Master Chef Matthew

OK - the other day in the supermarket, Matthew announced that he wanted to cook dinner that night. He proceeded to tell me what he wanted to cook. We had to have carrots, peas, red pepper and meat "in strips". I already had a cauliflower in my hand at this stage, so he agreed that I didn't have to put it back.

We came home and the process of creating began. Matthew peeled and cut the carrots, boiled the beans....(yep the peas I thought we had at home were beans)....and helped cut the caulifower. I taught him how to cut the red pepper and Ray helped Matthew cut the rib eye steaks into strips.

We steamed, boiled, stir-fried and sauteed the various foods and Matthew arranged them on a plate. Now the meat in strips had to be placed in a glass for a few minutes after being cooked to give it a roundish appearence (that is the best way I can describe it) and put in the middle of our plates in 'circles'. He then cut up the cauliflower and filled the circles and decorated the plates with the remaining vegetables

..... this is his creation.....

So - who do you think has been watching too much Master Chef.....!?

Hugs all round.

Anthea

xoxox

One Lovely Blog.....

I received my very first blog award from my lovely scrapping friend Sue. Thank you Sue.

Here are the rules:
1) Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award, and his or her blog link.
2) Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you’ve newly discovered. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.


Now picking 15 people to send awards to is going to be difficult...so I am just going to say I nominate everyone who I visit on a regular basis for this award. Everyones blogs are amazing in my eyes. I love sharing a little bit of my life with you all and I love that you allow me to share in yours. So to all my blogging friends, this one is for you!

MWAH

Anthea

xoxo

Busy times...

Sorry it has been a while...life is justa bit too busy right now.

I have 2 more assignments till I finish my post grad -now 2 doesn't sound like much, but it just isn't happening for me right now. Finding the time and having the inclination to do them is like pulling teeth! Grrrr. If I could find some positive in doing it, that might help, but all it is going to give me is a piece of paper telling me that I can do what I have been doing for the past 10 years! I am not saying I haven't learnt anything - how can you not? I am just questioning the relevance of some of the stuff that we have learnt. Oh well, it can only be good in the end! Just have to finish.

Work is busy - when is it not? Lots of people off sick and too many patients. Seriously - so many new patients of late - not good!

The new house will officially start within a week or two - just finalizing contracts. Will have to get down to the block to get a before pic....ohhhh...very exciting. Yesterday we started picking out baths, taps, sinks, etc. I love this part...am not looking forward to tiles and bricks though - they are hard to change if you make a mistake - lol. Will keep you all posted. Hope it all goes well. We really like our builder and think he is going to do a great job.

The kids are well, Matthew is off today as it is parent teacher interview day. Both him and Tori are driving me mad...! LOL

On a sad note; my Nonna (grandmother) is not doing so well. There is a pic of her in my previous post. She is in hospital right now and not looking to come home for a while yet. I pray she is OK, and ask that everyone spare a thought for her.

On a good note; Rays sister is getting married this weekend - unfortunately with the house stuff going on right now, we couldn't spare the funds to be there with about a months notice as a trip to Canada for 4 isn't that cheap. Nancy and Greg - we wish you all the best together and can't wait to see some photos. We truly are thinking of you on your special day and wish we could be there.

That's it for now - no photos for today. Hope everyone is well.

Hugs to you all.

Anthea

xoxo

Scrapping Fun

Ok -for those of you that don't know, I dabble in scrapbooking. I certainly am not the best scrapper around, but I have a bit of fun and find it very therapeutic. I also love that it is a great way to preserve history and tell a story. In the year and half that I have doing this, I really am lucky to have created about 20 - 25 pages....and this weekend I did 5!

This weekend I participated in my first ever cybercrop (actually my first crop of any kind) and had a blast. A cybercrop is where a bunch of scrappers get together online and participate in challenges set by the organizers and sponsors. Now none of my pages are by any means good enough to win any prizes but I thought it might be fun to show you what I created. So without further ado.....

Here they are...

