Celebrating not having to go to school

This time of night on a Sunday and I should be sound asleep in bed. Instead I have stayed up late doing very little. Eventually mum sent me to bed and less tha a minute later she changed her mind and said I could get up again because of this...

Love my view!

... Fireworks at the end of the street. This is pretty much what I was looking at from my room too!

I have to say that living here is like celebrating a holiday every day. 

I am looking forward to not having to get up early in the morning, instead I can relax and enjoy the holiday. 

Love AJ Pickle

Old (and perhaps a little crazy?)

SHHHH, don't tell anyone, but today is mum's birthday.  

If you ask her how old she is, she is likely to stop and think for a long time before she comes up with an answer.  For ages mum told us, and everyone else, that she was 27.   I think that she was 27 for about 10 years, even before she was 27.  Once we worked out that she couldn't be 27 forever, she started to use her real age for a while.  Apparently remember what her real age was was far too difficult so now she has decided that she will be 42 for a few years.

Don't believe her though, she really is only 38, but don't tell her that we told you!

Happy Birthday Mum

We hope you had a great birthday mum and will enjoy your relaxing weekend away

Love AJ and Milla, the best kids in the world 

Junior's Christening

ready to upload

24-Feb-2012

Junior’s Christening

Mum gets to become a parent again today.  She isn’t really having another baby, instead she is becoming a god parent for Junior.  We all went to the church where the whole god-parent thing happened.

Then we went to Junior’s grand parents house for the most fun celebration ever.

There were water balloons...

and a jumping castle.  And water balloons ON THE JUMPING CASTLE... 

Seriously so much fun :-)

Welcome to our family Junior!

Love AJ and Milla

Growing Up

Do you know what the coolest thing about growing up is?  It is actually growing UP, and by that I mean getting taller.

Almost as tall as Nan with my skates on!

I am guessing that this time next year I will be taller than Nan.  Look out Pop, it won't be long before I catch you too!

Thanks for coming all the way to Melbourne to hang out with me for my birthday.
Love AJ Pickle, the birthday boy

Christmas with Crazy Cousins

Yippee it is Christmas time, well almost Christmas time.  Really it is Christmas Eve and that means that it is time to celebrate Christmas with my crazy cousins, aunts and uncle and of course Grandma.

We ate a delicious lunch together and were all on our best behavior so that we could open Christmas presents!

Dad and my littlest cousin played Santa and together they handed out the million presents that were under the Christmas tree.


We played nicely with our new presents but then had to go out and run around to burn off some energy.  OK, we may have been eating some chocolates and lollies as we were playing!

The parents decided that it would be a good idea to get a nice photo of all of the cousins together.  Getting 6 kids to all look in the same direction at the same time and not pull crazy faces was next to impossible.  Here are some of the nuts photos that mum snapped.

I'm not ready for a photo yet!

We do love each other :-)

No hope!

Gangnam Style!

Clearly mum missed out on getting a decent photo of us all, better luck next year mum!  I wonder if anyone else managed to get a decent photo?  

I hope you all get to have a great Christmas with family,
Love AJ Pickle

The Christmas Crazy Begins

It seems that the Christmas Crazy has begun.  We have our first Christmas get-together tomorrow and so I had to get busy making a treat to share with our friends.  I wanted to make something that looked good, tasted great but was super quick and easy to make.  I have seen about a billion different variations of mini-plum puddings, do you like what I came up with?

Now normally I hate plum puddings but these are delicious.

Mini Plum Puddings (that actually taste great!)

The other good thing about making these is that all of the ingredients are delicious - Chocolate Royales, Jaffas and Mint Leaves.  Even the splodge of icing tastes OK.

I wonder what Christmassy treat I will make next?
Love Princess George

Guess who is 9 - Birthday Boo

I went to bed last night as an 8 year old and woke up as a 9 year old... that also meant that I woke up to a pile of presents that were all for me!

I am 'one in a million' - that's what the card said!

Present Time!

Trying to guess what is inside

Yippee, just what I wanted

How to wear new skate pants!

The best present EVER!

How about that for a ginormous pile of presents!

Happy birthday to me and let the Festival of Boo begin,

Love Princess George

Jumping High

Today was a school day but I didn't do any school work.  In fact I was barely at school.  I went to school early and jumped on the bus to go to the District Athletics Carnival.  I was competing in the high jump.

Nervously waiting...

I was pretty nervous, it was the first time I was competing in the District Sports and I have only ever done high jump about 3 times!  Now when I had a go at high jump at school, the mat we were landing on was about 30 or 40 centimetres high.  The mat here was ginormous, it was 80 centimetres high!

My event was the first event called.  I was the first person to jump.  The bar was set at 1.05m.  Off I ran and up I jumped.  Before I knew it I was over the bar and on the mat.

Success on the first jump of the day :-)

The other kids went next and every time they had a jump the bar fell down.  They all had a second jump.  Only one of the other kids in my age group managed to make it over the bar.

The two of us kept on jumping.  If I made it over the bar, then he would make it over the bar.  If I hit the bar, then he would hit the bar too.  

Almost! I think my bum got in the way :-/

We went from 1.05m to 1.08m and we both cleared it.  The bar was moved up to 1.11m but we both missed it.  They dropped it back to 1.10m and we both cleared it.

