Photo a Day for April

Photos I've taken over the month of April for my Project Life album.  I mainly followed the photo prompts from FMS again.  I've missed a few days and some days I'm not sharing the photo, but as usual there's plenty of photos!  :-)

Day 1 - Play.  Spring break and I took Aaron and Maddison to Block Space (you can see more details here).

Day 2 - Blue.  Blue togs, blue dolphin, blue eel, blue tiles :-)

Day 3 - Something beginning with A ... Aaron the Artist (at Kidzania).

Day 4 - This happened today ... we went with some new friends back to Block Space :-)

Day 5 - Something good ... water to play in :-)

Day 6 - Air.  Glad of the ceiling fans circulating the air.

Day 7 - Dreamy ... didn't really have the right photo for this, but Aaron and Maddison were playing and Maddison was Aaron's "dog" hahaa She's in her kennel! It's a dream of their's to have a dog (sadly that dream will have to wait as we can't have one in a condo).

Day 8 - On my plate ... dinner tonight, rice, chicken & salad.

Maddison also (finally) earned all her puzzle pieces on her reward chart :-)  Much excitement.

Day 10 - A Place.  Local garage where Lyndon's car is being serviced.

Day 11 - Detail.  Love the detail on these hanging tea lights holders.

Day 12 - In the Middle.  Frozen Yoghurt :-)  Lyndon and I had dinner out without the kids - was very relaxing!

Day 13 - View from your bed.

And it was the big boys birthday :-)

Day 14 - Water.  Filling water bottles ready for the start of the school week.

Day 15 - Alone ... I can't seem to leave these alone!!! Lyndon bought a bag of them (Delicious choc covered almonds) and I think I have eaten more than my fair share!!

The 15th was also our 18th wedding anniversary.  Ahhh ... doesn't time bring change!!  ;-)

Day 16 - My favourite colour.  Red of course!  :-)

Day 17 - Busy - Traffic here is always busy.  Billboard made me laugh though!

Day 18 - Hello.  Why hello again Thai food :-)

Day 20 - On My Mind.  Hoping that the pages of my mini album hurry up and dry so I can get it finished during class!

Day 21 - Blurry.  Rain makes things blurry ... glad for window wipers.

Day 23 - Time. I spent some time with Samuel building a Thomas track.

Day 25 - Life is ... BUSY with little kids hehee  (This particular day I'd made chocolate cupcakes.  They were cooling on the bench and after a while I realised I hadn't heard Samuel for a while ... I followed the trail of cupcakes and found him on the deck scoffing two of them!)

Day 26 - Childhood. Making good childhood memories in the pool with friends.

26th we had Mari Makan (International Food Festival) at the kids school.  Parents only :-)  It was fantastic ... there was SO much food.  The New Zealanders put together and provided roast lamb - it was delicious :-)

There were about 13-15 NZ couples I think and we all had matching tee-shirts.

Day 27 - Earth - Earth week at the kids school. Loved the art displays hanging in the hall ways.

Day 28 - My Sunday.  After dinner was spent frantically trying to take pics of Maddison for her earth week homework project! (Nothing like leaving things to the last minute!)

Day 29 - I wore this today.  One of my new RM40 skirts :-)

I also wore a bit of this as well!  The room wore a whole lot more!!  Maddison and Samuel got into a nearly new LARGE bottle of talcum powder and spread it around the boys room.  What a jolly mess.  Terrible stuff to clean up.

When Aaron had his shower I just dumped all the blocks and plastic toys in the shower and he washed them for me ... then I tipped them out on the deck to dry :-)

The day ended with a beautiful sunset though.

Day 30 - Glasses.  My current glasses in the front with the top pair dating back to 1995!  The 2 or 3 previous pairs before that must be in storage in NZ ... I must have thought they were too large to come with us hahaha

So that's this month nearly over!  6 weeks left of school for the kids before summer break!  Unbelievable really how fast this year is going!

Thanks for visiting.

17 Years!

Time sure does fly! 17 years ago it was just the two of us ...

Today we have grown and so has our family hehee ;-)

I will say though that I am not as big as I was 2 years ago! If you really want to have a "belly" laugh then check out this blog post. (I have lost 20kgs since then!)

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Cutting the cake 17 years ago ...

