July in August

Where oh where did July get to?  I seemed to have lost a whole month. 

I know we’ve done ‘stuff’ in July – it feels as though we haven’t had a weekend at home in a long while – but for the life of me I can’t really remember where 31 days went!  Here’s what I can remember:

The 5th July was Owen’s fifth birthday.  Five.  I can’t believe our little biggest boy is FIVE.  Yes, that does deserve capital letters!  And a blog post all on it’s own.  I have pictures, parties, dates and cake to share with you! 

My Mum’s 64th birthday was on the 6th.  She celebrated this by spending a week with two of her dearest friends, train tripping it to Longreach and back again.    

One of the days that Mum was away (Owen’s actual birthday), I looked after Cooper along with the Harvey Three while Jode went to work.  It was a whirlwind of a day!  We even had Zac and Emily over for morning tea and ‘happy birthday’ sung to Owen.  The best part?  Owen, Reuben and Cooper play together really well, so even though four children v one adult sounds absolutely shocking, it was a good day!  Honestly :D

I tried out several pikelet recipes in my quest to find the perfect (homemade) pikelet.  Prefferably a recipe that is freezable.  I’m still not entirely happy with my favourite recipe yet.  There has never been enough left over to test their freezability.  It’s been tough.  The kids find it really hard to be my guinea pigs sometimes! 

Sticking to the food theme…  We had our first Dessert Night with the Ostenfeld’s.  They all came to our house, complete with the ingredients for dessert and Nic cooked up a storm!  She made the most delicious chocolate pudding, with vanilla icecream and cream.  It was so rich and good!  It’s my turn next time so I’ve got to start thinking about what I’m going to try and wow them with.  I’m tempted to go safe and make individual lemon merrange pies, since Nic has never, ever had a lemon meringue pie.  Isn’t that just sad?!  It’s something that just needs to be rectified!   I can’t think of a better excuse to make a dessert!!!

It has also been a month of sickness for all of us.  Two days straight I was at our GP’s office with Reuben and then Ella.  We have all been suffering from what we all though was just a cold but turned out being much more, including a throat infection that won’t go away!  Everyone except Owen is still coughing…  I think it’s been going on for about six weeks now…  Hopefully we will be past it sooner rather than later! 

Reuben started swimming lessons this month.  The first lesson was just terrible.  Horrific, if you could ask him, I’m sure.  The thing is, Reuben can be very shy and is very much Owen’s opposite when it comes to trying new things.  Swimming is no exception.  Even though Marc is in the pool with him, Reuben clung to his Dad’s neck, screaming his way through his first half hour lesson.  The next week was a bit better, no screaming and only a few tears and in his third lesson he was smiling and letting go of Marc and singing songs with the other toddlers.  Hopefully he will become much more comfortable in the water as the weeks go by. 

Owen started his second block of Kindy Soccer at ACE this month.  The kids are learning a few more ball skills this term and having a short game at the end of the hour.  They play for an hour and it’s a full on run for the kids – Saturday nap time is a long one at our house! 

I went to a Chicks at the Flicks night in the Myer Centre.  We saw Killers after having survived devine mini cupcakes, brownie samples, champagne and for those who wanted, they could have their hair or make up done by some professionals.  It was a tough night.  Great company, the movie was better and funnier than I’d expected, we each got a goodie bag, and we raised some cash for charity.  See?  Hard work…!

So July went by in a blur, hopefully August won’t be quite so full on…!