Stuff With Thing

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Today is a beautiful day.

Today is Wrestlemania.

Not that I am biased at all but I hope Edge ends the Undertakers undefeated streak.

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And I rather hope John Cena wins the WWE championship, not because he is a great wrestler, but ‘cos he is pretty.

Hubby

Annie

Heidi

S&J

My wonderful family.

Smiley Saturday time again. If you want to join in then click on the Smiley Saturday link above and head over to Lightenings to enter your Smiley Saturday link.

I’m smiling because:

Of my lovely presents I got this week (well not Heidi’s present but the other ones).

Heidi told me about her day at the zoo.

Ralph will be going on holidays in two days and I wont have to iron those damn white shirts for ages!

Wrestlemania is on Monday. Woo!

I’ve got a months worth of groceries stashed away in my pantry/freezer and I don’t have to traumatise myself with a visit to ALDI for a whole 4 weeks.

Neither of my girls wear nappies/diapers during the day any longer so I only had to get one set of dry nights disposable nappies/diapers. Annie was dry 4 nights out of 7 this week so soon she may not need nappies/diapers at nighttime either.

We’ve had lots and lots of lovely rain. Not enough to make a huge dent in the water storage situation but our garden looks much happier for getting wet (it only gets wet when it rains I don’t waste water on the plants).

I got presents!

(click on any of the pictures to embiggen them.)

Heidi gifted me with a bed full of diarrhea this morning , not something I really enjoy waking up to first thing in the morning before I having my coffee .

But I got some other much more lovely gifts to show off.

Firstly the lovely Mel at Million Stitches gave me some fabric from her stash.

On the left is a 28 count Silkweaver hand dyed fabric (colour is I think Expressions Sundown)

On the right is a 28 count Jobelan colour - Bay Leaf

I’m itching to get started on them but need to finish my advent calendar first.

In addition to the lovely fabrics I got to spend the morning with Mel and her beautiful children Finn and Niamh at a local playcentre. Our children had fun together whilst we got to chat and catch up, that was the best gift of all.

This morning the post lady delivered another lovely present to me. This one is from BlackCat at the Unaboard.

The lovely BlackCat had asked if I’d like a cross stitch pattern she was finished with. Not only did she send me the pattern - an adorable Noahs Ark ornament, but also some cute gifts for my girls.

It got delayed at Aussie Customs - they had opened the parcel to inspect it and included a flyer for me about what you can /can not post to Australia. Not real helpful as I’m already here.

I just adore the picture frames you can see at the back behind the pattern and the girls jewelery - both frames are magnetic and already up on my fridge door. Now to decide what to stitch to go in them - of course they will be used to frame stitchy things, I can concieve of nothing I’d rather put in the frames.

Annie and Heidi adore the jewelery and the hairclips. I’m saving the animal balloons for a special occasion and the cute fluffy pencils have not left Heidi’s hands since she discovered them. Here is Annie modeling some of the jewelery.

Finally here is a present Annie made for Ralph - a little note on his lunch container (it reads “We love you Daddy from Mummy, Annie and Heidi” - Annie dictated what I wrote and then she drew the picture).

So I’m a bit late with this fortnights menu plan

Yesterday I did a months worth of grocery shopping. It was pouring with rain so of course I decided to try my first attempt at doing a full months shopping, just makes it more interesting right

Throw in tired, overwhelmed and having forgotten the shopping list and you end up with things like 40 x 1litre containers of soy milk. Mmmm Yummy. Well it should last us for the month (and a maybe the month after) and it was on special so all good right?

Not sure how we did with last fortnights budget as I’ve not had a child free moment to do the accounts and I really need child free time for the accounts or the figures end up … interesting.

School holidays will mix things up a bit. Ralph is going to be on holidays soon also. This means less frozen meals needed for his lunches so I can make some evening meals leftovers. I’m worried about how much food we will go through while he is home on holidays. Need to talk to him again about rationing and how just because something is there does not mean you need to eat it all straight away.

Lunches:
Girls - Frozen sandwiches worked really well for when we were busy. For school holidays I will just make the sandwiches fresh each day.
Me - Frozen sandwiches didn’t work so well for me, mostly because I forgot to get mine ready when I got the girls.
Ralph - Got enough meals stocked in the freezer for work this week + yogurt and breakfast bars. Once the boy is on holidays he will have to get used to sandwiches for lunch like the rest of us.

