Celebrating 40 Years of Sesame Street

Bit late with this, Sesame Street was celebrating its 40th Birthday last week.




Hooray for Cookie Monster!

I think that this would have to be my favourite Sesame Street thing though :



It was a big hit when we lived in Iserlohn.

Xavier's First Birthday

A good time was had by all.

And here's more photos : Click Here

Ishbel's birthday party aka the best laid plans . . .

(Should have posted this last week but I've been really busy)

Up early on Saturday morning, head spinning with all the things I thought I had to do. At the supermarket for 8am when they opened. Whizzed round and all at the checkout by 8:20am. Not the usual couple of hours as I bump into people for a long chat and perhaps a diversion to the coffee shop.

Among the to-dos was to bake a birthday cake. Having never had any luck baking cakes from scratch in the old house, we are now used to buying packet cakes. One of the advantages is that Ishbel can now follow the instructions and make her own cakes. All went perfectly until the timer went to tell us the cake was done. Twenty mintues later and the cake was burnt - I'd opende the door of the oven but not switched it off!

Back to supermarket for another cake.

The invitations said, I'm sure, drop the kids off at our house at 2pm and we would be taking them down to the indoor climbing centre in Penrith.

Ishbel was telling the girls to arrive at 1:30pm. One of them did. The mother of the other rang us from the climbing centre at 1:30 asking where we were . . .

Had a lovely time at the climbing centre. "Best day of my life," was Ishbel's verdict.

Here's the slide show

Home for pizza and a movie. The pizzas stuck to the tin foil and we burnt (again) a couple of them. Someone spilt juice all over the table.

Head spinning with shrieking girls and Pink on the CD player.

Karen, Dan and a still bit poorly Xavier arrived.

Cake had its outing. I have a square tupperware type box for cakes. It came with an insert with handles that you can pull the cake out with but the handles have broken off so I tend to put cakes on the lid and use the bottom of the box as the lid.

Ishbel didn't know that and, as she took the cake through to the dining room, did't have hold of the bottom/lid of the box - result - chocolate icing all over her foot and the dining room carpet!

Xavier tried some climbing of his own up the stairs. Was doing two steps up, one step down, quite happily until he face-planted a stair and tears ensued. Karen tried to interest him in the stairs again but he wasn't having any of it.

By 9pm two of the three guests had gone home. Zanny was staying overnight. Girls pretty good, not too noisy and we headed off to bed. Read for a while and fell asleep with the light on. Just getting into some deep snoring when Ishbel arrived at my bedside - Zanny crying and wanting to go home - at 11:45pm. Tried ringing her mum but got no answer and she didn't think her dad would come all the way down from Lawson to fetch her. And I had no intention of driving her up there, aside from being dead beat, I'd had a wine or two during the evening. After much persuading the girls agreed to try and go to sleep. I went back to bed.

Where I tossed and turned for another couple of hours, expecting one of the girls to appear at the bedside asking to ring Zanny's mum again.

And then up early to go to RFS training.

I NEED SOME SLEEP.

Birthday

Out to dinner tonight.

Ian's birthday, 4th July.

It was Ian's birthday on Saturday. Unable to go to the big party they throw for him in the US, we had a lower key celebration here at home.

We had dinner here with Karen, Dan, Ben and Xavier, Sharon and Holly, our Polish neighbour Chris and later, after they'd been to see their daughter Georgia in a play, Steven and Janet dropped by.

We had a yummy slow cooked lamb dinner with roast veggies and a banoffee pie to follow. The banoffee pie was a bit runny but no one seemed to mind - well Karen didn't!!!

Someone's lucky to be still alive!

Conversation with Ishbel on the way up to the bus stop yesterday morning:

Ishbel: How old are you today Mummy? 45?

Mummy: No, one more than that.

Ishbel: Oh well, never mind.

A considerable time later . . .

Ishbel: (with a touch of desperation in her voice) That's still quite young!

Two lovely days

I'll need to keep this brief as I'm writing at work . . .

