Mystery Reader

Aaron's teacher put in the first newsletter that parents could come in and be a "mystery reader" to the class. Last week I asked if I could today as I wanted to bring in cookies for the class for Aaron's birthday and thought I could do two things at once! :-)

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Aaron had no idea heheee ... love that he was super excited to see me (and Maddison and Samuel).

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After much deliberation I decided to take some Hairy Maclary stories and these two Little Kiwi stories (Little Kiwi and the Dinosaur and Little Kiwi meets a Monster) by Bob Darroch, both are New Zealand authors. Some of the kids had already heard about Hairy Maclary, so I read them the Little Kiwi stories.

The kids were really good listeners. It's nice reading when you know they are all listening and there's no high-jinks going on in the back row!! ;-)

And some of you may have heard me say (many years ago!) that if I had children they wouldn't pick their noses!! Well I regret saying that ... both Aaron & Maddison are pros at it! I asked Maddison to stop today and she told me "But Mummy I love my bogies!" Yugggggg ... I will just ignore it I think! (will stop me feeling sick anyway hehee)

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Thanks for visiting.

Let's Party!

Yesterday it was Aaron's 6th birthday. As usual I have an overload of photos to record the story :-) ... I'll start with Friday when I had two little helpers watching me bake the cake (and lick the beaters hehee).

After Aaron got home from school there was plenty of high jinks going on in their bedroom! Only one more sleep to go!
That evening when the kids were in bed the cake got decorated :-) Aaron's request for yet another racing track cake was an easy option for me hehee

While I was decorating the cake Lyndon very kindly blew up the "fire engine" ... unfortunately the pump I bought especially for the job wasn't very efficient!
But it looked great when he finally finished!
Before I went to bed I checked the kids and couldn't find Maddison. I went out and said to Lyndon, Maddison's not in her bed - where is she?!! He said "did you look under the bed"?! Apparently she "hated her bed and it wasn't nice anymore" so she got under it! I won't even try to understand her thought process on that one! (Yes we did move her back on top of her bed!)
Saturday morning bought lots of excitement with present opening! :-)


He was very spoilt with books, lego and hotwheels galore!
In the afternoon we had his party. We'd invited 12 other kids ... so had it at the playground! I definitely wouldn't have coped with 15 kids tearing around our apartment!

Samuel had a good observation point :-)
We had an "Amazing Race" party. I had done up a checklist of 10 activities for the kids to do and have checked off. It wasn't a "race" as such, but just to get each item ticked off and when they had done that they got a treat. They could do the activities in any order they wanted.

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We had an egg and spoon race

We asked the kids to bring their scooters and they had to zig zag round the cones down the little ramp, round the fountain and back again while wearing a hat :-)

Count the steps up to the BBQ area and complete a Jigsaw puzzle.
Walk along a concrete ledge in the garden :-)
Forward roll.
The other activities were : Climb up the small slide and slide down the big one (I figured they were going to do that anyway so they might as well get a tick for it hehee); hula hoop; catch a ball; throw 2 dice and either get a 6 or two numbers that added to 6; and search for 6 numbered balls in the fire engine ball pit.

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It was very thirsty work :-)

The treat was a "superhero" ice block. Samuel had an Iron man one :-)
Blowing out his candles.
After the "amazing race" we had food and then of course it was a race to scoff down what they wanted and get back out and play again! :-) The road cones didn't stay put for long, it became a game to hit as many as you could apparently!

Lots of goings-on in the slide!

And this morning Aaron set up his hotwheels track he got and showed Samuel how it worked :-) (I have a feeling he might regret doing that hehee)
Tons of left over food! Oh well better to have too much than not enough I suppose ... but I think I could have gotten away with only ordering half the number of pizzas!

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Fun week ahead this week too. Maddison has all week off school, Aaron and Lyndon have holidays Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, so we are looking forward to that.

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I will be back! Thanks for visiting.

The roots are showing!

When we were in Cameron Highlands I found these grass heads ... so Monday last week the kids and I set them going (watching them soak in a bowl of water really helped the kids eat their dinner hehee) ;-)

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There wasn't a lot of variety so Aaron and Maddison both got the same one and I got the last "little" one for Samuel (it's ears make me laugh!).

