Wow the holidays are over so fasssstttt

Hi,
I can not believe the holidays have finished seems so surreal that tomorrow the old school routine kicks back into action and it is all hands on deck to get out the door by that set time!! The kids have mixed feelings about it, Keelan is not looking forward to it, whether it is an age thing or the thought of his teachers he may have I dont know. Trinity seems non perplexed by it all really not having a comment or show of emotion 1 way or the other and Rainee well she has to wait till noon for her first stint of kindy tomorrow and she is breaking her neck full steam ahead she was ready a few weeks ago. I just hope they have great teachers and are with their friends.

Today we baked, banana cake and banana muffins and cherry and almond slice. Mum is staying with us ATM so she was my kitchen hand as well as the kids so it all was all good!! D.H. is so happy his favourite goodies have been made for his lunch box and the kids are excited to have some fresh home baked goodies for their lunches as well. Keelan and I went to see Happy feet this arvo while Nana was around to look after the others, the girls saw it with her last week and as I have had Zay I have not had the chance to take Keelan to the movies so today was it. It was enjoyable but boy we had a big popcorn to share, I swear it is like a never ending pack of tim tams, we just couldnt find the bottom and I could hardly get out the cinema seat I ate that much, mind you I had to keep eating it as a nana nap was threatening once I got into relax mode!! lol.

The weather has been kinder to us today and the rest of the day has been spent getting the last minute bits and pieces ready for tomorrow. So I hope we all get the kids off to school safe and sound tomorrow and good luck getting back into the routine, cant believe Feb is knocking on the door already.
Take care
Trace.

When hot create!!

Hi
Today has been another hot day and after a hot night as well, we did not venture outside too much so I did what I had to and then after lunch I started to create woo hoo. The l.o.'s above are done with Fancy pants products and paper. I am in love with this stuff, it is so nice to have enough of 1 brand of product to produce a l.o. with it all, makes life so easy, I did these similar as I want to put them up on my wall. The top photo of Trin is more true to colour than the second. I just love how colourful and matching these products are. Can you guess I am super impressed with fancy pants stuff, will be buying much much more of their products in the future.
1 more sleep till girls come home woo hoo, cant wait, life will be back in the house, I have missed them so much they certainly brighten up my days that is for sure, Trini is so home sick she cant wait to be home. So what does a Mother do who is fretting for her Daughters??? Scraps pics of them just to rub salt into the wounds lol. but it did give me lots of time to reflect on how much I love the qualities they have and how much they mean to me!! That can't be a bad thing I guess!! Other than that Tim has done major bonding with Zay today fixing up the girls furniture and Zay was the tradesman, what a laugh DADDY says "go get me the hammer Zay please from the shed" those short stubby legs burnt holes in the tiles getting out to the shed to please Daddy, back in he comes so proud with hammer in hand. Then back out the door he goes taking it all back out for Dad, gee how does a Mum get the same response for some help with housework, we get bursts of help I suppose but the novelty of helping Mum sure does wear off in a second. Although as I say that I must remember Darling Zay is only too happy to give the Vac a whip around the house for me yet the girls are scared of the vac, hmmm maybe they are smarter then I think.

So Keelan is ready for school next week with almost everything marked and books covered. Just the marking of the clothes to do and Trins stuff has to be marked. I have to say that I am starting to look forward to the "routine" back in action and to see what my days will be like this year with 2 home most of the time rather that 3. I just hope my Babies love it at preschool and Kindy and that Keelan gets to be in the same class as his best buds so we all can settle in for a good year!! Better go and organise something for tea.
Have a great week getting the kiddies ready for school and hope all goes well.
Take care
Trace.

Hot hot hot

Hi

Wow havent we just had 2 day of scorchers!!! We had an amazingly quiet Australia Day, must be getting too old, could think of nothing worse than being outside the house yesterday once it heated up, too hot. Thank goodness for air con, we had a movie afternoon, we have watched a couple of movies lately branded Family viewing and we have found them the best, funny bit for Tim and I at our level and yet entertaining and still funny for the kids all ages and really good story lines. I will look out for more of them next time. Little manhattan was 1 and the other was Dreamer, great movies.

