Just putting it out there

and in ten years time (ish) we'll see how right i was.
Thinking my three year old will one day be a vegetarian! (Although one of the ones that makes allowances for seafood!)
Maggie is not a big meat eater. She does eat it, but really takes her time. Put salad on her plate however and she scoffs it down! (Not complaining by the way!)
We were driving back from Kaiteri the other day and discussing what takeaways to have for tea. Pizza was mentioned (not something we have very often) and miss M yells out "I want a salad pizza" (Mmmmmmmmm!?!)
She does however love seafood of pretty much anykind. Fish, shellfish, whatever. She was happy to eat oysters at a very young age (and much to her Daddy's upset). On the same night that pizza was discussed we ended up going to the noodle bucket (First time ever and YUM!! Definitely going back!). Miss M saw the menu pictures and stated "I want the one with the wimps" (Too cute!). Sadly she had to share the honey chicken with her siblings (of which she ended up giving most of her chicken to her sister), but did get to share in a number of "wimps" from her Daddy's garlic prawn noodles (very happy little girl!).

Don't mess with the heart!

While i am not totally against this government (they have made a couple of okay changes), they do have to be dreaming if they think the general kiwi population are going to sit back and let them go against some of our key 'from the heart' beliefs.
Specifically the mining, but there are other issues as well. I realise that yes the money would be useful, but at what cost?
Summing things up at the moment they are suddenly okay with killing whales and mining our national parks....next it will be nuclear power!! SERIOUSLY - WHAT ARE THEY THINKING! I know there is more to it than saying it like that, but you just don't mess with matters of the heart!!
There is also all this guff lately about trying to make money so we're as rich as Australia. HELLO....We are not Australia, why on earth would we want to be like them? If we were that desperate why not just become a part of Australia and be done with it (and NO, funnily enough i am not for that idea either!)

IDIOT

Sadly these days it usually takes someone commenting i haven't been on in a while to get me in here. Life is currently soooooo busy.
Along with the usual intricacies (current favourite word, so while this isn't quite the right spot for it, i'm using it here anyway) of daily life i have added study into the mix. IDIOT!!
For this year i have one semester full of study from home doing my Certificate in Learning Support. I have realised that i didn't appreciate just how much time was spent on normal daily chores/tasks till i tried fitting in full time study as well. Again IDIOT!
So far we have had 1 official week of the course and i have no idea how i'm doing. We have a University of Canterbury site where you can go to see what others in the course are up to and a part of my course is actually based out of this site, but all of last week had very little happening on there, so i'm feeling quite unnerved. I'm hoping it's all because last week was orientation week at the university...so here's hoping for more feedback this week.
I do however have my first assignment ready to post away (due in March 8th), so that's kinda exciting. Not looking forward to some of my assignments though.

Anyway's we'll see how we get on over the next few months and if all does go well then next year i will start my first full year of three doing my Bachelor of Primary Teaching. IDIOT!!

Summer

We have been having a great family fun-filled summer (when the weather allows). Christmas was awesome....kids were spoilt, but very happy and we had lovely food with all our relatives and some nice times.
I got to have my first New Years in a long time as we pitched our camper on Daryl's cousins' lawn and so kids were put to bed and i could continue to join in. Pretty casual evening, but good company and a few songs on singstar. Good fun.
The new year saw us head away camping up Quinneys bush with Daryl's sister and family, which was awesome! Such an awesome campsite. We camped on the edge of the playground, so were able to monitor the littlies, while the big kids took off on their bikes for adventures. Big flying foxes, a massive water slide, go karts and swimming in the river. Brilliant!
The rest of the holidays are now being spent catching up with friends and spending any sunny time in the pool or at the beach. GOOD TIMES!

'Gordon', our camper up Quinney's Bush


Go Karting fun


Cringing ready for the splash! Charlotte and her cousin go down the waterslide together.


Fun on the flying fox

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth

Second to last in her class, but she finally lost her two front teeth! Drama central getting them out, but proud as punch once it happened. Two nights in a row the poor tooth fairy had to visit and both were special (extra money earning teeth). The first because it was the first, the second because she pulled it herself.

I have two wonderful little girls. Really thought we must've been pretty good parents to have ended up with such good girls (sure they have their moments, but they really are few and far between).
Then along comes a willful, tantrumming, rough and tumble, testosterone filled two year old boy, who challenges all the great parenting skills you thought you had.
Not so sure now if my great girls are a result of good parenting or if we just got super lucky to end up with naturally occurring really good girls!

Family shot for 2009