Summer Holidays

Well mum and dad decided to take Alicia back to Melbourne today, so she can learn her way around our house before we get home.  They said something about giving her a chance to find all of the hiding places before we come home and traumatise her, I think that it has something to do with not being able to fit Alicia, us AND all of our presents into the car.  

I don't really mind having a holiday without mum and dad, I know nan, pop and aunty Sharn will all spoil us, so it should be fun.

Love Princess George

Guess Who is Coming to Stay...

We are going to try (again) to be responsible pet owners.  Alicia is going to come and have a holiday with us.  If we are really good at looking after her, she can live at our house forever.  We are going to be really good pet parents and feed her and give her lots and lots of cuddles.

Love AJ and Milla

Christmas Continues...

We arrived in Yarrawonga in time to open about a million more presents... water powered cars, Barbies, kites, clothes, dolls, books... the list goes on and on and on... We couldn't believe that there could be so many presents, all for us!

We didn't really have time to play with all of our new presents, visitors were arriving.  Before we knew it, gazillions of the Sheridan clan were there.  It was great having so many people sharing Christmas dinner together.  There were about 50 people there, and more than 15 of them were kids - it was great.  

Happy Christmas everyone, we hope you had fun celebrating with family and friends too,

Love AJ and Milla

Perfect Timing

On most drives to Yarrawonga, we stop at Marg and Graham's in Benalla.  Being Christmas day was no excuse not to stop, besides there were bound to be presents under the tree for us!  

Our timing was amazing, we arrived as everyone was about to eat dinner.  We didn't mind, we did have more presents to open and by the time we had opened our presents and looked for fairies in the garden, everyone had finished their lunch.

"Look, I found a real fairy wing in the garden!"

After we said hello to everyone (and goodbye to Sarah and Odd who were going back to Sydney), it was time to fill our pockets with chocolates, jump back in the car and drive to Yarrawonga to continue the Christmas celebrations.

Love AJ and Milla

Christmas Eve

Well it is nearly time for Christmas, and instead of it being hot like it should be in Australia, it is freezing cold.  It was too cold to go to the Carols in the garden, so we went to Little Jimmy's house (that is Mark and Jo's son - James, as in James Hird).  We all had a great time, but we couldn't stay too late, we had to make sure we were in bed early to give Santa plenty of time to deliver all of the Christmas presents.

Milla made sure that she put some reindeer food out, she sprinkled some on the grass out the front and put some on the balcony too.  

I wanted to leave beer for Santa, but decided that Santa has lots of work to do and it is safer if he doesn't have a beer at every house.  I left him a juice instead.

Good night everyone, I hope you all have a great Christmas.

Love AJ Pickle 

The Feast

Mum and Sarah don't think that it took as long to cook the Thanksgiving Feast this year, and it didn't take too long before the table was set for dinner.  

Do you know what the secret ingredient for a fantastic feast is?  It is butter.  Not just a little butter, but lots and lots of butter. 

There was so much food that there was barely enough room for everyone to sit at the table!  I didn't mind, the food was amazing!

Love Princess George

Giving Thanks

Sarah and Odd have finally come back to Melbourne to visit, so we are going to have a huge Thanksgiving Feast.  We know that it isn't really Thanksgiving Day, but we aren't really American so that is OK.  

As Sarah, Ellen and mum start getting the feast ready for tomorrow night, we took Odd upstairs to get ready for our show.   We did a really amazing show where Odd was the duck that fell into the paint, AJ was the 'man who knows how to get to the castle' dancer (and the director) and I was a fairy.  

Sarah even helped out in the fourth act, as a ladybug.  

Mum and Ellen clapped and cheered.  We would have done more acts in the show, but more of the feast needed cooking.  Instead we watched a Christmas movie before bed.

I am sure I will have great dreams tonight, smelling all the yummy food being cooked.  I can't wait to taste the feast tomorrow night.

Love Princess George

Making Christmas Cards

The postman has been really busy lately, delivering all sorts of beautiful Christmas Cards to our house.  As much as we would love to send cards to everyone, we trying to save the trees (and we aren't organised enough to buy or make our own cards).  We decided to do our usual Christmas photos to email to everyone instead. 

Merry Christmas

Something that should have been really easy to do sure took a long time.  First we couldn't decide how to dress for the photo shoot.  Then came the dilemma of how to pose.  We had to get mum to take millions of photos for us to choose from.  We couldn't really decide on a favourite, so we thought we would give you a slide show of our modeling prowess and you can choose your own photo!

