Postman Pat

Grannie brought Sammy a post pat costume. He loves post pat so he is in his element. Tonight he donned the outfit and did a spin for the camera. He even has paper letters in his bag!

How cute is he!
Laura tried it on too - very cool!
Oh and here is princess poppy dancing, isnt she pretty.

Dora the Explorer and Princess Poppy

A couple of weeks ago I started a reward system with the kids. When they are good, do something well, do chores etc, they get a marble in a cup. When they get to 10marbles they get a lolly and at the end of the week the person with the most marbles gets a special treat.

The first week Jessa won the treat and she asked if she could have her much coveted Dora the Explorer umbrella. She has a friend at Kindy who has one and ever since she saw it she has been dreaming of owning one herself.

So it was a perfect first week prize and after a little bit of ringing around we managed to find one. Not when it rains she grabs her umbrella and dashes off outside to try it out!

The second week saw Jessa win again (much to Laura and Daniel's disgust!) Jase had just read her a story called Princess Poppy. So her request was to be princess poppy. Mmmmmm, that might be quite hard I told her, I will see what I can do.

Then I remembered that I had some bits of material in my stash that I picked up for a total of $3 at a specials table. 2 hours later and Princess Poppy was made and for just $3 - bargain of the century!!! Jessa was sooo excited when she got up the next morning and her dress was waiting for her. She has worn it every day since. It is a bit big but that is good - it will last her a while.

And of course we have Grannie here at the moment and the girls were so excited that Grannie promised them some sparkly nails. So they sat down this afternoon and Jessa got purple with sparkles on them. AND toenails too!!! She really is a princess! Laura got red and Daniel, who didnt want to miss out, got a couple of sparkles!

New pets.........

Jase brought the kids some pet lambs home. The kids wanted little girls so they can keep them instead of sending them to the sale yards. So meet Daffodil (Daffy) and Tulip. They came complete with pink and purple ribbons!! Jase has been doing a lambing beat for the last 8days for a friend and his wife saved a couple of little girls. The kids thought that was pretty cool and they are saving the ribbons for pet day so the lambies look pretty.

We are also now the proud owners of two Hereford cross calves, with more to follow. We will rear about 20 in all but these are the first two. The kids have named them Panda (the black one) and Violet. Violet was named because we have another lamb in at the moment (whose surrogate mummy doesnt want him) and Jessa named him Violet until they realised that he was a boy so we changed his name to Vince and then Jessa decided he should be Prince Vince so the poor dirty scrawny little man has a name bigger than he is and an appetite to match!
Sammy didnt want to come into the shed becuase the lambies would eat him!! So he stayed outside and practices his crook technique with 'daddys hook'!

He was so cute when we were walking down to feed the lambies at lunch time, we could hear them bleating. So Sammy - bottle in hand says "Me tumming lambies, me tumming"

Dressing up

The kids decided to dress up last night. They are mum and dad so they found mum and dad clothes! They were so cute. They thought it was hilarious wobbling around in the big shoes.

Fathers Day

Well ok, Fathers day was a little while ago now. But I forgot to put up the photos (well I think I did, I didnt actually go back to check so if I did put them up - here they are again!)

We had our traditional breakfast of Jam and Cream on toast for breakfast. Charlie thought it was just delicious!

Yarn Swapping

I am part of an online community called the Nappy Network. A great source of information, support and fun. At the moment one of the lovely ladies is running a Yarn Swap. Basically that means that you get some white wool and dye it. You have to think of a theme for your recipient and also add a suggested pattern for them to knit with their wool. You package that up along with a wee gift and a poem or recipe - all fitting with the theme.
So having never dyed wool before I thought I had better have a practice so I dug some cake dyes out of the cupboard and had a play. This was the result. I should have limited my colours more but I was just using what I had. Anyway Laura loves it so I am knitting her a scarf and a matching headband. This is what the scarf looks like so far............

The Lochiel Olympics

Jess and Sam getting ready to cheer on the Green team.
The light ceremony, led by room 1 - Daniels room.




Two girls in Laura's class decided that it would be a great idea to round off thier unit on China and the Olympics by having a school olympics. So they organised it for the whole school. It was a fun afternoon.


I found out that both Laura and Daniel are really good at sack racing and egg and spoon racing. They are both awesome runners.


Laura and Daniel are in the Forest Hill house. The olympic teams were the four house teams of the school. They had to dress in house colours so we had a frantic search for green top this morning and painted faces with green face paint.

Ducklings...................

Well when I got to school today there was some very excited little girls all dragged me in to see thier new project. They had found some ducklings in the school grounds and rescued them from some of the younger boys who were chasing them. They nursed them all afternoon and fed them. Now they are going to take turns to have them and look after them. So we have them to look after first. The kids have gone off to find some crushed barley to feed them. We are starting to look like old macdonalds farm!!!

