The Easter Bunny was here!!!

"Mum!!!  The Easter Bunny was here!!!  He was in my ROOM!!!  And he's left footprints everywhere!!!"

And that's how the day began :-)

Like I said the other day, I love that the small things make my son's day.  Last night's minuscule effort of making a cut-out rabbit footprint and sifting flour around the house was absolutely worth it.  Even cleaning it all up today, after the Little Big Fella had spread it everywhere, was worth it :-)

 

Lucky we made Easter baskets at playgroup this week!

 

 

Thank you, my lovely son, for walking in Easter Bunny's footprints... and spreading them all over the house!!!

Well, even though the Little Big Fella searched the house when he woke up, it turned out that he hadn't found all the eggs the Bunny had left behind!  It turns out he'd left some downstairs as well!  So another search was had (when Daddy woke up).

This time Daddy got to be the egg basket - the other one was full!

Chocolate all over his face = a happy Little Big Fella.  And some nice, clean water to wash it all down ;-)

Turning 4

A couple of days ago my Little Big Fella turned 4.

It's official.

He's now a "big boy" (according to him at the very least).

And because I'm blogging, I get to be the soppy mum for a minute and say I'm so proud of who he's turning out to be.

He's smart and funny and entertaining and fun to be around.  He can be generous and exceptionally loving.  He loves playing with his friends, but is also happy to play alone (lucky really, given that he's an only child!).

He's just as anal as me about things being done "right".  He's very good at demanding to be heard (especially if I'm on the phone or talking to someone else) and he generally knows what he wants.

I'm enjoying watching him change and grow and discover, and I wonder what kind of a "big boy" he'll be, and what kind of man.

Anyway, enough of the self-gratifying reflections, let's get on to the good stuff!

The night before his birthday, the Big Fella and I blew up a few balloons and hung them in the living area, and I put the present from us and from one set of grandparents on the table.

When he woke up and came to the living area he was stoked by the balloons! Amazing how something so small can be so exciting when you're that young :-)

Then, of course, he saw the presents and was into it!!!  We started with the one from the Big Fella's parents.

Now, the Little Big Fella hasn't made paper planes before, so didn't really understand what his new (BIG) book was about.  The Big Fella just happened to have picked up a foam plane the day before but hadn't put it together or shown the Little Big Fella.  So to give him an idea of what you can do with paper planes, he made up the foam one.

 
Obviously the Little Big Fella had to have a go too :-D  And he LOVED it!  No doubt that book will be regularly referenced in the future!

Well, as much fun as planes are, there was another present to open so we dragged the Little Big Fella back to the table to see what was there.

Insert side story here:
The Little Big Fella has been thoroughly enjoying the few dress-ups that he has over the past few months, so I'd considered buying him another one for his birthday.  But I hadn't gotten around to it.

So last week I was looking at super hero costumes online.  You know, Iron Man, the Green Lantern, Spiderman...  I couldn't decide which one I thought my son would like best, so I decided to get him involved.

I sat him on my lap and we looked through a few pages of boys costumes.  He was quite taken with the Green Lantern... until he saw...

 

Yep, it is!  Darth Vader!  Not a Jedi costume, but Darth Vader.  This is what he chose out of all the superheroes we looked at!!!

Of course, he had to try it on and show himself in the mirror straight away :-D

 

That costume stayed on him almost literally all day!  And most of the next day too!

He wore it when we went to playgroup (and unfortunately accidentally hit one of the kids with his light saber).

He wore it when we got home and for the afternoon.

And he wore it when we went to the park for an Easter event held by our local Lions club.

Suffice to say, he's happy with his birthday present :-)

When we got home from playgroup, the Big Fella had been to the post office and discovered another present for the birthday boy.  This one was from my parents.

It was an Iron Man 3 figure with car and guns and it got an absolute workout! It almost got taken to the park in the afternoon, but thankfully I was able to talk the Little Big Fella out of that one.

The Easter event at the park that afternoon was great fun too.  Funnily enough, the Little Big Fella thought it was his party in the park!  He got to play with his best friend, and plenty of his other friends.  They had sno cones (crushed ice with incredibly sweet coloured syrup) and fairy floss and a little jumping castle!!!  And the Little Big Fella won a prize for the Easter hat he'd made in playgroup that morning!

Talk about a massive day!

Originally I'd planned to have a couple of the Little Big Fella's friends over for a small party, then have a cake at the park for everyone.  But because of playgroup and then the Lions event, I'd decided not to.

But the Little Big Fella kept talking about having his friends at his house for a birthday party, so I decided to go ahead and have one.