The journalling reads:

On this bridge – we played, we laughed, we cried. We shared dreams and hopes. We fished. We put on concerts for the birds. We pretended we were birds. We raced. We waved at Mum and Dad, or anyone else who passed by. We were captains on our own ship. We were famous explorers. We were anything we wanted to be!I *heart* THIS BRIDGE

This challenge was particulary hard....had to use orange, hot pink, polka dots and the word buzz or bloom in the title. I didn't have any polka dots to match..so I made it with paint. The colours are not really coming through, but the heart is bright orange.



This is perhaps my favoutite LO of the weekend...but I will be changing the title to "I'm Here" as in hindsight I think it works better. Here is a link to a you-tube video of the song if you are interested.... "I Volunteer" . Pretty much sums up what I want for Matthew to know.

This challenge was the hardest of them all - producing some of the best pages. You had to use only black and white patterned papers and cardstock, had to use button clusters to accentuate your journalling and the photos had to have a strong connection between the past and the present. I nearly backed out of this challenge, but am glad I didn't as I really like the result.

And it opens up to this.....

And last but not least (according to the judges....cause I just found out this one won!)
A sketch challenge. Tori meeting Alex for the first time. I am surprised it won and figure the judges were just being nice to me - for whatever reason?! There were alot more entries in this challenge that were far more deserving.

If you got this far...thanks for looking. If you were one of the people participating in the CC with me...thanks...I enjoyed your company over the weekend and look forward to another one, everyones work was amazing!

Hope you like my pages. Better go now...and tidy up all the mess I made while creating.

Bye for now...

Hugz to all

Anthea

xoxox

Guess whos 2?

Tori is - that's who!

The week before last (Yes I have been slack) our darling gal turned 2. The last year has been a big one, starting with her Christening, some minor surgery, a trip to Canada to visit Nan and the rest of the crew, childcare, etc. Somehow though we got through. Thanks to those of you who have supported us through the tough times and laughed at the good times and to those of you who have just been there by our sides saying nothing, but letting us always know you were there!

Tori - from 1 to 2 !!!!

1st Birthday

Christening

First hair cut - she was better with it all by the end.

In LA....(one very tired girl in this photo)

First PIGGY Tails.

The day before turning 2

Yet again - I am struggling with blogger...uggh. Melisa I tried to use the windows video maker and was doing great until blogger wouldn't let me load it due to its 'extension' - any ideas on how to change it to an AVI?

Hope you are all well.

Til' next time....

Hugs and Kisses

Anthea

xoxox

For Mum...

Mum - as promised - here are some of the long awaited Easter Pics - sorry it has taken soooo long! Warning to everyone else....heaps of pics in this post!

Firstly - some pics of Easter Sunday....it was all kind of fun cause it was the first year that Tori really understood that something fun was happening. She found her stash fairly quickly and it took her a whole of about 2 seconds to figure out what to do with the eggs! The expressions on her face were priceless.

Secondly, for those of you that don't know, we do a kind of annual Easter camping trip with my family. This year we headed out the week after Easter and had a pretty good time, the weather was good and Ray and Moi enjoyed the new/old van. Tori was pretty sick for some of the trip - but by the end of it - she was right into it! Now, I took over 500 photos of the Easter trip...so you will only see some of my very favs here today...but for anyone out there who knows how....how do I do a slide show thingy? I think it would be a heap easier than downloading a ton of pics????? HEEEELLLLLPPPPP please!

Pic 1 - The veiw we woke up to every morning .... oh how I would love to wake up to that every day of my life. (PS; This pic was taken minutes before a dust storm, hence the hazy look to the pic!)



Pic 2 - What is camping without a campfire...(very well contained I promise)...couldn't choose which fire pic to upload, so I kind of closed my eyes and clicked.



Pic 3 - Not a particulary good photo...but one that shows I am not lying when I say, Tori was 'pole dancing'.



Pic 4 - what is and always has been referred to as 'THE BRIDGE'. In years gone by, when Shell and I were younger than Matthew now....we played on this bridge for hours and hours. I love this pic....perhaps my favourite of the whole holiday!!!!!

