Yes - poor blog you have been neglected....

....and for that I am truly sorry!

I guess I don't get on here that much because in all honesty I am not sure that anyone is even reading it half the time. It is hard to maintain something when you think no one is interested.

As for house photos - there are still some things that need to be done before I really want to take pics, there is some painting that needs to be finished, and a few little odds and ends. I will get some up soon I promise....I haven't forgotten that I promised them.

In the meantime here are some photos over the last few months...in no particular order.

Cool boy!

Gorgeous Gal

Those packing boxes were so much fun to play in.
Cute - even when throwing a tantrum.
This is our friend Nate giving us his "treasure" face.

Tori at swimming lessons. Just before her first swimming lesson.

BTW she got her first sticker the other day, for floating with a device on her own for 10 seconds....she was pretty proud....or at least Mummy was. The first night in the house, this is how the kids slept! Actually for the first 3 weeks or so they ended up like this because Matthew's bed was all over the room while waiting for replacement parts.....don't ask! Will post a pic of the bed next post. Burying Matthew in the gravel!? Matthew burying Tori in the gravel. Just a cute one of the two of them playing. Do you kind of get the idea that even though they argue like.....brother and sister lets say.....they love eachother VERY much? Well that is it for photos. As most of you know I have resigned from my job. If you want more insight into that I have posted on it here. It was big decision to leave a job that I love, but sometimes a gal has got to do what a gal has to do. I start my new job next week as an non-emergency ambulance attendant....looking forward to it. Sounds like it will be a fairly relaxed and fun type of job.

The house is coming along nicely...but very slowly. We are starting to get annoyed at the lack of progress. There are still things that need to be done and we want them done now...I mean come on. We have been pretty patient, but the patience is wearing thin. Matthew loves it here and he is outside 90% of the time kicking his footy - gotta love that. He is often covered in mud - but at least he is getting some fresh air.

Ray, unfortuantly, has been way too busy at work. With some massive restructruing going on and him having to take on more than one role it seems like we hardly see him. It should settle soon though which will be really nice. Then it will be time for him to get stuck into the new garden.

I have been enjoying my scrapping heaps and for more info on that you can check out my scrapping blog. Something has got to keep me sane.

Tori is Tori - she is a busy 3 year old who wants to be doing something every minute. She is a bright little thing (at least I think so). She says her alphabet, counts to 14 or there abouts, sings so many songs it isn't funny (but my favourite is her version of 'shut up and drive'), knows her colours, writes her name (on the new walls sometimes), recognises some letters....

Nothing else to really tell.

Hope everyone is well. Hugs to you all and please remember even though I am not always blogging, you are all in my thoughts.

MWAH

Anthea

xoxo

An Update

Gee - it's been a while hasn't it. Not a whole lot going on, March is nearly over and we should be moving into the new house in about a months time. It is coming along very nicely - I can't wait to be in it.

The new kitchen

Ray and I are both another year older....woo hoo :) We both had quiet but nice birthday's this year. Our pressy to ourselves is the house - we decided that there will be so many new things we want to buy once we are in that we will save our hard earned $s till then.

Tori is doing really well. She is finally toilet trained. She is growing 'up' so fast. She wants to do everything by herself. It is not uncommon to hear "NO! Me do it!" She is loving childcare and playgroup and her fun personality is just getting 'funner'. Her favourite activities now are playing outside, annoying her brother, Play School and Dora. She also has developed a fondness for writing on walls and tables. Ughh.

Tori with Alex and Abi from Play School

Tori reading to dad.

Tori on her first fair ride (with Matthew)

Matthew is doing well in school. I still can't believe that my 'little' boy is in grade 5. He is still the kind of kid who doesn't try very hard, but manages to do well anyway - one day I hope he will put some effort in. Matthew is still enjoying his swimming, but it won't be much longer before swimming lessons are over. If he wants to do squad - he will move into that. Football season is coming up and he is looking forward to that. He got to meet some Collingwood players the other day, and although I shudder writing that name, he loves them and was thrilled to get their signatures and his ball, hat, drinkbottle and anything else he had on him. He gave up the playstation for Lent (and has surprisingly stuck to it), but still loves his gameboy.

