Slowly getting back to a new normal

We're on the tail end of being in moving mode - it's been about a month, but we've been chaotically busy with more then just moving. More on those happenings in future posts, but for now here are some pot shots of our new normal...

Caleb had the first shower in the new house:

The lounge Lego room:

Making cookies on the kitchen counter:

The walk-in pantry and it's most frequent visitor:

First brekky after moving in:

Getting ready for the first dark sleep in the new house:

Guess what?

We're moving.

:)

Birthdays

The boys chose and decorated a cake for my birthday. PVT assembled the actual cake, but the boys did all the decorating by themselves, including all the icing. PVT is the cake decorator in our house, as evidenced here and here, so it seems they're following in his footsteps! If only I can figure out how to get them really excited about cooking dinner, they can do that each night too!

Update and Sewing

We've been away for a couple of weeks, here's the report and some other tidbits:

• we went on a fantastic Lake Dinner Cruise for my dad's 60th
• we took the boys up the 'rocket' tower in Canberra (Telstra Tower). Isaac was a bit worried it was going to take off.
• we bought a Dyson vaacuum cleaner (I've been coveting one for a while so this is exciting news)
• four out of six of us got sick. It could have been the swine flu?!?!
• we scraped and then painted the ceiling of a bedroom, whilst sick
• the boys spent hours collecting snails
• we were able to meet up with 2 friends who live far far away, seeing both for a very brief period of time (but definately worth it!)
• Isaac has learnt to write his name
• Caleb is learning to run and is becoming book-obsessed
• Jem is probably going to end up in the Guiness Book of Records for building then breaking up then building the same Lego Kit over and over again
• Jacob has begun adding numbers in the down-the-page format, which takes me back to my childhood.
• PVT is building the steps up to the verandah at our new house

The boys made some cards for my dad for his 60th birthday, using basic sewing. They turned out pretty cool:

Jacob's:

Jeremy's:

Isaac's:

Birthday Season has begun

Every family has a 'birthday season' part of the year, and for us it has well and truly begun, starting with Jem turning 5:



The boys get to request the cake they want from their third birthday onwards and for unknown reasons Jeremy wanted the shoe cake. It's possible he chose the cake according to the number of lollies shown on the picture in the book. But PVT did a brilliant job, yet again. This is possibly one of his best cakes yet:



Birthdays are alot of fun when you're five. :)

Here's a picture of the carpet, to prove things are progressing in the house:

The new wrestle mat has arrived.

When the carpet guy came and laid all the underlay, it sure didn't take long for it to become a wrestling mat...

Stay tuned for pictures of The New Carpet.

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.