Penguins

Well after the sucess of the Superlambananas during Liverpool08 Capital of Culture, Liverpool has been graced with 100 5ft high penguins, each painted and located on a winters trail around the city.

Ela and I met up with one of my best school friends Jackie and her daughter Evie and we went in search of some penguins around the city centre. here are some of the best ones we found...

 

 

England here we come

Excitement is running high in our house with just a few days to go before we set off to England. We have had a round of christmas parties, lunches, playdates and farewell dinners. Photos here of some pre-xmas pressie opening.

Ela has 'graduated' from both Cabarita-Mortlake pre-school and Gumnut, here she with her favourite friends, Belle, Bo and Gabby. She has been sure to tell everyone - including Santa that she will not be 'at home' for xmas so presents need to be delivered to both places. small ones to England and larger ones to Australia!

And of course Tom has ho idea of what is to come - 24hrs of flights plus a 5 hr drive to Liverpool, but he's non the less just as excited.

Advent Calendar

Ela has been so excited about getting out the advent calendar this year. She remembers its got something to do with treats but for some reason, she believes there are elves who visit the house each night and put the lolly or sweets or whatever into the pocket ready for the morning, so she has left him all sorts of goodies on the kitchen counter near the advent calendar.

I'm going to write a note from the elf to tell her that he will only be visiting the first night and that now he knows where the advent calendar is he'll magic the treats into the pockets!

A big boy now

Well Tom has been an absolute star with his toilet training. We started about 2 weeks ago and we had about 1-2 accidents a day for the first week. By the weekend, he was in pullups and they were completely dry all day and for the following week he has been in undies (or nickies as he calls them) without a single accident!. I'm so impressed but more than that I'm very grateful. I'd forgotten how much hard work the whole thing can be - washing midweek and running up and down to the bathroom.

Tom's manners are also really developing. He's not so good with the 'peas' but he says 'sank-you mum' everytime i give him something, without any prompting from me which is great.

On the down side, terrible twos are well underway and he has started stomping, hitting and throwing when he doesn't get what he wants. He's a determined little soul - as are most 2 year olds - but I'm hoping our trip to the UK which is coming up in 2 short weeks will be enough of a distractor to at least slow down the moody periods.

This lovely photo is of Tom with his friend Evie on the bouncy castle at Ela's party.

Orientation

Ela has had two visits to big school this past two weeks for orientation. Along with her dolphin room friends, Bo, Belle and Carmello, she had a play in her new classroom and met the kids she will be at school with next year along with the teachers.

We parents meanwhile were given a run down in the hall of all the extra curricular activities including music, choir, P&C, canteen etc.

We bought some of the uniform as Ela was able to wear it at Gumnut this week. They are practicing getting their stuff ready for big school.

Ela is so excited about going there (and has been all year!) most especially because the four kids who live next door go there and so she will be able to see them every day.

Ela turns 5

This must have been the most anticipated party ever. All year Ela has been asking when it was her turn for a birthday. She waited (not so) patiently throughout her cousins and her brother's celebrations until it was her own big day. The day itself was a Monday and Nannie made cupcakes which we took for all the kids at Gumnut.We opened her presents (at the crack of dawn) from family and she enjoyed riding her new bike up and down the hallway!

Then on Friday I had promised to make a cake for her to take to her pre-school, and thanks to my mum for the mould, i had a go at this fairy princess castle. It looks much more grand than it really was and of course it didn't travel well so byt he time we got it to the school there was a bit of scraping up to be done :)

The invitations had gone out long before - barbie mermaid ones (!) and luckily not all had come back as yes's as there were 28 invited. The final numbers were 25 kids in total on the day which was actually not nearly as bad as it sounds. I put that down to good planning and roping in some trusty friends.

We had plenty of games, a very large fairy castle jumping castle, a home-made pinata, a tattoo hunt, cakes,  and lots of fun. It was a very tired but happy girl who went to bed aged 5 today. But there was still enough energy to ask about her 6th birthday party....

smell the roses

All the hard work we put inot the front garden back in Auguest is finally paying off. We purched bare-root roses from Treloar earlier in the year and when they finally arrived, there was some confusion. I had a call from the courier to say he was at the front door and what should he do with the package. I had ordered 15 standards 'trees' which were about a metre in height, so I was wondering where I could get him to leave all these. He suggested he leave them at the front door - how can he possibly do that I thought....he tried to explain that he only had a small carton...so I started thinking ahh maybe Mark has bought me roses and this is a bouquet.....anyway when I got home later that day I was very surprised to see how small these roses came.

We planted them with lots of help and advice from Marg and Pete and have been watching them slowly turn from bare sticks to green leafy 'trees' and now to flowering standards. We also have some ground cover roses and a climbing rose for the ugly silver electricity pole in the corner.





update: Dec09
The roses were fed a little fertilser a few weeks back and we have seen nothing but blooms. The ones in front of the wall are growing b=much better than those under the right window for some reason. But all in all looking fab.