It was Mother's Day here on Sunday. I was up early, had tea and toast in bed and lovely presents from Ishbel (candle and home-made photo frame) and the boys gave me a Wasgij jigsaw puzzle (have you heard of them? They are great fun - the picture on the box is NOT the picture on the jigsaw - the picture on the jigsaw is either what the people in the picture on the box can see, or what happens next. You have no idea what the picture will be until the last piece goes in). I then went out to RFS training.

Or not training. We are preparing for hazard reduction burns this winter so, for the second Sunday in a row, I was out with a small group of others cutting trails through the bush behind houses in Valley Heights. It's hard work, raking the leaves and branches and bushes away, scraping down to bare earth, leaving a trail a metre or so wide for kilometres along. The birdies appreciated it though, coming down to see what beasties we'd grubbed up.

I got home, very tired, just before 1pm. Rob had left for his soccer match but Ian and the other two had made a baked chicken dinner for me. Yummm. Afterwards, full as a goog as Ian would say, I toddled off to read. I didn't even finish the page . . .

Yesterday, my birthday, started off quietly. I have to take Ian in to catch the 6:55am train these days so we were out early. Even when I moaned that the mini (my mini) that had been in the car yard had gone he didn't say anything about my birthday. I got a call from him once I got home though - my colleague Rita runs Book Express (library service on the train station) and she'd 'reminded' him!!

At work Jeanette, one of our elderly volunteers who usually comes in on Tuesdays and Thursdays, had changed her day, gotten up really early and come in with a yummy lemon cake which we devoured at morning tea. Then Rita came with lunch for me - a yummy spicy tomato soup which she makes from a Dutch recipe - don't ask me to name it. Then mid morning a bunch of flowers arrived from Sharon.

After work Ian arranged for us to go out for dinner. I chose to go to the Indian restaurant just across the road from work although we had to go home and collect Jamie first. It is never busy at that restaurant which is a shame because their food is very tasty. We were joined by Sharon and Holly and filled ourselves up on curry, rice and naan bread. Yummmmm. Ian and Jamie walked home.

So I've had a lovely two days.

Thank you GD & GT for the Cyprus books. I've not had the time to give them a really good look yet, but on first glance they look interesting. Was Shirley wanting to read this blog, or the library one? Either way she's welcome. Just give her the url for each:

http://springwoodcolquhouns.blogspot.com/
and http://readersinthemist.blogspot.com/

Thank you too, Fiona, Mark and Rory for the necklace. Lovely.

I got a digital camera from the family for my birthday. I chose it myself last weekend. I wanted a smaller one than the one we've had and I got a little pouch for it that I can put on my belt when I'm out on the fireground.

BTW: I was at book group on Friday. We are going to have a trivia night at our meeting next month to raise money for MS research. There is a thing called Throw the Book which is for book groups - they supply all the questions so it's easy to do. We're going to open up our book group to family and friends to come and play too. I'm quite excited about it.

Happy Birthday Granny Di

Jamie, Robbie and I are at Village Firefighter training all weekend (7:30-11:30pm tonight and 8:30am-5pm on both Saturday and Sunday. Will try and Skpe you over the weekend.

Hope you are enjoying your holiday and have a lovely day on Sunday.

Here's Karen's new boy

Xavier Christian Hale

Born : 12 October 2008

Time : 21:52 hrs

Weight : 3.845 kg (8 lb 7 oz)

Length : 54 cm (21.25 in)

Head Circumference : 36.5 cm (14.3 in)

Pictures in the slideshow at the right or via the Flickr site (link above).

Another generation of Colquhouns

Fraser George Colquhoun

So the long-awaited first grandson has arrived, born last night in Brisbane.

His grandmother reports that "He's pink, well-covered, 52cm long and "chatted"!!!! Long fingers and toes, significant shoulders! Mum was very calm, probably pretty tired, but happy and well".

Jono, Nelly (Narelle) and Fraser George

5 Days of Birthday Party

I've had a great birthday, all five days of it!

The celebrations began at book group. We usually meet on the first Friday of each month but had to postpone by a week this time. At the end of the book chat we had a little party. The girls had clubbed together and bought me a book voucher and TWO of them had made cakes.

