They grow up so fast!

Every once in awhile it hits me . . . my girls are really growing up quickly! At each new stage I think it's my favorite, but then they grow and I like them even more. It's hard to believe we are half-way through our time to really speak into Meggie's life before she leaves home, and we're even closer to an age where we may no longer be her favorite people. It gives me a sense of urgency and also puts me on my knees before the Lord. She is truly becoming a remarkable person and it's fun to watch her grow.

The other girls are growing up too and are also a joy to be around - I can't help but remember this time last year with Eleanor! It was tough. The poor thing was still recovering from having her whole world rocked and the only way she knew to express herself was to act out. This year is so much better - she talks much more clearly and frequently, she doesn't wear diapers, she can even go through the day without a nap, she's very funny and she's clearly independent.

Katie is a friend magnet! She is the social butterfly of the group, though Josie is a close second. Meggie and Ellie are quite content to be at home, in fact often when we are out Ellie will ask us when we are going to go home. But not Katie, she would party all night if given the chance. She is amazing in her ability to make friends and play with children of all ages, sex or nationality. I admire that about her. She's also interested in all things "tween" - she is 7 going on 16 without a doubt. She's beautiful and brilliant and I know she can do just about anything she puts her mind to, the challenge is simply to keep her focused.

Josie is still full of life and joy and drama. Nothing in the middle for our Jo, life is either wonderful or devastating as far as she is concerned. She is a gifted little ballerina, an accomplished reader and a very grown-up 5-year-old. She's also free with compliments for everyone and eager to be a part of all that is going on, it's difficult for her when the big girls get privileges like staying up later and she has to go to bed. If we could only cure the whining this girl would be just about perfect.

The other night Meg decided she wanted to make dinner. She made a list of what we needed and we headed to the store. She found a recipe in a kid's cookbook and true to her word she made it from start to finish. Here she is with her bolognese sauce:

Another sign of their growing independence is that Meggie and Katie now go places, alone, without one of us. They walk to their Musical Stars class and their gymnastics without me, and last Saturday they walked down to the shops to get us milk. They often take their bikes and head over to the park for a play. I lean a little right of overprotective so this has been a challenge for me, a big part of me wants to get them a cell phone, but then the more rational part reminds me that they aren't that grown up and the phone will most likely get lost or damaged before it is ever actually needed for an emergency!

(I don't know why my paragraph breaks aren't working properly, so annoying!)

Today the little two are sick and snuffly - so Daddy and the big girls headed to Palmerston North and we three stayed home. They've been in their pajamas all day - which is fine since it's been raining nonstop and Dugald took our only car. We've spent the day watching movies, blowing noses, playing on the computer, blowing noses, playing games, blowing noses, coloring, blowing noses, and this:

They are playing "Wii Cheer" on the wii and it is one of the funniest, most adorable things I have ever seen. The wii has been a fantastic gift - even Daddy is addicted to the tennis - thank you so much Papa and Mama!!

This is another new addiction - a game called Settlers of Catan. We LOVE it. I got an expansion version for my birthday and was very excited.

That's the news for now. . . please keep Lloyd and his family in your prayers. He and Julie flew to Seattle this week for further treatment. Dugald is scheduled to go over for 10 days in March to give Julie a chance to come home and be with the children. Each of the siblings is going to go at some stage so that Lloyd will hopefully never be there alone. It is a very tough time for all of them.

Lots of love from all of us!!

My Birthday - Part Two

The celebrating continued on Saturday with friends . . . it was the Cuba Street Carnival that night and Alison and Fleur made reservations for our families to eat together and then watch the parade. On the way to meet them Dugald and I saw two very young little girls crossing the street in Karori, one in a diaper and a t-shirt and the other in panties and a t-shirt. They were both under three-years-old and as best we could tell they were unaccompanied. We stopped and I got out and asked them where their Mommy was and the older of the two wouldn't answer, the younger one couldn't talk. I tried again by asking her where she lived and she vaguely pointed behind her. I asked her if Mommy knew she was out and she said she was just going for a walk. I kept on questioning her trying to determine where she lived but she was adamant she was going for a walk and kept walking away from me, dragging the baby with her. Finally the baby fell and started crying which gave me the chance to scoop her up and sternly tell the other little girl we had to take the baby home. She VERY reluctantly started showing me the way home.

It took a lot of talking, coercion, manipulation and hand-tugging on my part but I finally got to what I was told was their house. I knocked on the door and rang the doorbell. I couldn't help but wonder when nobody answered if perhaps the children's mother was unconscious or something. The oldest of the two got fed up with waiting and started to leave again so I begged her to go get her mommy first and then go for her walk. I could see through the glass door we were at into the kitchen and could tell it was a family home and most likely it was really where she lived. She then went in the open door as I yelled out "helloooooooo" several times. She finally returned with a rather overwhelmed and confused man, along with about five other children all under the age of seven. He had no idea they had been out walking and I had to repeat myself several times before he worked out why I was in his kitchen. I am still not sure if he knows, but I am grateful nothing happened to those darling children.

Anyhoo, we went on and met our friends and headed into town. Here we are with all the children eating at the Chinese restaurant:

Words cannot express how loud they were, but a good time was had by all. Thankfully it was a family-friendly place and was also fairly empty as it was still early. . . the manager only told them off once which is pretty good considering:).

My dear friends Fleur and Alison. We spent the evening ignoring the chaos as much as possible and discussing possibilities for a girls weekend away. It was lovely.

Matt, Dugald and Richard, also ignoring the children, which might explain the fact that the manager had to send them back to our table. Tsk tsk.

