Not a morning person

I am totally not a morning person. I love my sleep. On the rare occasion that I wake up before my alarm I will lay in bed until it goes off. I even set my alarm five minutes early so that I can lay in bed for an extra five minutes instead of having to jump straight out.

Why then did I wake up at 5:50am this morning? And why, when I woke up at 5:50am, did I decide to actually get out of bed? Two reasons. First, my brain was ticking over and I knew I was going to be going back to sleep. Second, I had an appointment this morning right when I usually exercise and I knew that if I didn't get up and do it then I probably wouldn't do it. And I really wanted to exercise. You see I've been working hard to lose weight for 10 months now and I am so close to reaching my goal.

Anyway, so at 5:50am this morning I got out of bed, put on my exercise clothes and snuck quietly into the lounge room. After 30 minutes on our new cross trainer and a 20 minute pilates DVD, I was showered and dressed all before my alarm usually goes off at 7:15am.

I was actually surprised how nice it felt to have accomplished so much before the kids had even woken up. Oh, the things that I could do if I could just manage to pull myself out of bed a little earlier in the day. Oh, but I love my bed, especially when it is cold outside and my bed is nice and warm and comfortable and peaceful.

Haylie on the other hand is what I call a 'ping' person. She is up with the sun and happy to do so. She doesn't need time to wake up slowly or ease into the day. No, from the moment her eyes open she is going and doesn't stop until her head hits the pillow at night. She has learnt though that mummy doesn't like to get up as early as she does so she will go turn on the tv or go wake up one of her siblings.

I don't think I'll ever be a real morning person but hopefully I can motivate myself on occasion to get up a bit earlier and start my day with a bang!

Ten Things Tuesday

Ten Things Caitlyn Loves

1. Caitlyn loves to play with her cousin Zoe. They get along really well together, most of the time, and it's going to be hard when they move to Darwin for 6 months.

2. Caitlyn loves to ask questions. She is always asking what we are doing? Where are we going? When are we eating? What are we going to eat? Can she do this? Can she watch that? and her favourite, What am I doing?

3. Caitlyn loves to sing. She always wants me to turn the radio up in the car so she can sing along. She loves to sing the Primary songs and can do all of the actions. If you ask her what her favourite song is at the moment she will say, 'The ABC song'.

4. Caitlyn loves to watch movies over and over again. At the moment she really loves Tangled and anything Scooby Doo.

5. Caitlyn loves any type of food that I put in front of her, which makes for a very happy mummy.

6. Caitlyn loves to go swimming which is kind of funny because she never liked the water when she was younger. Whenever we went swimming she would hold you around the neck really tight and freak out if she got water on her face. We started her on swimming lessons and now she is a total water baby. She has no fear and loves to go under the water and jump in from the side.

7. Caitlyn loves to dress up and put make up on. Any chance she get she is putting on a dress and high heels and prancing around the house.

8. Caitlyn loves to be with other people. She is very social and loves to play and talk with others.

9. Caitlyn loves helping me bake. She loves it when we make cookies or bread rolls so that she can roll the dough into little balls. She also, of course, like eating the end result!

10. Caitlyn loves her family. She loves to play with Lachlan, Amie and Haylie. She loves to sit on Daddy's lap and give him a cuddle, she just loves it when we are all together and doing something fun!

Belair National Park

On Saturday we decided to go on a family picnic. I had been looking through some pictures earlier in the week and was reminded of a time that we went to Belair National Park. We had only been there one other time and it was when Amie was a baby. At the last minute I decided to grab our good camera so I could practice taking some photos. After a few stops along the way we made it there just in time for some lunch. The kids weren't really interested in eating, they just wanted to go play.

There is a normal playground there, plus a huge wooden fort, plus a hill with concrete tunnels running through it, plus a wooden pole climbing area.

 There was a guy there with his little boy who offered to take this family picture for us.

After the kids had run around for awhile we decided to get back into the car and explore the rest of the park. We found a lake and got out to do some exploring. Lachlan ran down to the water and suddenly there was all these ducks heading towards him. We had some left over bread rolls so I asked Buzz to get them. When he came back the kids and I were surrounded by about 30 ducks! He gave the girls some bread to start giving to the ducks but the ducks started getting very excited. They weren't scared of people at all. The white one was nearly as tall as Haylie. Th girls started to freak out and ran back to the car. Buzz ended up standing on a rock and feeding them all by himself. When the ducks realized all the the bread was gone they walked in a line back to the water. It was so funny to watch.

We all had a great day and decided that we would really like to go back again and take some more of our family with us!

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Just for fun I went back and looked at pictures of our previous trip to Belair and I found this one. It was taken in August 2008 so Lachlan would be about 20 months old.

In this picture he is 8 years and 7 months old. He has definitely lost all of his baby fat.

Random

Every time I plug my phone into my computer up pops iPhoto so that I can upload the pictures. Up until this week I have never done it. I found out that I had about 400 pictures on my phone! Most of them were ones that Haylie had taken so I deleted them but I did find some real gems.

How cute is this. I can hardly remember her being this small anymore. And she had no hair. Love that little bald head.

Another of my cute baby. We were always out and about taking kids to school, kindy, doing shopping, visiting friends and running errands so she did a lot of her naps in the car.

Here is Lachlan doing one of his jumps at the local park. He was so good at it. He would ask me every day if we could go to the park so he could do this. I remember one time though, when he first started to do it and he was on his old bike. It had been raining and there was a large puddle along the gravel path. He was riding along and decided to go right through the puddle! He only got a little way through when his wheels got stuck in the mud and he went flying off his bike landing in the mud. He wasn't really hurt but he was very upset by it and so we had to leave straight away. He wouldn't ride his bike the whole way home.