Had a down day Friday missing my girls but have been on top of it since then, so glad I have both sex Children as together they just bring a lovely balance, I have been home with the boys for a week and my little chatterboxes and funny little spirited girls have been greatly missed, I have even had the boys missing them big time. So I am not the only sookie around here.

Yesterday the boys gave me a hard time about my sleeping in which I dont think 7.30-8am is too bad so I bet them this morn I could be up and out the house for a swim at the beach by 8am and I was, no breaky but that was fine and I spent the most time in the water, it was quite rough but it was refreshing then home for a shower and start the day getting ready for Tim's folks to visit. Not a bad day all round must go now and eat our BBQ Tim had cooked, will get some more pics up later.

Take care
Trace.

Cleaning up

Hi
Hope you are all enjoying the last days of holidays, not long now for the routine to be back in full swing. Today Keelan and I did some cleaning out of toys and rubbish, cant believe that amongst all my Girls toys and little bags stuffed with goodies they had 2 big bags of rubbish!! I wont even go there and describe some of it but I am so pleased to be sorted once again, it is just amazing what gets thrown into toy boxes and old handbags not to mention some of the clothing items that get caught up in it all, they have some socks back clean now. Truly sounds like my house was a pig pen but it wasnt on the outside, just some of the things hidden in boxes, mainly old bits of paper with scribble on it. So they have a lovely clean bedroom and toy room now. Tomorrow after getting the book list sorted at school I will be into their clothes!!

So I have managed to do a bit of creating, a friend asked me to do a swap ATC with her about friends so I have created the above. The other 2 l.o.s are from the VIP magical mystery tour I went on in Albany gosh well over a year and half ago but it was great so I am finally scrapping them, not completely happy with the l.o. but I dont do too much scenery scrapping but I have more to do, so that is my project to do ATM.

I have ordered your Stampin up stuff today Kim and Mum so that should be back next week. I will create a couple of cards for us to do when you come down next Kim. Thankyou Kim and Elaine for leaving me comments, sounds silly but I got teary when I had some comments this week, it means so much to hear from you. I keep trying to get Tim to take a break to Albany but he is onto my intensions Elaine so he gets evassive on me now when I bring up the subject but I live in hope!!!

Missing my girls, they are having so much fun with Nana, she wears them out going here and there but they love it. I will have to do something fun with the boys before they come home poor Keelan has not been anywhere with me over the holidays this year we didnt even do swimming lessons so it has been a real quiet holiday.

Well I am off to do a bit more creating before Men in trees comes on, love that show.
Take care
Trace.
P.S. Sorry the photos above are not the best, my battery was flashing low so I had to get them done quick.

Great weekend

Hi, we have had the best weekend, exhausting but the best I have had in ages. Friday the kidlets and I set off early and shopped for groceries, they behaved so so well I was very proud and so happy with them, the secret is definitely get it over and done with first up in the a.m. then we came home unpacked that and I did some cleaning up and then put Zay down for a rest and then had lunch and a rest with the girls myself, we were watching a DVD in between me dozing off on the score board and thinking I really should get the house spick n span before Sat morning when my Mum and Dad and Bro and SIL and kidlets were arriving but procrastinated about it when I had a lurking feeling I could get an early visit when the girls spang off their chairs and said Nana and Grandad are here, oh boy, I had been sprung, not that they were worried but I just love a clean house when people visit anyway I managed to get some sort of respectible in between catching up with them.