This morning I took the rainbow cake I made to share with our friends and they very kindly took some pics of us. Here we are cutting the cake together hehee

Inside of the cake - wasn't that happy with the blue colour actually. I will buy one of the blue gel colourings I think and hopefully it won't be so dirty looking.
All gone ... last bit was taken as a takeaway for someone who wasn't able to make it.
Bernadine left a comment on yesterday's post asking how I found the cake mix. It was really easy to mix, but I am still not convinced about using oil instead of butter. I think the cake had a different flavour than if I had made one using butter, but Lyndon reckoned it was the frosting. I will keep my eyes open for a plain white cake mix that uses butter I think and then do a comparison. Nothing like an excuse to taste some more frosting!! hehee

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We went out for lunch to a Chinese restaurant after our snack and Maddison was quite taken with this pig! :-)
Onward for the next 17 years ;-)

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Rainbow Cake

I have joined the hundreds, (or is it thousands or millions?) of others that have made a rainbow cake! :-) It's sort of a practice run actually because I would like to make one for Maddison's 5th birthday in July too. ;-)

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A lot of people seemed to use cake mixes for this, which I found interesting, so I thought I'd try that too (and the fact I had helpers for a little bit!). This was the only vanilla cake mix at the supermarket closest to us and it wasn't big enough to do the six layers - only managed 5 using 8" cake pans.

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And I did something else I haven't done before and bought Betty Crocker's vanilla frosting! (Oh my, it's got to be bad for you as it tastes so good!!) So 2 firsts for me using cake mix for cakes and bought icing!

I skipped the yellow colour since I didn't have enough mixture for 6 layers (and yes I know the rainbow has 7 colours but indigo and violet are both shades of purple right?!)

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So here they are cooked ... the recipe used oil instead of butter which was something else I don't think I have done (hope it tastes okay!!).
Layered together with frosting :-)
Then completely covered in frosting :-) And yes I licked the spatula myself heehe
Tomorrow is our 17th wedding anniversary, so we are taking the cake to share with friends in the morning. I am looking forward to seeing their faces when it's cut! I will post some pics of that tomorrow. :-)

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15 April

Today is our 16th Wedding Anniversary. On this day last year I looked like this!

35 weeks preggers! I am pleased to report that I have lost 18 of those 20kgs that I put on during that pregnancy! (I had actually lost the 20, but I am blaming myself for eating far too many choc Easter eggs in NZ the last few weeks!!)

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I didn't get a chance to get photos of Lyndon and I today - it just hasn't worked out, but hopefully tomorrow Aaron will be able to take some of us :-)

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16 years aye! Time really does go fast. I am sure it's speeding up as we get older.

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Today this little guy did some crawling in the foyer.

And some walking with his trolley :-)
He's so funny wearing those wee crocs (they used to be Maddison's). He will walk for a bit then sit down and try hard to pull them off :-)

When Aaron got home from school the first thing he asked for was the "little computer" (i-Pad) so he could play "Angry Birds"! I would like to link you up to a video so you could hear just how ANNOYING the noise on this game is, but after looking at several links on You Tube I couldn't find any that were as bad as the actual game!!

Anyway they had a few goes each before I had to confiscate the i-Pad because they were fighting over who's turn it was!

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The kids had their dinner at 5pm and were pretty much finished before Lyndon got home from work. I had cooked a roast meal for us and it was actually very nice to sit at the table and have adult conversation without having to deal with the kids every few minutes! :-) We should do that more often! heheee ;-) I even splashed out and got a bottle of sparkling grape juice from France! Was quite nice too! :-)

(That is broccoli hiding under all that cheese hehee)

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I forgot to record this the other day too, so must do it now before I forget! We were having breakfast and Aaron is busy looking at Lyndon, then he says ...

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Aaron - Daddy your hair is white! Why is your hair white?

Lyndon - That's what happens when you get old, get married and have lots of kids Aaron!

Aaron - Oh

Lyndon - Mummy's hair isn't white.

Aaron - Yeah, but yours is!

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heheheee Love it. The expression in Aaron's voice with the "Oh" was so funny. I did think it rather good timing because it was the day before Lyndon's birthday :-) :-)

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Now I am going to see if I can shuffle some papers on my scrap desk ... I have been having withdrawal symptoms! Haven't done any scrapping for over a month!

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