Nothing. Absolutely Nothing.

I've got absolutely nothing to say. The only reason I'm posting is that it's been two weeks since I last posted, which is getting a bit on the slack side. But really, this is a post about Nothing, since I have Nothing to post about. (name that tv show).

That's not to say we are doing nothing. We are too busy to be doing nothing, although doing nothing looks pretty good somedays - you know the days when you want to just curl up in bed and do nothing. I've had some of them lately. But four kids plus homeschooling plus housebuilding equals no time to do nothing.

I could discuss the weather. We've had a fair amount of decent rain lately, but that would be pretty lame discussing the weather on my blog. Especially seeing as when it comes to rain in these here parts, our annual average rainfall amounts to not much more then nothing anyways.

Nothing much has happened on our house. Nothing much worth posting about anyway. The fireplace is being put in by PVT as I type. The carpet is hopefully arriving tomorrow. I've been having visions of the wrong carpet being put in, so the plan is to rush out tomorrow to check it's the one we ordered. We had trouble deciding which carpet to choose, but then we pretty much had trouble choosing stuff every step of the way. Like the kitchen benchtops, the tiles, the paint etc. We're pretty good at procrastinating. The carpet colour we eventually chose is called 'bran'. A nice healthy choice.

There is really only one thing to post about that isn't nothing, and I still get heart palpatations thinking of it. After three years of house building, and three years where we have been very blessed with no major accidents, we had a major/minor accident last weekend involving the youngest member of our family. Without going into too many details, Caleb managed to drink a tin of turps, which had a paint brush in it being cleaned of enamel paint. So he managed to drink some turps mixed with enamel paint. Fortunately he hasn't yet mastered drinking from a cup so he spilt most of it down his front. Also fortunately was the fact that our paramedic friend arrived for dinner two minutes later. To cut a long story short, he's totally fine. He spent a fair bit of time that evening hiccuping and burping, and has a bad case of what looks like sunburn on his tummy where it got onto his skin, which is now peeling. He was over the whole experince the next morning, whereas I'm still recovering from the shock. So I guess that's not really nothing, but thankfully it turned out to be nothing.

This is where I post a cute picture of Caleb to prove he's okay after his experience (which turned out to be nothing) but I haven't got the camera here at the moment, so you'll have to wait till next time. Until then you can just look at nothing.

From zero to one

Happy Birthday Caleb!

One year has passed since little wingnut came into the world. A birthday is always an exciting thing in our house and the boys have been counting down to Caleb's first birthday for quite a while, with the big day finally arriving yesterday.

I'm not sure which brother was the most excited, but they all ensured Caleb had a great time. He quickly got the hang of taking the paper off the presents, insisting on tearing one tiny piece at a time, which he would then pass to his big brother...



He took the job of opening his presents very seriously, giving it a great effort...



We made him a number 1 cake. Do you think he liked it?...


Some things about Caleb at the age of 1:

• he is walking more then crawling (toddling being the correct word for it)
• he is determined to be a part of what his brothers are doing
• he loves to read books and turns pages with his cute little fingers
• he still looks like a wingnut, but of course a very cute one
• he loves his bath and will play for ages in the water
• he loves being outside
• he's not afraid to face up to his brothers and tell them off
• he can climb on all the furniture
• he loves his dummy, and mummy cuddles
• he is very determined and persistant

There isn't a cuter one-year-old out there. :)

Good or Bad

If you come to our place this week you'd better watch out.

You might get caught in the trap:

And if you do, we'll know you're a 'baddie', coz it's a 'baddie' trap. The chairs will fall on you and the 'bomb's' (flower pots and bricks) will go off. The broom will prevent you from escaping, if the flower pot's didn't finish you off.

Dad got caught. ;)

Time flies when you're having fun. And when you're not.

It's only taken 3 years to get to this point.

It's still not finished yet, but the house has taken a huge leap forward towards being Finished. Right now as I type there is an expert sanding and polishing our wooden floorboards, making them fit to live on. It's one part of the building process that we knew we be fools to attempt ourselves. Unless of course it would be trendy to have grooves and dips in the floorboards, then we could have attempted it. In that case we could have gotten the boys on the job.

In approximately 3 days time the floors will be available for light traffic (read - No Boys). It's amazing how exciting it is to reach this stage. When PVT gets home from work each day we rush out to the house to see what's been done that day. I think it's even more exciting when it's something that we haven't had to do ourselves. Cay-Cay seems to approve of the current change to the floorboards:

The big task of moving has begun, with boxes of books starting to be packed up in readiness. The boys saw me loading up boxes and requested a box of their own each to pack their treasures in (in case they get left behind or 'accidently' end up in the Vinnies pile). We headed to the supermarket and picked up said boxes, with the requirement that the boys had to carry their own boxes home. That wasn't a problem for the boys as they quickly found the easiest way was to carry them on their head. Over their heads may be a better description. But the boxes made it home and were filled almost immediately with an assortment of stuff that is important to a 3 year old boy. I haven't informed them yet that they will be in charge of packing ALL their toys into boxes. I think a few more trips to the supermarket will be in order.

Up, up and away

It's happening:

Yep, he's upright.

With 5 other people to keep up with and to encourage him, it's not surprising that CRT is our youngest walker, taking his first steps at 11 months. His brothers were all 13 months. At 11 months he is certainly shaping up to be the most mule headed, stubborn persistant and determined of the four.

Whilst being a tiny bit sad at how fast his babyhood is slipping away, it's always exciting to have them learning new skills, and learning to walk does bring a certain pleasant freedom from things such as having to carry a bag, wallet, keys, drinks, jumpers, nappies AND a baby to the car.

I'm going to take bragging rights here (it's my blog, so I'm allowed) to point out the unusual way in which he's learnt to walk. All our other rascals learnt to stand by pulling themselves up against a chair or other obstacle, then let it go to balance. Once they had the balance down pat they'd attempt a step or two. Not so Caleb. He learnt to stand by going straight upright from a sitting position. When at a recent wedding he got up over and over and over again, determined to stand straight, and finally doing so. Pretty much as soon as he was upright he began to take a step and throw himself forward. He is extremely persistent and very determined. Surely that makes him a potential genius too, right?!!

He's currently taking up to 5 or so steps without falling, so we're taking bets as to whether he'll be totally upright by his first birthday in 2 weeks time. If his brothers have anything to do with it, he will be. :)

Mixed Feelings

Today I am:

• Happy that J & J are both zooming along in their reading
• Delighted that CRT is starting to take steps
• Enjoying watching Jake, Jem and Icac put together some Lego designs to enter into the Cobar Show
• Excited to be able to take the boys to the Cobar Show this week
• Sad that our Guinea Pig died last Thursday (RIP Buzz)
• Concerned about the lack of sympathy from our children when we discovered Buzz had died. They were more interested in examining his ‘cute little teeth’ and ‘cute little legs’ then having a funeral for him
• Annoyed that the cold going through our family has moved to CRT and is still with me
• Enthusiastic about our upcoming school term
• Grateful for good friends I can talk to on the phone
• Ecstatic that my house is clean
• Thrilled that we’ve almost finished painting the kilometres of architraves at our new house
• Thankful for family, friends, good health and life in general.

(photo taken by Jacob)

Family Friday

I don't think I've ever put a family photo on here before, so here's a recent one from our trip away...

That's all for today!