1st Week of December 2012

I seemed to have survived on very little sleep ... but it's been fun :-)  Here's a quick recap (with quite a few photos!).

Nana and Grandad arrived and the kids were super excited to see them when they got home from school last Friday.

2nd Dec - Jingle the Elf was found riding an elephant. 

We attended the funeral of an elderly Chinese lady.  Nana and Grandad offered to mind the kids which was awesome as it was a long afternoon with quite a drive between the house the cemetery. The cemetery was huge ... we've never seen such a large burial ground.  Was very interesting to see.  I took a few photos on our way out.

 There were gold buddha's lining the roads.

Angels lined the roads on the Christian side of the cemetery.

 Dec 3rd - Jingle was up high on the bookshelf reading a book.

Chocolate coins in the advent calendar :-)

 Yum yum scoff scoff!!

4th Dec - Jingle was back in the tree with a present!

He left them a letter explaining he'd made a quick trip back to Santa's workshop during the night and bought them back a tree ornament each.

 Cute little hand painted wooden snowmen.

I did a LOT of baking (cookies and cupcakes) for my table at the school fleamarket.  I also sold a lot of the kids baby toys which I'd cleaned up.  Was nice to see the majority of them go to new homes :-)  I sold all the cookies and half the cupcakes.

I took the rest of the cupcakes to Samuel's school the next morning for his "farewell" snack heheee

Aaron came down after he finished school to help me "sell" things.  But he seemed more interested in spending my money buying new toys!!  hahaa  He is now the very proud owner of a set of Pokemon characters (for RM10), 3 bey blades (for RM5) and a book (1RM).  I printed out a label for an old tin when we got home so he could keep his Pokemon figures safe!  :-)

I told him to look for something for Maddison that was RM10 or less.  He was away for about 5 minutes and came back and said he couldn't find anything!  (such a bloke!)  I asked him to go and look at the table he'd bought his Pokemon things from because I could see a Little Pony there that she would like.  He came back and said it was RM5 (said with very BIG eyes).  He got the big pony Maddison is holding plus 2 tiny ones.  She was thrilled and has lined up all her ponies in her room and the big one has a special bed she tucks it into each night!!  :-)

Dec 5th - Jingle was caught with his hand in the candy jar!

Dec 6th - he rested and read a Christmas story.  I do believe he may have had a tummy ache from eating so much candy!!!

I spent the morning in Aaron's class showing them how to make Christmas ornaments for the tree using 2 Sizzix dies.  (The Mums that were helping me helped me make up a pile of pine cones using Tim Holtz' pine cone die as they were a bit fiddly and involved hot glue).

Aaron's letter to Santa was on the wall.  :-)

Santa came and visited all the Grade 2 kids in the library and read them "The Polar Express".

When they went back to their class they discovered Santa had left them a present!!  Aaron got a Roald Dahl Treasury book.

That afternoon I baked the 7 layers needed for a rainbow cake and in the evening I iced it.  It was 8 inches without the final layer of icing!!  Only just fitted in the fridge!!

Dec 7th ... Jingle was caught licking the icing on the cake!

Kids thought that was so funny. :-)

The sky this morning at 7am.  The clouds had a lovely pink hue to them.

Really really busy day today.  Santa came to visit Maddison's class at 11am, so I popped down to take photos of the kids with Santa :-)

They all got a book present as well!  Maddison's was "The Christmas Tree Fairy".

In the afternoon we had Christmas craft activity in her class.  I spent the majority of the time taking photos :-)  Maddison's tree ornament had more than her fair share of glue I think!!

It was very glittery and had pompoms down the edges.

Another Mum and I did the food for the party, as it was the teachers birthday as well (hence the rainbow cake).  We did Christmas themed fruit and veg platters - a lot of the fruit was cut with Christmas shaped cookie cutters.

The veges were placed on the tray in the shape of a tree (idea from pinterest!)  :-)  I used a slice of star fruit for the star.  and I couldn't find cauliflower at the supermarket for snow at the base of the tree, so we went with a red capsicum tree skirt!  :-)

The cake in it's finished state.

And in it's cut colourful glory :-)  The teacher was so surprised to see it when it was cut, I don't think she had any idea it was a rainbow cake :-)

So that's what we have been up to ... one more week of school left for Aaron and Maddison.  Samuel finished today.  Lyndon gets back tonight from Australia.  Aaron has his last soccer practice for the year in the morning.  And I want (and need) to catch up on some sleep over the weekend!

Thanks for visiting.  Be back in a week hahaa ;-)

Why yes ... I do have a blog to update don't I!!!

Goodness ... it's been a while!  Sorry about that - life has been crazy busy and updating my blog wasn't at the top of the list!