Saturday was Go karts and Brad and Kim and girls arrived at morning tea time and then the Men went out to the track and we organised a picnic lunch and Mum and Kim and I caught up on news and drooled over the stampin up catalogue and I did demos for them, all fun. So about 4pm we went out to the track and watched the racing, Keelan is doing great in his new class and Tim and Brad were on fire after having a big break from racing, Tim had the best day, getting a couple of 1st and Brad was out front most the other times. The kids loved it although Zay is obsessed with his Dad and Grandad and spent most of the time trying to get to them, we ended up having tea and staying in the pits so he would stop wondering off. My God daughter and Niece Dakota is just amazing, the best baby girl, I was slack on the camera, just absorbed the atmosphere but in a few weeks I will have to get snap happy when they come down again. We left the track late and came home and bathed babes and put them to bed then had a shower ourselves and cuppa and then Kim and I did some more stampin up dreaming. We got to bed a 1.15am. Today has been relaxing, the kids have been so great playing, my girls are real little Mummies doting over their cousins, they love them so much giving Dakota a bottle and entertaining her and Mikayla. Zay has just loved having someone his size around it is rare for him to have little folk his size and he gets on better with Mikayla all the time.

The girls have gone home with Mum and Dad for a week, Keelan has returned home and is going for a sleepover with a friend tomorrow and to the beach and I have some serious sorting out and cleaning up to do while the girls are away some toys are going bush, too much clutter again, but after christmas with new arrivals some old toys are going to have to go.

Thankyou Mum, Dad, Brad, Kim and Girls for a great weekend, we all pitched in and it made it so great and enjoyable and thanks Kim for all the giggles and laughs, I can always count on you for some laughter!!! Heres to the Pages race team getting a great year in and us having a great time with it. Off to bed now for some much needed sleep. Have a great week, not much left of school holidays, enjoy it while it lasts.
Take Care
Trace.

Back to normality.

Hi, things here today have gone back to reality with Tim starting his new job. hmm it has been enjoyable having him home for a break but now it is all back to normal again with me home with the kidlets and fighting a loosing battle to keep the home front clean!! I realise how much he picks stuff up off the floor and fossics around tidying up when he is home and possibly more to the point how much when the kidlets follow him around and stay outside they dont destroy the house inside. Never mind all good things come to an end.

The kidlets and I cooked cakes today and now I cant keep them out of them, we made cupcakes with blue icing and chocolate cake mega size, ( small baking dish) so that should give D.H. something for his lunches and the sweet kids kept saying we are making this for Daddy arent we Mum for his new job.

So that has been our day nothing exciting unfortunately, I have put a new layout up, of Keelan I just love that blue it is my favourite colour, I am so a blue person. I used my new cricut machine for the heading and it is wonderful, I think they are an easy way to simplify l.o.'s. I love the font too. Tonight I hope I can steal myself away from tennis and create but will see how it goes. Well D.H. home must go and catch up on his day.
See ya
Take care
Trace.

more creating!!

Hi
Hope everyone is loving these holidays as much as I am, although D.H. is getting serious job hunting so I have a feeling my load will soon get heavier, it has been lovely having him around and sharing the load with the kidlets. We have been achieving so much, I just can't believe how much cleaning up and out it takes with a family of 6, I seem to be forever starting again at the the other end and D.H. has a job here as full time yardie, having half an acre with a lot of garden means lots of clean up. But Keelan always helps Tim outside and Zay does his best to potter around behind them trying to help hmmm. But we do literally take a trailer load of stuff away every 2nd weekend, the peppy trees are lovely and cooling but they sure shed leaves. So with that inside I have been changing things around also, when we unpacked this time I just found a home for things, not really the right place for some so now I am slowly getting to find the right place, which brings me to today, I brought on Friday a new Paper stacker which has a dust cover and it is great, Today my D.H. let me sleep in big time and even did all my morning housework so I had breaky and went from room to room finding all the work done, Bacon and eggs payback for him in the morning for sure. But because I slept so long and heavy I thought I would not get too much done today but it has been the opposite thank goodness. So back to the paper stacker, sorry getting so sidetracked here. I went through all my patterned paper and put it all in there, where I can see it and get to it all in order of the brands and then sorted out my bazzill and generally found things I wondered where I had put it and got totally organised. I am so impressed with it now it looks wonderful.

I have also discovered that I really dont need to purchase bazzill or p.p. for at least a decade. Time for me to create big time and get this stash shrinking. I had a bit of a buying frenzy happening last year but it is all stopping now, I have to resist the shops for a while and use what I have!!!

