And so that was Christmas...

Christmas was a bit different for us this year with Greg actually around and awake enough to celebrate with us - for the past few years he's been sick after having worked himself to exhaustion in the lead up at the shop, and then spending the day recovering before diving into the fray again on Boxing Day morning - so we made the most of it.
We'd already done all the fantastic Christmas light displays, including one at a church where a friend is on staff, and they did a fantastic job with so much to see that we were there for ages watching the shows, the wood-turning, choirs, inspecting the lifesize nativity etc., so Christmas Eve was church and then watching some of the carols on TV (that I had Dad tape from the previous week, so that the girls were still in bed at a reasonable hour - yet still saw the Wiggles).

Christmas morning was spent reading the Bible, opening a couple of presents at home before heading to my side of the family for breakfast, where we had a ball, ate too much and then headed home for a lazy sleep for us all before the afternoon's activities at Greg's parents place.

The favourite present for this year was actually a photobook that I'd compiled for each of the girls with photos of them since they were little, and things or people that they were familiar with. They loved them! Daddy received some pictures of the girls to take with him when he travels with his new job, and also some of the beautiful homemade presents from kindy that the girls made as well - the best kind!

We took time out to remember how blessed we are this Christmas - hope you did too.

Getting plastered

 

 

 

While it was great to see the rooms without the asbestos, it's even better to see them getting plastered again and reconfigured ready for the entry and laundry/3rd bathroom combined, instead of the previous arrangement where the entry was to walk through the laundry - you can understand why we were keen to reconfigure! Some of the family who had some time to contribute gave Greg a hand on Saturday to get things started with getting the plaster on the ceiling - high ceilings are great unless you're plastering them!

The next level

The girls have been trying really hard in their swimming lessons and sometimes even practising when we're in Nanna and Grandad's pool, so today their efforts were rewarded with them both progressing to their next respective level at swimming and receiving another certificate. Well done girls! Photos to come...

Highlights 2

After a baked ham lunch in air-conditioning at Mum and Dad's on Sunday and the regulation sleep that follows such a meal, we headed out for the Community Christmas Party at Greg's parents Church for the evening. The girls loved the hay ride with Papa driving, the animal farm, the jumping castle and even managed a photo with Santa - all for free. It was great. Between long sessions on the jumping castle they also managed to do some craft, inhale some food and then I found them reverting to their own personalities - Olivia off to play with the kitchen and rustle up a good play food meal, while Ellen was located having found a willing person to read her some stories - a favourite pass-time of hers (thanks Karen! aka Jeremy's Mum).
Greg as usual spent his time catching up with everyone who's known him since he was a little tacker, while I held shoes, craft, food, drink bottles and so on, in between catching up with friends. A pleasant evening rounded off with a drive past some Christmas lights on the way home.
A few early nights are in store for us now I think - Olivia even slept in until 7.15 this morning (normally 5am), so we knew that she was tired!

Highlights

Ellen mid-twirl in her interpretative dance of Oh Holy Night I think...
The angels - second from left and from right with fluffy (and slightly crooked) halos
The cheekiest angel you're likely to meet
My camera's driving me crazy with it's delay, so the photo doesn't really show the huge grins that they had the whole time they were on the ponies - and no, they're not getting one for Christmas!
We've been sooo busy lately - no time to document all we've been up to, so the next few post are some of the highlights of recent days...

This is the second year that we've attended the carols in the park new our new home, and each time we've had a ball. This year was a festival beforehand, so we were down there early to enjoy some of the other things as well, or at least the girls and I were, while Greg was at home with the plumber reconnnecting the water mains in the house - something had gone wrong...thankfully he managed to join us before the program really started.

Highlights for the girls at our Church carols night were their first pony ride, singing on-stage (I think we've created a monster there with Olivia!), the fireworks and so much more. This year they knew the words to just about every song, and Ellen had an interpretive dance to go with most of them as well. Kept us smiling anyway:)

Princesses

Today was Princesses and Pirates day at Kindy to celebrate the Letter 'P', so of course the girls decided to go as Princesses. Dilemma - all of their dress-up clothes were not good for playing in the fort etc. in and weren't sunsafe (the two conditions to be met in the note that came home), so thankfully Nanna came to the rescue and made some little play friendly skirts at very short notice, the tiaras were located and they were set.
They had a great day and made 'p'opcorn the old fashioned way for afternoon tea - which, in the true old fashioned way, went all over the floor as they tried to cook too much at once - ah, the simple things bring back memories!

