Birthday Girl

My Little Charli Bear turned 5 today. She had a fantastic birthday, lots of good presents that she "always wanted". It is so cute that every present she gets is exactly what she has always wanted whether it be My Little Pony Trouble, UNO, Hogwarts Castle Lego or LaLaLoospy dolls. Everything is exactly the present she wanted and was waiting for. She squeals and laughs and then plays with them for days without taking a break for any other toy. The best thing is that not only does she love her presents, but she is happy to share with her sister and they play together with them really well.

On the other hand, she is FIVE!!! It feels like just months ago we were moving to Melbourne with a 3.5 yr old and a 10 month old and now they are 7.5 and 5 years old. She will be starting school next year which is really only 6 months away. She seems so small, but she is so ready. She will have so much fun next year and I am positive that she is going to love the rest of this year at Kinder.

Charli is smart, loving, sweet, always happy, confident, outgoing, loves her "Puppy No-Eyes", sucks her thumb, cuddly and an all round ray of sunshine in our lives.

Happy Birthday Charli-Bear, we love you <3

School & Kinder

To be honest with you, I can't quite believe that it is almost the end of the first term of school already. Paige is doing well at school and loving her new teacher which is great. Charli is LOVING kinder and doing quite well. She is really into the routine of how it works and often corrects me when I get the order wrong of the way they do things like packing up from snack time, etc. Funny girl. If things continue at this rate, it will soon be the end of the year and Charli will be ready for school.

On a positive, I did fill out all of the required documents for Charli's school application and didn't forget any of the photocopies that needed to go with it, yay for me. I am pretty proud of myself on that one.

Things are pretty hectic with working and school and travel (to and from school and kinder) and everything else that goes along with it. Particularly the new out of school activity taken up by Paige. She is doing Martial Arts 2 times a week and absolutely loving it. I was not sure at first as she is quite uncoordinated and not very sporty, but she gets out there and runs and does push ups and start jumps and situps. They practice their stances, and punches, kicks, rolls and then play poison ball. Running for 45 minutes and she will come off the mat sweating and puffing and ask to do another class....straight away.

I have to say, although we are busy, we are happy and it is good.

The Beach

Yesterday we went to the beach. We took the girls down there with the expectation that after about an hour they will have had enough and we would be heading home.

Little did we realise that since the last time we were there they had both decided that the beach was AWESOME (and yes, it was in capitals). I think I may have written about it before, but Charli is not good with water in general. There was an incident when she was quite alot younger where she went under the water by mistake and couldn't get up again. When she did there was much coughing and spewing and never going in the water again without behaving like a terrified Koala Bear which often left my ears ringing and my neck strangled. This summer, however, we have made an effort to go to the pool and beach more often so that she can get used to the water. Over New Years we visited friends and spent an afternoon at the local country pool. They had a large kids pool which was 0.9 metres deep. Deep enough that Charli had water to her chest, but not too deep that she was afraid. She loved it and since has been much better.

So, as the water at the beach, being Dromana, was pretty calm and you could go out quite a way without getting deep, she had a ball. In and out of the water by herself, jumping around and even falling down while trying to pick up a shell. No screaming when the water got on her face and only a little bit of strangling. In fact, she was having so much fun, she didn't want to leave once we had had enough about 2.5 hours later.

Paige of course never wants to leave the water. She loves the water and always has. Normally the beach gets too much for her as she swallows alot and the salt stings her eyes. This time she took her goggles so the salt in her eyes was not an issue and she didn't swallow enough to throw up so she was also all for not going yet.

The Boy and I had enough and announced that it was time to leave, both girls got out of the water with much complaining and gnashing of teeth. They then rolled around in the sand so that they would have to go back in the water to wash of, oh dear! This happened about 3 or 4 times until Daddy called an end to the play and they were trundled off to the car to promptly fall asleep on the trip home.

Over all, a good day.

Just Like Daddy

It seems like it wasn't very long ago that Paige was this size and playing computer games. Now it is Charli's turn to be "just like Daddy". I asked her what she was doing when I took this photo and her response was "I am being like Daddy, watching a movie and playing a game." Imagine it said in a tone of "like DER, what do you think I am doing".

Too cute!

It Doesn't Really Matter

I keep finding myself worrying about whether or not my washing will dry, it has been on the line since Sunday and is just getting wetter. Will the rain ever stop. It has been raining constantly since Sunday night, not heavy rain, just constant rain. When I got up this morning and walked down stairs I thought to myself, gee it is damp in here, the railing feels wet and pretty much all the floors couch, etc feels damp. This humid weather is not fun.

Then I turn on the news......




Although it is raining, it is really not that wet at all.

My thoughts and prayers with those who are going through this disaster in Queensland. All our friends in Queensland are safe, but there are many who are not.