Discoveries in the kitchen

Normally when there is a discovery in the kitchen it is something gross and disgusting. Perhaps a potato that has fallen to the back of the cupboard and has gone rotten or more commonly a lunchbox is discovered weeks after it is packed and ends up looking something like this...

This once was a vegemite roll!

Sure the mouldy lunch happens a little too often but we have only been in this place for 4 months so we haven't discovered any other mouldy or rotten food hiding in the back if the cupboard or fridge. This discovery was way cooler than rotten food, and heaps more practical. Today I discovered a new drawer, right there under the oven.

Surprise, another place to hide things!

I wonder if this tiny little place will have any more hidden surprises for us?

Love AJ Pickle

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

Blood spatter on the ceiling?

All kinds of crazy can happen when dad helps out in the kitchen. Take this afternoon for example, we were having DIY salad rolls for lunch so dad was chopping up some salad for the rolls. A simple task really but one that ended up with blood all over the place; from the kitchen bench, over the shopping, on the table, the microwave and of course the floor too. 

Further inspection also saw blood splatter on the pantry and the stove, even the ceiling. 

Seriously, there was so much blood that you would think that there had been a murder in the kitchen. Luckily it was just a tiny cut on the tip of dad's finger!
Love AJ and Milla

Billy and the Wool!

You would think that having 2 kids of her own that mum would know that when there is a little kid in the house and the house is quiet, their is a fair chance that trouble is brewing.

Look what Billy did when he was playing quietly on his own!

I hope that mum has fun untangling all of the wool :-)

Love Princess George

Pissed Off - a tutorial

How to get the whole family pissed off in just a few easy steps.

1. Get Milla and I to do things just to annoy each other.  
2. Make sure Milla is really annoyed.
3. Milla will run to mum and tell her what happened.
4. I get in trouble for annoying Milla. 
5. Milla gets in trouble for dobbing.  
6. We are half way there... we are both pissed off!
7. Continue to annoy each other because we are pissed off.
8. That makes mum get pissed off.  
9. When mum gets pissed off, it pisses off dad.  
10. Then dad keeps getting pissed off because mum is pissed off at him for no reason.

And there you have it - how to piss off the entire family in 10 easy steps!

Does anyone know how to get the whole family un-pissed-off really quickly?

Love AJ Pickle

PS - luckily this doesn't happen all the time, just every now and then :-)

How to buy a new house (and turn your world upside down) the superRelish way

Now this story starts a couple of weeks ago when mum and dad decided that they would go for a wander around Docklands instead of sitting and watching us skate all day long and ended up with us exploring display suites and pretending we were going to move to Docklands.  Well today, mum decided that she needed to convince herself that she didn't want live at The Quays and that meant that she wanted to go and have another look at the display suite to prove to herself that it was too small, that the kitchen wasn't practical and that she really didn't want to down-size.

Boring… been there and done that!  Instead of joining her, Milla and I went home with dad and mum and Ellen went off to explore the display suites.  Well this is the shorter story of what happened next.

First off, instead of deciding that she couldn't possibly down-size and live in a small apartment, mum decided that she really really really wanted to live there.  The only problem was that someone else already had the apartment on reserve and were thinking of buying it.  She called dad (using Ellen's phone because hers had a flat battery… again) to let him know that she loved the place but was disappointed that someone else was going to buy it.  Mum decided that if it was meant to be, it would happen and wandered off down the promenade to explore some more before walking home.

Now naturally the sales person checked in with the people who wanted to buy the apartment and found out that they weren't ready to commit to the sale, that meant it was available and ours if we wanted it.  She couldn't call mum so she called dad.  Dad tried to call Ellen to work out what to do but her phone had gone flat too.  He wasn't sure what he should do but took a punt and headed in to the bank to even see if we could afford the apartment.  Apparently most people talk to the bank way before they fall in love with a new place!

So it turns out that we could afford the apartment so dad transferred the holding deposit and had whatever paperwork needed to get a new home loan started.  He got home from the bank just after mum walked in and said that we had plans for the morning - WE HAD TO GO AND SIGN A NEW HOUSE CONTRACT!

Check out the photo gallery of the place we will soon call home :-)

I guess we had better start thinking of packing soon!

Love AJ and Milla

How to fill in time

When we were skating today, mum and dad decided to get out of the cold and go for a wander around Docklands.  Somehow that walk became them imagining what it would be like to live at Docklands and they had a look at a few different places that we could live in if we ever decided to move.  When they came back to collect us they decided that instead of going back to our own house for lunch and a rest before going back to watch the opening round of the hockey, we would go out for lunch together.  Of course they told us all about looking at apartments so we wanted to look at some too.  Next thing you know, we are wandering around Docklands looking for display suites to play in.

