We are in Devon by the way

Visiting my family, Nana and Grandad by-the-sea, Auntie Vicky by-the-sea, Auntie Polly near-the-sea, all my cousins, and my cousin's children (once removed?) and Aunts and Uncles, and friends who all live near(ish) to the sea.

Other than getting my car MOT'd down here in Devon by Gary (who i would highly recommend in Galmpton) I also particularly came down to see Rachel and Josh who are back from The Bay of Plenty in New Zealand, where they were for two years. They have Freya who is nearly 4, Pippa who was born out there and the same age as Iris, and another one on the way.

Lots of photos to come when i return.

x

BBQ with Nana & Grandad by-the-sea

Nana & Grandad by-the-sea, hosted a family BBQ in honour of my grandad's birthday who died many many many moons ago, i believe my mum was about 12 when he died, so obviously i never met him.
Aunts, Uncle, and lots of cousins and second cousins all came over for a fun filled afternoon.

First off there was some tree climbing from Daisy, Poppy, Zach and Carmen.















Then Grandad rigged up a death-slide, which was good fun for the children, here is Ava modeling how to elegantly come down a death-slide.



And Steve had a go too.








Then a very small paddling pool came out and four children got in; Daisy, Bella, Oscar and Carmen.
















This is the youngest member of the family to date, Kristian, who is only about 7 weeks old at this point, sleeping very peacefully through the afternoon.




And in case you were wondering where she was, Iris was having fun wondering around Grandad's garden.

Freya & Pippa & Rachel & Josh

Josh with Pippa and Rachel with Freya, Poor Freya had just stubbed her toe so she wasn't feeling all that up for a family portrait.


Here Iris got in on the action and plopped herself back in the arms of Josh, Iris loved Josh, Iris really loved Josh.









Here is lovely little Pippa who being rather inquisitive got closer and closer to the camera, there is another version even closer but i figured we didn't need to see her bogies really.


Here are all four girls in the bath having a lot of fun splashing.

Pirates of Brixham

In the summer months, every thursday is 'Pirates Thursday' in Brixham, South Devon and there was quite a lot of pirate action going on.

This pirate is a Johnny Depp / Jack Sparrow look a like, and he quite spookily did look like him from the side, he sounded and acted like him as well, it was quite bizarre. Daisy was suitably scared of look-e-like-Jack, but look-e-like-Jack kept coming back to her to see if she had grown a bit of courage to fight him and she hadn't.
I did manage to get look-e-like-Jack to pose for me with two of his pirate buddies and it would have been a good shot, but then my camera battery ran out, bah humbug.



Daisy deemed it safer to fight the balloon making pirate who made her, her pink sword balloon, he wasn't as scary as look-e-like-Jack.


And just because Johnny Depp is rather handsome, here is a photograph of the real Captain Jack Sparrow, that i didn't take obviously.

Fairies in Devon

Here are a couple of photos of the girls dressed as fairies running around my mum's garden.



Here are a couple of photos of the girls with my sister 'Auntie Polly' sitting in the garden.

Radiohead in Victoria Park

We (Marc and I) went to see Radiohead tonight, Fred babysat.
They were good, but i had a cough and cold and was feeling very chilly, so didn't enjoy it as much as i could of, but it was still good, especially the lights when the sun went down.

It was a bit like being at a mini festival full of everybody who works with/on/or for the internet though.

Click the image to see it bigger.

Hanging on in there

Here is Daisy, Iris and Leo playing in the park, well i say playing i guess technically these photos show Daisy and Leo hanging on things, but it was a lot of fun and Daisy has now learnt to drop down from the big one.









We have only just discovered these down by the canal, so they are our new thing when the weather is remotely nice.

A dead beetle in our house.

Marc found a dead beatle in our house, and asked me take some pics of it on one of our drink coasters.
It doesn't really look very real does it.















It would have been far more interesting to have found an dead Beatle, actually no it wouldn't, that would have been messy and a bit disturbing.
I would settle for Ringo or Paul coming round for a cup of tea though.

(FYI - I took this pic off this website)


Daisy and Iris have taken to singing 'Yellow Submarine' i must have sung it to them without even thinking, i don't know all the words though (i must find them) but i'm pretty sure i never sang it like Daisy does.
Daisy's version goes something like, "We all live in a yellow submarine, in America, in American, we all live in a yellow submarine, in American, in America" I have no idea why.

Old Negs

Every now and then i shoot some film, then, i forget that i shot some film and it stays in my camera for ages, then i find it and develop it and am sometimes pleasantly surprised with the results.
Sometimes.

Other times i realise why digital is so fantastic.

Mary and Andy in Brissy

Look at these explorers out in Enoggera park in Brisbane forest.
Mary said there were lots of Wallaby's, can't see any in the background mind you.

Happy Daddy's Day

Daisy drew Daddy a lovely picture of himself for Daddy's Day.
You can clearly see his lovely long eye lashes that she decided he absolutely had to have.
Not sure why he has one leg bigger than the other, he doesn't in real life, honest.
She did say one of his arms is all wiggly, the other is straight, perhaps he is actually dancing in this picture.
Perhaps with false eyelashes!


Daddy also got breakfast in bed this morning, and his tea was served to him in a new fathers day mug with this pic of his girls on the side, along with some toast.







And then lucky daddy cooked lunch for us and a few guests, he cooked 'Beer Can' chicken, it was yummy, and mighty amusing pushing a beer can up a chickens bottom.
Link to article about 'beer can' chicken and recipes.

