I'm here. Golly it's been so long I almost forgot my login and password! So what's new?
Introducing Luca! Born 26 Feb at 2.58am. Our wee bundle of joy is now 3 weeks old, man how time flies!
Can't believe how quickly 3 years have gone by!
Got a bit behind with the December album as she's been sick for a couple of days which unfortunately meant we had to postpone her party but she's fine now so we had a lovely visit to the zoo today. We had cupcakes for dessert last night, it was Grandad's birthday too. But she'll get a bigger cake next weekend for her party.
Today we visited Isla's grandparents who took us to Ambury Park Farm. What a fantastic place and its free! Isla enjoyed looking at all the animals especially feeding the pig though I have no photos of that because the batteries died and then the spare batteries died!
Playing in puddles was a hit too.
Golly where have I been?
Blog do you still love me? lol.
Where I have been is watching Daryl complete and launch his boat. This all started in our garage way back many many months ago (about 18 or so) and ever so slowly progressed until finally last Monday it was complete and he put it in the water and it floated! Yay! Such an amazing achievement for him to design and build this himself. I'm so proud of my boy!
We bought a new tent this week so its goodbye to the old one which as you can see is not really big enough for a family of 3 now.
And hello to the new one. Quite hard to see it very well in this pic but it has 3 rooms and a nice sheltered awning off the left hand side.
Looking forward to using it now. What's your favourite camping spot?
Summer holidays 2008 is all about going to the beach, walks around the Mount, enjoying the sunshine, playing with the hose while "helping" to fill the paddling pool, washing the car, painting pictures or painting yourself, having fun in the sandpit, enjoying all the new xmas toys (far too many of them) but particularly the tea set, playdough, the doll's house, kicking the ball around outside, going on picnics, sleeping in the Dora bed, trying your first fluffy, looking for airplanes, enjoying time at Nana and Grandad's, too many chippies and Shrewsbury biscuits, saying so many new words. It's all good. Happy New Year.
Well Isla's birthday has been and gone for another year. We had a really enjoyable day. Isla had a lot of fun opening her pressies and she's now reached the age where she knows how to get the paper off. The tearing the paper off is a lot of fun and even better there's something inside - bonus!!! lol. So here's a few pics from the day.
Playing with her new doll. She's a real girly girl and loves to tuck her dolls into bed and feed them.
The new easel - she really loves drawing and painting. We had to go and buy paint the next day as we didn't have any, duh. I took these photos from behind because i wanted to show her Maisy sticker on her back which says "I am 2".
Looking cool in her new shades. This is the first pair she's had tho not sure how long they'll last as she tends to bend the frames a bit. These are from Pumpkin Patch, i think next time she'll get some real cheap ones, lol. 
Looking gorgeous in her party dress and crown. She actually wore this dress for her 1st birthday but wanted to wear it again and it still fits, yay! I think it looks so lovely on her. I made the crown last year as well - her head is now a bit bigger so it might need to be adjusted soon or I suppose I could make a new one.
This was really funny. She was unwrapping this present and once she got the wrapping paper off she stomped on it. Good thing it wasn't fragile, just clothes. Rofl!
And the cake. Have to say that it turned out great and I'm rather chuffed with it. And it passed the taste test of Isla. She got her finger into the icing straight away and picked off as many pebbles as she could. We lit the candles and she blew them out straight away so we lit them another couple of times so we could get pics of her doing it!
For lack of a more interesting title I am going to call this post "Dec update", because its December and its been so long since I blogged. Lots of fun things have been going on since my last post.
We were in the local Santa Parade with Isla's Playcentre. Was so much fun. All the kids had reindeer antlers to wear and Isla actually wore hers, yay, she was so cute!
Nana and Grandad came to watch swimming so we got some photos which was nice. One of her favourite things is the shower afterwards!
Daryl's boat is getting closer to being finished. He is on a fast-encroaching deadline as he wants to sail in the Nationals over New Year. We'll see! Fingers crossed for him.
Isla has an advent calendar for December this year. Nana made it last year and this year its filled with lots of yummy and fun things. The first day it was up we soon realised it needed to be up higher, a lot higher cos little hands can reach high these days or they can get chairs to stand on, lol. And also having to wait till tomorrow for the next thing is not so easy to understand.
And today we went for a visit to the zoo with Playcentre. Here's my little tiger.
So the other day we did some baking for the first time with Isla. We made shortbread cookies, yum yum. We even had an apron for her and she looked so cute in it! Though its a bit big so might have to make her another one. The only apron i had was my Fiskars one so I had to wear that, rofl! She didn't really want to get her hands too mucky in the dough mixture but was keen to try out the rolling pin and make shapes - just like playdough! Then we did the washing up together and by then the cookies were cooked. And they tasted really good!