Merry Christmas Everyone,

Love AJ and Milla

All Star

Tonight I went to the NBL All-Star Basketball game with AJ and some friends from Flemington.

It was awesome, they played lots of music and I saw all of the dancers on the court.  Oh yeah, I also watched the Aussies beat the International Import players.  

It was heaps of fun,

Love Princess George

Tales of a Watertight World

Well everyone knows that living in a drought is hard work. Our circus cabaret was all about living in a place with no water.

In the cabaret, there was an explorer in the jungle who got very, very lost and ended up in the desert. He was so dehydrated that he imagined that waiters were wandering around with glasses of water for him. Milla was a waiter and she balanced a cup of water on her head so that the explorer couldn't get it.

AJ was a part of the tribe that found the explorer. The explorer taught the tribe how to use water to clean themselves. We think the tribe was more intelligent than the explorer - who needs to be clean, you will only get dirty again. Water is much better for drinking or swimming in.

Anyway, the performance was heaps of fun and everyone cheered really, really loudly so it must have been good. We were such good performers that we were all given tickets to the second part of the Watertight World story at the circus next weekend.

Hooray, we love the circus!
Love AJ and Milli

PS - if Poppy emails us some photos from the show, we will post them here.

Dr Nao's Picnic

Today we went to the Botanical Gardens for a picnic to celebrate Nao graduating from university. Her mum and dad (Ritsu and Yoshi) were at the picnic too.


Congratulations Dr Nao. Have fun working in Adelaide as a vet.
Love Princess George

A Lot Like Cinderella

Can you believe it, after all our hard work, the end of year dance performance is over!

Dancing has kept us very busy lately, with photo shoots and extra rehearsals. Apparently all of our hard work was worth it because everyone said the show was fantastic. Naturally the parts we were in were great, but it is hard to tell about the rest of the show when you are too busy backstage to see what is happening.

We were both very busy during the night. Milla was in the opening dance and the first dance after interval as well as the finale. I had 3 dances during the show and the finale. I only had 6 minutes between my first 2 dances. It was pretty crazy trying to get 14 tappers out of their 'Singin in the Rain' outfits into jazz shoes and costumes, but somehow we managed to do it. It was much more relaxing in the second half of the show when I only had one dance to worry about.

I wonder what the dance performance will be next year?

Love AJ Pickle

Here are a few photos from the show...

A Crazy Day

Today certainly was a crazy day.

First we took AJ to school, then we had to go to circus for a photo shoot to promote the show. We went straight from circus to dancing for our final class before the concert tomorrow. From dancing we went to school to collect AJ's bag. We couldn't collect AJ because he was at the swimming pool having a swimming lesson, so it was off to the swimming pool next.

After we got AJ, it was home for lunch and then off to Tia and Tio's for the Christmas Party. The crazy elf and Santa both visited the party and we had heaps of fun.

When we left the party, went home to get the rest of our dancing gear and headed off to rehearsals.

Finally when our part of the rehearsal was over, Lucy picked us up and took us home. Mum is still at rehearsal, making sure that everyone else is safe. If I wasn't so tired I would write more about our crazy day, but for now - Good Night!

Love Princess George

PS - perhaps when mum gets home she will post photos of the crazy day for me!

Milla and her balloon butterfly

AJ trying to win the tug-of-war

Thanks for our presents Santa's Helper

Making Friends

When mum went to Japan to get Ellen, she stayed with Yoshi and Ritsu.

Today, Yoshi and Ritsu came to our place to visit us. It was great to meet them and practice my Japanese. Luckily they both speak really great English because I don't really know much Japanese!
We had a really yummy dinner and then Yoshi did some magic tricks for us. After Yoshi's magic, it was time for dad to do his tricks - throwing fruit in the air and catching it in his mouth. He even taught Yoshi how to do it, they were very funny.
I am glad that I finally got to meet Yoshi and Ritsu. I will have to learn more Japanese so that I can talk to everyone when I go to Japan when I am 7.

Love Princess George

Climbing High

Well I have only had my plaster off for a few days and there is no stopping me.

I had my first class back at circus and I was strong enough to climb way up high on the rope!

Luckily I am back, rehearsals for the end of year circus cabaret are about to begin.

Love AJ Pickle

A House Guest

Well Dad has gone to Tasmania for 'work' for a few days. Look who has moved in with us...

He lives in our bedroom and eats mosquitos for us.

