its school holiday this week and im trying my hardest to plan activities for the whole week so that i won’t have a restless
and bored 5 year old in my hands…and let me tell you im almost running out of ideas already and its only day two! *yikes*

So far, we have been to the malls where they usually have some sort of school holiday fun activities….
it keeps her occupied for about 10mins max during the day (yeah that wasn’t a lot of help), and then we have been to the park
and to the library, and to give mummy a break we have coffee together while Logan is asleep LOL

Luckily for me, tomorrow i have her Nana to help me keep her occupied….and i just found out from WCC (Wellington City Council)
Spring brochure that there are kids activities in town that we can take the kids to during school holiday,
which we are planning to go to depending on how the weather is like tomorrow…

Today i took her to see Dora and then we had lunch together, then go to the park and of course we can’t forget my coffee break.
Don’t get me wrong, i love spending quality time with my kids….however im not sure i can survive the whole 2 weeks.
its pretty full on when im constantly on the go since i wake up in the morning until 7pm (if im lucky) when my hubby gets home from work…
well lets just hope i have enough energy to keep up with the kids for the next couple of weeks…

at the park, burning off some energy…

then off to my coffee break…this is my mocha, let me just say that this was the only break i get the entire day *sigh*

and a slice of chocolate cake that we shared together…oh my it was sooo yummm! this is where i get my energy from LOL

this is her “babyccino” which consist of frothy milk and marshmallows…

Claudia insisted that i take a photo of both our coffee together, obviously the big one is mummy’s and the little one is hers…

she gets this cool Dora Passport that keeps her occupied during the time i had my coffee LOL

and her reward for being good for mummy…a rocket pen which has 4 different colour (red, blue, green & black),
not that she doesn’t already have a gazzilion pens at home…coz thats what she does, she loves to draw and she loves cool pens.

and lastly we can’t forget her picture with Dora…

we had a Plunket appointment this morning and now that my baby boy is 6 months old the nurse recommended that we introduce solid food.
as usual the very first solid that they suggested was rice cereal…so we decided to give him his first solid lunch today.

well let me tell you one thing….introducing solid food is one messy business!
we had gooey cereal everywhere because he keeps wanting to grab the spoon…
so in the end i just gave it to him and he seemed to really enjoy playing and eating at the same time…LOL

im sure there will be plenty more messy business for us in the future…
however just to see his face and his reaction the first time he tasted the rice cereal was priceless!
sure glad i got it on camera….

my baby is 6 months old….
wow, i still can’t believe its been six months since we brought him home from the hospital…that went by really fast!
he is growing beautifully and hitting his milestones as he should be….he can roll onto his tummy and back really well now,
in fact he just rolls around all over the living room floor everyday LOL

we are soo gonna be in big trouble when he starts crawling…
nothing in our tiny living room will be safe because everything will be within his reach…*gulp*
ohh btw, we just spotted his first tooth peeking out and seeing from the way he is chewing his hands and drooling like crazy,
im sure it wont be long before his other chompers will show up too…

he is talking up a storm eventho we have no idea what he is going on about….LOL
he loves his big sister, no matter what mood he is in (even when he is crying) he always smiles and grin when he sees his sister…
we love his smiley face, his laughter, his squeal, and everything about him….just love LOVE love him to bits!

I can’t even describe the feeling when we look into his crib/cot in the morning and seeing his beaming smile when he sees us….
its just the most amazing feeling and it makes everything worth while. He really is a delight and he makes our family complete…

Miss C had a special day at school yesterday…her class was doing a “Pirate Day” so she was going to school dressed as pirate
and the kids are supposed to be bringing a plate of finger foods to share instead of their usual packed lunch.

The thing is, i only just found out about this the day before, however the little miss told me that she has been trying to tell me about this all week
but apparently i had not been listening as i was too preoccupied with other things in my mind…*whoops, bad mummy!*

So i was feeling quite guilty about this as we looked around the house for things she can wear for her pirate outfit.

Since  we could not find anything decent i told her we should go to the $2 shop to get an eye patch and a pirate hat….
she told me she did NOT want to wear an eye patch because only boys wear eye patch! She was quite adamant about this,
so we proceed to get her a bandanna instead and i had to buy her a pair of new black boots because of course pirate wear boots she said…
and i cannot argue with her on this one. LOL

Well after looking around her whole wardrobe we decided on a stripey top and black and white tights to wear with her boots….
she said she also wants to wear a skirt because she wants to be a pretty pirate….hell i dunno if there is such thing as a ‘pretty pirate’
but considering this was a last minute effort we settled on a red skirt for her to wear and she was happy with that…thank god! LOL

So i took a couple of snaps of her in her pirate outfit before i drop her off to school, but because it was so cold outside yesterday we didn’t take many….then as i dropped her off to school she asked me to come visit her at lunch time. I told her i can’t promise anything but i will try my best.