I'm hoping the next letter is 'R' for rattlesnakes and rabbits, because courtesy of Greg's old Church drama days, we have a number of sets of rabbits ears in the dress up box just looking for an outing!

Thank you Nanna - we wouldn't have done it anywhere near as well without you!

Oh Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree...

Luckily you don't have to hear my rendition of the carol, but we did put up the tree last weekend - a few days later than normal, but we weren't living at home at the start of December, so had to wait until our return (and find the boxes with all the relevant bits!). The girls were very excited as usual, and even more so when they realised that we have our very own, 'real' chimney for Santa this year - the stockings look fantastic hanging up there - very Christmasy!

Asbestos out

The second lot of asbestos came out this week - the last lot was just before Christmas last year, so it's been a while. This time it was the playroom, laundry and 3rd bathroom, so a much bigger area and we had to move out for a while to Mum and Dad's while it was all happening. Looks like such a big area now that it's empty again - a blank canvas for the next major work to happen. So hopefully in a little while we'll have an enlarged bathroom that will incorporate the laundry, and entry way (no more walking in through the laundry - lovely as that was!) and a newly sheeted and plastered playroom with walls that we're actually daring to put pictures up on!
Of course we did manage to time it for right at the beginning of the hot season, so I don't envy Greg working in there - he's doing such a great job though and the house is looking fantastic in the areas where he's finished.

Ellen's birthday part 2

We were going to have a kids party this year with guests etc. but with everything else going on, went for the family gathering instead. Ellen decided on a pony cake this year, so the challenge was there and this was the best that I could come up with (not being the most artistic person I know). She was pretty excited about it - you can see that I was just a tad heavy handed in the food colouring department - I can never manage to just get one drop out of a bottle - so our ponies were enjoying lush green pastures due to the recent rains!

Ellen was keenly anticipating blowing out the candles, only to be pipped at the post by her over-eager cousin Lachlan, who blew the first lot out before she could manage it. We wondered why he was so keen to stand next to her during the song...unusual for him! She didn't miss a second time though!

Thanks to Tricia and Jason lending their home for the occasion as our's was stripped ready for the asbestos to come out.

Prayers with Olivia

I often get to do the nighttime routine with the girls, and it's a special time of the day. Sometimes a bit too hurried at the end of a busy day and running late, but usually a lovely way to end the day with them. Tonight we went through the usual routine: read books, read Bibles, sung our two carols for the Christmas concert and then Jesus Loves Me (you can never have too many songs at bedtimes apparently) and we were on to prayers. Olivia has recently started saying her own without prompting and rather values the opportunity - tonight was so beautiful that I wanted to cuddle her for hours just to retain that special reality of a gorgeous little girl with her simple knowledge of God.

She started out as usual and then almost made an inventory of her favourite things in her room - dolls, teddys, the door that closes, the vacuum etc. and I almost pulled her up when she switched to thanking God for our house, and for food and then proceeded to list all of her favourites - apricots, nectarines, grapes, watermelon, apple, pineapple, stewed apple (there was an apple theme happening here!) and then rounded up with a great big thanks to God for evweefing!

A good reminder to me that I need to thank God for my favourite things too - instead of taking them a bit for granted each day. She focussed on what's big in her world and reminded me that I should look a bit more closely at my own. So another lesson learned from my 2 year old...many more to come I'm sure.

