Family. Pink and purple horsey cake

All year I asked Max what kind of birthday cake he wanted when he turned 4. His answer was consistently, 'a pink and purple horsey cake'. So that's exactly what he got.

Family. Max turns 4

My baby Max turned four this week.

Here is he with his big sister and little cousin in beautiful Kangaroo Valley. It's been lovely for the boys to have their cousins visit. All of them have had a wonderful time playing and running crazy together.

Can you believe that this beautiful child weighed 10lb10oz when he was born? I still haven't forgotten that day...

Family. Max has a girlfriend

Max loves a girl from our church who is 17. The other day I heard him pick up his toy mobile phone.

"Hello? Sally? This is Max." he said. And then he started to sing.

"Na, na, na, na, you are the music in the me!"

One day he'll have his love returned to him...

Family. 88 isn't old

Bright Eyes has been fascinated by the cost of things recently. He is always asking how much things cost and from there decides whether that is cheap or expensive. We are trying to get him to see that value is a relative concept, but basically, anything over $20 is expensive to him.

The other day we were talking about people's ages. I asked him, "Do you think I'm old?" 

"Yes," he said.

"Well, to you I'm old, but to Poppa, I'm really young," I explained.

"How old is Poppa?" he wanted to know.

"88!" I said.

"Wow - that's expensive," he exclaimed.

Family. Folk Festival

Today JJ sang with her school choir at the KV Folk Festival. It was great to see the group of children singing so well. It was also great to find out that she was a finalist in the Folk Festival Busy Poetry Competition and had to perform her poem in the finals.

Of course that meant that the boys had to wait around for two hours instead of the 3/4 hour I had originally planned for. I couldn't take them home because AP was out with the car, so we had to stay. By the time the poetry began both boys were at the end of their tether and I was wondering how we were going to manage.

My life often feels like a series of unplanned gambles. I had no way of knowing that we would be out for two hours. We could have gone home, but I really wanted JJ to have the opportunity to be part of a poetry reading, and I didn't want to do what I have had to do SO often in the past and miss seeing her because I had to look after the boys.

Thankfully, the poetry was held in the pavillion next to the park. The boys and I headed to the park, having dropped JJ in the pavillion with my promise to return somehow. Amazingly I saw a friend in there who was waiting to be picked up in half an hour, so she watched the boys play while I went in and saw my beautiful girl perform a gorgeous poem. 

Sadly, she was beaten by a seven year old with a long and vocabulary-rich epic about lizards, but she did well and her teachers and I were very proud of her.

And I was proud of the boys, who also were resilient to the end, even though they didn't particularly want to be there.