Sarah and Charlie's birthdays

Sarah sent me through this photograph of her and her boy Charlie.
It was their birthday on the 10th June, Charlie was 4 and Sarah was 39.
They are wearing their matching hats that i knitted for them.

Of course it is just coming into winter now for them in New Zealand, so hopefully they will get some wear out of their matching hats, until they loose them of course.

Sarah and Charlie's Blog

Sunshine!!

Oooh unexpected sunshine is so good, i hadn't expected nice weather at all, i have been expecting yet more rain, but we have sunshine, horay horay horay.

My mum and dad (Nana and Grandad-by-the-sea) have gone away on their holidays to Majorca and they have taken the rain away with them, horay.

Please leave it in Majorca when you come back.

They have gone on holidays to visit one of my dad's older brothers 'Max, 85' who he has never before met, it's a long story which shall be told another time.

Are you two oldies having a nice time out there?

Iris walked all the way to the Library and back

Today we walked to the library, it's not far, maybe a 10-15 min walk at the very most, but at Iris' pace it took us about 30 mins.
Here are the girls holding Daisy's green library bag containing the old books that we were returning, we choose badly last time, last month's books were mostly rubbish, i was glad to get rid of them, the only good one was Little Red which i thought was totally charming.
This months books are very good, we have a lovely Michael Rosen book called Rover, a very sweet book called Ben and Gran and the Whole Wide Wonderful World, and many many others because you can take out up to 12 books at a time!
Oh i also picked up a Dr. Seuss book because i thought it might be good, but i was wrong Green Eggs and Ham is actually quite boring after you've read it three times within one afternoon, i now regret getting that from library, and thank my lucky stars nobody has ever bought it for us, Sorry Dr Seuss.

Daisy's Triceratops

On a lighter note...
I meant to put this up ages ago.
Grandma took Daisy into town to look at the dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum when she was over visiting and helping out for Daisy's birthday party.
Grandma let Daisy choose a toy from the museum shop and Daisy chose a soft cuddly Triceratops for herself and a baby dinosaur for Iris.
After the museum, they went to visit Marc at his work, and whilst Daisy was at Marc's office she did this drawing of what her dinosaur really looks like.
"It's a lady triceratops and she has chicken pox on her legs, but her body is hairy. One of her eyes is happy [left] and one of them is sad [right]. The one is sad because the happy one poked it."

Here are the two soft cuddly dinosaurs.

Packaging taking over the earth

On Saturday i bought a set of new Canon printer cartridges for my Canon Pixma ip4200 printer, I had previously bought some refilled ones at a fraction of the cost from ebay, but, they didn't really work all that well. I have five separate cartridges in total, a big Black, a smaller Black and three smaller Magenta, Cyan and Yellow, the trouble was my printer kept telling me i needed to change cyan and magenta even after i'd changed it, and then even when it accepted that i had changed it, it still didn't seem to be able to print the correct colours.
My printer was on drugs i tell you, 'Lucy in the sky with diamonds" and all that malarky.
However the one good thing about the ebay refills was the minimum packaging, they all came together in one envelope and each cartridge was individually wrapped in that soft airtight plastic stuff, the only other thing was an A4 piece of paper with instructions on how to prize the chip off your old cartridge and stick it to your new refilled one, that was all.

Look at the packaging that came with one of the five genuine Canon cartridges that i bought from PC World, it's unbelievable the amount of plastic and cardboard that has gone into protecting one tiny cartridge.

blissful sleep

Iris slept at lunchtime today, so all is well with the world again.

Today Iris didn't sleep

Iris is usually pretty good at going to sleep in the afternoon, either in her bed or in the buggy, however i have noticed these last few weeks that, she has been having her snooze later and later, which means she isn't so keen to go to bed again at 7/7.30pm their usual bed time.

We went out for a walk around 1(ish) and i was expecting Iris to drop off in her buggy quite soon, i say expecting, perhaps i was just hoping and praying, anyway though she didn't drop off, instead she wanted to get out and walk and run and look at the geese.

Iris not very sleepy and wanting out of the prison so she can chase geese

Geese tolerating us being near them

Geese realising we have no food for them so doing a runner

Lex's birthday party

Now that's what i call party.
Presents, party food, cake, games, toys, sweets and all with your mates around.

I took Daisy along to Lex's 4th birthday party, Iris stayed at home with Marc.
Daisy had a wonderful time at Lex's party, she thoroughly enjoyed both pass the parcels, especially once she'd landed her bag of choccie, i think actually winning one of the final prizes of a 'bat and ball' was just an added bonus.

She wasn't so good at the musical statues though, she has always had ants in her pants, so keeping still is nigh on impossible.

The bright green crocodile cake, made by Conor (Lex's big brother) was simply wonderful, wonderfully full of sugar, but wonderful all the same.

Here are a few photographs

Lex opening her first present of the afternoon

Party picnic food

A little bit of bodge-job face painting, Winnie is a cat

Pocahontas Daisy obviously has her 'Native American Red Indian Princess' face paint on.

Pass the parcel being opened

Lex in true battle stance, getting ready to thwack a Piñata

The aforementioned Piñata

Daisy eyeing the candy, having just slaughtered the cute number 4

(ok, Gordon did have to basically cut it apart with a pen knife cos the kids weren't getting anywhere fast with their thwacking)

Loot being pocketed

The wonderful crocodile cake