So what's been happening?  Probably the thing that kept me most busy was doing a digital photo album. No I am not going to turn digital (didn't really enjoy the process at all actually).  When we were in NZ I bought a 12x12 hard cover 50 page album from GrabOne thinking it would be a great idea to do for our holiday (especially in light of the fact I still haven't finished scrapping our 2009 NZ holiday haha).  I had a deadline to complete it before my voucher expired (5th September) and I can tell you there were a LOT of late nights getting very frustrated trying to get it completed on time.  Lets just say that the program and I had different views on how things should be placed on the page! hahaa  Anyway it's done and it's arrived at my Mums today and she said it looked good (although she hasn't had a close look for any spelling errors ... I am sure there will be some as I found it hard to proof read on the screen).

What else has been going on ...

This big fella turned 7 at the end of August!  He opened most of his presents the day before because Lyndon was flying out early the next morning.  

We gave him a little bookcase to keep by his bed for books and his special things.  He was pretty excited about it all :-)

He had fun setting it up and gathering up his chapter books and special things for the shelves.

And when the big fella's at school the little fella gets up to inspect what exactly is on the top shelf!!!  Lego mini figures aren't safe up there at all!  haha

His birthday was on a Monday and I made muffins to take at snack time at school and he handed out his party invites.

Cinnamon buns and apple muffins.  Several of the girls were really cute and asked me for the recipes.

Samuel is enjoying Montessori ... although as soon as we get into his class this is a very familiar sight!!

So is this when I go to leave haha

But he's getting better at saying goodbye!  He loves those plastic animals.  The basket of animals at school has dinosaurs in it which he doesn't have at home ... so there's lots of roaring going on with dino fights!!

I have been down at school a lot the last few weeks.  I volunteered to be Class Mum for Maddison's class.  Should be fun!  ;-)  Good job lots of the mums have volunteered to help with things throughout the year.  Each week her class has a snack on Friday afternoon based on the letter of the week they have been studying.  Samuel and I went the first week and it was letter C.  Samuel decided the white board needed a bit more decoration while we were there!!

Oh yes ... much better heheee

C was pretty easy ... lots of edible things start with C.

Special hat for Malaysia Day.

Last Sunday we went to Tony Roma's for lunch (as we do!) and Harvey Norman had a stand in the centre of the mall ... Samuel rather liked the 3D glasses hehee

Yesterday we had Aaron's birthday party straight after school.  He's so predicable with his cakes (3rd year in a row he's asked for a racing track cake)!!  (You can see his 6th birthday cake here and his 5th birthday cake here.  Side note if you check out those linked posts ... Maddison stayed in her bed this year hehehee.)

The cake had 2 Ferrari's and a yellow car which had a bonnet that lifted up which I hadn't seen on a hot wheels car before - so cool and just right for the cake :-)

Aaron asked for a hot wheels party this year (his love for hot wheels hasn't diminished over the last few years!)  We hired the multi purpose hall at our condo for the party and it was really great.  Nice big space with plenty of room for the kids to run about.  I didn't do any decorating - but I did blow up about 20 balloons and left them in a corner.  That was a good idea heheee ... they spent a bit of time running around chasing each other, kicking the balloons, trying to get them to pop etc.

Aaron has lots of hot wheels but I knew it wouldn't be enough for 20 kids to play with and share nicely!  So I asked a friend if we could borrow his for the party.  We were very spoilt and amongst all the track we loaned got this awesome Dinosaur one.  It was very popular!  :-)

I had a barbie corner set up as well as there were a few little girls (siblings) there and also a Thomas the tank engine track set up.  The barbies didn't really get played with though but the Thomas track did and the rug I had in the barbie corner was used to skid little ones around on the floor!

Thirsty work being towed about on a rug!!

We played "pin the number plate on the Ferrari" :-)

I had set up some track before the kids arrived and left a lot of it lined up for them to make.  The funny thing was that the stuff I had set up was taken apart and used in their other track creations after about half an hour!  :-)

I had some things left over from putting goodie bags together and Lyndon told me in no uncertain terms that he didn't want ANY lollypops left in the house heheee  So I decided to do a "prize" tin.  All the left over items from the goodie bags went in the tin and anyone that participated in a game got to choose something from the tin (what made me laugh was that all the toys went first and there were still lolly pops left at the end anyway hehee ... I might have to sneak some into Lyndon's brief case so he can have them at work lol)

Samuel loved playing with the little soft soccer balls.  Love this photo even though it's really blurry - it's a perfect picture of what he's like!  :-)  So much excitement and energy in such a little person!

Aaron has lost two teeth this month already.  He lost one at snack time at school on Friday (you can see all the gaps in his mouth in this pic)  :-)

So "Tootie" the tooth fairy has been visiting a bit!  Aaron likes the tooth fairy here in Malaysia better than the one in New Zealand because the Malaysian tooth fairy writes him letters!  heheee

Today Aaron started playing soccer on the school field.  Lyndon and he headed off this morning - Aaron rode his scooter.  He got his tee-shirts and had a great time.  There's quite a few boys in his class this year playing so he was really happy.

I got a picture of him when he got home holding his new soccer ball he got for his birthday.  :-)

So that's us ... I'll try not to leave it so long till the next update!  I might even have something crafty to share in the next few days ... we'll see!

Thanks for visiting.