Around Here

Around here we are gearing up for the last two weeks of school with swimming carnivals, music concerts and award ceremonies.  There's always a push towards the end of the last term of school as everyone including myself gets very tired and exhausted.

James celebrated his 13th Birthday yesterday so now I'm the mother of a teenager and you wonder where all that time went.  Just think in another 5 years he will be an 18 year old which I think seems scarier to me.  I love that even though 18 year olds are adults they usually still have no idea about real life like rent, electricity, bills, insurances, internet, food costs and the life that parents (lets call them big adults) have to deal with.  James has grown into a lovely young teenager and I can't believe he is growing at the rate of about 1cm per month so that's 6cm since mid June and is slowly catching up to me.  Here's some photos of what's been going on around here.

My tips for the best birthday cake photo is to do it before the guests arrive.  I set this up in the morning and make sure you have your numbered candles facing the camera not the birthday person and then take your time to get the shot you want.  I then took the candles off the cake and popped it back into the fridge.  Later on in the afternoon after we had pizzas for lunch it was time for the cake you can just enjoy the moment, sing and cut the cake without trying to clear the scene to get your birthday person on their own when you have 10 guests there.  I always do this so I get my shot well before guests arrive.

James requested our family's favourite white chocolate raspberry cheesecake and he was pretty happy about it.

We had the family over for pizza's which we use pita bread for the bases and everything is chopped up in containers and you each make your own by selecting which toppings you want.

We love our Kmart Jackeroo Pizza oven which runs off a normal gas bottle...beats stoking up a wooden fire for 2 hours before you need to eat.  Very convenient and it cooks 3 pizzas at a time.  We actually got this a week before James turned 10 and celebrated his 10th Birthday with pizza's.

Found this in my shower yesterday morning.  I knew the kids hid the elf but didn't know where.

It's looking a lot like Christmas....my sister (James and Sienna's Aunty Lisa) always comes over to put our tree up with us.

James with his own sense of decorating the tree.

I love our pretty Christmas balls.

I took this photo for a friend who had her 2nd child....2 weeks old isn't she beautiful.

Sienna helping with dinner prep.

Self portrait........these are pretty hard to do vs the iPhone selfie.  This was with my DSLR.

James is back into his Rubik cube and was trying to explain to Sienna how to do it.

I love that these crazes come back....I remember my Grandmother years and years ago being into the Rubik cube.  Also James was into about 2 years ago but now he's back into it learning all sorts of algorithms for it.  His memory just amazes me.

And my smiley silly funny creative girl....

Making a Foosball machine out of a cardboard box and wooden skewers and pegs.

And of course Sienna's humour is everywhere around here.  This was meant to be my piece of water melon.