Head cold from hell and a lamb

Well Jase has been away this week at a course in Ashburton so the kids and I took over the stockwork on the big ranch!! The weather has been lovely so that has helped. Jess, Sam and I have been moving the sheep, feeding the pigs and moving the cattle. We have also been on the lambing beat with the big flock (all 60 of them!!) We have had a few sets of twins and a single on the breaks with the later lambers (whoops!) One ewe didnt have much milk so we gave the lambs a feed off another ewe we had caught to get them going. But this morning the lambs were still pretty hunched up. We popped around to Gegens and got some milk powder and picked up a lamb teat when we dropped Jessa to kindy. Sam and I went out to feed the two lambs. However only one of them would suck from the bottle so we brought the other one up to the house and tube fed him. I popped him in the shelter of the back door to keep an eye on him. When we got back from picking up the kids he was looking pretty chilly and not too well so we made up the baby bath for him and popped him infront of the fire. It has been raining this afternoon and the wind had got up.
Anyway we gave him a feed again and the kids have been patting him and talking to him. Sam is particularly interested in him. He still looked pretty sick when Jase got back at 7.30pm tonight so we tubed him again and he actually perked up a little. I took these photos just a little while ago as he had decided to lift his head and look around and was bleating for more food. (good sign!) Then he decided to try standing up again and discovered that he could step out of the bath. He has got quite long legs!
Luckily he didnt leave any lasting impressions on the carpet while he was having his little wander! Jase just tried the bottle for him again but he isnt particularly interested in sucking just yet. Hopefully we will get him going on it tomorrow and the kids will have fun feeding him.

They will be quietly gutted that he is a little boy as they were hoping for some girl lambs this year so we dont have to send them to market. Ah well I am sure we can source a couple more for them later on!

Lucas is 1

Wow it is hard to believe that Lucas is 1 already - where did that year go! Last night we all dressed up in our 'good' clothes. Hair all done up and went to Lucas' birthday party. The wee man had a great time, especially with the paper and boxes!!! Jess was so excited about going to Lucas' party that she talked about it all day and the kids had thier clothes ready at 8 in the morning!! (party was at 5pm.)

First Lambies of the year

Old wild eyes - who was one of our first ewe lambs had twins this morning. The first lambs of the season. It has been raining so is pretty soggy around here but she had them up under trees though so they were pretty sheltered.

Cutie boys!!!

We had Lucas to play for a couple of hours the other day and they were so cute I had to snap a couple of pics. Sam saw the camera and insisted I take a cheese off him! I really like this one - it is so cute!

I decided that Gruff would appreciate me getting Lucas in touch with his feminine side so I got the wee pink bike out for him. He had a great time going backwards round the house on it!
Hes just a bit cute too eh!
and not to be outdone - Charlie who was protesting at being dumped in the excersaucer instead of being fed even smiled as soon as he saw the camera. It was so cute - cry cry - oh camera, smile smile - all done now cry cry lol!

Terrible week

Well I am sure it hasnt escaped your notice that I havnt updated the blog in a while! We had a terrible week with sick kids last week. Both Sam and Charlie came down with Bronciolitis. Sam's aggrevated his asthma and he had an ear infection too. So he was put on a preventer and antibiotics. Charlie was a little wheezy but otherwise fine. Poor wee men were tired, poorly and wanted lots of cuddles. Sam was on the improve but Charlie went down hill. I took him back to the doctors with really fast breathing, terrible colour and just exhaustion. They sent us down to the childrens ward for observation. So we had a day in there. Some steroids, panadol and antibiotics later (ear infection for poor bubba too) and we came home. Mummy by this time is a tad tired with only 4 or 5 hours of broken sleep for 5nights.

Two days later I get out of the shower to find that Sam has just drunk the two bottles of amoxycillin. One was nearly empty but one was nearly full. So we spent the day with him the childrens ward under observation, then had to take him back for blood tests the following day. Luckily we got the all clear.

So this week has been taken up with catching up on all the cleaning, washing and tidying that was totally ignored last week. I am just starting to take a few breaths!

Sam and Daniel building and Jessa in the background on the chair sleeping!

Sewing and bikes

Sew I managed to get a bit of sewing in yesterday. I have been playing with my pattern for quite a while now and yesterday stumbled upon a brilliant idea. Completely by accident. I wont go into specifics just now as I still have some tweaking to do. But this is the edge I was working towards to get my pattern to a level I was happy to sell to more than just friends for cost.

This is the same nappy - the top one is folded as small and the bottom one is a medium. It has a nifty snap and velcro combination for the fastenings. I have cut out two more patterns a newborn/small and a med/large to add to the small/large I have already tried on Charlie. He wore it overnight last night and I was very pleased with it. It is a great fit for him. I am going to make them up tonight.
In other news - Laura finally saved enough from her birthday money and the stall to get her new bike, due to seven swedes selling yesterday. So after school today we went into Winton and she chose which one she wanted. It is a 26in wheel with a small frame. So it is an adult bike and should last her for a long time now! She is stoked. And she got a free helmet thrown in too so she was pretty chuffed.
Sam was waiting for me to get his bike out so he found the old 'feminine' side and had a spin on the trike.
Jessa has been practicing setting off by herself without the trainer wheels and is doing really well. She only needs a little bit of support - so proud.