4 days later they were like this ...
The little one growing a great head of grass ... and showing off his roots!
Tonight they look like this. Maddison's one (in the middle) is growing a mono-brow hehee
Soon I think this one will need pigtails! :-)
Other news ... a birthday was celebrated and I consumed too much chocolate cake! :-) It was delicious though.
Lyndon found these little Buddha's for the kids to give me! They make me smile too. I also got the gorgeous vase in the background.
So another year done and dusted! Doesn't time fly when you are having fun! ;-)

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Thanks for visiting. I am off to see if my roots are showing now hehehee

Yep I'm still here ...

Thought I better update ... photos of the kids again, as I haven't done any scrapbooking for simply ages! Oh well ... one day hopefully my scrapping mojo will return with gusto!

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So Aaron started Grade 1. Here he is on his first day waiting for the teacher to welcome them in :-)

Getting his name tag on.
Setting up his desk with all his new stationery.
I had Maddison and Samuel with me that day as Lyndon was away and I had to be at school early to get a park, so couldn't drop Maddison off at her school before hand. Samuel was really good and just sat and watched in his pram. I was helping Aaron put away his stationery and books and looked around and my heart skipped a beat or two as I couldn't see Maddison ... so I did another scan of the room from a different vantage point and spied her being a darling! (for a change hehee) Sitting quietly in the hand chair reading a book. I was MOST impressed!

Later on her and Aaron sat on the mat and checked out one of the games.
Blue raspberry iceblocks leave a lovely mess! She tells me they are delicious, but doesn't like me scrubbing her face trying to get off all the blue stains!
Samuel is a ball of energy ... he's running, climbing and scampering everywhere, chatting the entire time. Loves sitting at the bookcase pulling out a book at a time and "reading". (This just takes me back 5 years ... it's exactly what Aaron was like!) :-)
Ahhh yes ... good morning gorgeous hehee :-) (time for a haircut I think!)

Tissues are very exciting as well ... if a box is within reach (even climbing reach) then each one is pulled out and "tested" with a nose blow, before being discarded and pulling the next one! (If it wasn't so messy it would be cute!) :-)
He loves climbing ... I can't even leave the pram up now. It needs to be folded and left upside down. I am afraid he will tip it over while standing up there screeching with delight! (Note the dining chairs stacked as well for the same reason. He climbs up onto the table!)
i-Pad time.
So that's it. I will probably be back tomorrow with more pics :-)

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Thanks for visiting.

New School Year about to begin ...

tomorrow for Aaron. This morning Aaron, Samuel & I headed to Aaron's school to see which class he was going to be in, who his class mates are and his new teacher. We managed to met his new teacher and she's just lovely. Her class is the "Lion Class" :-) There's a lot of soft toy lions in that class and books all about lions ... so should be an interesting year for him! :-) I had to grin to myself because last year the only 2 red haired boys at Kindergarten level were in the same class and they are this year too! Lion Cubs together!! heheee

Outside the classroom the noticeboard had a big welcome sign and letters from all last years Grade 1 Lion Class students welcoming the new Lion Cubs to Grade One! I thought that was pretty special.

Inside there was a world map jigsaw puzzle set up on a table and Aaron very quickly got busy with that and didn't want to leave until it was finished! (I suggested to the teacher she undid it all ready for tomorrow because he'd be happy to redo it again heehe) You can see a shelf in the background full of lions.
After he'd completed the puzzle he went looking around at everything on the shelves and pulled out a plastic Lego bin and asked if he could play with the Lego. The box didn't have Lego in it though! It had a bag full of short pieces of plastic pipe and elbows, which the teacher explained made "telephones" to practice phonics. She asked if we'd like to take the bag home and put the telephone's all together. So we've spent a bit of time this afternoon doing that and the kids have had fun "talking" on the phone! I must say you really only need to whisper because if you talk loud or shout you nearly blow out your eardrum!
Samuel loved them and spent ages saying "hi-eeee" and lots of other gibberty gook! :-)
So that's us for today. Hopefully the kids will actually go to sleep when they go to bed tonight so they will be up and going on time in the morning! (Won't be holding my breath about that though!)

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Thanks for visiting.