A Bit of This and a Bit of That

I have been delving into more of my family history this past week and cam eup with a few little surprises. One of my great great great....uncles helped to build the Manti temple. He was also choir director for 25 years... have no idea what choir but unfortunately his obvious musical ability did not make it this far down the generations. Hopefully we will be able to go visit the Manti temple when we are over there in 2017. 

We got the title transfer for our land in the mail today. I doubt it will title at the end of December like it is supposed to (was really meant to be August) but whatever. It will happen when it happens. It will just sit there increasing in value, while we keep saving like crazy people. We don't have to pay the remaining of our deposit until it titles so the more money we have the better. Luckily for us it is already worth more than we owe which is nice. Two of Aarahi work mates are building on the same street as us which will be convenient for carpooling at 4am...Hopefully they will be able to keep each other awake. I am so looking forward to living out in the country a bit. The drive out to where we are building is beautiful especially in spring time. Lovely tree lined roads and kangaroos and animals in the paddocks. The area is set for a huge amount of development so no doubt in 10 years time it will look a whole lot different. 

Our TV broke last week. I was a sad time. Especially for Aarahi who wanted to watch the All Blacks game. It was even sadder for me when it cost twice as much as first thought to fix it. I run a tight ship with out finances and things like this really really annoy me. If it's not one thing it's another right? Aarahi has a ridiculous amount of leave and RDO's so he got one of those paid out so as to not disrupt the fine balance I have going on.

I lost Ammon this week. I thought he was in the bedroom where the kids were playing. They came out and I asked where Ammon was. "I dunno?" I looked everywhere couldn't find him. Finally looked outside in the back yard and there he was laying down in a big puddle splashing away in the rain. I'm not sure how he got out there, probably followed Auron or Lili out there. He was not happy when I bought him back inside. 

Aarahi and I bought some Book of Mormon Study Guides that we are LOVING. It has been the favourite part of my day for the past week. Our scripture study has been sporadic at best since having kids. Let's be honest once you get the kids into bed all you really want to do is sit in silence and peace without someone yelling your name every 20secs. Yet this past week we have quickly got the kids into bed as fast as we can so we can do our scriptures together. They would be great for teenagers and adults alike. If you are intersted you can find them at https://www.theredheadedhostess.com/

In a couple of weeks we are celebrating Aarahi's birthday a bit early because December is already crazy enough. We are going away for the night CHILDFREE. I am still not sure how I feel about it. I am kind of excited but apprehensive. I think it will be weird, but we have lots of nice things planned and Aarahi is super exited about it. 

Well it's 5pm and Aarahi just got home from work. It's been a long day. His work is moving accross the road to a new facility and he got the "honour" of being the moving crew haha. 

Quick take a photo of me

Lili wanted to feed Ammon a Chocolate Yoghurt (a very rare treat in this house) I told her not to let him have the spoon, next minute she's telling me proudly that she taught him to use a spoon. He ended up covered head to toe in yoghurt. 

Introducing our new baby, Baby Stuart. Lili has been a great little Mummy to her minion, this is where I found him when I went to bed. 

Auron made this really cool car. It's hard to tell from the photo but it was pretty fantastic with lots of different parts that did different things 

The Week at Our House

It's been a quiet week for our little family. I we haven't really gotten out much. I think we were all in need of some down time. Aarahi was sick a couple of days and had one day off work. It was lovely having him home. The big kids and I went and did groceries together and picked out a Halloween costume for Ammon. He's going to be Buzz Lightyear. Super cute. They love coming to the shops because we usually get a special treat when we are finished. We try to take each of them out by themselves at least once a fortnight. Lili came with me earlier in the week to pick something up from Coles. While we were there she asked me if we could get a bubble machine. Knowing how much she loooooves bubbles we had a look and found one for $5. $5 well spent.