Matthew with a butterfly

(I STILL Love this photo)

I am right into my scrapping right now and loving it. Although I am not the world's greatest scrapper....I have so much fun cutting and pasting. It is soooo therapeutic. Sometimes I am asked what is the point of it. I guess the answer to that is, not only is it fun - it is a great way of documenting stories for the kids and future generations. Hopefully when I am gone from this world, my kids kids and their kids etc. will kind of know me through what I have written. I also really want to do a photography class.....I just love playing with the camera!

Ray is doing well. Still no hobbies to speak of, but he did enjoy watching Canada win lots of gold in the last olympics. The highlight for him was when Canada beat the US in the hockey in overtime - what a great game. He was hoping to get his boat licence before Easter, but I think he has left it a little late. Ray has to have some surgery on his foot next week to remove a piece of glass that has been embedded in there for about...... 3 months. Crazy fool left it that long to go to the doctors to get it checked out. *insert rolling eye emoticon here*. He will be off work for a week recovering (don't ask me why it is gonna take that long - I think they plan on cutting the whole foot off.)

Anyway - just wanted to let everyone know we are still alive and doing well - hope everyone else is well too.

Hugs all round & MWAH.

Anthea

xox

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

OK, in true typical Anthea style, I am late with the wishes in my title, but I promise they are sincere. I did try to touch base with everyone on FB, but if I missed you....please accept my apologies, I was thinking of you all and I truly wish everyone a wonderful and happy New Year.

I trust that you all had a good one. We certainly did. Mum got this idea in her head that it would be fun to go camping for Christmas and New Years. After some convincing (yes it took a bit with some of us), we all decided that camping would indeed be fun. Camping on New Years is not new, but the whole camping on Christmas Day was a concept that even most of us had some trouble with. Deb, Shane and the girls were unfortuantly not with us this year; but by Christmas Eve at around 5ish, Mum, Dad, Shell, Brian, Dylan and Jake (Brian's nephew) and us Englishs' were all out camping at a place called Burrowey Reserve, ready to see in Christmas.

Now, don't get us wrong, just because we were camping doesn't mean that we missed out on any of the luxuries of a good ol' traditional Christmas, we just did it in true Aussie style. Now I know that there are a lot of Aussies out there who would question whether the word traditional Christmas and camping belong in the same sentance, but for some of my international friends I would imagine it is downright unbelievable, so here for you all to see are some of the photos from our week out.......(Just bear in mind there are a few - I have resized them to make veiwing them a bit easier, but it still might take a little while....sorry!)

No Christmas is complete without a Christmas tree...

One of the mini 'wreaths' that adorned each of our caravans

Christmas Eve, we kept with our Italian tradition of seafood - and boy was it goooooood!

Santa found us....despite one young man not being sure he would....and you can't see here, but the pressies and tree were about the only things not to get wet in the rain the night before - Good old Santa knew just where to sit them.

Tori wondering if there was more in her stocking. Yep - she understood the concept of pressies this year.

Matthew with a boat that Santa bought him, how clever of Santa to know that boat would get lots of use on the river.

The pressies that we got for eachother and the kids. Mmmmm - no! None of us were spoilt.

The Christmas table, complete with home made bon bons (The boys all got fishing tackle in theirs and us girls got a keychain with a supermarket trolley token on them and hair clips & Tori got hair accesories).

Yep - Ray got his turkey and to eat it too.....(in case you are wondering, it had to be cut in half to fit in the camp oven)

The food (salads instead of veggies), and yes there are several bottles of champers on the go.

Us

Mum & Dad

Michelle and Brian.

Dylan with his new toy.

Tori modeling her new bathers and thongs. (And before you ask, Tori did have a hat and rashie vest, but it was very late in the afternoon and very overcast and she was covered in sunscreen.) Oh and she did not wear ear plugs and she did NOT get an ear infection the whole time we were there!

The boys cooling off after Christmas lunch.

Matthew showing of his new t-shirt (& muscles).

Well, thats it for now, hope you enjoyed. For the very observant, you will notice some of these photos are larger than others....this was in no way intentional and by the time I realized my mistake I was not downloading them again.

I hope everyone had as good a Christmas as us....it really was fun; very little mess to clean up, a river to cool off in, everyone got to have a drink without worrying about driving, if anyone wanted a nap they could, the food was great (albiet it be simple) and most importantly we had eachothers company for the whole day!!!!!! Other than the fact that we missed Deb and Shane and the girls and of course, all of Rays family, it really was a perfect Christmas Day. So perfect that we might just do it again next year!

I will post more pics later. Love, hugs and kisses all round....

Anthea

xoxo