Sometimes he lives on the ceiling or on the walls, other times he lives in our bathroom. I don't think that mum likes him, she always looks around to see where he is before she comes into our room. I really don't know why, he really is a friendly huntsman spider.

Love AJ Pickle

A Day at the Races

I think I like going to the races – I get to wear a pretty dress and a hat.

I went to Emirates Stakes Day at Flemington with Ella and Taylah. The grownups came too and everyone had fun.

There was lots of yummy food and drinks and gambling for the big people. The kids got to do fun things like make badges and jewellery, have their hair sprayed and get face painting. If we wanted to, we could have even made posters but we were too busy for that, there were horses to watch as they ran past the glass fence.

I hope that I get to go to the races again some time soon.
Love Princess George

Show and Tell

I had the best ever show and tell today - I showed everyone my old plaster.

As we waited in line to go inside, I hid my arm inside my jumper so no one could see it. When it was my turn for show and tell, everyone was surprised to see me without my plaster.

Lots of people tried it on and pretended that they had a broken arm too!

Love AJ Pickle

The Great Unveiling

Today after school, I went to the park with Isabella for a snack picnic. After we had our snacks it was time to play. We had a great time running around and climbing trees.

Lucy was surprised to see me climbing trees so well, even though my arm was still in plaster. She is a physio and know all about fixing kids after they have broken bones. Since 3 to 4 weeks was up, we all decided that I could finally take off my plaster.

After I took the plaster taken off, Lucy checked to make sure that I could move my arm normally and pick things up properly. Some things hurt just a little bit, but she said I was strong enough to leave the plaster off - HOORAY!

It was strange having no plaster on. It was actually much harder to climb trees. I will have to do some weights to make my right arm as strong as my left.

Love AJ Pickle

Spring Flowers

It was spring day at circus today. I decided that I would go dressed as my favourite plant - Bouganvillea.

We all went for an early morning walk across the park to pick some bouganvillea and AJ helped to put it in my hair.

Don't I look beautiful?
Love Princess George

No School Today

Isn't it great that instead of going to school or work, everyone gets to watch the horse races. Australia really is the lucky country.

We decided to watch the races at the 'other park' (that is the park that doesn't really have a name or anything special to describe it).

Tom and Rachael set up their house in the park, with the tv, couches, tables and the barbeque and millions of people sat around eating and drinking and having fun. All the kids played footy and cricket, rode scooters and bikes, climbed trees and played chasey.

It was a great day. I hope we get another day to play in the park with friends.

Love AJ Pickle

This is dad checking out how much money he won (lost) on the races.

(Milli had fun making flower chains too.)

Trickle Treat

Today I played a new game called 'Trickle Treating'. First Liam and Angus cam over to visit wearing costumes. They tried to give us a fright so we gave them some lollies.

Then it was our turn. We finished our dinner and quickly put on a costume. I was a wizard and Milli was a scary fairy. We walked over to Liam's house and gave him a fright. They gave us some lollies too.

I wonder when we can go trickle treating again?
Love AJ Pickle

Meeting Mason

After I went to work with mum this morning, we decided to go visiting.

We went to visit Kirsty and her new baby Mason. He is really adorable, and smart too - I taught him how to sleep during the day so that Kirsty could play with me!

I can't wait until Mason is bigger, then we can all play together.

Love Princess George

Catch Up Time!

Well here we were thinking that when mum got her new toy we wouldn't have to deal with the 'thermal events' of the old computer. The only thing we didn't realise is that even thought the Mac is a really pretty computer that does heaps of cool stuff - it won't let us blog properly. We can't even upload photos (and what is the point of a blog if you can't see all the cute photos of us?).

So now as well as publishing all of the posts from when we were off-line, trying to stay up-to-date, we have to see if we can convert the blog to another hosting site. Does anyone know a host site that is as easy to use as Blogger that is Mac Compatible? If we can't convert the host site, we will try to keep up to date by juggling computers - the 'thermal event' machine, mum's Mac and dad's Dell.

Love AJ and Milla

PS - we have been off-line for so long that we have only just published posts from the start of October!

Another Almost Emergency!

Well it seems that visits to the Royal Children's Hospital are becoming quite common for me. It was less than 2 weeks ago that I was there having my broken arm xrayed and plastered. Tonight it was mum's turn to take me to the ememrgency room, this time with a freaky rash that started as puffy tired looking eyes this morning, to a rash that looked like big pretend mozzie bites on my back, neck and face after school.