On the weekend we went and bought some seeds to plant. Auron has been all about growing plants and gardening lately....must be in the blood or something??? Aarahi however can't stand anything to do with gardening, too many years spent in the kumara patch as a child I suspect. Lili wanted to plant strawberry seeds but we compromised on buying actual plants instead, hoping we might have more luck. Unfortunately they are still not growing fast enough for her liking. Here's hoping we get more that $21 worth of strawberries out of them, because that's how much the plants were.

Ammon is such a mischief. He is in to EVERYTHING! and more importantly (for him anyway) he has figured out how to get Lili and Auron to do pretty much whatever he wants. In the mornings the kids are early birds usually waking up just before 6am. As for me, I don''t personally want to get up at that time. Auron usually comes in and gets my phone and iPad for him and Lili, and Lili then goes and gets some toys for Ammon to play with. Then they all go back to bed for another 30mins. It's lovely.

Lili had a rough day at church, everyone was touching her hair... Just so you know, she really really hates people touching her hair. I know its cute and all and it's really hard to resist pulling those little curls but please don't. It hurts her and makes her hate her hair which is really sad. Then after church she got her finger jammed in the chapel doors.

We had a singing practice for our Primary Presentation next month at the end Auron sung a solo of popcorn popping. It was super cute! He has got the sweetest little spirit. I love his little child like faith. He is working hard to memorise the Articles of Faith and our weekly family scripture. So far he has 5 versus memorised. We are really enjoying all the new questions he has. The other day he asked me where babies come from. I told him they come from Mummies tummies when they have husbands. Later I heard him tell Lili that when she gets a husband she's going to get fat.

Aarahi gave a wonderful talk today on the Resurrection of Christ. He always gives wonderful talks, Ilove hearing him speak. Unfortunately my children weren't the most well behaved today and I struggled to hear the whole talk.

Onwards and Upwards!

I think it must have been awhile since I have written. There are 3 unfinished post sitting in my account!

We have been enjoying the beautiful Summer like weather here this weekend. It has been at 30+ degrees the past two days and will continue for another few days before dropping back down to more seasonally appropriate weather.

Apparently on Friday it was a public holiday to celebrate Grand Final weekend for the AFL...not we could actually care less about it. I am not even sure who was playing. But it was a perfect excuse for us to take advantage of the sun and head down to the beach in the city. It in no beach like we are used to but it was good enough for the kids. They had the best time, I don't think Auron and Izayah got out of the water for 3 hours or so.

On Saturday Aarahi went to play in the Greenvale Ward Table Tennis Tournament. It's all very serious business. I think it's the 2nd or 3rd year it's been going now. He came home a winner! He won the doubles with one of the other guys.

Lili is pretty much 100% now. She had been having 4-5 hour naps in the day for half the week but hasn't had to have a nap at all the past few days. It is so nice to have her back! Although it was hard to have her sick, I really enjoyed all the time I got to spend with her. She really is one of the funniest kids you can meet.

Auron has taken an interest in Chess this past week so Aarahi has been teaching him slowly. Each morning after breakfast he gets out the board and practices setting it up and learning the names of the pieces. When Aarahi gets home they have a couple of games and learn a new rule.

Ammon has been sleeping through the night...THROUGH THE NIGHT!!!!! That is unheard of in this house like, what am I going to do with all this sleep I am getting at night?? I've been waking up at 5am which is not cool, hopefully my body clock will reset. But really, is this what it's like for all those people with kids that are good sleepers?? First time in 5 years I've not had someone yelling my name or crying at obscene times of the night. Aarahi and I have so much energy it's like we should go run a marathon or something. There's something to be said about sleep deprivation that's for sure.

The kids and the birthday girl...

Family Photo

Winners!

Lili earned her Happy Meal, learning all her letters

MMM white top + watermelon = bad idea

3 Little rascals ready to swim

Tuckered out after the party

September Started with a Bang!

