10 months

Dear Sara,
I love how you press your forehead up against mine.
I love how you roll on your side with your right thumb and your bankie when I lay you in your crib.
I love how you open your mouth wide when you see your toothbrush.
I love that you stay where I place you because you're not mobile yet.
I love to listen to you giggle at your brothers and sister.
I love you,
Mom

Happy Australia day

 Our first Australia day. I couldn't resist the 'little Aussie' festive diapers for Sara.

The girls.

 We had a picnic at Southbank and then the kids played in the water.

 Michael put the kids to work building a dam.

 He lost one of his workers when Luke sat down to play in the water.

Southbank is a great spot in central Brisbane next to the river. There are all sorts of water spots, a park, restaurants, flowers, palm trees, etc...

 This is what the beach at Southbank looked like on Australia day.

For dinner on Australia day, what could be more Australian than Dominos pizza? Okay... maybe not. We may have been too tired to do our traditional Australian BBQ but we did include the Ginger Beer. Now THAT's Australian!

Rainy season

It's the rainy season in Australia. We have had continuous heavy rains for 4 of the last 5 days. The rain stopped long enough for us to enjoy Australia day (more on that later). The other night Todd woke me up just after midnight to tell me that our garage was flooding. The drain at the base of the driveway was clogged. Todd and I got 2 hours of sleep that night as we tried to divert the water and clean out the garage. We were soaked to the bone. We experienced a miracle when the drain started working again. We have sand bags now since the forecast calls for rain everyday for the next 5 days.

Back to school

Monday was the first day of a new school year. It was an especially big day for our family because it was Luke's first EVER day of school. Luke started Kindy (American equivalent= Pre-school). He has been looking forward to taking his lunchbox to school in his backpack for quite some time.

First on the Kindy agenda; place lunchbox in a basket and apply sunscreen. Sun-safety is a big part of life in Australia. The kids apply sunscreen, they are required to wear a hat outdoors, and most of the play area is shaded. See what I mean? Extremely sun-safe.

 This is what Luke was doing when I left him on the first day of school. He gave me an enthusiastic, "Bye, Mom!" and off he went on his "walking thingies" (as he calls them).

 Next it was Mary's turn to go to class. She is starting Year 1 (American equivalent= Kindergarten).

Off she goes with her new sparkle shoes, box of school supplies and her princess backpack.

Mary has the same teacher as last year. We absolutely love her. It made her first day of school a breeze.

Next to be dropped off was our Benjamin who is starting Year 3 (American equivalent= Grade 2). Sporting the new shoes, this guy did great on his first day.

 And last, we took Michael to class. Michael is starting Year 5 (American equivalent= Grade 4). He too has the same teacher as last year which we are grateful for. He had a great first day.

After we dropped the kids off and drove daddy to work in the city, Sara and I were all alone. What did we do on our first day alone together? We went home and took a nap!

Happy 13

13 years, 9 moves, 5 kids, 3 continents, and countless great memories. 
Thanks for being my best friend through it all.
I love you.

Lazy days of summer

Sadly, our lazy days of summer have come to an end. So much for painting in our jammies and spending our afternoons at the pool. It's time to get the uniforms and lunchboxes ready because...school starts on Monday!

This daily group of six is about to become...

Just the two of us (for 5 days each fortnight at least)...

 The other 5 days each fortnight will be just the three of us...

 We will miss these three tremendously while they are off to school all day every day.

Local library

We have had a great time at our local library over the summer holidays. We went to a picture book mask-making workshop. Adorable!

Luke as a hippopotamus

Mary as a rabbit

Benjamin as a wombat

We participated in a science workshop. The kids are still taking about the cool experiments.

We also participated in the summer reading program. The three older kids each earned their reading prizes--it was just the incentive we needed to keep up with our summer reading. Thanks library!

Daddy's work

We took a day during our summer holidays to visit daddy's work. It is such an awesome building--it's a good thing the kids and I don't work there or we wouldn't get anything done.

Ceiling to floor white boards. Hours of entertainment.

The views of the city are great from the top floor.

Daddy showing the kids the neat pop up monitors in the conference room.

Our five VIP's.

Viola

Our Primary school in Australia offers an instrumental program. We were notified at the end of last school year that Benjamin had been selected to learn the viola. The school didn't have any violas available for us to rent, so we needed to purchase one. I didn't know anything about string instruments so I went to work doing some research. In the end we purchased a half-size violin restrung to a viola. I've even learned how to apply rosin on a new bow. It was an exciting day at our house when we brought this new instrument home.

We can't wait until the after school practicing begins.

G.O.M.A.

Jenny and Rachel are great friends of mine. Between the three of us we have 12 kids-- 8 boys and 4 girls. Since our kids go to different schools, we try to get together every school break. This time we took the kids on the City Cat (water bus) to the Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art.

This art exhibition is from Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama who uses dots to cover surfaces and fill rooms. She calls this process 'obliteration,' which means the destruction of every trace of something. In November of 2011, the Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art opened a completely white furnished life sized living room. Since that time, children have been obliterating the surfaces with colored adhesive dots. Luke used his first dot on  himself.

 Even a piano. Seriously cool.

 This exhibition was made out of sugar. Doesn't that look tasty?

We picked the hottest day of the Summer to go on our outing. It called for a visit to the ice cream shop.

 Sara enjoyed my mango smoothie. Look at that little red sweaty face.

 We stopped to play in the water fountains to cool down.

 The kids were fully clothed and completely soaked within minutes.

 We went for a swim at home that afternoon to finish cooling down. What a day!

Happy New Year

It's hard to believe 2011 has come and gone. It was a memorable year with the birth of our sweet Sara and our move to Australia. Every month in 2011 was filled with something new and exciting.
We look forward to what 2012 brings. Michael will start tuba lessons. Benjamin will be baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mary will start to loose her teeth. Luke will start pre-school. Sara will learn to walk. It's going to be another new and exciting year.