 Haylie fell over the back of the couch one night, hitting her head on the the floor. I couldn't believe how quickly the bruise and lump came up. By the time I got over to her and picked her up it was already there!

This one was taken in the school holidays. We had just gone bowling and in the shopping centre they had free face painting. Haylie was terrified of Lachlan and would not go near him until it was all washed off later that day!

We are always on the look out for new parks to go to so one Saturday we just drove around looking for some. We stumbled across a few but this one was the favourite of the day.

 During another lot of school holidays we went to Carrick hill to see a fairy play. Afterwards we had a picnic lunch and explored the storybook village in the gardens.

All she wanted for Christmas was her two front teeth!

Lachlan got this fat lip earlier in the day when he was riding his scooter at the park. He was doing a jump and caught the front of his scooter and fell flat on his face. He was lucky to be wearing his helmet or it would have been much worse!

 Our back garden started to flood a bit after days of rain.

At the beginning of the year we took Lachlan to see the Monster Trucks. He loved it!

This is my sleepy baby after her surgery a couple of weeks ago.

Today I . . . .

. . . . . am feeling grateful.

Grateful for a husband that works hard to provide for his family.

Grateful for four healthy, beautiful, active children.

Grateful for a beautiful home to live in. That is full of the things that I treasure most.

Grateful for the sunshine that dried my washing this week.

Grateful for the cold,wet and windy weather forecast for the weekend as it means I have a good excuse to snuggle up on the couch all weekend.

Grateful for the time I get to spend with Caitlyn every Friday. She is so fun to be around. As much as I'm looking forward to her starting school in July and I know that I will miss having her around so much during the day.

Grateful for cuddles from my baby boy every night before he goes to bed, even though he is 8 he knows he will always be my baby.

Grateful for wonderful friends who know just what to say.

Grateful for a fantastic mum who encourages me to be my best. She is one of my best friends and I'm forever grateful for all that she does for me.

Grateful for amazing sisters that I can always rely on.

Grateful for a loving husband who goes to see musicals with me, and enjoys it too!

Today I am grateful to be me.

Budding Photographer

Haylie loves to take pictures. Anytime she can get her hands on my camera she is off taking pictures of very random things. Here are some of her most recent photos.

Grandma and Poppy visiting on Sunday night

 Cheesy Lachlan!

 Beautiful posing Caitlyn

 A lovely one of myself exercising, minus my head!

Her feet

 Close up of her shoes

 Her favourite show, The Octonauts!

 Caitlyn posing again

 Daddy and Caitlyn having a treat on Monday night

Nice Amie!

Maybe I'll have to show her how to use the camera a bit better for the future. I do like looking at the world through her eyes though, even if they are a bit blurry!

Houseboats

A couple of weeks ago Buzz called me on a Thursday afternoon to ask me what we were doing on the weekend.
I thought, "Great! He has to work on Saturday!"
I reminded him about Haylie's surgery the next day and that we had a Ward Activity on Saturday night but that was it.
Buzz, "Would you like to spend the weekend on a houseboat......for free!"
Me, "Yes please!"

Turns out the owner of the houseboat needed the it moved up river and didn't have time to do it himself. Buzz has been doing some work for him on the houseboat and we had previously used one of his houseboats so he asked Buzz if he would like to use it for the weekend and move it for him.

After a very hectic Friday of packing, taking Haylie to the Hospital for her surgery, taking Caitlyn to swimming lessons and working we managed to head off about 6:30pm to the houseboat. 

The next morning this was our view over the river. Perfect! It was totally worth the crazy day the day before to wake up to that view.

Before leaving Mannum on Saturday morning we saw these ducklings on the shore. I ran inside to get some bread to see if we could get them to come closer. They ended up right next to the houseboat! They were so cute and fluffy.....and hungry! They could get enough of the the bread. It was funny because everywhere we stopped along the way if you went outside you would get all these ducks coming over to you looking for a feed.

After re-learning how to drive the houseboat we were off up river. The place we had to take it was about 8 hours by river but only 15 minutes by car. The weather wasn't too cold so we sat out the front and on the top deck a bit, watching the world go by as we putted up the river. Just after lunch we reached the midway point on our journey so we decided to stop for the night and get out a canoe to do some exploring. On the map we could see a little side creek that opened up into a large lake. I took Lachlan for a ride first and we set out to have a look at the lake. He did try and help and paddle occasionally but it was easier to do it myself. About halfway through our ride it got really windy, which made the water really choppy and, of course, we had to paddle into the wind to get back to the houseboat. We figured out afterwards that we had gone about 4kms. After that I let Buzz take the girls for some short rides!

                             

(The view of the lake from the top of the houseboat)

(The girls chillin' on their bed watching a movie. I think this was after they had used the spa on the top deck. Poor Haylie was so upset because she wasn't aloud in because of her surgery.)

(The view out the back of the houseboat from the girls bedroom.)

On Saturday night the weather got a little bit wild. It was really windy and it rained quite a bit but when we woke in the morning the sun was shinning again. The wind stuck around all day though. As we made our way up the river again there would be times when we would look out the side window and see a tree, look forward, then look back out the side window and see the same tree! The wind was blowing so hard that we weren't moving forward! We had to turn the boat a little bit to keep moving forward. Then sometimes we would be going along straight and all of a sudden the wind would blow and start turning the boat. It was a bit of a battle but we finally made it to the owners dock late in the afternoon.

(Lachlan in his PJ's with Teddy)

(This is Seth. We invited our friends Casey and Nicola to come with us. It was very last minute but we had a great time together. Bytheway, this picture was taken by Haylie)

All in all it was a very nice, relaxing, fun weekend!