By the time lunch time came around i was feeling pretty lousy as i was coming down with a cold…but i still remember that made promise to try and document our day to day life more often and i know it will mean a lot to Claudia if i come and visit her at school during lunch….so i braced myself, bundled up with a few layers of jackets in my attempt to keep warm and headed off to her school.

I thought i’ll stay for only a few mins to take some quick snaps and then i can go back home to rest….so i took a few pictures inside her classroom
while the kids were having lunch and left after about 20-30mins when it was time for them to play outside.

I was going to post these pictures yesterday, but i was so crook (sick) and i crashed right after the kids went to bed so im posting this today.
The first 3 pictures were taken at home before i dropped her off to school and the rest are the pictures i took at lunch time in her classroom.

I asked her to give me a scary pirate face and this is what i got LOL

this is her “don’t mess with me” pose lol

check out these cute and creative pirate food for their lunch…

having yummy chicken and popcorn for lunch to be a lean mean pirate machine hehehe

and then eating her so called “pirate sword”

with her friend Arno…

I just love Arno’s full pirate outfit…

and this is one of Miss C’s friend, Stella and her awesome pink sword…

Miss C and her girlfriends…

another one of Claudia’s friend, Jonty showing off his awesome pirate arm muscle to the ladies…LOL

Claudia and her wonderful teacher…

and of course we can’t forget her best friend, Denise….

and lastly, Claudia and Stella playing together during lunch…

Miss C loves reading…everytime we go out she will go to the bookshop and ask if she can get a new book to read.
Last week she brought home a book from the library and started reading it while i was feeding Logan…
he seems to be fascinated with it, so today we decided to do a reading session together.

She wanted to read to her little brother, so i asked her to choose a few books from her bookshelf that she wanted to read to her brother.
He loves looking at all the colourful pictures inside the book while listening to his sister reading…

I think we are going to continue the reading session… its a good bonding time for all of us, and the kids seems to enjoyed it.
I really hope he grows to love books and reading as much as his sister…

Today i took my lil guy for his 5 months vaccination….i still can’t believe its been 5 months, wow time goes so fast!
He was a trooper and only cried for a short spell when the vaccine was being injected in and then he was all happy again after its over.
To be honest i think it harder on me to see that huge needle going into both his chunky thighs! LOL

Anyway, i decided to take more pics of him today…i just love his blue vest i got from Jakarta and his white fluffy bunny hat,
so i just had to take some pics with him wearing them. So here is my little tiger bunny…

in his yellow bumbo chair….used to belong to his big sister and now being handed over to him.

and he is always chewing on his hands now because he is teething, we can see a teeny bit of his chomper showing thru his gum.

Since we moved house, i have been walking the little miss to her school every morning since we only live 5 mins away from her school.
The location of our new place is totally awesome, everything is within a walking distance.
We are right across the street from the swimming pool and the park, the mall and the supermarket is just around the corner….
i just love how this new place is very convenient.

However, since i have been walking Miss C to her school every morning from our new place its been really hard for her to say goodbye at school.
She cried and clings on to me saying that she wants me to stay in school with her, i told her that i can’t stay
then she told me that she will miss me too much when im not there. As sweet as that may be, that my daughter cannot bear
to be apart from me, its not a good feeling leaving your daughter while she was crying everytime you drop her off to school every morning.

This has been going on throughout all week, so i talked to her teacher to figure out whats going on….we need to get to the bottom of this.
The thing is, she used to bounce along to school excitedly every morning when i used to drive her to school,
so the only thing that has changed is the fact that now i walk with her to school from the new house.

So it turns out she has not adjusted to the move as well as we thought….although we have prepared her for the move
well before the sale of our house was confirmed. She kept on telling us that she loves the other house better….
we totally understand that it was the only house she has ever known and that she has been in that house since she was born
so she is very attached to it.

Ever since the sale of our house was confirmed we’ve been preparing her for the move & we tried to keep a positive spin on things…
we told her how great it was that the new house is so close to her school, its also close to the park and the pool so we can go there often,
and all the other good things about it, however she still insisted that she loves the old house better…

Well, i think she is slowly getting around to the idea that this new place is now her new home….
but it might take some time for her to adjust to that, and obviously this is also part of whats affecting her when i drop her off to school.

Her teacher suggested to break the crying habit with a promise of a “special treat” when she is being a good big girl
and not cry when mummy drop her off to school. So over the weekend we talked about her clingy-ness and the crying….
and we told her that if she can be a good girl and not cry this week we can give her a special treat.

During our talk she mentioned that her friend Stella got this cool colourful straws that has sherbet inside it….
we agreed that she can have that as her special treat if she promised to be a good girl this week.

