How much can you do in two weeks holidays..................this much!

Time has just been gobbling me up lately, and I seem to be running in circles most of the time. It has been such a long time since I blogged and I have been busting to get on here and have a small slice of me time! I can't believe that the school holidays have been and gone and we are well and truly back into the routine of life and school again.

It was wonderful not to have school lunches to make and to sleep in and wander around in our pyjamas until midday, just pure heaven. I love having Amber home and Aidan loved it just as much, following his big sister around and having someone to amuse him, as she does a much better job then myself!

Aidan has added another couple of teeth and now has a firm grip on anyone game enough to stick their fingers anywhere near his mouth. Its such a relief, if for only a brief moment to have my happy playful baby back instead of the one that is teething and following me around the house like a groupie hoping and praying that I will pick him up and have the chance to permanently stay attached to my hip. He has finally got his appetite back which as you can see by the below photo is in full swing! It amazes me how different boys are to girls in some respects, just the little observations like the fact that Aidan likes to smash and whack his food until it is dead before he will consume it and his love of climbing everything and anything that he possibly can.

I can't believe how quickly he manges to learn and pick things up, he already loves to wave and clap his hands and I only showed him once or twice how to turn around and slide off the bed or how to move down the stairs and he has just picked it up and does it with ease. He is so curious with learning new things, he certainly has Davids intensity and drive to learn how things work he even watches you whistling and tries to give it a go! It just amazes me how much of a sponge he is, the mind of a baby and the things they pick up and learn in the first year, just makes your head spin.

I have recently noticed through my photos just how long Aidan's tongue is, its huge just like his sisters, I remember commenting when Amber was born that I gave birth to a baby lizard I know that sounds alien like, but honestly she just kept poking her tongue out and it was so long! I have no clue who they have inherited this off, but it is obviously a very strong trait! Lucky I love my lizard babies very much!

I have to say though, their are several things between Amber and Aidan at the same age that are exactly the same, its funny how you forget each stage once you have finally conquered or muddled your way through it and have moved on to the next, like the pulling off of everything at great speed off every table in the house that they can reach. Lets just say that I am looking forward to erasing this stage from my brain already, as it is driving me just a little nuts and I am already hating hearing myself say no over and over again!

Well where do I start, Amber went to a fab 5 th birthday a week or so before the holidays started for Evangaline a little friend of hers from school. It was a belly dancing party, now you would think that finding a costume for something like this would be a challenge but not so when you have an Ebay ediction there is always something in the cupboard that would be appropriate lol and guess what there was!!!!! It was such a fantastic idea for a party and the children had an absolute ball learning to swing there hips and use their amazing imagination to the best of its abilities. What a gorgeous idea for a party and apparently its a tradition in Evangaline's house- hold as ever one of her sisters celebrated their 5 th birthday the same way, what an amazing tradition!

Amber thoroughly enjoyed the myriad of costumes at Mousy's place!

I thought instead of me blabbing on for years about all the things we managed to squeeze in I would just tell the story in basically photos! This is what we squeezed into two weeks, three trips to the park with friends which included all the fun things kids like to get up too like tree climbing, scaling walls underneath bridges, stick eating (An Aidan activity..........a favourite at the moment), learning to ride a scooter, slides and swings, feeding the ducks and of course for the mummies in between assisting with all the above activities a nice little chin wag and chat about love life and children!

Aidan, Amber and her school friends on various outings!

We also fitted in rollerskating with Cathryn, Tiana and Alex, Amber's first and now second experience on wheels, lets just say she has already surpassed me with talent in this department, which would not be hard as all you would have to do is stay upright lol! We also visited our friends out at Ipswich, Amber had a charity ballet concert in which she was a pearl in an under the sea dance to raise money for the children's hospital, many attractions at the shopping centres including circus school, a reptile show and a little retail therapy or do I mean punishment, as it was a little painful, but that is another story. We finished off the holidays at the rail museum which had a theme this holiday that was focusing around the circus, which is great as Amber's class is learning all about the Circus this term.

