Vinnies 3rd birthday

We had a wonderful afternoon in an Enchanted wood for Vinnie's  3rd birthday.  The kids loved all the games, especially hide and seek and the bubbles. Alex was still talking about them as he went to bed.

5 going on 13

Mackenzie decided she'd like to be like Mum and twist her hair up in a towel, unfortunately her head wasn't really big enough to take the weight.

Little drummer boy

Alex loves music, play a song and he'll be up swinging his hips.  Lucky he has such lovely Aunties and Uncles that he plenty of noisy musical instruments too.

Clucky Grandparents???

We had a lovely morning tea on Sunday with Great Aunty Jo, Great Uncle Murray, Megan, Great Aunty B, Aunty Kathryn, Uncle Matt, Bella and Zach.

Zach was a big hit with his Great Aunts and Uncles - they looked quite keen to be grandparents...

Day out at the Glenbrook steam train

We went on a big outing to the Glenbrook Steam train.

It was great fun playing in the playground

Riding on the train

We even found Thomas the Tank Engine in the engine shed.

The new addition to our family

Baby Zach arrived on boxing day. He is a very popular member of the family

Alex especially loves baby Zach and often has his only baby Zach at home who needs his nappies changed.

Holiday activities

The weather wasn't the best for the holidays so we kept busy catching up with friends, visiting exscite

and swimming in the paddling pool

We love Uncle Geoff

We loved having Uncle Geoff around for the holidays, we made sure we wore him out with lots of games whenever we got the chance. We thought he was the best, even though he didn't bring us the Christmas present we wanted - Aunty Alex.

Christmas

When we got home from our holiday a present from Mum and Dad was waiting in the backyard - a great big trampoline.

On Christmas Eve we went to church with Granny, Grandad, Aunty Kathryn and Bella then we came home to sprinkle reindeer dust and set up snacks for the reindeer and Santa.

In the morning we were spoilt with lots of toys

Then Uncle Geoff, Granny and Grandad came to have lunch with us - and share more presents.

After a wee rest we enjoyed a swim at Uncle Tony and Aunty Leah's house - and of course more presents!

our holiday in New Plymouth

The week before Christmas we went on a summer holiday to New Plymouth.

We were very spoilt with lots of time from friends, Aunties, Uncles and Cousins that we think we'd quite like to live there - unfortunately Dad doesn't agree.

We went to carols at the park

Checked out the Christmas lights

Went to the beach

Had a picnic and play at Mum's old school

Played dress ups

and experienced the beautiful scenary and weather.

Thanks for a lovely holiday everyone.

The naked sailor

We got to borrow a boat from the toy library for the whole holidays - our naked sailor loved it.

School performances

Mackenzie had lots of performances at the end of the year, they sang carols and Mackenzi even stood up in front of the whole school to do an item in the talent contest - I think the only year 0 who did! You can never keep our performer off stage!

Celebrating Nannie's bday

It was a little early, but as Nannie was with us we had a birthday cake to celebrate her birthday.

We got her a ticket to go to the ballet - all the girls headed to Auckland for a big day out.

Decorating the Christmas tree

We were very lucky to have Nannie and Grandad here to help us decorate the tree.

Once we'd finished we took some lovely photos in front of it.

Grandad fixed the sandpit

When Grandad visited we kept him busy with a few jobs. He cleared out our sandpit and topped it up with new sand so we could have fun playing in it again.

Riding the train with Nannie and Grandad

We took Nannie and Grandad to ride the miniature trains in the weekend. It was lots of fun - especially playing tag in the park afterwards.

The ballet show

After hours of rehearsals Mackenzie had her ballet show at the weekend. She was a star and her group all worked really hard to get their dance right.

Big boy pirates

Alex and his friend James went to visit the pirate ship. They were both big boys going out in their undies for the first time and were very grown up playing together while their mum's got to sit down and have coffee and cake - bliss!

Caterpillars

We discovered we had a swan plant right outside our door with lots of caterpillars on it.

Just like the book they are very hungry caterpillars and are proving to be expensive pets keeping them in food. 

They're getting nice and fat so hopefully some are about to go into cocoons very soon.

Our big kids

Alex is now a big boy who uses the toilet. He started asking to get out of the pool and bath to go to the toilet so we decided undies were the way to go - although he prefers to call them knickers like his sister!

Mackenzie is also very grown up and had a girly sleepover in the weekend with  movie watching and lots of giggling. Her friend was a little scared so they ended up cuddled up together in the same bed - very cute!

Fire! Fire!

We got a fire engine out of the toy library this week.

It was a big hit when Luke came over to play. The boys had lots of fun racing along to put all the fires out and rescuing everyone.