The closing hours

The water park was great - we didn't even explore half of it, and the girls were a little short for a number of the bigger slides, but had a good time regardless, even when the rain started to come down they splashed on while Greg and I took it in turns to try out some of the bigger slides.
The crazy trio were rather taken by this poor old chap sitting quietly on a bench minding his own business

Day at Dreamworld

Daddy the maniac dodgem driver - Ellen loved it
Olivia on her first roller coast at 2
The teacup ride in Dorothy's cup of course
Our Chauffeur around the car track - very serious about her responsibilities too
In 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang'
Finally we made it to Dreamworld to use our Playpass cheap entry tickets and it was great - a super day, and it appears that everyone stayed away to avoid the potential of schoolies being there, and the schoolies stayed away too, so the park wasn't crowded, there were hardly any queues for anything and we had a ball.
Highlights included the girls patting a tiger cub out on her walk, Olivia's first roller coaster ride (the first of many judging by how it went!), Ellen's first drive of a car (and they were adamant it looked like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which increased the excitement level!), Daddy loved the bumper cars with Ellen giggling in the passenger seat, and Mummy thought that one of the slides in the water park was awesome. The girls were too short for a few rides yet, but we had plenty to fill in the day.
I planned ahead with food, drinks, prams etc. to be organised, and then of course, they only used the pram for all of 5 minutes all day, although it proved a handy vehicle in terms of carrying bags, hats, suncream, snacks, cameras etc. I felt for the people lugging kids, bags etc. around - which I'm sure would have been us if we had left the pram at home!

Four

or should I say 'Fore!' - because look out world, here she comes!
Ellen has been a BIG girl since she was about one and a half - the age she starting telling me so when I suggested that little girls perhaps couldn't do something quite yet. Olivia on the other hand, is quite happy to be a little girl, and instead sees the advantages that come with that particular label, however Ellen has always wanted to be about 10 years older than she currently is...so that makes her 14 and with the sass and attitude to go with it!
This morning kicked off with a treasure hunt to find her gifts, and then the presentation of her 'new' bike (thanks eBay!) - we couldn't figure out how to wrap that, but by the reaction that it got anyway, it seems we would have wasted the effort anyway. Suffice to say that she's very excited about the bike - it's pink and has a special bag at the front - what's not to like?!?!

Not the best picture, and the deadpan face doesn't reflect her excitement, but the shutter on our camera is so slow that she was probably on to her dissertation about the seat being too high by this point!
Took a while to find this one - hard to find anything in the playroom at the moment!

Quiet weekend - the best kind

A quiet weekend catching up with family and friends, a long swim at Nanna and Grandad's place and some time to catch up with ourselves after a busy few weeks. Ellen spent a happy hour or so making patterns with her peg board, doing her 'stiles' and keeping herself amused after her 'rest' while Olivia slept blissfully on for a huge sleep today. I was rather envious as I took the photo, a couple of hours of shut-eye today would have been nice, but wasn't to be today....

Going west

Ellen and Emily with the geese at one of the cafes that we visited
The girls checking out their bed for the weekend

We headed out to spend the weekend with cousins in Toowoomba on Friday, and had a great time catching up with people that we know - and missing a number of others that we couldn't fit in to such a short timeframe. The girls had a ball sleeping in the 'King Shed', sharing a Queen size mattress together and the delights of two slightly older girl cousins to go crazy with.
We checked out some of the local attractions (Japanese Gardens, parks and cafes, enjoying the views while the girls all burnt lots of energy in the playgrounds provided) as well as unwinding and just catching up. Went to church out there on Sunday and I ended up catching up with a number of people that I knew from Churches in Brisbane and other places from years ago, so that was great. Looks like we might be spending more time in Toowoomba from next year, so it was a great surprise and a reminder that friends (current and future) are everywhere.
Our arrival home occurred just at the conclusion of the big storm, so we were very thankful that there was no damage to our property - given the rather dubious structure that the carport currently is, we were expecting some damage, but it's obviously stronger than it looks and God had His Hand holding the roof down!

Family date at the beach

Had some fun with afternoon family date at Kings Beach last Friday. Of course we dropped in to see how the shop was doing as well and to say Hi to some old friends. Had a super afternoon - the weather was magic and there were a few waves occasionally too.

Cousins

Hard work to get them looking in the same direction - this terrific trio are starting to have lots of fun together now that little 'Lucyloo' (as the girls call her) is able to get more involved in playing. Thanks for your patience and the impromptu lunch Aunty Kathryn!