Trying out Geocaching

Last weekend my friend Nikki posted on Facebook what a great time she spent with her family geocaching. It's like a treasure hunt where you use your phone as a gps and find a certain point, often interesting or beautiful. When you find it you sign the log book and put in a little something that you brought with you, swapping it for something you take out of the box.
I'd seen it as an activity option at Center Parcs when we were there at the beginning of January but we weren't sure if our boys are too young to manage the maps and gps.
Today we tried it. We downloaded the free app and had a look- there are LOADS! More than 2 million, in 185 different counties. And they are everywhere! We picked one to find a 10 minute drive from our house, and we passed a few other areas on our way.
We found a castle we had never seen and had a great time, despite a grumpy baby (probably his second time ever being grumpy in his whole life so I couldn't really complain) and freezing rain. When the gps said we were pretty close we had to have a real search to find the cache but we found it! Really quite exciting, and I bet it could become quite addictive. We did another one on our way home!
So we have found a new favourite :) Outdoorsy, educational, fun and FREE to do with family. You can't beat that!!

TRY IT WHERE YOU ARE!

Christmassy Jacob

Here's 14 week old Jacob on my knee this evening. He just smiles and laughs all day long. We love him so much!!!

December is BUSY, and I haven't even done anything Christmassy yet!

Hello!

It has been months and months and I think I'd better stop filling up Facebook with photos, so I'm going back to blogging (I think!)

The past week has been a whirlwind of family, friends, parties, food and LOADS of children!! Oliver turned four, we crammed 12 kids plus three of our own, into our house, we made a foiled-covered rocket (it survived at least four children and three balloons in there at once) Jacob was blessed by Ben at our church, I singlehandedly looked after six children for more than three days (three of my friend's, three of my own- oldest was 7...) And the inlaws, outlaws, a couple of brothers and my Nanna came up all for a flyingvisit for the blessing. It has been wonderful, and now I feel like I need to sleep for a week!

2014 Goals

In am no different this year, I still love goals! This year I have less of them, I want to crack the lot :)

- Get into shape physically

- Get into shape spiritually

- Make a Christmas quilt

- Potty train Oliver!

- Enjoy 1-to-1 time with Zach (will have lots of that with Oliver starting Playgroup next week!!)

I also plan to blog my progress more, but I don't want to make that a goal. Hopefully if I don't it's because I am doing something better?!

May 2014 be wonderful for everyone! :)

Update + Christmas!

It has been a long time! It is mainly down to me not being very techy and having trouble making this blog app work on our tablet :s But everything is going well for us right now and we are feeling rather Christmassy! This year we have two trees, Ben had grown up with a fake tree and I always had a real tree so I am always a bit sad with our fake tree every year (Ben says a real tree is "inefficient!" Ha) but some friends told us where they had seen some Christmas trees for free (nothing inefficient about that!) so we had a little look through and found one I loved! Then our friend even brought it to our door on his car roof, lucky us! So we have a real one in the lounge decorated by me and a fake one in our kitchen/dining room decorated by Ben (still baubles to go on I think). Haha best of both worlds and even better that it was free :)

The boys: Oliver starts Playgroup in January and is now in a toddler bed having just turned three last week with a train party. He is definitely still a train boy, and particularly excited about the Santa Express we will be going on next week (a train ride where Father Christmas is on it too!!) Zachy is saying some words nowadays!! He says up, down, Dada, Mum, cheese, please, ta, hello, yes, no and amen and he makes a lot of animal noises and can chug like a train (of course!) This is a great breakthrough for him some he has always been the point-and-grunt type :) He loves running some giving us all cuddles and he loves to "bundle" Oliver (they say "bund-O!!!") The boys are often tackling each other (and us) to the floor, they just love it. I am looking forward to having lots of one-to-one time with Zach while Oliver is at Playgroup.

I am really looking forward to Christmas this year, and making it extra special to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and not getting totally carried away by presents (although there will be quite a few of those too!!) In between talking to the boys about Father Christmas and making reindeer paintings with their feet we have been talking and reading books about the true meaning of Christmas and we will be doing some acting out with them on Christmas Eve :) I think we will all play Wise men, Shepherds and everyone else all at once! We have also been watching some of these lovely, short Bible videos which are very simple and absolutely beautiful and made by our Church. http://www.lds.org/bible-videos/videos/the-nativity?lang=eng

Happy Christmas!

Boy number two, lover of electrical appliances

A video taken a couple of weeks ago in which Zach demonstrates his love of plugs.

Oliver the Tank Engine

I began writing this post a month ago, time got away from me!

I used to keep a daily journal, then when I became a Mum I wrote a couple of times a week, and now I have fallen off altogether! I am determined to get back on track since I have a hopeless memory (really, I have next to no memories of my childhood) and such lovely things are passing me by and I refuse to forget them and not be grateful for them!

So I have started scribbling the odd funny quote from Oliver, or something I want to remember about Zach and thought that I'd share, since they do totally crack me up :) And there are times and seasons for everything, and that is better than nothing!

Oliver the Tank Engine

Oliver has been obsessed with trains as long as I can remember. Definitely for 6 months, plus some probably. He can link trains to any conversion, and he chugs (moves his arms like pistons as though he is a train) from room to room and outside... anywhere! He doesn't walk, he doesn't run- he chugs. When Ben gets home from work Oliver greets him with,  "Hello Daddy! Let's chug around!" and so they do- around and around the sofas. It is very difficult to get him to stop, the most effective way my Dad found was to yell "red light!" and then "turntable!" and my lovely train/boy obediently stops and turns around.

It is hard work getting him away from his train set at mealtimes ("No! I want to chug away!") but once he is up to the table the train love continues. He suddenly gives a big sigh and says, "let's talk about steam trains!" And off he goes, chatting about funnels and how many wheels James has. We had cheese toasties for lunch today. When his came out of the grill Oliver said, "Ooh! There's STEAM- Woo-ooh!" Then he had a sip of his orange juice, which had just come out of the fridge:"ooh! It's cold! Like Percy! He says, "I want a scarf, I want a scarf!" (A favourite episode..)

He bumped his head the other day, I offered to rub and kiss it better. He bowed his head to me and said, "kiss my funnel"!! Sometimes he chugs in slow motion, really puffing and showing the strain, "ooh, it's rea-lly har-d, up Gor-dons's hi-ll..." and when I tell him he is a good boy he answers, "My not a boy, my a tank engine!" Our new favourite game is to turn on Classic FM and to use it as our chugging soundtrack. Dvorjak symphony number 9 was a big hit this week: "There's a cow on the track!" "The fat controller is going past on his bike!" Any piece will do, slow and beautiful ("It's a nice day for a chug around the Island of Sodor") or fast and frantic ("Hurry, hurry, hurry, sing the coaches")

The boy is hilarious, and every day brings a new train-related adventure.