Catching up!

It's been a while since I had time to sit down and blog. Having a baby who seems to have suddenly discovered the world means I am never still for very long, and since my computer is painfully slow I need a good chunk of time if I intend to download photos. This morning however my hubby is at work for a few hours, Jaden is with his other side of the family and Bethany was asleep when I started (she is not anymore, but is trapped in her play gym thing for the moment!), so I can finally catch up!!

The photos seem a bit higgeldy piggeldy, I normally have it set on the centre button but it obviously changed itself and I didn't notice, oh well. What you can see in our dish rack is our very first produce from our garden. A lovely lettuce, picked, washed and ready to eat. Unfortunately this is the only one we got to pick like that cause we obviously did something wrong and the rest 'went to seed' and started growing up like a stalk and then dying off. Brett's dad has given us some manure for the garden and some more lettuce seedlings, so we may try again. Our pumpkin seems to finally have one vegetable actually growing. We have been trying to pollinate them as we see the female flowers opening, but with limited success so far, hopefully this 1 little pumpkin will grow!!! You can also see some of our 'festival of flowers', which seems to have new colours and flowers ever day.

We have another grogeous sunflower that opened up this morning and our corn is growing quite a few cobs, not sure if you can really see it in the photo or not but there's cobs hiding under the leaves there, YAY!!!

Onto other things we've been doing lately. Brett has done a lot of overtime in the past few weeks so we felt inspired to spend what we would normally spend ourselves on groceries in a week on groceries for another family and make a christmas hamper. Jaden was very excited at this christmas project and since we have had chrisco and castle hampers in the past where you get a list that you check off as you unpack things he decided we needed to make a list to give them too, very cute.

We packed it all into boxes with a chrissy gift for the kids too and went as a family to deliver it, it was heaps of fun and I know it really blessed the family, but I also love the fact that it reminded my son that christmas is not all about 'I want' and 'what I can get', and he really got into the idea of giving to others generously!

We haven't done much science this term apart from our garden, the first trimester of my pregnancy only left me with the energy for the basics of school, but I am 15 weeks now and apart from an ear infection this week have been feeling a lot better, so we are 'experimenting' again. Yesterday Jaden wanted to crush a can like he'd read in a book. So we put water in it, I heated it over the stove and then you turn it upside down into a bowl of cold water. We didn't capture the exact moment it crushed itself on camera cause it happened so quick. It made a big bang and Jaden thought it was great. He has now decided any time we have a can of drink (which is rarely), we should do this before recycling it.

Miss Bethany will be 9 months old in a couple of days and has all of a sudden become so much more active and independant. She has stood up holding onto things a couple of times in the last 2 days, which is a little scary in a house that is all floorboards and slate tiles so no doubt there will be more bumps and bruises like the one she copped on her forehead from the edge of the lounge the other day.

Part of her budding independance is that she doesn't let me feed her much anymore and wants to do it herself, I have given her an extra spoon a few times and let her think she was doing it herself but yesterday I let her have a go. She actually did get a few spoonfuls into her mouth before she decided to put the bowl in her lap and finger paint with the sweet potato. She went straight from the high chair to the bath but she was very happy :-)

Well that's us at the moment, must dash now and rescue the baby who is most unhappy at not being able to escape and explore and who smells a tad suspicious as well.

The adventures of Bethany.

My little girl has suddenly got a lot more grown up and very active! We have had to pull out the playpen I bought a few months ago at the Target toy sale so that we can have a few momets of peace from her getting into absolutely everything, she especially likes pulling all the DVD's off the shelf in the loungeroom.

She also likes pulling all her books out but we let her do that, she must be starting to realise it too cause after being redirected away from other things several times she'll head to this shelf where she can get away with pulling everything out. She then sits there and looks through them and since she is used to the touch and feel ones she runs her hand over the pages of all the books checking for feely parts which is very cute.

Last week she had her first experience of sand at playgroup. She wasn't quite sure about it at first but seemed to warm up to it and surprisingly didn't try to eat it. We are heading to the beach for a holiday in Dec so I'm trying to get her used to the new texture!!

She is finally crawling forwards properly, not very fast yet but I can see that chnaging very soon!!

And just as an aside one of my sunflowers greeted me today with this beautful flower, YAY :-)

Half a garden update.

Either the blog site or my computer are having issues and after 1/2 an hour and 3 unsuccessful attempts to upload the other 5 photos I had of our garden I have given up!! You will just have to imagine our corn, sunflowers, tomato, carrots and zucchini growing beautifully!!! Above you will see our lettuce is looking great and will be ready to start eating soon, just needs a bit more growth in the 'heart'.