Now the l.o.s above are the wrong way around, it is a double l.o. which reads My girls r fun. The other is a family layout with about the best photo I have of us all so far. Living in hope of being able to get some weight off and go for family shoot through the year. Living in hope being the key word here. If anyone finds my willpower be sure to post it back please. lol.

Other than that we are not up to too much, might have to venture somewhere with the kids this week although Keelan is going with his Dad on Monday for a week so that will be some fun for him and the Boys are racing Go karts next weekend so they are looking forward to racing again this year after having a break last year. Hope it is not too hot for them, Keelan had to get a new helmet as the other was too small, not a cheap venture but hey his head is certainly worth protecting big time. Love that Boy to pieces, he is just so wonderful. Love them all to pieces actually, even the girls who decided this a.m. to go for a ride on there bikes around the big block and not tell anyone, Tim went in pursuit on his bike and met them at the round a bout, they have had their bikes taken off them for 2 weeks Dad has said, and tonight at tea I gave them the big lecture about going off and the kidnappers around etc. I dont think they will consider doing that again, thank goodness we have really quiet streets in our neighbourhood!!!

So I will leave this huge post, thankyou if you got to the end of it and be back later.
Take care
Trace.

Some layouts to share

Hi,
These 3 l.o.'s are my most recent, the 1st is Zay and Tim, love these new p.p with the family type themes. The other is Family and it is all of us, the 1st l.o. I have done of us as a Family, don't get photos of Tim and I too often and the last l.o. is of me and that was so hard to do, I hate hate hate having my photo taken with so much weight on but I think I need to start getting over that and giving my kids something about me, my jounalling is about me and who I am and some of my loves!! I have some more but that will have to be tomorrow, I also have photos of Trin having her hair cut yesterday but that can also wait, blogger has had enough of my time today waiting for these to upload.

A busy day here today doing all the cleaning and catching up with the mopping and washing and vaccuming, oh I do loooove a clean house and it feels like such a sense of achievement but not for too long when the 4 kidlets are in and out and hungry, it soon gradually starts to decline. Tim and I had drinks last night outside with the kids, I got a bit merry and then we walked around the block, dont really know how I did it being so under the weather, I think I floated around the block, probably why Rainee and I beat the rest of them home by miles, anyway it was lovely to get some exercise and all to music as southbound a big band weekend show was only up the road so we enjoyed the music from the front door and walking around the block, eskimo joe, John Butler trio and Wolfmother just to name some. It was better than fighting with 20,000 people up the oval to listen to it. So today as the day is going on I am starting to feel ordinary but you get that when you indulge. It was good to let my hair down though.
So enjoy whats left of the weekend and catch you later.
Take care
Trace.

Clean up

Hi
Today was a bit spur of the moment that turned into a mountain of cleaning. I decided this morning to get 4 boxes unpacked that had been on our patio waiting to be unpacked but I kept putting it off as I did not know where to put the stuff in them, anyway I bit the bullet today and cleaned them out but also got D.H. in the shed searching for the china boxes to finish off my china cabinet, well we have ended up finding everything but what I started off wanting to unpack and I am wondering where they have gone. But I am very pleased with the amount of cleaning up and clearing out we managed to do. The kidlets were perfect seeing as I was otherwise occupied and all went really well until everyones stomach started grumbling and then some saddies and words that should have been left unsaid got spoken, however it was all good after lunch and I managed to have it all cleared up and away bar 1 box in this office hmmm .