Note: I wrote this on Sunday it's now Thursday. We had a pretty rough few days. On Monday Lili becoming increasingly more lethargic. For the past 4 days she had slept the majority of the day, but she was happy enough and was eating and drinking fine whenever she woke up. On Monday she was really hard to wake up and she wasn't drinking or eating much so I thought enough was enough and took her to the hospital.
They managed to get her to eat an icy pole and did some tests. They had the the paediatric docs come look at her. They were still baffled as to what was really wrong with her. She had no other indications of illness other than being tired. They were happy for her to go home and go to the GP the next day for her results. We were to bring her straight back if she got worse or we couldn't get her to drink.
Tuesday night we ended up taking her back as she had nothing to drink in over 24 hours and waking her up was terribly hard. "Thankfully" she had developed a cough and slightly red throat. This led the doctors to be more happy with their predictions of a virus instead of something quite serious. The admitted her overnight to pump her full of fluid. The next morning she was so much happier. Yesterday she only had a 1 hour nap as opposed to sleeping 20 hours a day as she had been doing since last Thursday.
It was a pretty worrying time and we have never been so thankful for a cough and a sore red throat! We appreciated all the love and messages and checking in.

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We hope all those lovely Daddy's and Poppa's out there had a fabulous day yesterday! Our week has been plagued by sickness but I'll get to that later.

Monday: Home school group. We left home about 10am and it was lovely and sunny so I told Auron to leave his jacket at home and he would be warm enough with what he was wearing. 30mins later it was freezing cold , the poor kids was miserable. He warmed up once we got to the park and could run around. I let Auron pick what we were having for lunch since and he chose a place called Schnitz. He declared it was his favourite place ever. I informed him not to get to attached as the price tag wasn't as appealing as the delicious food.

Tuesday: Today was a beautiful day so we went for a walk to Aunty Mel's to have lunch. It was actually really warm today, think tee-shirt and shorts weather. When Auron put on his jacket again he just looked at me and said "remember yesterday mummy?" Who was I to argue with that? He ditched the jacket a few 100m down the road.

Wednesday: I have absolutely no recollection of what happened on this day. This seems to be happening more and more often these days.

Thursday: This is where our week took a turn for the worst. I should have seen it coming! When the kids got up they were lounging around on the couch looking sorry for themselves. I told them they needed to change their attitudes or go back to bed. They both headed back to bed at 930am and didn't emerge again for another few hours. Auron perked right up but Lili on the other hand just had some lunch then went back to bed. For the next 3 days Lili didn't get off the couch. She is such a good sick kid, barely hear a peep out of her.

Friday: Aarahi had the day off work! We had big plans to go out and spend time together as a family for Fathers day but Lili was sick and Ammon was now sick too. Ammon was not a good sick kid!!!! The whinging and the whining was doing my head in. I was thankful Aarahi was there to share in the torment but felt bad he was missing out on his special day. On a plus note I got all the washing done. Aarahi did take Auron out to the city for a treat. They got ice creams, special hot chocolates and went to play in the arcade (something only Daddy would do)

Saturday: Oh dear now I'm down with whatever the kids have. I spent the majority of the day in bed whilst my dear husband looked after the kids. Unfortunately when you are a parent there are no sick days and you still need to get up and do some cleaning and help out with the kids. Lili was still couch bound so Aarahi was going to take her to the doctor but she started to perk up so he just took her for a ride in the car and let her pick a treat at the supermarket. Grapes and strawberries....no surprises there!

Sunday: Aarahi was speaking in Stake Conference today. I really wanted to go hear his talk, but was still sick and definitely didn't want to take all the kids! So at 8am I dropped Auron and Lili at my cousins house. Unfortunately conference didn't start until 1pm not at 10am like I thought. Poor Sarah lucked out there. She messaged me a little while later to say all the kids were asleep. Aarahi did a great talk on "Not Just a Casual Follower of Christ" After conference we went back to Sarah's for dinner and learnt that Auron was now struck down with the sickness and hadn't moved off the couch all day either.

Auron filled up his Alphabet Dinosaur and got his treat of a Happy Meal. He has worked so hard over the past couple of weeks to learn all his letters this was such a well deserved treat. 

