Hot Chocolate and Marshmallows

... marshmallow socks, that is, LOL.

The chill of Winter is in the air, and that means it's time to drink hot chocolate and break out the bed socks.

All my life I've been cursed with bad circulation, so that means my hands and feet are usually like blocks of ice during the colder months of the year. When I'm lounging around the house, watching TV or headed for bed, I have my marshmallow socks. As you can see, I have a few pairs. OK, more than a few. I'll admit it - I may be obsessed with them. The aqua ones with the non-slip flowers on the sole were bought to match my paisley PJs, and the black, pink and white ones match my Pink Ribbon PJs (and they came in a 2 pack with the hot pink ones). The brown leopardy print ones were just too pretty and snugly to be left on the shelf in the shop.

Actually, that seems to be my downfall. I'm a tactile sock shopper. I don't obviously need another pair, but you can bet I'll see some in a colour I don't have, and once I touch them, I'm done for. Oh, they're so soft, so snugly, and pretty. I'll get them.

I've also recently bought a set of micro polar fleece sheets for our bed. Yes, you heard correctly. Not flannelette. Polar fleece. Sounds a bit odd, but they are to die for snugly, soft and warm, and I'm so glad I got them. Steve, however, is not so impressed. He reckons the pillowcase sticks to the stubble on his face like Velcro during the night. I've yet to see any actual evidence of this though, LOL.

Vege Tableau

I started collecting these shelf-sitter figurines a couple of years ago. They are available in both fruit and vegetable varieties, but I decided to go with vegetables. There are many different ones to choose from - cauliflowers, carrots, corn, peas in pods, chillies, mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, garlic, potatoes... any vegetable you can think of, there is probably a figurine of it in the range.

For ages I just had the broccoli and the eggplant, co-existing happily on my kitchen window sill, above my sink. To me, it always seemed like the broccoli had been telling a joke or having a good gossip and the eggplant was leaning in to share the secret. Last year I bought the orange pumpkin, because, with a grin like that, he looked as if he belonged with the other two gossipers.

For Mothers' Day this year I received another to add to my set. I picked out the butternut pumpkin (...or maybe he's a marrow, I'm not quite sure) purely because of the cranky expression on his face and his folded arms. I knew he would be perfect to play the role of the "outsider", so I've placed him off to one side. I can't quite decide whether he's pissed off because the other three are gossiping and laughing about him, or just because they aren't sharing their secret with him.

What do you think?

100 Not Out !

My Grandma (on my mother's side) turned 100 on the 29th of March, so we had a small family morning tea for her at the nursing home on the Sunday before.

She is quite frail, is bedridden and has almost no vision due to glaucoma and therefore wasn't able to enjoy her own party, but she was awake for most of it.

It wasn't a large turnout, as the family is scattered around the country now, but there were three of her children, eight of her grandchildren and two of her great-grandchildren there to celebrate, and another one of my cousins and his family visited her on her actual birthday the next day.

Here she is on the day, with two of her great-grandchildren, my daughter Cheyenne and my cousin Jodi-May's daughter Gemma.

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Longevity seems to run in my family, as my other Gran (my father's mother) lived to be 101, although she was far more sprightly on her 100th birthday.

Back to School

Well, we've survived the first four weeks of Grade 1 without any dramas. Homework and the learning of sight words has commenced, and home readers are now being brought home for reading practice. PE, Library and Music specialty classes have also started, as has Junior Choir practice. Cheyenne has settled into the routine fairly well, and even with the new earlier starts, we've only been a little bit late once. She loves sitting at her brand new desk and pink swivel chair in her bedroom to do her homework. So far, so good.



She was ready early for school on the first day. We found her classroom, met her new teacher Miss Wilton, and looked for her name on the desks to find out which group she was in. She loved being able to put her stationery things into the tidy tray of her desk, as they hadn't had allocated desks in Prep.

Another cause for excitement on the first day of school was that another wobbly tooth fell out. My little Gummy Bear is definitely keeping the tooth fairy in business! The good news is that just this last week, her missing top front tooth has finally made its appearance! (Typically, only AFTER I'd made her an appointment with my dentist, but isn't that just the way life goes, lol?)

Gummy Bear

♫ ♪ ♫ All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth ♫ ♪ ♫

Well, Christmas has come and gone and we're still waiting for Cheyenne's second front tooth to come through at the top. Her two top front teeth (the ones which were wearing away at an alarming angle) fell out within a couple of weeks of each other, during the last term of school last year. Her left-hand side adult tooth has cut through and grown nicely, but there's still no sign of its mate. To make matters worse, the baby tooth on the other side of the gap has recently fallen out as well, so Cheyenne has a rather gummy (although cute) smile. This of course, has given rise to her new nickname, "Gummy Bear".

She's told me that even though she likes the nickname, I am only allowed to call her that until her new teeth grow in. Fair enough, since she won't be gummy anymore.

Christmas was a fairly quiet, family affair once again. Lunch with my mum and brother, dinner with Steve's parents and two of his three brothers and their families. On Boxing Day we went up to visit some friends who live the other side of Gympie, and stayed the night at their place.

Steve found out about his work closing down between Christmas and New Year a little too late for us to book anything, so we didn't go away anywhere for a holiday. We spent New Year's Eve with some friends and Steve actually managed to see in the New Year for a change, lol.

This past weekend we spent Friday and Saturday nights in the annexe of Steve's parents' caravan down at the Broadwater Tourist Park. Cheyenne spent the entire weekend, playing with some of her cousins, either in the pool or at the beach, and has really gone quite brown. She already had a cute little oval shaped tan mark on her back from her bathing costume after spending so much time in our pool over the holidays.