Unlike previous parties, I didn't want to spend weeks (months) preparing for it and wanted to make it pretty simple.  So I made a superhero cape for each of the boys, got some cardboard masks, a Spiderman pez dispenser and a bag of teddy biscuits and made that the party bag, intending to give it to each of the boys as they arrived.

As well as the balloons we'd put up the day before, I stuck some streamers around the place and that was it for decoration.

For food I just did a plate of fruit, a bowl of chips (crisps), and some party pies and sausage rolls with sauce.

Well, unfortunately the party with a few friends didn't quite turn out as expected.

The Little Big Fella's best friend went camping first thing on the day of the party.

Another friend woke up with a tummy bug that morning so couldn't come.

The third friend's mum had booked an appointment with the hairdresser so couldn't get to the party.

So only one friend (and his sister) ended up coming.  And they had a great time and the Little Big Fella thought it was awesome!  He even took off his Darth Vader costume and let his friend try it on!!!

It was definitely the most laid back party I've done so far, but apparently it was still a success!  Hip, hip... hooray!!!!!

Visits and shopping

As promised, here is another "catch-up" post from all that we've been up to this month.

The week after my brother was here, the Fellas and I drove back to our old town to visit family, for the Big Fella to get a root canal, and to collect the last of our belongings that had been stored in my Poppy's shed.

My grandparents moved interstate when I was four or five years old.  As we were growing up, I only got to see them about once a year, and I felt that I'd missed out on something really special because of it.

Then, when the Big Fella and I first moved to Queensland, we ended up living with my grandparents for two or three months.  It was hard for everyone initially, but we got to know each other well and became great friends.  It is an absolute pleasure to me to now watch my son having the opportunity to know and love his great-grandparents!

Anyway, when we first arrived at my grandparents' place, I had quite a shock.  Poppy has just recently had a knee reconstruction and managed to get blood poisoning in the hospital.  They didn't pick it up and sent him home.  Thankfully he had a checkup with his surgeon a couple of days later, and was readmitted immediately.  By the time we got there, Poppy had been back home for a few days and was on the mend.

But walking in and seeing him was a shock!  His skin was grey and he looked 10 years older than when I'd seen him in December.  Talk about confronting!!!

Thankfully within a few hours he was looking more like himself.  I think that the Big Fella had a lot to do with that - they're great friends, which is kind of amazing given that they didn't like each other when they met!

Over the next three days, I noticed that Poppy's knee was less swollen and he was able to do more.  So he's definitely mending, which is such a relief.

Okay, lets move on to other things.

The Little Big Fella had such a good time playing with his cousins!  He misses them so much, and that really is the thing I feel worst about with our move here.  I've no doubt they'll be great friends, but I guess when we lived closer they were almost like siblings.

I've been reflecting a little over the past few months that it would have been wonderful for the Little Big Fella to have a sibling.  Unfortunately I wasn't mentally capable and now that he's just about to start school I'm not willing to go back to the baby and nappies stage.

Oh my goodness, this post is getting rather dreary, isn't it???

Let me tell you about the very fun part of our visit!  We went shopping!

Now, when I say "we went shopping" I don't mean a little bit here and there.  I mean we. went. shopping!!!!

We finally found office furniture that we like (I've been looking for months!!!), and a dining setting/buffet/entertainment unit that we both like.  I ordered the office furniture as soon as we got home and it arrived the other day.  I'll show it to you when I've got it all together :-)  The other stuff will be ordered in a few weeks I think.

We went to the sports store and ended up with two pairs of shoes each, a footy for the Little Big Fella, some extra dumbells and weight plates... I think there was something else too.

The Big Fella went to our old butcher and ended up buying, literally, a deep freezer full of meat!  Here comes the jerky :-D

I bought some black beans, which are a little difficult to get here and are expensive to buy online.

Okay, I bought a lot of black beans.

I'd never used them until recently, but I have a recipe from the Dessert Angel for "Belly Fat Burning Brownies".  They have no flour and no sugar but are high in fibre and protein, and they taste FANTASTIC!!!  Even the Fellas love them!  And everywhere I've taken them people have loved them too, and asked for the recipe.

So, I bought a massive bag of black beans :-)

The Little Big Fella and I went to Bunnings.  I love that store!!!  Apparently there's a little one opening in our closest large town sometime this year.  Guess that'll make it heaven :-D

From Bunnings I bought new fittings for the bathroom.  I know, we're in a company house!  But I wanted fittings that suited our lifestyle and matched the rest of the room so I bought some.