Mithcell, Oliver and Amber enjoying the rain!

Reptile show!

A Look can tell a thousand words, I wonder what Adian thought about the snake just above his head lol!

My gorgeous little pearl!

Oh and did I forget to mention the most important thing that happened during the holidays, the long antisapated viewing of disney princess on ice, how could I nearly forget something so important, Amber has only been talking about it and counting down the days until its arrival since I first spoke of it all those months ago............I think it ended up being all that she was hoping and dreaming about and more!!!!!!!!!!! As Snow White always says DREAMS DO COME TRUE! Apparently and I wish I was sitting near Amber the looks of pure joy and surprise on her face were priceless!

I hope these holidays were as special to you Amber as they were to me it was an absolute joy
sharing them with you! It certainly wasn't boring!!!! I think Aidan has been missing you around the house in the last week or so also!

We managed to fit in the erection of two new wardrobes over the holidays as well- Amber's and our walk in robe (thank you IKEA) and the slow and painful process of changing them over. I am still unfortunately slowly moving mine. I might still be doing this years from now. Unfortunately our shell of a wardrobe was used as a storage area when we moved back in after the renovation, so now Aidans room is no longer in use as this is where all the junk was moved to! Oh well my next project to work on is clearing and moving my cupboard and moving all the junk out of Aidans room, so he can finally get have his space back.

Thought I would throw in a couple of photos of Aidan with his first try of daddy's tools while errecting the cupboards, I think daddy is going to have a little shadow in a couple of years time whenever he brings out the tools!

Cleaning the cupboards has been very theraputic though, as I have sorted out all the things that are ready to sell on ebay and after months and months of work we finally managed to get my ebay store up, with new templates(thank you so much honey for all your help in that department and for putting up with all my crap) and a whole lot of clothing to list I shall never be bored with nothing to do again...............hang on I can't remember the last time I was bored with two children anyway lol!!!! I don't have a huge amount of stuff listed but it is one small step in the right direction at least.

We spent this weekend trying to clean the house up a little spring cleaning slightly early I know but we really needed to for peace of mind and the house looks alot better now with alot less clutter, we still have a long way to go, but one foot in front of the other as they say.

I feel so terrible that my sister was up with her family this week and I hardly took a single picture of them. Aidan and Amber absolutely loved having their cousins up here to play with and they were both a little sad this afternoon that their playmates had gone home already, both for different reasons, Aidan loved being cuddled and held constantly and Amber talked everyones heads off talking about her new adventures at big school! I am sure Christmas will be here before we know it though, and it will be nice to get away and have some time off away from routine!

Poor Julie and Scott came up for the Pink concert and unfortunately it was cancelled last night, so even though they were kept busy with Dreamworld and Putt Putt Golf, I guess it couldn't quite compare to the whole reason why they travelled up here. Mind you Amber has added another thing to the list of things that she must do on a regular basis, so far we have ten pin bowlling, roller skating and now Putt Putt lol hopefully we can add something that is free to the list soon!

We have also had a few scares in the last couple of months with David's mum taking ill with some wierd blood virus, wonderful to hear that things are looking up now and with Aidan having Roseola and Amber at the beginning of the holidays having some horrible flu thingy! Bring on spring I say and a thunderstorm or two to clear the air and start a fresh would be nice also!

Nearly all the kids!

Oh well so much for me not blabbing on, I just can't help myself, I am sure everyone turns off after the first two minutes, as like my house I am a bit of a blog hoard and blab on way too much and I love adding way too many photos, but it gives me so much joy writing all this down and its also like therapy in a way!

I hope everyone is having a nice school holiday break or came back nice and refreshed and ready to start the second half of the year, can you believe we are half way through the year already, insane! Now all I need is another holiday to get over this one!!!!!

And finally just a couple more photos of my sometimes little angels!