Baby Girl

Bekah is one of our earliest walkers, taking her first proper steps two days before her 1st birthday. The bag of 'baby' toys are not often touched as Bek likes to play with her older siblings, go through kitchen drawers, or sit in the swing outside. She longs for the day when she is allowed to roam free out in the yard. Sammy is one of her most favourite people, alongside Mummy & Daddy.

Changes around here

A number of weeks ago we re-arranged things in a few of the rooms. For those who are curious, here is our school/study/eating area now:

Last Week

we were spoiled with a visit last week fromJennifer... as well as lots of thought provoking chats, shopping, spending time together we...

went from a drive to Lorne (on the Great Ocean Rd). Along the road there is thisincredible house, completely off the ground!!
and were also treated with

icecream, donut and other treats. Thank you Jennifer.

Around here

We had a morning of thick frost and quite cold (4Celsius) till late in the morning. The children thought it was fun to see and feel the frost.

Months ago we purchased these three swing seats, Bear finally got to making the frame for it. The swing seats are suitable for adults to swing on also, plus one of the seats is specifically for an infant.

1st birthday

Big sister enjoying birthday party food

Bekah's 1st birthday cake

The birthday girl with Mummy

Under the Sea

The cubs were enjoying learning about the sea. Here is the old school room decorated by them.

Catching Up 2

These pictures are from my mobile (cell) phone so they are not very good quality, but you can get the general idea from them.
Amongst other activities, during the Easter school break the children spent time doing jigsaw puzzles...


& I cleaned the kitchen (and also did a deep clean in the rest of the house).

On our first interstate travel as mentioned in the previous post, we had a brief visit to see newborn Sarah Grace & parents.

And our second travel involved taking a 'detour' - we got to catch up with a couple of friends whilst there, which was lovely.

Catching Up 1

Between preserving, freezing, cooking, schooling, mothers group preparation, cleaning, to interstate trips, washing clothes/towels/sheets and other miscellaneous activities, blogging has not been a very high priority. So have had a few pictures waiting to post. This is the first installment as it is time to put the little ones to bed.

A bit over a week ago Bear brought in the carrot crop - over 7kg!! We are currently enjoying lots of carrots, along with parsnips and pumpkin.
Back in March we celebrated Leah's 4th birthday. What made the day extra special was that Leah's littlest cousin was born on her birthday!! Birthday twins. :)

We had a lot of zucchinis to cook up a few months back, which worked out well with what I had organised for school one day - so we had a baking morning. Here are the 4 cooks in the kitchen.

The children all adore little Bekah. She is getting to be such a big girl. She pulls herself up on furniture all the time now, and can sit unassisted.

Spot the Difference

Mothers Day 2009
Mothers Day 2010

School Days

ICT lesson...

Physical Education - obstacle courses...

To answer the question from the previous post about school - the children really enjoy school most of the time. The "main" teacher enjoys school especially the organising part of it all! Also finds school to be a learning experience - in many ways!

Homegrown - yum!

Thanks be to God, we daily are enjoying fresh homegrown produce. We have eaten well over 50 zucchini in the past number of weeks, along with cucumber and tomatoes every day... beans, capsicum, lettuce, snow peas, and corn. There are a lot of pumpkins almost ready, beetroot not far behind, as well as more of the above listed vegetables. Bear brought in a big bag of homegrown apples this morning. We are so thankful how God has provided the rain, and grown all of this for us!

Our tomato bushes have been laden with tomatoes. Here is a small sampling of a haul of tomatoes. This bunch made a batch of homemade tomato sauce (ketchup) pictured below. Have also made a double batch of pasta sauce, and have a lot more tomatoes needing to be used/cooked up.


Here are two meals that we have enjoyed with homegrown produce. The first one is a tuna salad.

And this one a hamburger. The onion, tomatoes, zucchini (in the bread), lettuce, capsicum, egg, beetroot, snow peas and herbs are all homegrown. Yum.

Can You Figure How This Happened?

Boxing Day was Bear's mummys birthday, so we had arranged to meet with them for tea. We were sitting waiting for them to arrive, and just as they arrived there was this great commotion a little way down the street. We quickly figured that there was some car accident of sorts, and we rushed and had a look. It was the most incredible sight to see. A 17 year old had stolen his mother's car, had no licence... and this is what he did. The whole structure was very precarious as the posts not knocked down were cracked and ready to fall at any time. What was absolutely astonishing was that this young man got out of the car without injury and no one else was injured even though there were thousands of dollars or damage done to this shop and surrounding cars. We overhead towns people saying that usually people would be outside on tables having coffee & cake, but not this day as it was a public holiday. We gave God thanks that no one was injured in what could have been something very horrific!

Precious People

This was taken in November, and just found it again!

School Time

For the curious people who want to know what our school area looks like:



Leah & Sam have the same name plates, and the twins have the same:



The jobs get switched around each week. And our apple tree is an incentive/behaviour tool. They can get two apples in their basket each day at school, which will add up to awards/rewards of some sort.


Sam likes to be involved with both school & Bekah. Bekah usually happily plays on the floor or in her bumbo. The bumbo is SO great!

Have many ideas of posts that I would like to blog, or pictures to include, BUT... the camera never gets out of its case, and the ideas never get further than my head. Maybe one day.

Have been really busy here, which is the majority of the reason why no blogging for the past couple of months. December was spent doing a lot of research for school, making jams and chutneys... and January has been equally as busy preparing for school and doing the normal things around the house.

Till have a few spare minutes again...
xx