Our pumpkin started flowering about a week and a half ago which is very exciting!

These are some of my herbs. The parsley is doing great. The basil and mint have only just started actually growing well but seem to be catching up. (my oregano which is not in the photo has only just started actually sprouting again after I tripped over the pot and spilt it all over the place, oops!!)

This pot and the one below are our 'festival of flowers' and have come up with lots of variety. There is way too much in both pots but I couldn't separate them cause they were all a bit entangled so they'll just have to cope. The pot that looks empty in the middle of the flower pots is my chives, there are quite a few growing in there but you can't really see them in the photo.

I might try tonight to upload the rest of our garden pics and see if I have better luck!

In rememberance.

In looking at the past with Jaden recently we went through some boxes of photos at my mum's place and found all my grandma's photos which I am now planning to put into some albums and hopefully find out who the people are in the ones who aren't labelled. My grandma will be 92 in December and has dementia but still has good days, so hopefully I can pick her brain before all knowledge of who is in half these photos is lost forever!!

The photo above is her family in 1915, which is before she was even born. Her 3 brothers are at the back, Jack was in the navy in World War 1, and Bert was in in the army.

This is Bert (Albert) Austin, an Anzac soldier.

This is Jack Austin in 1940 where he also served in the navy during World War 2.

It has been amazing going through these photos and also reading some bits of history and genealogies that my grandma has written down as well. Jaden and I have been able to talk about the meaning of remembrance day with renewed meaning for him cause he had ancestors who fought in the wars. Neither of them died overseas and lived till 1971 and 1983 which makes it a lot less sad for our family, but remembering the world wars always makes me very teary, so many lost lives that affected whole generations. Let's remember!!

Creative recycling!

This is what happens when I let Jaden loose with the recycling box. We have a robot (with very cute penguin feet).

And a city with little houses, a car on the street and Sydney Tower at the end of the road.

Very clever :-)

A garden for a little girl to dream in :-)

Bethany's mural is finally finished and it is beautiful!!!!!! This is the view from her door.

A bit closer.

There's a swing with a ladybird on it, steps climbing up the tree (there's a caterpillar on there if you look closely).

Butterflies flying around the tree.

A little birdie family in a nest.

Mushroom growing at the base.

Some more little creatures hanging out at the bottom of the tree, a snail and a bumble bee.

Time warp!!!

I watched a show on Sunday night that I really enjoyed and it has cause me to do a lot of reflecting and reminiscing. It was called electric dreams and a modern family in Britain agreed to take part in a social experiment where their whole house was transformed back to 1970. No microwave, vcr, mobiles, computers, not even a freezer to start with. They did it for 10 days and each day would tick over the next year where any new inventions could be given to them. I wish I had've taped it cause I would've loved to have shown Jaden what life was like when I was really little.

Next Sunday they're gonna be in the 80's so I am taping that one cause it's more my era anyway and we're going to do a project on how much life has changed. I was chatting to Jaden about my childhood and he can't fathom a world where I couldn't watch videos, we didn't get a VCR till I was 12. We didn't even have a hot tap in the kitchen so he thinks I grew up in the dark ages LOL. So next week he's going to interview me and Brett and also our parents and then we're gonna try and find old pictures and do a time warp project. We've just been doing 'boring' maths and english bookwork so far this term since I've been so tired so Jaden is looking forward to something a little different!!!

So these are some pics of my life in the 70's (which isn't a lot since I was only born in 1975). The top pic is me with my mum, my aunty (I forgot she actually has brown hair, been blonde for years) and some random boyfriend of my aunty's I think, complete with long hair and cigarette!! I'm loving the stunning decor of green couch, curtains and carpet :-)


This is me and my grandma in her lovely orange suit.

I'm 11 months old here, don't think this wooden contraption would meet safety standards anymore and I'm loving the wooden kitchen cupboard behind me for 70's style.

christmas 1976, I look like a little nurse or something in that silly scarf, I'm sure it was very fashionable LOL

This is my 3rd birthday April 1978, with mum, grandma (love the brown suit!), aunty Carol (I am named Carolyn after her) and my cousin Zac.

This is the same day, hanging out in the loungeroom, with all that green and brown, and our high tech stereo to the side there, which was our record player. I used to have a box of little golden books on record that I thought were fantastic!!!!!

My 4th birthday 1979 (I'm the one in the denim overalls). I used to think this was the most massive backyard in the world, if I saw it today I'd probably think it shrunk LOL

christmas 1979 with my new dad, looking good in paisley pj's and a bushy face :-)