My Husband is a Zombie Catcher

It was a much quieter week than the last, mostly because the weather was terrible and I slowly began to drown in laundry.

Monday: Much of the same. School in the morning then we went over to the cousins for Family Home Evening and dinner.
Tuesday: We went to the launch of the 100 Book Before School program. It was pretty average, and I would rather have not gone. The kids did score a book pack each though so I guess that made it somewhat worth it. I rewarded them for having to sit through speeches with Subway for lunch.
Wednesday: We caught up on some neglected school work and Lili, Auron and I did a bunch of baking for the week
Thursday: It was pouring with rain so the most logical thing to do is get the train to the visit the cousins and go shopping. Yep we are crazy like that. It was a terrible idea. The kids were all grumpy and by the end of the day Lili was really really pushing her luck with me. We had a few tantrums on the ground in Target. It's our first in a long long time, I was pretty exhausted from a long night with Ammon and probably didn't handle it as well as usual.
Friday: I realised Lili needed some time out just her and mummy. I know this is always the problem when she starts having melt downs. So we had some time out to read books, do cooking, play in the sandpit without anyone else. A few hours of one on one time and she becomes a different child. It's good for me too. It helps me to remember that she is still just a little girl with big emotions that sometimes just needs her mummy to be a little more patient and understanding with her.
Saturday: My cousin Cindy was down in Melbourne from Queensland for a girls weekend with some of her friends. Sarah and I were lucky enough to catch up with her in the city for a few hours. We went to a little cafe in one of the lane ways and got so ripped off it was painful. We should have just ordered drinks but instead Sarah and I ordered a quiche and an apple crumble. We paid good money and got piddles in return and to top it off it tasted gross. If that's what the rich people eat, I think I'd like to stay poor. Aarahi the brave brave man looked after all 5 kids by himself for the afternoon. These kids are hard work for both Sarah and I together, so you can imagine the task Aarahi had before him!!! He did fantastic and everyone was happy on our return.
Sunday:  My lesson for class was "I am Thankful for Food" naturally bringing cupcakes to decorate after our lesson was the best idea. I was only planning on having 3 or 4 kids but ended up with 7. They actually did really well and the mess was fairly minimal. The even got the whole point of the lesson. However later in the day during sharing time some other kid grabbed a cupcake off the table at ran out the door with it dropping it along with all its delicious coconut topping all over the floor. sigh... The kids made some Fathers Day ties at church. They had questions on the for the kids to answer about their dads. The first question was "What does your Dad do for work?" Lili's answer "He goes and catches the Zombies" Gosh I love that kid!!!!!!

We had a Fantastic Week

We squished so much into this week! The children have all been in bed early almost each night because they are just so tired. On one day both Lili and Auron didn't wake up until after 9am.

Monday: We had school time in the morning then later that afternoon we met up with our home school group at a nature park? I'm not really sure what it was. Well actually it was a huge community garden and nursery but they had other stuff going on too. The kids loved it and got covered in dirt and looked rather negated by the time we left. That's what being a kid is all about right??! Straight after the park we headed into the city to visit my cousin who is was in hospital. Unfortunately we couldn't stay long as Ammon we getting grumpy. By the time we arrived home it was past dinner, luckily I had put something in the slow cooker that morning so it was a quick fix to feed our starving bellies.

Tuesday: School work, housework, catch up on everything. I was having a pretty low day after writing my 3rd "memory" letter this year for someone sick with cancer. That disease gets everyone, and affects everyone, there just seems to be no escaping it. We went out for dinner that night to try and cheer ourselves up. It was a really lovely time. The kids really enjoyed the restaurant and food which is always a plus.

Wednesday: Off to the library for story time with our cousins. This weeks theme was crocodiles, which was right up Lili's ally. She is all about dinosaurs etc right now. It was such a beautiful day we took our lunch down to the park for a few hours.

