Month: November 2011

Advent calendar

Mark and I loathe all things Christmas (except seeing our families!), so its a real struggle to share Inigos new found joy in Santa, and Christmas trees, ornaments, etc. Weve told him that it is a celebration of the birth of Jesus, and a bit about what he means to a lot of people. Ive also told him that Santa cant come to our house because we dont have a chimney, but he will leave something for Inigo at Nannas.

But I do love his excitement, so I have decided to do a countdown to Christmas, cheapskate handmade style. Hes going to love it!

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Four

Inigo, today, you are four. Yesterday you were only three, and now you are FOUR. Four is big and bold and messy and monstrous, and I can’t believe how much I love you, and the gentle, boisterous, tender and wild thing that you are. I love that you challenge me, and that you care for me, you surprise me and amaze me.

I can’t wait to see what the next year brings. And even though I am terrified about pre-school, I know you are ready, I know you will love it, and I know that a whole new world is about to open up to you, and I am going to have to learn to share you more and more with the world.

Love,

Mama

Happy 4th Monster Birthday Party!

My little monster turns 4 tomorrow, and we had a little party for him on the weekend. You remember, the beautiful, sunny, hot weekend? The one that started with a downpour?

Yup. Guess which part of the weekend we picked for the party?

The downpour.

This is what the park looked like when we arrived at 9am. Those shiny bits of grass were actually little lakes forming, and you had to walk through inches of water to get to the play equipment.

There was no wet weather alternative.

So I decided to stay positive, and we put up tents. Mum and dad had a marquee, and Bonnie and Zenia had two, so we were set up in no time, and the adults and babies stayed (mostly) dry while the kids had the time of their lives!

Most of the pics are already up on Facebook, but I’ll stick a few here of non-stalkbookers 🙂

And here is the commemorative t-shirts I made for the kids (and one very special adult) instead of lolly bags. We also had monster branded water bottles instead of soft drinks, and all of the food was (reasonably) healthy to make up for the toxic birthday cake.

Pics from the last few weeks

Banana smiles at Pearl Beach

Happy to see his birthday trampoline

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Paining at playgroup

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Trying on Bonnies goblin mask

Meerkats!

Hot and happy

Feeding the giraffes – a bit scared

Of this!

A wallaby taking a dip

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Koala hanging about

Just having fun!

There were emus

And a bunny

A very friendly echidna

A pretty parrot

Another meerkat on watch

Happy to be allowed an icy pole

The lemurs and the lemur keeper

On safari

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Ducks and ducklings

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A dip to cool down

Ricotta hotcakes for breakfast

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We dipped our toes into the Macquarie River

We saw the hippo, and we saw him take a long underwater stroll

Inigo and Ursula got glittered in a mall – just because I spoke bad Italian, and the make up woman was Italian, and very sweet

And my adorable husband is starting to look like Huggy Bear, the pimp from Starsky and Hutch.

Pearl Beach weekend

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Mark went snorkelling to see what he could see – and he found this amazing sting ray, just off the beach! He got some video too, but it hasn’t been uploaded yet.

And our favourite moment of the weekend was Alex and Inigo splashing together in the surf and playing surf rescue 🙂