When the rash got itchy and covered almost all of my body, mum decided perhaps I was ready to go to the hospital. This is what I looked like before I went to the hospital! Lucklily Ellen had dropped over to say 'Hello', she stayed with Milla and Zara.

After an hour and a half, I was almost asleep and the freaky rash had faded, it was my turn to see the doctor. Apparently I am allergic to something and it gave me hives. One day I might have to go to a specialist to see what I am allergic to, but I am in no hurry.

The doctor decided to check my arm and found out that I have broken my plaster and I have to get my arm re-plastered. Maybe I will go t the doctors again tomorrow!
Love AJ Pickle

Sleep Over

I must be a big kid now, my friend Zara came to my house for a sleep over. We had lots of fun playing together. We even pretended that we were twins.

Do we look like twins?

Love Princess George

Fun and Games

We found a new game to play - it is called cleaning. First we cleaned the table and the floor under the table, then the cupboard doors and the fridge. We even cleaned the front door.

Cleaning is so much fun, especially when we both had a bottle of orange cleaner and paper towel.


I like cleaning, I don't know what mum complains about.
Love Princess George

Party On!

Well for someone who wasn't having a birthday party, I sure have done some celebrating.

This morning mum had to work at a festival at Debney's Park. Some of AJ's school friends were at the festival so we decided to join them in their celebrations.

When we got back from the festival, Grandma, Grandad, Aunty Sam, Sebastian and Poppy were all at our house. Nan was busy shopping but was going to come to our house for dinner too!

When Uncle Grant called to say happy birthday to me, I invited him over for dinner too. It wasn't long before he was at our house with Aunty Mel and Henry. Marg and Graham were in town, so they came over to our house with Ellen and we all had a yummy bbq dinner and then more cake for desert.

I think that when I turn 5 I will have a 'no birthday party' birthday, that way the celebrations will last for ages!
Love Princess George

Who Needs a Party?

Birthday parties seem to take up a lot of time and I am very busy, especially on a Friday. Since my birthday was on a Friday, I decided not to have a party.

Even without a party, I still celebrated turning 4. First I was given a garden, then AJ gave me a new doll who is called Lena Dorothy. We had pancakes for breakfast then Ellen came to visit, naturally bringing more presents.

Then it was time for school and dancing. Everyone I saw wished me a happy birthday. Gabby even decided to spend the day with me while her mum was at work.

After dancing Kalinda came over for a play in my new garden and Amelia dropped in too.

We decided to make cookies to share for afternoon tea and then do some face painting.

After we picked the big kids up from school, we shared some cake in the park. I may not have had a party, but I sure did have fun!
Love Princess George

PS - don't worry, I still had birthday cake!

Hip Hip Hooray, I am 4 Today

When I woke up this morning, I waited in my bed very quietly until the clock said seven o'clock. AJ and Marcus were still asleep so I snuck downstairs as quietly as I could.

I didn't stay quiet for very long - about half way down the top stairs, I saw beautiful colours on the glass door to the balcony. As I was looking at the beautiful decorations on the window, mum and dad told me that I could go outside, on to the balcony to find my birthday present.

I went outside and found a beautiful garden all for me. In my garden I have a rose, some dasies, petunias and verbenas. My boyfriend Macs gave me a tomato and Ella and Taylah gave me a strawberry that will grow flowers and strawberries. All I need now for my garden to be perfect is to have a Bird of Paradise, capsicum and some rosemary.

I am so lucky, I think that I am the only 4 year old to have their own garden.
Love Princess George

Kids Everywhere

After circus today, I stopped for a play at Bayswater Park. Normally the park is pretty quiet. I was really surprised to see millions of kids there - furry ones and little people.

There were even lambs, a calf, a pig, rabbits, guinea pigs, chooks and ducks. I had a great time feeding and playing with all of the animals.

It was like being in the country in Kensington.
Love Princess George

Happy Mum

Mum has a new toy...


Now if only she had time to work out how to use it, we might get time to use the big computer.
Love AJ and Milla

Not Fair!

My broken arm isn't even a day old and already I am back at school.

Mum did tell me that if my arm hurt, Louise would call her at lunch time and I could go home. I was a bit tired after such a big weekend, that I did want to go home, but I don't think that mum believed me when I said it was because my arm was sore - she saw me climbing the school fence!

My theory was that if I could climb fences, I could go to dancing tomorrow and to Kelly Sports on Wednesday to play hockey - I was just too tired to stay at school for the rest of today!

Oops, Love AJ Pickle

Them's the Breaks!

Picture this...