Back home again after being away most of the past week in Mt Maunganui with a daytrip to Rotorua too. We had a wonderful relaxing time. Was just really nice to spend all that time with Daryl and Isla and of course the grandparents got to see Isla again which they loved. Here are some pics:
Her first visit to a big swimming pool which went really well - she pretty much just walked straight in and later we took her into the big pool, walked her in right up to her neck. Must start considering swimming lessons now.
We also went to a petting zoo. Her first closeup encounter with animals apart from the zoo. Was really funny because we kept getting hounded by chickens for food i guess. Isla had the death-grip on daddy's hand! Lol.
On Saturday we went and visited some good friends of ours in Rotorua. Went for a lovely walk through the Redwoods Forest and then later drove up to Lake Tarawera. Good times.
Today we went to Playcentre for the first time. Was sooo much fun, so much to do and play with. I have been thinking about some form of Early Childhood Education for Isla but don't really know what yet so its good to go and try some out. We've been to 2 different playgroups as well recently but I did really like the Playcentre best i think. And we would most likely enrol her at kindy or a preschool as well for when she's a bit older. I know there is a lot more parent involvement but I'm probably ok with that - wouldn't really want to leave her at this age anyway. So things to think on.
So here is the artwork she did today:
So the news is out: http://nzscrapbook.blogspot.com/
I've been asked to be on the NZ Scrapbook DT. I'm really excited about this as they were the first scrapbook store I ever went to and I also took my first class there. They're not that far away (about a 10min drive) from where I live and I might even get to teach some classes as well. The other 4 team members are Jo Kneller, Megan Renfree, Ilka Adam and Sarah Groen who are all just fab scrapbookers. Just too cool!!!
And can't have a post without a photo can we? Bit of a crap photo but anyway. So here is Miss I yesterday sitting in her doll's pram. First time I've seen her do this, good to know it can take her weight! Tho for how much longer I wonder!
And where have I been this week?
Last weekend we went for a drive up around Okura and Stillwater just to check it out really. We're quite keen on moving out of the city and thought we'd take a look. We liked Stillwater more than Okura but despite its size there is no school there or even a dairy or service station so its still a bit of a drive just to get your milk. We used to live in Dairy Flat a few years back and quite liked that but not really sure we can afford to buy a lifestyle block when anything decent is upwards of $700k.
On our way back we stopped in at Snowplanet for a coffee and noticed that its changed a little bit since we were last there. They now have a kiddie's slope for playing in the snow and tobagganing for only $15 which I thought wasn't too bad, so maybe in a few months time we might take Isla there and see what she thinks.
Then Monday and Tuesday Isla was sick and still has a real hacking cough and runny nose, poor thing. We'll be glad when the warmer weather comes.
Weds we went to the library and yesterday went and checked out the new mall at Albany. So nice to have a KMart on the Shore now and i'm looking forward to a flash new Farmers store and especially Borders.
Oh and I've been doing a few layouts too. Here's one I started at Donna's house last Friday and finished over the weekend for Scrapbook Studio. Ok so the picture of this layout is a bit washed out or something but you get the idea.
So we went shopping this morning and came back with this. Actually I'd eyed it up a few weeks ago and in the meantime sold a couple of old toys on Trademe that are no longer played with. So we got this barn to keep all her animals in. She loves her animals. Whenever we go into a postshop or bookshop she gets excited by the greeting cards with animals on them, she loves to flick through my National Geographics to see the animal pics and the best thing is the Schleich animal figurine catalogue. Lots of animals to see in there.
Ok so it doesn't actually matter who the shoes belong to, just the fact that she can get her feet into them. So here she is displaying a keen sense of fashion wearing her Dad's sneakers along with her teletubbie suit:
So last week there were no blog posts because my camera died and really you can't have a post without a photo now can you? No, totally against the rules. So now the camera is fixed (it appeared to be suffering from out of battery-itis! Oops) we can start posting again.
Ok so in the past week we went to the zoo - no photos. But Lesley got some very cute shots of Isla being led around by Amanda, so cute.
We went to Trina's house on Wednesday to pick up my Stampin Up stamps. This is what I got.
On Saturday went down to Nic's house for a big gettogether of some online scrapping friends. Was great fun and while there we all made a cute little album and took pics which we printed out on a wee portable printer so we could all stick them in right there and then. The wonders of technology! I finished my album yesterday - here are some pics.
And some inside pages:
And this was lunch today.
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