Funny how sometimes the spur of the moment decisions give the best results and hubby had no time to get grumpy about the thought of it and just fell in sink and got his shed looking a lot more organised in the process!! So I was pretty tired this arvo after all but also after lunch we had a scare with Zay. Rainee had peanut paste on her toast this a.m. and that was cool as Zay was outside at this time and not anywhere near her (he is allergic to peanuts) anyways she wanted 2 pieces of toast and then wouldn't eat 1 so I wrapped it up and told her it was her lunch, normally I would have binned it but I had a bug bear about waste this a.m. so at lunchtime I gave it to her and told her that was her lunch just mucking anyway she ate it I thought but she only ate the middle and left the crusts on a toy, so after our real lunch, Zay ventured over and I looked to him in the lounge just dropping the crusts and spitting out some and saying yuck and trying to make himself sick, we grabbed him and grabbed a container while he tryed to be sick but couldnt, then Tim said "Dont make a deal of it and he might be alright" so I gave him a drink and tryed to change the subject and put dummy in and went to change his nappy and that is when he started getting really upset and sticking his tongue out and gagging and then the rash appeared around his mouth so I flew him back out the kitchen and got the container and up came all his lunch and I tryed to find the phenergan in the pantry and when I couldnt I just threw everything out and got all the medicine down, got that into him and then Tim watched him while I decided to go through all the pantry and sort it all out. So something else I achieved out of rage. I had cereal and everything flying out the pantry when I was hunting for the bloody medicine. So now the peanut paste is in the bin and this is a definite peanut free household, I will not risk him having any more accidental exposure. I am going to take him to the Dr. and get an allergy test done on him as I really need to know how bad he is and if he will need to have an epi pen next time. He is so amazing but, he knows as soon as he has accidently had it that he needs to be sick and that he has to show me his tongue is swelling. He can't talk to tell me so it he does really well to let me know how he feels. I just wont jeopardise his life for the sake of a few in the house liking peanuts as I said to Rainee, "we may like peanuts but we love our bubba more". So that was our day. Eventful, organisation happening big time and lots of cleansing. All good!!! Tomorrow little bubba is getting some curls cut off and I am guessing it will make him look like a little boy boo hoo. Lucky we cant have anymore or I might be chasing hubby around the house again!!! On that note I am departing, layouts to share tomorrow.

Take care
Trace.

Happy new Year

Hi

We had a quiet New Years Eve, just the kids and D.H and I, had nibblies and BBQ and all was good till Tim took Zays nappy off and whilst riding around the kids suddenly stopped horrified as a glorious nugget dropped out the side of Zay's shorts. lol. How to kill a good party get D.H. to take toddlers nappy off!!!!! So it was off to baths and showers with the kids, (after I had cleaned up the droppings) and time to tidy up and get kidlets to bed. We then watched the 9pm fireworks on T.V. with Keelan before he went to bed and then watched a DVD and then I played on computer till Tim came and kissed me at midnight. Then I departed for bed!!! I kept thinking how boring we have become and how years ago I would have been slamming a few drinks back in good company but then been crook as a dog the next morning, like a good friend of mine is today, I rang to wish her happy new year and her hubby said she had not surfaced yet and that was 12.30pm, he said she had indulged far too much last night uggggh glad it was her and not me, I am so not one for hangovers!!!!

The thing I like to do these days is have a great New Years Day without wishing it away with a sore head and tum. I love to soak up the New Year on the Day, we did roast pork and turkey breast roll in the barbecue and I made Cauli cheese and beans and gravy inside and the other vegies went in the BBQ also and we a lovely bottle of wine with lunch and choccies after and just soaked up the atmosphere with the kids, I dressed the table up like Christmas as we had not really had Christmas with Keelan yet and had his favourite crackling of the pork and he just loved it and enjoyed every mouthful and for us it was like our Christmas Day, so we have had an amazing day with the kids, then Zay had a rest and we all vegged out for a while and then at 4pm we got the slippery slide out and sat out the back and watched the kids going on that. A true family day just bliss and I didn't take 1 photo, never mind I just loved being in the moment!!!! So I hope that is a sign of how our year is going to be, pretty much about family and good times.

On that note I will be off and go and vege some more. Having the best holiday even if we are at home, the kids have been angels apart from some tiffs they are really being so good, it feels like we have shifted into another stage with the kids. I know that would make sense to parents of little ones as you do really notice when they shift a little more towards their independence and free you up from one little thing, it is sad they are growing so quick but it is lovely getting to know them at this new stage, they just seem to be so different.

Take care
Trace.