I also got some paint.  Our playgroup was getting rid of a few bits and pieces when we moved to the CWA hall at the start of the year, and I decided to keep a stand/rack for hanging up costumes and hats.  It needs a bit of cleaning up, so I decided to buy some bright, dark blue paint, which will go really nicely with the Little Big Fella's new bed, and the freshly painted walls. Don't worry, I'll show you pics when it's done :-)

So, obviously, as well as all this shopping we spent time with my family and everyone had a great time.  I absolutely love that spending time with my family is fun, not a stress.  I feel particularly lucky!

Okay, that's the end of this update!  But don't worry, there'll be more!!!  :-D

Oh my goodness!!!  I totally forgot to put in the photos from our visit!!!  I ended up taking my camera, specifically with the CWA photo competition in mind - not because I think I'll win anything, but because it's another way to support what's happening in our local community.  I took a bunch of pics of the Little Big Fella playing in the playground, and had a go at some more abstract-style photos.

Anyway, here you go!

This is my youngest nephew when we were op-shopping.  He really didn't want to get out of there when it was time to go, either!

Oh!  This is at home.  My brother gave the Little Big Fella his birthday present and he's played with it for hours!

 

There you go!  Hope you enjoyed it :-D

Oh brother!

Oh my goodness!!!  I have some serious catching up to do here!!!  I have pictures and stories and all sorts to tell.  So I think what I'll do is give you a few today, and hopefully a few more tomorrow and over the next few days.

Why am I bothering to catch up?  Well, because I think you guys are awesome for reading my blog so I want to continue to entertain you.  And because my friends and family who live a long way away say that they like to see and hear what we get up to, so I want to keep letting them into our lives.

So, here we go!

I am the oldest of four.  I love my siblings and, although we had our fair share of fights as we were growing up, we've always been friends as well.

At the start of the month we had the pleasure of having my brother stay with us.  He lives two states away - about 24 hours drive.  So it was awesome to see him.

He'd flown up and was staying with my sister in our old town, then caught the train to here.  The train was supposed to arrive at 2am but due to the heavy rains and a couple of trains breaking down he didn't get here until 6:30am (or something like that).

Sunrise while waiting for the my brother's train to arrive.

Unfortunately, we were all sick while he was here :(  We had head and chest colds so we ended up spending most of our time reading and watching movies and attempting to sleep.

But we also played some board games, did the shopping and just spent time talking.  And we were really quite happy with that!

The last day of his visit with us was my brother's birthday, so I attempted my first ever sponge cake!  Mum used to make sponges for our birthdays every year so it was fun to recreate the tradition.

The cake turned out great!  It was light and fluffy and delicious!  But I'd forgotten that Mum used to cut the cake in half horizontally, then put the jam and cream in the middle and ice the top.  The recipe makes two cakes though, so I put the jam and cream on the bottom cake (by the way, we'd bought low fat cream.  Turns out you can't whip low fat cream!  So I just poured it over the bottom layer and let it soak in a bit, then put the jam over that), then put the other cake on top of it and iced it.

The Little Big Fella decided he wanted us to put red icing on top.  Well, that icing just wouldn't turn red!!!  So after about half a bottle of red food colouring, I ended up adding some yellow to make it orange-ish.

Okay, fine!  It's pink!

So after a pretty quiet couple of days, it was time for my little bro to go.  The exciting thing is that I'll be seeing him in July when we go to the P!nk concert with my youngest sister!!!!  Woo hoo!!!!

About to say goodbye as the sun sets on the day and our visit.

Our next new adventure for the year actually happened in February!  We went to our first Race Day!

Last year the Big Fella was living here in the quarters and went with one of his classmates.  He called me up telling me how much fun he was having and that we should definitely go next year.

Well, this year he was working so I had to take the Little Big Fella instead :-D  They cater to kids and had a few rides and bits and pieces.  Initially the Little Big Fella was NOT interested!  The slide looked too big and he just wanted to be near me.

That didn't last too long!

And once he'd been on the slide, he had to go on the horses, then the rocket, then the jumping castle.  He had a ball!

Being new to races, I didn't realise there would only be 5 races for the whole afternoon.  But once the races started, the Little Big Fella and I got up to the fence and cheered everyone on, not caring a bit who won!  It was good fun!

There were heaps of people there too, including some of the Little Big Fella's friends, so we had a lovely afternoon.

The funny thing was when the police turned up and drove through the carpark.  Everyone who could see them kind of stopped what they were doing and watched them.  Then once the police left, it was as if someone had turned the music back on or something!

Hmmm, what else have we been up to?

Okay, one more for today.

This is one of our Rhode Island red chicken's eggs.  She lays her eggs in the dog house.  If I don't collect the egg very quickly after she vacates the dog house, the dog retaliates for being kicked out of her house by cracking (and sometimes eating) the egg.

At least the other chicken lays her eggs in the chicken house!