

I went and had these tags printed off today to add to some Christmas gifts I have nearly finished.
I followed this tutorial to create them.


Can't show you the bottom print because I don't want the surprise spoiled for younger members of our extended family.....but the top print is to attach to Meg's teachers gift .....that idea I found here.
After her award last week I am sure he will be slightly amused!

"Carolling"

Not quite the Christmas carols in the park photos I was hoping for but keeping them both still for "the photo" was near on impossible.

We as a church hosted a local carols service in our local community tonight. Fantastic crowd, great weather, awesome band and a great way to spend a Sunday evening leading up to Christmas.

The kids sang as part of the kids church gang and actually enjoyed their moment in the limelight.

Derek headed up a great team of musicians again tonight to lead a community gathering through some well loved traditional songs.
 

Well that is another event done and dusted on the busy calender......now if only the Christmas shopping would do itself!

Christmas baking

Had a few minutes to start some Christmas baking ...hopefully to wrap as gifts....the trouble will be keeping little and big fingers off it.

White Chocolate Rocky Road Slice.

You can find the recipe for this one here.

Sticky Stars

Stars out to dry before the nursery class at church tomorrow...there seems no end to crafting in this season.
(a stark contrast to the advertising material they are drying on.)

A bit girly

Fraser wasn't that keen to model this "girly" cape.....it is for a girl in his class who's party we are off to this morning.

I have another waiting to be customised in my shop...take a visit there.

A first

A first for us.....a tour of the neighborhood lights......on our bikes.(in our PJ's - well only one of us in pajamas!)

One little guy in our family was busting at the seams with excitement of us doing this family expedition.

Surprise

Late yesterday afternoon we had a call from Meg's teacher letting us know that she was receiving an award and would we like to attend the ceremony?(It was a secret from the students) We were a little puzzled as to what award because  the school had held all their award ceremonies at assemblies during the week.

So we arrived at school- lucky Derek was able to get off work early.

We discovered that the Year 6 teachers had decided amongst themselves that there were  a whole bunch more students who deserved to be recognised other than the formal awards they usually stick too.

So with their own initiative they held a Year 6 only ceremony. It was great , the kids encouraged each other and the teachers were able acknowledge students for a variety of achievements.

Having made the change at the start of the year from private schooling to our local school it was with a huge amount of pride that we saw Meg recieve this award from her teacher.

(Click to enlarge.)