It is almost the end of the Gathering of the Clan in Tungamah and I needed to fit in a few more games before it was time to get into the car and go back to Melbourne. I was standing on top of the fort, yelling out to nan, pop and Sharn, "Kick me the footy, I will take a specky!"

Now nan being nan, thought that it would be a little too dangerous to jump from the top of a nearly 2 metre platform to mark a footy and calls back, "AJ climb down to take a specky, you don't want to get hurt."

Being the good kid that I am, I went to climb down from the fort but I missed the top rung of the ladder. Instead of climbing down safely, I fell to the ground, landing on my head, shoulder and arm and screamed.

Naturally nan, pop and Sharn came running. I was on the ground holding my arm screaming "My bones broke!" over and over. Mum wandered over with Milli and saw that my arm looked a bit broken. She took Milli to the toilet knowing that we had a long drive ahead of us, to get to the hospital in Benalla.

By the time mum and Milli were back, I was in the car and almost ready for the journey. My arm hurt too much to let anyone touch it, but I did have some Nurofen to make it hurt less.

Mum kindly took a photo of me in pain ( and Tunga dirt), to share with the world.

The drive to Benalla seemed to take a million years. I could feel every tiny bump in the road. Luckily (for mum and dad too) the nurofen kicked in and I went to sleep. I woke up when we got to the hospital.

The people at the hospital in Benalla couldn't take an x-ray of my arm, but they knew that one bone was broken and that maybe the other bone was a bit bent. They put my arm in a half plaster and sent me home, to go to the Children's Hospital later.

I had to call poppy to tell him he was right - my arm was broken!

I didn't want to go to the hospital straight away, but by the time we got back to Melbourne the nurofen was wearing off. Dad took me into the Children's and they x-rayed my arm. They found that I had cracked my radius (that is the lower arm bone that is on the same side as my thumb) about 80% of the way through, just above the wrist. Luckily my other bone looked pretty good. Then they put a backslab and another bandage on my arm so I couldn't bend my wrist, dosed me up with more nurofen and sent me home to bed.

All in all, it was quite a dramatic way to end a long weekend away. Sorry that I didn't get to say a proper goodbye to everyone. Next year I will try really hard not to break anything!
Love AJ Pickle

Gathering of the Clan

Can you believe it, it has been an entire year since we last went to Tungamah to go camping with the Sheridan Clan? We love the Gathering of the Clan - it is great to see everyone again.

The Sheridan Clan is all of nan's family and there are millions of them. This year there were almost 70 Sheridan's camped on the banks of the Boosey Creek - some in tents or swags, others in caravans and cars. A few of the clan were too young (8 months), too old (92 years) or just too buggered to camp and they stayed in houses nearby.

Lots of the clan had to travel for ages to get there, but we all knew it would be worth it. We didn't get to the campsite until it was already dark. Luckily our tent was set up and there was a lamp turned on inside, waiting for us to go to bed in our brand new sleeping bags.

Since we went to bed pretty early, we also woke up pretty early. We had our breakfast around the campfire, then had a play till the rest of the people woke up for our second breakfast. After a few rashers of bacon from the barbie, we all had heaps of energy to play.

We don't know why people think there is nothing to do in the country. We couldn't decide what to do first! We played tennis, rode on bikes and played cricket. We tried to hit golf balls into (or over) the creek, played on the playground equipment and climbed trees. We played hide and seek around the camp site, went exploring, threw the vortex and kicked the footy. In amongst this, we managed to eat heaps of bbq food and snacks and the grown-ups managed to drink a few cans of beer.

On the Sunday, not only did we have more fun, but the whole clan went to church. Now going to church during the Clan Gathering isn't exactly commonplace for all of us, but it was a special day - Jaxon was being Christened.

After the Christening, it was back to the camp for even more food, drinks and play time. Then eventually it was time to finish packing the car, say goodbye for another year and head back to Melbourne.

We all had a fantastic weekend, right up until the very end, but that is another story...
Love AJ and Milla

ps - we all took a gazillion photos, some of them are already on Flickr. Heaps of photos are listed as private, but if you email us we will send you the link. If you can't wait to see photos, click HERE for a preview.

Racing

Wow, going to the V8 supercars at Bathurst was amazing, even if Holden didn't win. I had so much fun I don't know where to start. I think that I will have to sit down with dad and write a journal of my adventures. To start with, I will post a few photos to show you my favourite parts of the weekend.

Love AJ Pickle

In the pits.

Getting a tattoo

Getting a poster for dad!

Watching the race.

I love Bathurst!