Saturday looked like it was going to be a regular Saturday running around fitting in the washing, taking kids to sport and shopping. About 4pm Steve and Bec rang to ask if we were doing anything that evening. We ended up with them, Marie and her two boys plus Leigh's girlfriend Jess and the boy's pal Harley, Hugh and us five for a BBQ dinner. Bec put together a chocolate cake and we had a birthday party going.

We are still eating coleslaw - I asked Steve and Bec to get some then promptly forgot and sent Ian out for some too. When he came back with only a smallish tub I went out and got more!!!

Sunday was Mother's Day here as well as my birthday but I was up early to go to RFS training. We were doing fire behaviour and weather conditions. We went for a walk to a lookout with breathtaking views and had an outdoor tutorial on bush fire behaviour before going to the grounds of a local high school where we chased the PC which had a hose running from the back - we were mimicking grass fires.

Then, as a Special Mother's Day Treat, Steve let me drive the BIG RED TRUCK!!! I couldn't begin to tell you how exciting that was!

Meanwhile, at home, Ian had donned his pinny and was baking scones and mince tarts and almond tarts, jellies, fruit salad and cake for an afternoon Birthday tea to which Karen, Dan and Ben, Sharon, Janet, Steven and Kate and Joanne came. The others also brought along sandwiches and slices, etc. The table was fairly groaning. We had to go for a walk in the middle of the afternoon to make room for more. The fridge was still chokkas from the BBQ the night before so I'd told them no one was leaving before the food was all gone.

See the Birthday party photos. I'm just sad there's not one of me driving the truck.

Monday I thought I was back to normal at work but no, the girls bought a cake and we had a birthday morning tea.

I was feeling a bit poorly yesterday morning (sore throat, dry cough, bones aching) and nearly didn't go in to work but one of the volunteers has been promising a lemon cake for my birthday for ages so I felt obliged to be there. Good job I made the effort - Jeanette had been up at 5:30am to bake it - and it was delicious. But I did go home immediately after morning tea.

Sweet 16

It is the boys 16th birthday today. We got them RFS shirts upon request. Now they are 16 they can become full members of the Brigade. Our next meeting is on Tuesday so it'll probably be made official then.

On Friday we went out for a Chinese meal with Robbie's friends, Harley and Leigh. Karen and Ben also joined us.

Yesterday it was the usual mad running around doing chores and getting kids to sport. We've only got to run around with Rob (rugby union) and Ishbel (soccer) at the moment and that's tight enough - not sure when Jamie (Aussie rules) starts but it's going to be interesting!

Today Jamie and two of his mates, Nick and Scott, went to the Easter Show. Ian and Ishbel also went while Robbie did his homework (!! - his choice) and I did a long long walk and the windows.

The rest of the birthday photos can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11895723@N05/sets/72157604311901171/show/

Birthday Bellydancing

It is Kate's 15th birthday today and Sharon's @#$%th one tomorrow. Steve, Janet and I arranged a surprise dinner out at a Lebanese restaurant in Penrith for Sharon. We made the booking then got Sharon's mum and dad to say they'd be taking her and Holly to dinner.
I met Sharon at the pictures last week and went into a rambling excuse for not doing anything for her birthday this weekend. She said that was OK, Holly was going to a party on Saturday and on Monday night she had something on at school.
In a panic it was all going wrong I rang Janet when I got home to tell her what'd been said and she rang Sharon's mum. It was OK, Holly had told Sharon she was going to Kate's party to throw her mum off the scent. It WAS all still as arranged. Phew!
As arranged, we headed off down to Penrith to be at the restaurant for 6:45pm. As we came off the freeway and into Penrith we were stopped at the lights. And who should pull up beside us but Sharon!!! Ian held back and tried to let other cars get between us and her but again we thought our cover was blown. We couldn't believe it when we got to the restaurant before her.
And without her having seen us. She arrived with her parents and Holly some ten minutes later and was very surprised to find us all there.
We had a nice meal but the highlight of the evening was the belly dancer. She wasn't terrific but it was a lot of fun watching her get people up to dance - as long as it wasn't us! She got Georgia and Ian up to dance. With Ian she was getting him to do belly rolls, you can see she had a walking stick - he had to roll his belly in and out and keep the stick between them. Hilarious stuff!