Pic 5 - Michelle trying to get on to that darn old tree stump that we are both soooo sure was never so hard to climb when we were 8!



Pic 6 - Me - showing Shell how it is done...???!!! (Different angle of course)

Pic 7 - Just a cool pic of Matthew on the bridge. (Does he ever take a bad pic?)

Pic 8 - 'Just let me fix my hair'. Michelle so 'not' intentionally posing for the camera.

Pic 9 - My gorgeous Mum....yes it is blurry...but I still love the photo!

Pic 10 - The worm that Matthew caught with a fish!



Pic 11- Now this is what camping is all about - mud castles by the campfire...hehe.



Pic 12 - My daddy!



Pic 13 - Matthew taking the phrase 'go climb a tree' literally!



Pic 14 - My gorgeous nephew with a snake around his neck..................................................................(no not really.... he'd probably freak, it is just a tyre tube....I think!)



Pic 15 - Ray.....Love the hat babe.



Ok - that is it! There were, as I mentioned, many more pics to choose from - but I think this bunch gives a reasonably good idea of our holiday. Brian and Adam managed to avoid the camera somehow but I do solemly swear that I will catch you both one day! Hope you enjoyed. Will be back soon with some Tori b'day pics!

Hugs and Kisses

Anthea

xoxo

Happy Easter

Hi all, I am a bit slack on the blogging this week but intend to catch you all up now.

First things first, Tori's visit to the specialist on Tuesday went well. After a later start than planned, we got to the Children's Hospital with only about a minute to spare....(not bad for a three hour trip!). Thankfully the doctors were running a bit late so we had time to catch our breath. As soon as we got into the waiting room, I realised that there was another young LP in the waiting room with her family.

Me, being so shy and all (I was really quite nervous), went up right away and introduced myself. It was sooooo nice to personally meet another LP family with a child under the age of 10 who lived in our state. That might sound crazy, but seriously, I have only ever met adult LPs or the parents of LPs. It turns out that their daughter is 6 and they live in country Victoria. They still live hours away, but hey....who cares? We swapped emails and I hope that we keep in touch.

We then met up with all the geneticist, orthopaedic guru and social worker and Tori got a clean bill of health. In fact, she is doing so well they don't want to see her for another year (unless we need to of course). They are going to arrange for a dietitian consult and try to organize an OT for us. The OT will hopefully give us some ideas for bikes, etc. We also are not sure if we should start introducing stools - we know we will have to eventually - but when Tori climbs up on one, it scares the living begeesus out of me, she is not so good at the height concept yet and most stools I have seen are really quite high. Maybe some of our LP friends can let me know what you did? Also, what did you do for beds? Did you lower a bed for your LP child or did you just let them climb up onto a regular one? Right now Tori is still in the cot, but at almost 2, it will soon be time to move her out.

Anyways, with the appointment over, we all jumped in the car and headed to one of the local shopping centers and did some retail therapy. We didn't buy too much, but we did manage to find Tori a really cute pair of sneakers (joggers for some of you) that fit really well. I was very excited by this buy, as buying shoes for Tori is a nightmare - although I must say, in the last month she has amassed quite a collection. The trip home was uneventful, and we arrived home safely at around 8ish. Pretty good effort for 12 hours if I may say so myself.

Well....other than that, nothing much happening. I did today finally finish that rotten assignment I was working on. I don't imagine I will be topping the class with my effort, but I am pretty positive I will pass. On Monday we did manage a trip to the park, so my pics today will be of that, be warned, the kids had an egg hunt and there is chocolate all over their faces!

Now, I was going to end it here...but while loading these pics....I saw some others from last week that I wanted to share with you all, for no other reason than...I like them!

And these are of Matthew with the Boomerang he made at school as part of his indigenous people studies last term.

OK - Blogger is just not working for me tonight, I can not get this set up the way I want, so I hope you can forgive the big mess it is making, cause I give up, time for beddy byes for me! Hope you all have a wonderful Easter weekend and that the Easter Bunny hops on over to where you are.

Ciao for now.....

Anthea

xoxox