First stop was The Quays.  We pretended that we wanted to buy a 3 bedroom apartment.  Just our luck, there were 2 available.  We chatted to the sales person and she showed us all the cool things in the building.  We really wished that we were going to live there, it looked freaking awesome!  The apartments themselves looked pretty cool, all shiny and new, with our own bathrooms but the coolest parts were in the 'residents club' - there was a swimming pool, tennis court, gym, library and even a cinema.  Better yet, it would be ready to move into by the end of the year.

When we finished looking at the display suite, mum and dad reminded us that we weren't really moving to Docklands, that we were really just pretending.  They kept on pretending and went to another display suite - New Quay Promenade.  This time the building hadn't even been started and it was pretty hard to imagine living in a place that wouldn't be built for nearly 2 years.  We got to choose who would have each of the bedrooms, had fun exploring the kitchen and the bathroom on display, as well as looking at all the really cool pictures they had.  It looked pretty nice, but it didn't have a cinema so it wasn't as nice as the first one we looked at!

If only we could move in to Docklands, we could easily go home for a few minutes in between ice skating things without any hassle…
Love AJ and Milla

A holiday at home will have to do

As much as we would like to, it doesn't look like we will find the time to take a family holiday to some far off exotic location this year and our frequent flyer points from our last big adventure are about to expire.  We didn't want them to disappear so we went shopping with our points instead.

It may not be a holiday to Macau, Tanzania or Guam but it will be great for a holiday at home!
Love Princess George

Earth Hour

When I first found out about Earth Hour, I have to say that I thought it was completely insane. How in the world could we possibly last an entire hour without power? Sure when we are camping we can manage it, but when we are camping we are usually so exhausted after running wild all day that we are ready for bed as the sun goes down. An hour at home with no power would be a completely new challenge. No TV, no computer, no i-devices, no lights. It was going to be a challenge.

The first few minutes were spent running around finding all of the candles we could, than searching in the dark for a lot longer trying to find some matches to light the candles!  We gave up on the search for matches and we ended up using the stove top to light the candles, I hope that wasn't cheating - it is a gas cook top so I think it would have been OK!

Now that we had light, all we had to do was find some way to fill in the rest of the hour without power or technology. What to do... Play cards, a board game, create? AJ decided to use the opportunity to teach mum and dad how to make origami cranes.

Making Cranes by Candlelight

Before the hour was up we had created more than a dozen teeny tiny cranes, had fun together and realised that having power and technology is awesome but we don't really need it to have fun.

AJ and I have decided that we need to have an earth hour every month, to remember that fun isn't reliant upon technology to have fun.
Love Princess George

Where did the laundry fairies go?

Now I am guessing that heaps of parents nag and if other parents are like mine, one of the most common things they like to nag about is the state of bedroom cleanliness (or lack thereof). Apparently using a floor-drobe is considered inappropriate and that clothes should be folded away neatly or hanging in the cupboard. Well once your clothes are on the floor-drobe, getting them back into the cupboard neatly is way too much effort and takes too long. My answer is simple, scoop up everything on the floor and throw it into the washing basket. Surely then the laundry fairies will visit, clean all the clothes, even the ones that weren't even dirty in the first place, then magically put them away in the cupboard all neat and tidy. That was the plan but it seems that the laundry fairies are on strike. Sure they wash all of the clothes and hang them out to dry. They sort them into piles, even folding the clothes that need folding but that is where they give up. No longer do my clothes miraculously re-appear in my cupboard ready for me to make a mess with. Now they are left in a GINORMOUS pile for me to put away!

Can you believe the injustice of it all, me having to put my own clothes away? It really defeats the purpose of me throwing everything into the wash basket if I am only going to have to put them away myself. Perhaps I may have to re-think my room cleaning strategy.

I know, don't tell me not to make a mess in the first place, it will just make you sound like my parents!
Love AJ Pickle

Time to tidy

I got a surprise when I got home from school today - mum had cleaned my bedroom.  Now having a clean bedroom is awesome but when mum cleans it for me it means that all the things I had shoved out of the way to pretend my room was clean get dragged out and put into a pile for me to tidy up.  I know that if I forget to put them away 'properly'.  I could just leave it for mum to do, but when mum says put them away 'properly' she really means she will either throw it away or give my stuff to someone else!

The Clean Bits...

and the not so clean bits!

Luckily AJ is facing the same dilemma , a clean room... And a giant pile of stuff to sort through!

AJ's kinda clean bits...

and his pile to sort!