Now there's only one week to go until the holidays are over and Cheyenne starts Grade 1. Time to buy new school shoes and start going to bed early to practice for next week. The earlier start time is going to be a shock to her system (not to mention mine as well). Guess I'd better start covering schoolbooks and labelling everything so that I'm not doing it all the night before.

Cheyenne has just had her hair cut nice and short so she doesn't start the new year looking scruffy.

School's Out For Summer...

Well, the school year is over. Prep is done and dusted, and we're into the first week of Hell... er..., sorry... the Christmas Holidays!

Six weeks of "I'm hungry, Mummy! Mum, can I have an iceblock? Can I have some fairy bread? Can I have a Nutella? An apple, a sandwich..?" It's only Tuesday, and already she's devoured almost an entire box of Tiny Teddy biscuits (which were bought as a treat), is about a third of the way through a 12 pack of individual Nutella snacks and has consumed more Zooper Dooper ice blocks than should be deemed necessary, considering the overcast (and therefore cooler) weather. Clearly I will need to buy another truckload of apples, and reintroduce her to stone fruits, now that they're in season.

This, from a child who has spent the better part of her life eating like a bird. I also know for a fact that she survived quite well every day at school on the two standard breaks, morning tea and lunch. So where has this sudden need to continuously graze come from? Maybe it's a growth spurt, but I hope it doesn't last. She's eating us out of house and home... and she isn't even a teenager!

Maybe I'll just have to sidetrack her with holiday activities. There's plenty of things she wants to do. The problem is getting her to understand that she has 6 weeks to do them in. We do not have to do every activity TODAY. We can swim in our pool any time we like. The park and duckpond is only 5 minutes away - she can even ride her bike there on the nice wide bike path. (Maybe we'll even get those training wheels off if she practices hard enough!) We can visit friends, have sleepovers at Grandma's and Nanny and Poppy's, do crafts, go to the movies... we just don't need to do it all right now, this instant.

Perhaps she's right though. All too soon it will be the end of the holidays and we'll be covering books, ready for Grade 1. Maybe we should be trying to cram in as much as we can.

Cheyenne's "Prep Graduation" photo.

(They didn't actually have a Graduation ceremony, this was just a posed shot included on the Powerpoint slideshow that each child received on a CD at the end of Prep. Kind of like a report card with photos. Excuse the grainy quality of the image - we didn't get access to the originals. I just copied it "as is" from the slideshow.)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

I can't believe that it's December already! This year has really flown past. Cheyenne only has one more week left of Prep and then she's on Christmas holidays for six weeks! Six weeks! OMG!

You can tell it's that time of year. All around, friends and family are off to watch their kids in Christmas concerts and sports carnivals. Two weeks ago it was our turn. Norris Road SS had their Music Gala concert, and as Cheyenne has been a part of the Junior Choir, we went along to watch them perform two songs.

Let me put this into perspective for you. For most of the year I had no idea Cheyenne was even going to choir practise. Sure, it was mentioned in the school newsletter early in the first term, and Cheyenne told me that she had gone at lunchtime one day with some of the girls in her class, but that's about all I heard of it until the end of term 3. Her teacher let me know that the Junior Choir were going to be singing on Parade that week. This was news to me, since Cheyenne hadn't said a word about it. Occasionally we'd heard her singing the same line or two over and over, but when we'd questioned her about it she'd just said it was a song they sang at school.

We found out she was a part of the Music Gala in much the same way. About a week and a half before the Gala I found a book of Music Gala raffle tickets with her name on in her "information pocket", and, according to the newsletter, only students performing in the Gala would be given them to sell. So I asked her, "Cheyenne, are you singing in the music concert?" She just rolled her eyes at me and replied "Ye-es!" Did it occur to her that maybe she should let us know in time to buy our tickets? Clearly not. Never thought I'd be thankful to get raffle tickets to sell !

I asked her what songs they were singing, so that I could look up the lyrics and maybe help her practise before the concert. Turns out they were singing Colour My World (the old Petula Clark classic) and Louise - a children's song about an elephant. Cheyenne didn't seem to be very sure of the words to this and it isn't one I'd ever heard of before, but even I knew that "Down in deep blue Africa, by the shade of the boo-bah trees" couldn't be right. Africa isn't blue and I don't think there's any such thing as boo-bah trees... except maybe on Telly Tubbies or In The Night Garden, lol.

Now, the internet is a wonderful place... just about anything you're searching for is only a click or two away... except if you are trying to find the complete lyrics to songs out of the ABC Sing books! Clearly the copyright is closely guarded. I did manage to find an index, which told me that Louise features in the 2005 edition... and, miracle of miracles, it also listed the first line!
Turns out the lyrics are as follows: "Down in deepest Africa, by the shade of the bongo trees, lived an elephant, her name it was Louise. Louise was very fond of an elephant named Joe, and every night by the pale moonlight, he'd serenade her so - Louise, Louise, come out from under those trees! Don't give me none of that bunky bunky, I wanna hold your trunky trunky. I love you so much, I wanna hold you so much, my Lou, Lou, Louise!"

OK, it's a lot cuter when sung by a choir full of Prep - Grade 2 kids, all doing the actions. I really wish I could upload the video clip here, but as it is of the whole choir, not just Cheyenne, that just wouldn't be right.

Steve and I were such proud parents though. :-D

Christmas is definitely sneaking up on us. We haven't put our Christmas tree up yet, but Cheyenne has been madly running around wrapping tinsel around the railings. There probably won't be any left to actually go on the tree, lol.