13 Years, Whoop Whoop

So today my son turned 13!!!! I can't quite believe I have two teenagers in the house!!!!

We had such an awesome starting with a fantastic cake made by Kate (post coming soon about cake :). I whipped up a bunting/garland happy birthday sign, which I LOVE, and will totally use for the next birthday. Pretty simple using a background I had previously painted, cut into rectangles, draw on the letters, then fastened with some cool twine and mini pegs. We got ours from Typo, but you can pick them up at various $2 shops as well.

Our family, Kate's family, and his best mate spent the day together.

We went to two different skate parks, had fish and chips on marine parade in Napier, went to ocean spa for a hot swim and got to see some of the Indian festival, Dawali, at the sound shell.

Probably the highlight was at Sk8 zone in Napier landing his first ever back flip on his scooter. Check out the video.... How super cool is my boy.

We love him heaps, he is such a quirky, intelligent, funny, individual. God was awesome when he gave him to us :)

mim

my 15 year old :)

Sometimes i find it hard to believe i have a 15 year old!!!! 2.5 more years and she will be at uni!!!! eeekkk. I remember being 15 so clearly, and really i think my daughter has it so much more together than i did. She is amazing and i love her.

Morning out in the school holidays :)

My eldest daughter is doing a history assignment on the Napier earthquake so we decided to take a trip to the CHB Settlers Museum this morning.

We had a really good time and the little ones totally loved it all. They pumped the water and played with the old telephones and ovens, enjoyed looking at the chainsaws and old farm equipment, lots of interesting things to see.

My favourite moment was when my 8 year old daughter asked where the screen was on the typewriter!!!!!!!!! Then called her older sister over to come see it saying "come and look at the cool old fashioned computer"!!!!!!!!!! wow times have changed and only in like 15 years!!!

I also had to show them how to use the dial phone, one day they will be showing their children how to use a button cell phone.

Good times in the school holidays :)

the fluffy pencil case

So my youngest daughter had a bit of a sad weekend. She found out her best friend is moving :( We are all pretty upset as the family is pretty special to us.

To cheer her up we popped into town (I use that work loosely as we only have one main street of shops, small towns gotta love them!!!) as she wanted to buy a fluffy pencil case.

Well due to the a fore mentioned lack of shops we could not find one anywhere. I suddenly remembered i had a whole lot of fluffy fabric in a variety of shades and off we went home to make one.

She has a great sense of style and chose the purple fluffy and aqua vintage zip!!! very cool.One pencil case made in about half an hour and one happy wee girl, yay

I got it right!!!!

So i don't always get my parenting right, often, too often, i get it really wrong. But yesterday I got it right woohoo!!!!!

It was time for my sons piano practice after school. He was not keen on the idea and had spent a bit of time playing games on his ipod. I sent him off to the piano to do his practice.

Well for about 15mins he crashed and banged on the piano playing not what anyone would call music mucking around, very grumpy.

My usual response would have been to go in tell him off, try the 'wait till your father gets home' but i thought mmmmm, no.

So i asked him if maybe he needed some time outside playing around and then could come in and practice. He shrugged and grunted, yay pre pubescent!!!! Then i had a brain wave, how about we both go outside and play some soccer.

We had the best half an hour tackling each other and trying soccer skills, his ever so slightly better than mine lol, and after he came straight inside and did his piano practice without a grumble.

It was by far the best part of my day. A new technique and a happy household and he even agreed to pose for a pic for my blog!!!