For the last couple of days Miss C has stick to her promise in being a good girl and she did not cry when i dropped her off to school…
she asked if we can go get the sherbet straws after school today.

So after school we had a stroll over to this one specific service station (the only place we know that sells it!) to get her sherbet straw.
And guess what??….they are only .20cents for 3 of them! What a steal!!
i didn’t even know that we can still get candy for 20cents these days! LOL

Anyway, i love those sherbet straws because not only because they are a bargain….they motivate my lil girl to be in her good behaviour
and they also help make me feel better because i dont have to see my daughter crying in the morning…so its a win win in the end.

And another upside of this…after getting her special treat she is more than agreeable for me to take pics of her.
So after all that drama….and a long essay, here are the pics we took after school today…

As some of you already know, we just recently moved house and we had to downsize quite a bit…
we went from a 4 bedroom house to a 2 bedroom townhouse.
I know for some of you it seems that we are going backwards seeing that now we have 2 kids and yet we are moving to a smaller house.
However rest assured that its all part of a bigger plan we have…which is moving to Australia.

Anyway, seeing that we do have 2 children obviously we have quite a bit of stuff…and if you ask Russ (my dear hubby)
he will say that my photography stuff takes up more room than anything else LOL

Now we have quite a problem seeing that in our small townhouse we have no garage….so we decided we will buy a shed to store some of our stuff.
I thought this weekend is about as good time as any to go buy a shed. We went to a few places but we ended up in Mitre 10 MEGA…
for those of you who don’t know what that is, its like a huge place for home improvement and DIY stuff.

I never know a shed could cost so much! I just hope Russ can assemble it together when it arrives in a couple of weeks time.
We’ll have to wait and see on that…i will update you with it when the time comes.

Btw, the little miss had quite a good time there coz there was kids playground inside and we also went to the cafe inside and had some yummy cakes.
As part of my promise to be more proactive in photography i took my camera with me and I managed to take some snaps while were there…
here are a couple of pics i took of Miss C with some random Mitre 10 things while we were waiting for daddy to order the shed in the checkout.

oh and we also went there to get a new toilet paper holder…apparently there was a different opinion between Miss C and daddy and she was really dissapointed when we go for her daddy’s choice so this is the face we got from her…

Lets be honest…Im not much of a blogger seeing that i’m such a slack in updating mine.
Well, for the last couple of weeks i have been looking thru my archive folders of my daughter’s photos
in my attempt to catch up on doing her yearly photo book and i realised how much i have been slacking off…
im feeling very guilty that i have not been documenting my kids as much as i used to….and to be honest feeling a little rusty too,
so i made a vow to get off my tush and start doing something about it.

What im going to do is im going to start updating my blog again and hopefully will be posting more regularly.
My aim is to take daily photos of our everyday life, whether it be my kids, things around the house, any macro shot (which i love taking pics of),
or anything that takes my fancy. The kids will hopefully take center stage, but in the event that they are too grumpy or not in the mood
i will just take pics of something else.

So i took my camera out of the camera bag this morning and it is now sitting on my bench table within reach in my home.
This should give me no excuse whatsoever to not shoot and start taking pics again.
I will try my best to take photos daily, but if something comes up that makes me not able to do it everyday
then im not gonna sweat it and just keep going.

Im starting this morning and today i had a specific thing in mind…since we just moved house we had to re-decorate and re-arrange the wall,
and we have this one picture of my daughter that i took when i just started taking up photography
and my aim was to re-create a similar photo with my baby boy.

These are the pics i took today and i will be printing the second one to be put up on our wall alongside my daughter’s photo

this is the original photo of my daughter that i took 5 years ago when i just started photography…taken with Sony Point and Shoot camera
just before i decided to invest in my first Nikon DSLR.

well its in the middle of winter…so what would you expect a four year old to do at winter after all that rain?
Puddle Jumping of course! LOL

this was taken over the weekend and it wasn’t even all that much of a puddle….
in fact im sure you can’t even call it puddles because its just rain water instead of brown and muddy,
we have a slab of pavement in our back yard which has collected some water after the rain…
but she said she wants to have a go at it anyway and i have to agree with her just for the photo opportunities LOL

btw, im sick today….my cold has gotten worse, im really congested and feeling yucky all over.
So im staying in bed, keeping warm and having my tea…hope everyone is well and staying away from my germs!!

and here is the so called ‘puddle jumping’ pics from the weekend….

she picked a little daisy and put it on her left gumboot, and she said to me “look mommy, my left gumboot is giving a flower to my right gumboot!” hahaha isn’t she cute?

the big jump with a nice splash that she is so proud of….lol

the splash landings….check out her wild hair while she was jumping around! lol

her standing ‘tude’…just love the reflection here…

and the full collage of the her puddle jumping fun…