Oh well, enough of the complaining, I've got some serious sorting to do.
Love Princess George

Almost a CATastrophe

Now in case you had forgotten, we have 2 cats, Rebel the cheeky little kitten that you see pictures of everywhere and Tornado. We don't have as many recent photos of him because he is much older and doesn't hang around to have his photo taken, he has much more important and exciting things to do. Things like jumping fences to visit the neighbours for second breakfast, traumatise the dogs that walk by and catch up with all of his cat friends who live nearby. He is a pretty busy cat.

Yesterday he came home from another day of adventuring and he had a really bad limp. His front leg looked like it was bending the wrong direction and we had to take him to the vet to get checked out.

Luckily it seems that his leg isn't broken but the vet couldn't work out why there was a patch of fur in his leg that was cropped extra short, like it had been shorn off but there was no damage to his skin. Another mystery it seems.

Now all we have to so is try to keep him quiet and indoors so that he doesn't damage his leg any more by fighting with dogs or jumping off 10 foot fences.

Wish us luck!
Love Princess George

Freaking Friday

Now normally when it gets to Friday everyone is all "Thank God it's Friday", today that thought is followed by "freaking Friday!"

In the hour that we have been awake this is what has happened so far

1. We found the wool felt that was soaking overnight in green food dye on the floor with green dye splashed all over the place, with cute little kitten footprints through it.
2. A plate 'jumped' off the bench and smashed into a bajillion pieces.
3. A crazy kitten went for a kamikaze run across the table and knocked mum's cup of tea over (did I mention that we were out of milk and that the tea was made using a funky lactose free UHT milk!)

Surprisingly there have been no tears or screeching by anyone in the house (yet!) but I have a sneaking suspicion that mum might just go back to bed and imagine that today isn't happening once we go to school!

We hope that your Friday is off to a better start!

Love AJ and Milla

edited to add
PS - a few more extra choice words that were nastier than 'freaking' may have been heard when mum got a parking ticket because she was at work for too long!  She really should have gone back to bed.

Sleep Out

It is no secret that we love camping, the only problem is that we are always so busy that we never make time to go camping. A few weeks ago we wanted to go camping in the backyard but it turns out that our tent is bigger, WAY bigger, than our backyard so that didn't work.

Well all of that has changed now and we are the proud new owners of a new tent that we can all fit in but still fits in our backyard. To celebrate, we went camping the very night we got the tent.

It was great camping in the backyard. The best thing was that we could quickly run inside to get anything we had forgotten.  And yes, you do need to have a cow with sunglasses when you go camping!

We tried to convince mum and dad to join us on our camping adventure but we had no luck.  Hopefully  our whole family we will get to go camping properly soon.
Love AJ and Milla

Dear Children - Does Not Compute

Dear Children (and in particular the older child!),

Lets imagine that it gets to Sunday night and all of a sudden I realise that all of the laundry is still sitting in the basket waiting to be washed, including all of the school uniforms you need to wear tomorrow.  This scenario would entail me having to stay up late to do the laundry.

Now lets keep imagining that as the laundry slave for a said children; a 10 year old boy child, his younger sister and their dad too, their would be a decent amount of laundry that needed to be washed.

Now in a standard school week, school uniform would be worn for 5 days.  During this last week there was a costume day for the male child so only 4 days of actual uniform were required for him.  Of course if this particular boy child is known for cleaning his hands on his shorts so it is possible that his shorts were actually dirty and in need of being thrown into the laundry basket and a clean pair of shorts worn.  Keep in mind that this same boy is known for wearing clothes that are filthy and in need for a wash so this desire to wear clean clothes isn't entirely logical.

So, with all of this in mind, why would there be 7, yes that is right, 7 pair of school shorts (of the male style) in the wash today?  I am thinking that the boy in question has worked out that the easiest way to clean the floor-drobe is to dump everything in the wash.  I am also thinking that the same boy is soon to work out that if he continues to dump all clothes into the laundry he will soon be given the additional task of doing the laundry!

Oh and as a side note, I think that it may be time to clean out this particular child's wardrobe, one pair of shorts in the wash were size 4 and another were size 2!

Love your mama, xo

Cheers

The weather is warming up so it is time to make myself a refreshing drink.

Equipment and Ingredients
A tall glass
Apple and blackcurrent juice
Sodawater to add some fizz (I love using the SodaStream)
Ice
Strawberries
Kiwifruit
and of course a decorative umbrella (


Now if you are like me and you don't have any little paper umbrellas to put into your refreshing drink, don't panic, you can make one.  All you need is a circle of paper, a toothpick and some tape and you can have an umbrella to add to your drink to make it even better, because everyone knows that a drink that has an umbrella in it is so much better than a drink without an umbrella!

