Welcome to the world...

... little baby Lucas Flynn.

My very good friend Cassie gave birth to a beautiful baby boy yesterday. Lucas arrived into the world at 5pm weighing 3.9kg and 53cm long. He did however, take his time about the whole thing with poor Cass labouring for several days before she had her dream birth at home in a birthing pool. Brett (the proud new daddy), is in the running for daddy of the year with his support and big sister Charlotte is pretty chuffed with her new brother.

So congratulations to this awesome family!

On a final note I just want to say how proud I am of Cass. She had a vision in her mind how she wanted this birth to go and despite an overwhelming lack of support from several fronts she stuck to her guns and proved in the end that she knew what was best. I am so happy it turned out the best possible way.

Mum & bub:
The happy family:
My first cuddle with baby Lucas:

Believe it or not this is me...

Through Facebook I have been in contact with some girls I went to boarding school with way back in the 80's. One of the girls posted this photo - this is our very first day (our parents are there dropping us off). I was sooooo spun out when I saw this photo - it brought back so many memories.

Aiden

Because of our move we have had to change Aiden into a different daycare - one that is only two minutes down the road as opposed to the 35 minute drive the last one was. Thankfully he has settled straight in with no problems at all. He actually asks almost every day if he can go but for now our plan is to stick with the two days a week.

Since winter is coming up I went out and bought him these PJs - unfortunately they are miles too big and I've had to return them.

Megan

Megan is still working on her crawling but at least now she properly crawls on hands and knees about half the time and only reverts back to the commando belly drag when there is a lot of ground to cover or she needs a burst of speed. She is however, pulling herself up to standing on anything and everything. This is a typical look of pleasure when she gets herself up:


Dave has had a course all week for work so has been home late every day. I was actually required to bath Megan (usually a Daddy job) so I decided to try her in the laundry tub instead of the bath tub - I think she liked it:

When friends come to play...

Cassie and Charlotte came over for Dave's famous pancake breakfast last Sunday. The kids were playing some golf in the back yard - but looking at their style I think Grandad needs to come and give them a few lessons!
On another note - some of you may or may not know that Cassie is VERY pregnant - today is actually her due date. We are all waiting around patiently with bated breath for her to pop (OK perhaps we're not actually patient...). Anyway - Cass if you read this then know that we are all thinking of you and wish you luck.

If any of you are keen to keep up to date with Cass and her new arrival then check out her blog at http://happyhunters.blogspot.com/

And still more pages...

More pages

Scrapbook Pages

I haven't posted any of my pages for a while so there are quite a few:

Home once again...

... and back into the daily grind. As with every holiday we've come home with a mountain of washing and the kids and I are all battling colds.

Here are some random pics:

Concert pianist perhaps?
Megan's crawling is really progressing although she still reverts to the commando style belly drag to get somewhere quickly.

Stopping to point to the crowd...
Aiden is still a dude...

All together

This is the entire family... it was a really special time having us all in the one place at the same time. No doubt Vicki & Hank appreciated having us all there with them.
What a good looking bunch! I love this photo of the core family...
Oma & Opa with ALL their grandchildren (do you have any idea how hard it is to get 8 kids to cooperate for a photo?)

Family photos

While I was on holiday I magically lost about 20kg and underwent a stunning transformation. Isn't this a fantastic photo of me with my hubby??? I WISH! This is actually Dave with his sister, Annemarie. It is a gorgeous photo though...

This is our happy family:


The Kleingeld family - Tim (Dave's brother), his wife Amrit and their two cute girls, Anjali & Kiran:
The Moule family - Gary, Annemarie and 4 kids (aka "cousins"), Rachel, Michelle, Ben & Jenna:

We're going on a berry hunt

We're going on a berry hunt,
gonna pick some juicy ones,
we're not scared,
on a beeeeaaauuutiful day.

For those of you wondering what I'm on about this is a song sung by Dora the Explorer and often sung in the B-K household... so you can imagine how exciting it was for Aiden when we discovered that the blackberry bush behind Hank & Vicki's place were actually bearing fruit. My hard task master of a mother-in-law even put me to work not once but twice picking blackberrys - but is was all worth it when I tasted her yummy homemade jam.
Aiden enjoying a bowl of porridge with a very liberal scattering of blackberrys and blueberrys on top:
I was surprised Aiden didn't turn into a walking blackberry by the end of our trip...

Cousins...

One of our adventures was a trip to the national park at Ferntree Gully with the Moule family (Annie is Dave's sister and all these kids are Aiden & Megan's cousins). There was a quick game of cricket before some chasey on this playground equipment. Need I say once again how much Aiden loves spending time with his cousins... We went for a short walk through the forest and came across this very small creek. Since kids are like magnets to water they were in there pretty quick. However, being slightly older and way more coordinated all the Moule kids cleverly jumped from rock to rock to avoid getting their feet wet. After watching Aiden almost breaking his neck in an attempt to stick to the rocks I told him it was OK to stand in the water and get his feet wet. WHAT WAS I THINKING? Sure enough standing in the water lead to splashing in the water which then somehow ended up as sitting in the water... I should have known better...

Trip to the zoo

Of course we couldn't fly all the way to Melbourne and not visit the zoo while we were there.

We were all dressed and ready to go on the Thursday when it started to rain... we ummed and arred for a while before finally deciding that perhaps it wasn't the best day for it... and it turned out that it did in fact rain the entire day. So the following day we tried again and it was sooooooo worth the wait. The weather was perfect, the boy was well behaved and all round we had a fantastic time with Hank & Vicki.

Even though this was just a statue of a pig Aiden was really unsure about it. Dave did the typical Daddy thing by sitting on it to prove there was nothing to be scared of but Aiden still wouldn't have a bar of it.

Melbourne Zoo has a really awesome gorilla enclosure - something we don't have here at our Perth Zoo. The gorilla in this photo (not the one in the front in the green shirt wearing a hat) sat there the whole time with his arms crossed with a mean look on his face and just checked everybody out.
This photo is typical of our zoo experience. Aiden is into maps. If you've ever watched Dora the Explorer you will know all about the map (I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map...). As you can see Aiden is much too busy checking his map to find what animal to look at next that he hasn't got the time to actually look at the tortoise...

It feels good to be home

We have just returned from a 10 day visit to Melbourne where we got to spend a whole lot of time together with our estranged family members. Although the actual travelling there and back was sooooooooo not fun it was worth the effort to see how much Aiden loved his "cousins".

The first weekend of our visit was spent with ALL 16 of us staying/sleeping/eating at Hank & Vicki's (aka Opa & Oma) house. The highlight for Aiden of course was 24 hour contact with his new found playmates but the highlight for Dave & I was some quality time spent with the adults of the family once we had all the kids down to sleep. Unfortunately for Megan it was all a bit too much and she had a bit of a freak out about all the people in such close vicinity... she compensated by becoming an absolute mummy's girl all week.

Unfortunately, Megan's freak out meant that cuddles were few and far between.