We headed downstairs from the restaurant to participate in the evening's festivities.

This magician was from New York and we enjoyed watching him break out of his straightjacket in under 1 minute and 30 seconds to break a new world record (at least that's what he told us).

There were plenty of bands around and lots of dancing in the street.

Friends Rock!!! Meggie and Pippa

Josie and Isabel:

Julia and Katie:

Alison and Monty still dancing:

The prelude to the parade:

These lovely "ladies" weren't planning to stop but the kids kept yelling out "dance for us please". . . so they did!!

We were interviewed by several tv stations thanks to our enthusiastic bunch, our girls were hilarious - when asked where they were from they always said "Texas" which of course got them even more attention for having come "all the way from the United States" for this grand carnival.

Some scenes from the parade:

This last picture . . .that's another guy. Go figure.

My Birthday - Part One

I woke up Friday morning to a very wet and somewhat gloomy day outside, however my perspective immediately brightened with the loving birthday wishes of my sweet family followed by some morning phone calls from family in the States. While I was on the phone in bed, upstairs Meggie was busy making me toast and jam, and she and Katie were helping the little girls draw me birthday cards. The big girls had actually used their own money to buy me cards - buying cards is almost, but not quite, against my religion, given how much they cost, but getting them from my little darlings who spent their own money was a huge blessing.

After the card and present presentation in bed I got up and went swimming with my swim group, who also had remembered my birthday and welcomed me, late as always, with happy birthday wishes. Dugald took the day off work to tend to some business on the home front, and later in the afternoon Kate and Ant, Ben and Wills stopped by for a visit. They are in town to get Wills settled in at Victoria University where he will soon be starting classes. Ben has taken up painting and showed us this amazing oil on canvas he did for Lloyd, we were most impressed.

I also got a lovely bunch of flowers and gifts, thank you very much Howard family.

Later that afternoon we headed out to Rob and Liz's for a celebratory barbeque. Liz's birthday is the 22nd so we were really celebrating for both of us. It was such fun, Rob makes the best burger I've ever tasted and that's saying something!! The Kiwis all put beets on their burgers, but I just couldn't bring myself to try it.

Hamish and Delaney

Rob, Ant's brother Roger Howard, and Dugs.

Rob grilling the yummy burgers. As an aside, it is hard to believe this man is related to my husband. . . I mean aside from the fact that he cooks, often, can you see how clean his grill is????

The girls having Hugh help them open the trunk full of Groovy Girls dolls. Such fun!

I made the cake because I wanted an excuse to have my favorite and everyone sang to Liz and me, then we blew out the birthday candle together.

Hamish, Hettie, and Hettie's boyfriend (can we officially say that? ) Stuart, or maybe Stewart? I should have verified the spelling!

Me and Jo.

Hettie and her mom.

Liz, Ben,Wills, Ant and Rob. Sometimes it's just easier to take pictures when they aren't paying attention.

Ellie getting a cuddle from Delaney. Hamish and Delaney have offered to take the girls to the Marine Science Centre over in Island Bay in a few weeks so Dugald and I can have the afternoon off, how excited am I? It's a bonus that Hamish is actually studying Marine Biology. Score.

This picture makes me smile, seriously those Howard boys are TALL!

Mommy and Meg - you may notice that Katie and Hugh are noticeably absent from my photos of the evening, they were upstairs for most of the night playing on the Playstation.

The birthday girls - we were missing Julie, my other sister-in-law who shares the same birthday as me, but our thoughts were with her too.

Oh here's Katie - I managed to get a few shots with her in them before we left. I also wanted one of Katie and Hettie because several people have commented on how much they look alike.

We had a lovely evening, thank you again to Rob and Liz for opening your home and hosting us all.

Saturday night we celebrated some more, I'll post about that tomorrow. Thanks to all of you who sent me birthday greetings - especially on Facebook, I was overwhelmed by all the good wishes and felt very loved!

Teddy Bear's Picnic

As I sit here uploading pictures and trying to catch up on our blog, Meggie is upstairs making everyone breakfast. I am so loving it. Dugald is out of town (again) and when I woke up this morning she was already heading down the stairs to my room with toast and jam for me. She is eager to learn to cook and has been helping me a lot in the kitchen, but this was the first time she actually went in there and did it all herself. I immediately showed her how the coffee is made, in case she gets it in her head to do this again. She also presented me with a grocery list, she plans on cooking our dinner tonight all by herself and found a recipe in our children's cookbook. I'll take pics and post about that later.


A few weeks ago it was the "Teddy Bear's Picnic" in the Botanic Gardens. Meggie and Katie performed with their Musical Stars group and Josie and Ellie and I went to watch, I don't really need to tell you that Daddy was out of town. . . . you could probably work that one out! Anyhoo, we had a ball, here are some pictures from our day:


Katie during her solo part:

Waiting for the next song:

The audience:

Katie again:

Meggie:

Meggie and Ellie watching more of the show:

I don't know why I'm posting this one, if you looked up "haggard" in the dictionary I'm pretty sure this is what you'd see:

After the performance we went to another area of the gardens where they had jumpers and other activities for the kids. Ellie is a big fan of the jumper. Meggie was an awesome big sister and took her over there, stood in line with her, paid for her and watched her play while I was in the "hair and makeup" line with Josie and Katie.

Katie getting her "makeup" (face paint) done:

And Josie getting her hair done:

I'm thinking the girl doing Katie's makeup isn't wearing the most flattering look for her. . .

but look at my little star, she's beautiful!

It was another fun day for all of us. I apologize for the photo quality, my editing tools are on the computer that isn't set up yet. See you tomorrow!