Enjoy, love Princess George

The spider is back

*****WARNING, DON'T READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T LIKE SPIDERS*****

Remember last week when mum confessed to running away from the house because of a spider, then when we got home it was no where to be seen until the next day and it was on the ceiling and we were too scared to go downstairs?  Well the spider did a disappearing act and by the time dad came downstairs to take him outside he had hidden again?  That same spider came out of hiding again today and again he was on the ceiling at the bottom of the stairs.

Mum must have been tired, she didn't notice him and went downstairs, but I did and pointed him out to her.  Mum kept an eye on him and I went to wake dad up to take the spider outside.

So dad caught the spider and put him outside in the cold, a few houses away from our house so hopefully he will find somewhere to live that isn't in our house!
Love a happy-to-not-have-a-spider-in-the-house Princess George

Winter Woes

Remember on the weekend we had no new photos to share of our week because we stayed inside most of the weekend because I was feeling pretty ordinary and had a really bad cold?  Well I felt OK on Monday and I went to school but by the end of the day I was feeling pretty ordinary again so we all decided that since mum didn't have to go in to work on Tuesday that I should spend the day in bed resting so that I could recover.

On Tuesday morning, AJ headed off to school and mum and I snuggled on the couch watching Glee.  Now normally when we have a sick day, we have to spend the morning in bed either sleeping or reading.  I really expected mum to remember that sick days mean sleep and not endless hours watching tv shows but mum was sound asleep on the couch!

Other than when the guy came to fix the tv antenna, Mum spent the entire day sleeping, either on the couch or in AJ's room.  I figured that she must really be sick when she didn't even answer her phone when it rang!  I didn't want to bother her so I made my own lunch and even told AJ not to annoy mum when he got home from school.

When dad finally got home from work, he decided that mum was too sick to stay at home and before we knew it, we were heading over to our neighbours house for some dinner and dad was taking mum in to the hospital for some tests.  It turns out that they thought mum might have had malaria but luckily it was only dehydration from the flu.  They gave her some IV fluids, some drugs and then let her go home for some more sleep.

So today I am back at school feeling almost normal again and mum is at home, still in bed sleeping and hopefully feeling a little better.
Love Princess George

Sundays in my City #9 - Not going to plan

A long weekend in Australia is the perfect opportunity to get out and about with the kids and have some fun.  For the first time in what felt like forever we had a weekend with no sport and no training obligations at all.  The only plans we had were to look after my gorgeous little God son on the Saturday night.  The theory was that we would have a quiet day on Saturday, pottering around the house but then on Sunday we would go exploring.  The weather was predicted to be fairly decent, well at least not raining or freezing, so we were thinking that we would even find somewhere to stay overnight and really explore somewhere new.  That was the plan but like all good plans, they seem to get turned upside down.

The reality was that we did spend Saturday pottering about and then the rest of the day was spent playing with a gorgeous little bub.  I didn't expect to get much sleep Saturday night, what with having a 7 month old who doesn't sleep through the night the house, but surely that wouldn't be too bad.  When the beautiful bub did eventually fall asleep for the night, he only woke once.  Unfortunately though, I had the lack of sleep trifecta - a waking baby, followed by insomnia and then a sick child.  I managed to only doze for a an hour or so with my night being spent re-settling the baby, cleaning up vomit and calming a sick child.

Needless to say, with the extreme of lack of sleep, I was in no state to do any exploring on Sunday.  In fact AJ and I barely moved from the couch all day long.  Instead of photos of awesome adventures, I have photos of a beautiful bub and my beautiful girl.

A bath in the Kitchen Sink

Beautiful Babes

I was so grateful that my beautiful girl loves him almost as much as I do and was happy to help out.

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

Grrr, Argh!

Way back in the last school holidays, at Easter, there was a big storm and during that snapped our television antenna and now we can't watch tv.  It really isn't a huge problem because we have about a billion dvds that we can watch instead, and then there is hours of fun watching random stuff on You Tube.

[source]

In the lack of traditional tv watching, we have found some awesome stuff to watch.  Our first new family favourite is Punky Brewster.  Punky is really cool.  Milla love it because she wears really cool clothes, has a dog and great friends.  I love it because it is fun to watch.

[source]

Now that we have watched all of the Punky Brewster episodes available, we needed to watch something new.  After heaps of begging, mum and dad broke all of their own rules and gave in.  They let us watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  It was really cool but kind of scary, so we didn't watch too much of it.

Well that was until today...

Last night I was sick and woke up during the night to vomit, over and over again.  It was pretty ugly and exhausting too.  I was so exhausted that I didn't leave the couch all day.  Mum who stayed up all night with me was pretty tired too, so we snuggled on the couch and watched Buffy all day long!

As much as snuggling on the couch snuggling is the best way to spend the day when you aren't feeling so well, I hope that I am feeling better so that I can enjoy a holiday outside tomorrow.
Love AJ Pickle