Wow, i have been so slack, so I'll start with 1 child at a time.

Tamika is 8 and most the time just wonderful! Thinks washing up the dishes and Mum are the best things since sliced cheese, so I'm happy! Dancing has just finished for the year and the concert was great to watch last weekend. She is now also finishing up Girl Guides for the year and also loving every moment of that and swimming and Nippers will continue into early next year. Girl Guides doesn't recommence till Feb.

Next weekend is the Santa parade she is involved in with Guides so I'll get some photos to share from that.

Updates

Not much new really......

Tamika's dance group at school was accepted into the school festival so we have had rehearsals for that last Friday (i had to do my first ever braid in her hair, will beg for help for the actual concert). Tamika has reached the highest levels in her spelling and maths groups, something she has strived to do which we are proud of.

Jared is killing Kindergarten, and went from reading level 2, to 5 in one test. Also very proud of him. He also does extremely well at maths, so I'm told ( i haven't been a part of his group the last few weeks).

Tahlia, well she just keeps on trying to keep up with the older 2 and does a good job at that. Her talking is still amazing and her sentence of the week is "Jared did it" or "Jared's annoying me".

As for me, this is the last week of me doing 5-6 shifts a week and I'm really looking forward to some normality again. I know 30hrs is perfect for me, anything extra just puts a strain on me and the family. This week i will do about 44 hrs, way too much! Bring on next week :)

Moving right along....too quickly

Mothers day was pretty uneventful in a sense. Woke up to a wonderful bunch of kids and their pressies. Tamika got me a gorgeous basket of bath stuff and told me the basket will be great for my scrapping stuff when I'm finished with the bath stuff, very thoughtful and cute. Jared got me some chocolate almonds and was very disappointed i wouldn't let him open them at breakfast. Tahlia gave me a beautiful poem with hand prints and a hand made rose, very nice!

Ian bought me a much needed jumper/jacket which i love and is very warm.

He took the kids to his mums for the day as i worked, and from I've heard it really made her day. They left the same time as me and literally pulled up home the same time i finished work. Big day with over 5hrs driving for them but they all had a great day.

Just for fun

The last 2 days of school holidays i made a point of simply having some fun with the kids and 2 of the things we did was go and kick the soccar ball around and go to the local BMX track. So of course we had to take the cameras.

Miss Tahlia, aka Golden child

Hard to know where to really start. Tahlia is almost 2 and a half and one little individual. She goes to preschool 2 days a week while i work and that has never been a problem, she loves it. Always gives me a kiss goodbye and then waves out the window as i leave. Preschool love her and i am always hearing cute stories of what she has been up to, especially standing up for herself.

Her speech is amazing, coming from a someone who has dealt with speech therapy for years with Jared, she speaks a lot in full sentences and it's her normal reactions that amaze me. 'Mum, where's Tamika?', 'at Leighs having a sleepover', 'that's not fair' is her response with heaps of body language. Ummm you are 2 she's 7, get over it! Tahlia also loves chatting on the phone to nanny which is very cute.

She is still small and petite, just like her sister. Gotta love still putting on size 0 pants now that she is day trained. Otherwise she's a 2 in tops. She is also a little fashion queen and every morning and night is a bit of a fight between my practical suggestions and what she wants to wear.

scrapping bits

Easter at the Pitstocks

Nothing different to millions of other parents everywhere, but it's still a highlight in my kids life. The one and only day they can eat chocolate for brekkie and all day long.

The kids got from the Easter bunny, 3 small bags of small eggs for the hunt, Tamika and Jared got a small box with 3 normal size eggs and a torch, one dora and one Bob the Builder (can't help but being practical, they need there own torches for camping ), Tahlia got a egg cup and mug with 2 med eggs, Dora again.

From us, i got out my winter clothes layby for them and those small bags of chocolate money. They loved that, they love new clothes . Tah's got zilch from us, not even clothes as she really doesn't need much. There will be more than enough chocolate floating around in the next few days for Tahlia. I also had to get the IL's present as Ian's mum isn't well. So they got from them a pair of pj's each, and Tamika and Jared got an egg moulding kit, complete with chocolate and all the stuff they need.

The only other thing we did spec in the morning is have croissants for brekkie, Tamika's fave!

Easter hat parade

Jared had is Kindergarten Easter Hat parade yesterday and once i had made the hat, it was lots of fun and very cute. The 4 classes walked around and showed us their hats then they sang and danced to some songs they had learnt, including the chicken dance, funny!

Start of soccer, end of nippers

We lost the game to a better team, but the 'Invinsibles', as they are known played really well especially the second half. The new small sided games does give the kids more ball play so it was good to see all the kids get a good go.

1st man of the match for our team, JARED.....he was very excited and proud, so were we:)

Nippers presentation was last night and both the big kids got their participation medal, another proud moment for the weekend. They both love Nippers and can't wait till next year, Tamika will be in the competion side of it now too.

Jared

As for our boy, he is 6 in June and has just started Kindergarten at school. Jared loves school and can't wait to get there every morning. He does very well with his school work (which i know Tamika is the influence, he wants to be like her), and also received the 'Citizen of the week' for the school. We were so proud of him:). He received a nice big certificate and a Dymocks voucher which he spent of Mr Men books, cute.

Jared loves playing, he is such a boy! Slowly he is becoming nicer at home, but he can still test every person in this house to their limits.

Jared finished his 1st summer of Nippers and did well, his strength was board riding. We have the presentation on Sunday, so look forward to seeing him get his 1st medal. (just the standard token at the end of the season, rather than a trophy)

Soccer is back on and officially starts this weekend. Jared has had a few pre match games, how cute does that sound, but tomorrow is the official day to start.

The beginning of catch ups, Tamika....

This photo Tamika got the role of BBQ toast on out last camping trip, she did a great job:)

Tamika is 8 in July and in year 2 at school. She has a lovely teacher this year, as she always has had really, and is going along well at school. She is in the highest levels for spelling and maths, and her reading is amazing, her home readers are mini novels now that take up to an hour to read. I usually sit thru a chapter or two and leave the rest till quiet time before bed. Then she writes down the words she doesn't know or understand and we go thru them. She is also about to start the Premiers reading challenge and is going to do the year 3 and 4 books. Which i think most kids are, but sounds good.

She has completed the swimming scheme thru school now too and really enjoyed that. I must also get her back into normal swimming lessons.

Dancing is her 'thing' still, and does after school dancing and another dancing class at sport time, that actually starts to gear them up for the big school spectacular in the future.

She still has a heart of gold as she always has had, and is now leaning towards nicer friends as such. Lucky there is plenty of them around.

Generally she eats well and is a good girl at home, she is especially good with Tahlia, and they will end up good friends at this stage. She would dress and do heaps to help with Tahlia but being the head strong person Tahlia is, she normally complains and wants me. Tamika definitely tries hard to help with Tah's, that's for sure.

With Jared she shows off a bit and asks him to spell words well beyond him, that's about the most negative thing i can think of. She just gets the 'well I'm glad you can do year 2 stuff well, I'm sure Jared will too in 2 YEARS TIME'!

She scraps again

I have been totally inspired again and scrapping a fair bit. All of these come from the 52 pick up challenge at LSBS.

This was at Killalea, our 1st camping trip. I got a handful of nice shots of Ian teaching Jared how to skim rocks.

Made this for a friends 4th birthday and filled it with hair things, she loved it thankfully :)

Tahlia playing.




Jared about a year ago.

This was a Dr Seuss theme

Tah's

Day out with my Dad and Jared's 2 cousins.