Made it this time :-)

The bar was moved it back up to 1.11cm.  I just missed it on the third jump, I clipped the bar with my heels but he made it over.  That means that he won the event and I came in second place.

They had to have a jump off for third place.  Everyone else tried their best but they couldn't make it over the bar at 1.05m so they dropped it back again and still no one made it so everyone else came equal third.  Because I got a place, I was lucky enough to get a ribbon and points for my school. 

Second and super proud :-D

 Oh and did I mention I had a cheer squad - Aunty Sharn,  Billy AND mum!  That was a pretty cool surprise!

Happy high 5s after the high jump :-D

I think I like high jump, I wonder if I can go to Little Athletics and learn some more sports, maybe one day I could be in the Olympics!

Love AJ Pickle

Sundays in my City #16 - Crazy Cake

I know I promised to get out and about this weekend and take real photos but I have already posted many of the photos.  Luckily after the Soccer Goal of the Year (OK, her only soccer goal), we promised Milla that her and a friend could do something fun and they decided to make a cake.  I could have taken photos of the baking but that would have shown the devastation of 3 kids baking, instead I took heaps of photos of the eating.

Ready for frosting

He doesn't want to wait!

The boy has a taste...

The girl is waiting for her slice... 

Apparently this shows they like the cake.

And perhaps this one suggests a little too much food colouring!

If you want to make this delicious cake too, this is the recipe base we used, adding food colouring instead of cocoa and choc chips.  It is super easy to make (3 kids under 10 did all of the work!), delicious and looks pretty spectacular too!

If you want to join in the fun of Sundays in my City too, click on over to Unknown Mami.

She Shoots... She Scores!!!

With only 4 weeks left of the soccer season, I was a little disappointed that I hadn't scored a goal.  Every week I work my hardest but I never seem to score.  Not long into the game today, I took a pass in the forward as I was running to the goal.  I didn't want to kick it straight to the goalie so I aimed wide.  Unfortunately it was a little too wide, but if you don't tell anyone, it actually looks like I am kicking a goal here! 

Kicking goals... Almost!

When I did actually kick a goal, mum was too busy cheering for me that she didn't get a photo of me kicking the goal.  She did manage to get a photo of me celebrating but I am behind the opposition!

Yippee!

This photo is completely our of focus - I think mum was still in shock when she took this photo of me running around with the hugest smile on my face! 

She scored!

Later in the half I did a great kick from the midfield, straight to another one of our players who kicked her first goal too.

Another assist

Three different players on our team kicked their first ever soccer goals in the first half of the game.  Unfortunately the other team kicked three goals in the second half so we drew the game.  I was so proud of my friend who had her first ever game in as a goalie.

Congratulating my friend

Of course we sung our team song at the end of the game.  I was so happy that I jumped the highest I have ever jumped.

Celebrating

I love soccer.  It is great to spend time hanging out with my friends, running around and having fun.
Love Princess George

Celebrating Harmony

How did you celebrate the diversity in your community?  

I went to a picnic where I could share delicious food from all over the world.  The picnic was delicious but even better than the picnic was the face painting.  

How cool is this?

Love Princess George

Party Time!

It seems that mum isn’t the only one feeling guilty that I didn’t get to celebrate my 10th birthday with my whole family.  Nan and pop must have been feeling guilty too because I had a small party there with my Yarrawonga friends, then when I went home we had another cake day and of course more presents at our place on my actual birthday! 

(if I can find any pics from pop I will put them here!)

Now that mum is back from India, I get to have a birthday party with my friends too.  We headed down to Adventure Park in Geelong

I think that a water park is the best place to hang out with friends for a birthday!

Oh and of course there was more cake.

Now that I have finished ALL my birthday celebrations, I must officially be ten!

Love AJ Pickle

Pre-birthday birthday celebrations

Mum is going off on a crazy adventure and she won’t be here for my birthday.  Of course I will be sad that mum won’t be here to celebrate my real birthday, but it won’t be all bad.  I get to celebrate my birthday early, at the time of my birthday and then again when mum gets back from India.  

I am pretty sure that I will be extra spoilt because mum feels extra guilty, you can tell by the early birthday presents AND the triple layer pre-birthday cake!

Happy almost birthday to me!

Love AJ Pickle

Christmas Eve Craziness

We decided to start Christmas early this year and my cousins all came over to our house to begin the celebrations on Christmas Eve.


Naturally with the cousins there, we would have to share presents and of course there were far too many presents under the Christmas tree.  We had a simple solution to that problem...  hand out the presents and start ripping.



Before we knew it, there was ripped up wrapping paper everywhere and little kids playing with their presents.


Of course there were big kids who had about a billion presents too but they were too clever to open all of their presents and play with them, they hid them from the little kids and played with their toys instead!

Unwrapping so much food made us work up  an appetite.  Naturally there was way too much food to keep us going and give us the energy to keep running and playing.


Eventually the early start to Christmas was over, the cousins headed home and it was time for us to get ready for bed.

Of course we have left out some snacks for Santa, just in case he has the munchies when he arrives here.

  

Time for us to go to bed now, Santa is on the way.

Merry Christmas,
Love AJ and Milla