Dinners:
Friday - Chicken Risotto
Saturday - Stir Fry - chicken
Sunday - Leftovers
Monday (Wrestlemania) - Pizza and
Tuesday (dinner with FIL) - Curry
Wednesday - Fried Rice
Thursday - Left Overs
Friday (Ralphs night to cook) - Mince Chow Mein
Saturday - Bangers and Mash
Sunday - Pancakes
Monday - Pizza
Tuesday (dinner with FIL) - Apricot Chicken
Wednesday (committee meeting) - Pasta Bake

Will chuck veggies into everything

Snacks - Fruit and veggie sticks

Drinks - Get cube of Pepsi Max for Ralph to take to work.
Cordial/Water/Tea/Coffee for girls and myself.

I think I know what the problem is. Why we do not have World Peace.

White Business Shirts.

Those suckers are evil and they create evil in the wearer.

Have you ever tried to keep a White Business Shirt clean? Sure it is easy if you have a job that does not involve anything messy like say….. breathing.

You get your pristine White Business Shirt, you spend hours of your life ironing the sucker so it is all starchy and crisp.

There is no sex because you are too exhausted after hours of ironing the White Business Shirt to want to indulge in any recreational fornication. (apologies to my parental units if they are reading this). And we all know that sex makes people more pleasant but no everyone is missing out because they spent hours ironing the White Business Shirt so they are all cranky.

Then you put your pristine starchy crisp White Business Shirt on that has deprived you of sex and you take your first breath whilst wearing it.

Instantly airborne particles are attracted to you and adhere to the no longer pristine but still starchy crisp White Business Shirt.

WHAM

There it is shades of grey are now colouring your no longer pristine but still starchy crisp White (slightly grey) Business Shirt.

So you’ve donned your no longer pristine but still starchy crisp White (slightly grey) Business Shirt being careful to put it on just before walking out the door so nothing else will cause it to loose the pristine white. Off you go to the car, train, bike whatever means of transportation gets you to the place that requires you wear a White Business Shirt.

In doing so you acquire wrinkles, thus your shirt is no longer starchy and crisp.

Really do I have to lay it out any further, all we need to achieve world peace is to rid ourselves of the no longer pristine, not even starchy or crisp, sex depriving, White (slightly grey) Business Shirt.

Here are my very belated Easter pictures.

Easter Sunday we got up at 5.30am and dressed the girls ready for Church. Both girls were fascinated by the concept of being awake at sleepy time, even better was the full moon which kept Heidi’s attention the whole way to the Church.

No pictures from the Church service. One year I will have to rope in a friend with a better camera than mine to take pictures of the service in the graveyard and the sunrise. The service is timed so that we will hopefully be saying “He has risen, He has risen indeed” as the sun comes over the horizon.

Back home after a quick stop off to say hello to S (J was still asleep). Then the Easter Egg Hunt.

It was still very early when we started hunting.

Little wooden eggs were hidden along side packets of lollies. I’m really glad we got the Natural Confectionery Company lollies - this year we had none of the tantrums and meltdowns that usually plague us post the Easter lollyfest.

Sharing the bounty:

After the hunt and lolly eating were over the girls decided to play doggy, so Heidi attached a lead to Annie’s shirt and they took turns playing doggy for almost an hour.

Annie is really getting into ‘arts and crafts’ and I got some stuff at K-Mart heavily reduced so she is well stocked for the school holidays. A couple of her pieces of artwork.
Daddy and Mummy:

Snake with Noah:

Did you see all those plastic tubs behind the girls in that second doggy picture? Those were full of toys but they are no longer because

Drum roll please

….

I have finished painting the toy box I got on ebay for $1.50

and here is the girls room with the bookshelf, dolls house and toy box all in residence.

By accident I painted all the vertical surfaces pink and horizontal purple - it wasn’t planned that way.

I’m all over the place right now. Got heaps of Easter pics to share but not sure when I will get the time.

Starting to look at schools for Annie. She will be starting school next year so we have to get going on enrollments and stuff.

We really really would like Heidi to eventually attend the same school as Annie. To that end I’ve spent the last month trying to arrange one on one school tours/interviews at the top 3 local schools recommended to us. No dice. I need one on one tours so I can discuss Heidi’s needs without feeling like I’m taking over a group tour.

But you know something - I’ve got no idea what to ask about schools. What do I need to know?
Class size - what is good and what is bad?
Computers, I assume they learn from the first year.
How their settling in program works.
How does the Victorian School system work?
Do they do Prep? What is Prep?

Time for me to do some research into this aspect of the whole school thing and any advice you want to send my way - feel free, I need all the help I can get because we are very close to running out of coffee.

Check out this fabulous tip of Meari’s for reusing scented candles.

Such a brilliant idea.

I love the blogosphere and all the wonderful things you can learn.