Summery of our last 6 months. Wait! What?

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I don't even know where to start.
We have grown. We have changed. We celebrated birthdays. Not only one, but two!
We turned four and we turned one.
We learned to walk and we are learning to talk.
We are full of adventures and we have some stories to tell.
We made some friends and we became friends.
We love to sing and we love to dance.
We chase each other and we hide from each other.
We start our days with laughs and we end them with lovies.
We cray and we smile.
We live to be outside but we also like to cuddle inside.
Things have changed. For the better.
We could not be happier!

What the hell just happened?

Can someone tell me where these 3 months have gone? Why have I not been posting? Well there is really no good reason. I guess two kids a move and the summer we just got too busy.
I guess I might’ve also lost my “muse” for a while there.
So, here we go again. I am promising to catch up on my two months of not writing and fill you in on our lives.
Let’s welcome 2011 and enjoy the ride.

Update on Bee

Seeing how Bee just turned 7 months I thought maybe a quick update would be in order.
He is still a very mellow little guy. Sleeps well, nurses well and just all around a very easy baby.
We have started him on solids early but due to his own decision we are still mostly nursing and if that makes him happy it certainly makes me happy. He still never used a bottle and at this point I would imagine he never will.
Sleeping has never been an issue and there is really nothing I can say about that.
His whole world and the understanding of his surroundings comes from Bug.There is this magical connection in between the two of them and I so hope that it stays that way.
Phisicly he is very strong and LOVES standing and jumping. I am giving him another month and he will be cruizing around to my delight!
He is over 11 kg and about 73 cm.
As you can tell I am totally in LOVE with our children.

School Break

I am happy to announce that we have survived the first week of the school holidays.
Bug is off for two weeks and the anticipation leading up to the first day of her holiday put us in quite a good mood.

Naturally we have been busy with things around the house but to my greatest delight the weather also allowed us to spend some serious time on the beach or at the park.
I always worry that keeping my hyper super duper energetic little girl busy will be impossible and that she will turn into this out of control kid I pretend I never met.

Can I just say "NOT this time!!". She has been fund and helpful as well as a good sister. We have developed this something for something system and it seems to be making both of us happy.

We have been able to share our outings with her little friend Jake and the two of them can get lost in their pretend world for hours while Jake's mom and I enjoy a little "gossip" time.

I also think we might have found the best kept secret of St. Heliers. This little co op ice store carries very limited variety ice cream but the are absolutely delish....

Rotorua a.k.a. Rotovegas

On our latest journey we set out to check the local "Vegas". No, not because we wanted to gamble. Not even because of the wonderful magic shows. WE wanted to spend some quality time in the stinky geothermal pools, Rotorua is well known for.

We found a quaint little hotel on the "strip" with it's own tiny thermal pool, self containng kitchen. Perfect for a family traveling with small children kind of place.


Besides the first day of rain we actually got to spend some time just walking, playing and dipping into the stinky thermal water everywhere we wnet.

The scenery is quite amaizing, the pools are incredible. You can see steaming air everywhere you look. The smell of the thermals' is so apperant that at the time of our arrival I naivly but totally seriously commented that "someone had a poopy diaper!"

The reason the locals call the place Rotovegas is that it is a major destination for domestic or international tourists. As soon as you reach the city limits you can tell that most of it's population is set to "milk the cow".

Really we had a fantastic time. One well deserved get away and we loved it all the way. Well, maybe not our breakfast at the "most amazing" and "best of New Zealand's" cafe but hey it can't be all perfect.

Melting heart

Each day I wake up and I am so thankful to have two beautiful, happy and healthy child.
Each day some things drive me crazy and some things just melt my heart.
Today was that kind of a day.

Our day started out a bit slow, a bit groggy and a bit crazy at the same time. I was certainly ready to pull out my hair if I had any. Thankfully I shaved it recently.
It is quite a well-known phenomenon I would imagine in every family house.
Wake up, have breakfast, nurse, change diaper, use the potty, get dressed, brush hair and teeth, make lunch box ingredients, have a sip of coffee (if you can just jug down as much as you can, while you can, but be careful the beverage you are about to drink is HOT!!!) make sure everything is packed, get to the car, buckle up…….

Every day when we get to kindy, I help Bug settle in. There is a routine we follow each day we go. Today wasn’t any different, besides that I decided to hang around a little.
As I was sitting there Bug came up to me holding another little girl’s hand, one whom I haven’t met yet. She seems to be older, definitely taller and way more shy than Bug has ever bin.

Just as I was about to ask her name Bug introduced her to me and told me that “she just got back from a long vacation”. Once again I automatically turned to this new friend and asked her “where she spent her vacation”? To which I got no response, but a nice little smile. At this point Bug came to her rescue, took her hand and off they went with an “see you later mom.”

I watched them run to the swings while laughing at something invisible to me. I watched them enjoy their newfound friendship where words didn’t seem to matter.
Later I found out from one of her teachers that the new little friend has spent 3 months in Croatia (where she is from) for 3 months and her English has gone out the window.
Bug took it on herself apparently to teach her everything she needs to know and make her feel welcomed back and comfortable.
As I said, she melts my heart.

I'm dreaming of a lemon tree

Guess what? We've got a lemon tree!
Well,not really! Our neighbor has lemon tree that is full of ripe lemons at the moment. Yeah, that is what I thought too! It is winter here and we have a citrus tree full of it's juicy fruit.

Seeing how they would go bad unless we rescue them, Bug and I decided to put them to good use.We picked them ourselves right off of the tree, we put on our baking aprons and squeezed out their delicious juice to make our favorite LEMON BARS!

Bug loved making them so much that now we have a plan to make lemon cake, lemon torte, lemon jelly, lemon pudding, lemon soup, lemon muffins, lemon shots.......