Thursday: While we were at the library the day before we signed up for the 1000 books before school event. The kids are excited to stamp their chart for each book they read. I think we will get to 1000 pretty fast, They are already up to 30, Lili is a few ahead of Auron because she will sit forever and ever being read to. Auron prefers chapter books so he will take a little longer I think. Since we can read 10+ books a day I think we will have it out of the way before Christmas.
Auron and Lili both went to Lego class at the library and loved it.

Friday: This was the day the kids had been excited about all week! We were off to the science museum. We met our cousins at the train and were on our way. We thought that going during the week would be a good idea but we were SO wrong. The whole place was swarming with school kids. Big kids who were pushy and rude and didn't care about the little kids waiting patiently in line before them. In the end we skipped the first floor and went upstairs to the little kids area which was much more quiet (the school kids weren't allowed in there) Unfortunately we didn't really get to see the cool Alice in Wonderland exhibit or the Space one that my kids were excited about. The kids had a blast anyway and are already asking to go back.

Saturday: Clean clean clean that's what I did all Saturday morning. I always like to have the house back in order from the week before lunch on Saturday. After lunch the kids and I went to get some sand to refill their sandpit. I can't believe its that time of year again! Summer is coming and we CAN"T wait!!!!!! before long we will be able to put the pool back up.

Sunday: Ammon threw up this morning twice. He seems fine now but has already had 2 naps. Looks like whatever it was may have passed.

Hope you all had a lovely week too!

Haircuts, Doctors, and Ice Skating

We all had a fantastic week! It feels like we have finally finding our routine again which is amazing. I hate the feeling you get when everything is all out of whack and nothing is predictable. I prefer my life to be boring and well planned. The last 3 months couldn't have been further from that.
It 3am one morning I had the terrible realisation that Ammon was late for his 6 month immunisations. so I quickly booked those in the next day. He has been a bit delayed in his last two sets because he has been sick over winter but now we are all caught up until he is 1. He was a champ and didn't even cry. I think I am lucky that my kids take them so well.
The following day Ammon had his 8 month check up at the health nurse. He is still fat. a full 1.5kg over the 98th percentile, and 98th percentile for height and head circumference. All in one week he decided he was going to crawl and start pulling himself up on everything. I doubt it will be long before he is off walking. He is such a placid baby. The only time you hear him complain is if he is tired or hungry, the rest of the time he is busy busy busy. He loves to be invilved in whatever the other kids are doing. If they are on the couch, he needs to be on the couch, if they are colouring, he needs to have a pencil too. It is pretty cute how much he loves to be with them. Lili doesn't think it is cute at all and really hates all the "love" he gives her.
On Thursday we went to the park for a picnic. We caught the train to the park and Auron isisted on bringing a big box that had arrived that morning with school supplies. I told him it might be a bit difficult to carry the whole way but it was up to him. We got 100m down the road before he wanted to me to carry it. Haha tough luck kid, I made him carry it the whole way. HE told me later that next time he is going to leave it at home.
One day last week I took the kids out to go ice skating. They loved it. Thankfully it was a lot cheaper than the place in Palmy. The workers at the rink we so lovely, they actually got out on the ice and helped the kids holding their hands and teaching them how to skate. By the end of our time there all 3 of the kids were pretty confident little skaters.
We ended up paying off our car this week too. The bank has changed its policies for home loans and our trip to NZ in June really really stuffed up our finance. Simply because they took the month of June as their final snap shot for our income. Which wasn't a realistic portrayal since Aarahi had 3 weeks off without pay. So in order to save all the hassle of proving to them that we were out of the country and it was for a legitimate reason we just paid the car off and the final approval went straight through.
That's it for the week. We have some exciting things planned for the coming week that I am sure the kids will enjoy.

Ammon got his hair cut this week. This a photo both Auron and Ammons first hair cuts. Auron is on the Left and is 11 months old, Ammon in the right is 7 months old

Ammon loving Lili. See how much she enjoys it!

Waiting for the doctor

Auron and Izayah

Speaking of hair. Lili had hers straightened one day last week because I was sick of having to fight her to brush it. Those curls are hard to maintain! But this didn't even last a day