Category Archives: Family

The Big Day

Our entire visit to Australia was building up to one big moment – the day my brother, Ben, was to marry Emma. The ceremony took place in Melbourne’s Carlton Gardens which was just beautiful (thankfully the rain held off until the very end). The bride was fashionably late so Thomas and Samuel entertained guests by wrestling each other on the red carpet.

I had a couple of responsibilities on the day – accompanying my son down the aisle with the rings and giving a reading – so I wasn’t able to take as many photos of the ceremony as I had liked. I did, however, have a fabulous view from the front row of the bridesmaids…

…and the grooms men/woman. That’s my baby brother Jono in the middle. He turned 30 during our trip so I suppose he’s not much of a baby any more.

And of course we had the perfect view when the vows began. I began crying the moment I saw Emma get out of the car and I’m pretty sure I didn’t stop until the marriage certificate was signed. I blame the extra hormones that come from having given birth to two children.

And of course Emma looked stunning. (Ben looked OK too).

A light rain began to fall as the champagne was poured, so we quickly headed off to the reception at a nearby Chinese restaurant for Yum Cha (Dim Sum for my American blog readers).

I love this next photo. It is so “Emma”.

I told you she looked beautiful.

My kids were the life of the party.

Especially after the pants came off.

We gave Samuel free reign with the binky during our visit. It began with needing to help sooth him during our flight from hell on the way over, and became a crutch to help him cope with the fact that he was introduced to about 50 new people during our stay. I was worried that he would continue the binky addiction when we got home but, thankfully, he reverted back to bedtime-only as soon as we touched down in Portland. Still, I’m a little disappointed that he has a binky in every single photo of him at the wedding.

Of course between the moments of child entertainment, there were speeches from both best men, father-of-the-bride and father-of-the-groom, my cousin Luke who acted as MC and the bride and groom. Nothing too embarrassing (although I’m sure there was plenty of fodder) and I continued to cry. (I swear I didn’t cry this much before I had children – not even at my own wedding).

The very proud parents of the groom.

And another one of Jono. I’m not absolutely sure why I took so many photographs of him during this visit, although I suspect it’s because he’s matured enough that I no longer have to photoshop a certain middle finger out of all of the shots.

Finally, in what is likely to have the longest wedding celebration in history, we headed to a nearby pub for cake and dancing. My flash misfired on this next photo but it ended being one of my (and my brother’s) favourites.

Kei and I partied into the night after my parents took the kids back to the hotel. It was wonderful to have some time to relax and catch up with cousins who I have not seen in years, as well as get to know some of my newly-acquired family members.

It was a wonderfully beautiful day and a great party – and I even scored a sister out of the whole deal (my second one). I’d call that a huge success.

There HAD To Be A Kangaroo: More Aussie P365

Now you know I couldn’t possibly post all of my Aussie photos without at least one picture of a Kangaroo. Once again we found ourselves at a small farm near my parent’s house where we could feed the rabbits and guinea pigs, collect a few still-warm eggs from the chickens and throw some bread at a couple of emus.

Sadly the kangaroo population has dropped somewhat since our first visit and this little guy was the only one who came to see us when we shook the can of food. Well, him and a few extremely-aggressive deer. I was afraid to pull put the camera without a fence to protect me, although we were able to get behind the fence and pet the animals.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, we had a great time and definitely had our fix of animals. A few of the Australian variety…

and some of your general, run-of-the-mill farm animals…

It was a fun day for my city kids, even if Samuel was a little traumatized by the experience of being surrounded by animals that towered above him, one of which stole a can of food right out of his hand.

Thankfully he’s young enough that he’ll recover and I’m sure we’ll visit the farm again on our next trip to Australia. It’s become something of a tradition, although admittedly a very smelly and dirty one. Yes, I’m a city girl too.

Smiles

Today’s entry for the I ♥ Faces challenge is all about smiles, so of course I went back through my photos of Australia looking for the perfect smile. The sad thing is that my children are already beyond the age of smiling when I need them to. Oh, they smile on command but it involves the word “cheese”, although I swear I never taught them how to do that. I think it’s innate, like frowning when they’re unhappy or desperately needing to talk to me suddenly every time I pick up the phone for an important call.

Oh, back to the actual smile. I caught this one of my little (now 30 year old!) brother while holding our cousin’s baby. I think this photo is so sweet and I know he is probably going to groan and wonder why on earth I posted it for all to see. It’s because you’re just too cute, Jono, and this photo cancels out every single smirk you’ve flashed me when I’ve tried to take your photo in the past. 🙂

A Quick Interlude

Before I continue with my “Flight From Hell” rant, I present this small moment of peace from our trip (spoiler alert: we did finally make it there) and my entry for this week’s I ♥ Faces collage challenge. One of the key things I learned from this trip is that I should ALWAYS make time to stop at a store and buy chalk. This activity kept the boys  occupied for hours and my parents were able to enjoy a constantly changing piece of artwork on their concrete driveway for our entire stay, dominated by Star Wars scenes/characters and a full airport blueprint. It seems my children are now more familiar with airports than ever.

Part 2 of the “Flight From Hell” coming tomorrow.

Home Again..

We returned home about 7:30 last night after a marathon flight from Australia. Thankfully the return trip was a lot less eventful that our trip over (more on that soon). We’ve now had a chance to catch up on some sleep but I think we’re all going to suffer jetlag for a few days. Thomas finally went to sleep at around 12:30am after declaring many times that “NOTHING was working” to get him to sleep last night. (Turns out that singing “Hey Jude” helps. Must be the repetition of na na naaa nanana.) He woke the rest of us up at 11:30am. I’m a little nervous about bedtime tonight but hoping that the long sleep was more catching up than time adjustment.

You can judge by the lack of blog posts that internet access during our visit was not ideal – in fact I was completely offline for the last four days (gasp! horror!). Actually it was a nice break, but I am now ready to catch up on the more than 1000 blogs in my reader, many facebook messages and, of course, start posting on here again.

Now I just need to find a little time to download pics of our trip, including the very important photos from my brother Ben’s wedding. Needless to say it was beautiful and I basically cried from the moment I saw my new sister-in-law walk out in her dress to the very late ride home in the taxi to the hotel. What can I say? Weddings make me emotional (as does Oprah. I blame the new hormones I grew when I gave birth to my children).

Side note: I caught up on Lost last night before going to bed at around 2am so comments on key plot points are now allowed.

I’ll be back with more photos soon but in the meantime I’ll share some P365 pics that I took before our trip.

A few days before our trip I went on a mummy-son date with Thomas to see an original production of “Don’t let the pigeon drive the bus” performed by the Northwest Children’s Theater. We caught a free early read-through of the play a couple of months ago so we were eager to see the fully-costumed version. It was a LOT of fun and I hope they are able to take the show on the road. Of course photos were not allowed in the theatre so I had to make do with a pic of the beautiful building. The theatre itself is over 120 years old and is just stunning.

Thomas wanted to take a little time for some drawing on the steps outside the theatre before we left. Part of the play required us to learn how to draw the pigeon and Thomas wanted to practice while it was still fresh in his mind.

We all went out for dinner on the Sunday night (starting our vacation early) and I broke out the wide angle lens. I rarely use this lens mainly because I am too lazy to change from the 50mm. Turns out that I miss the wonderfully distorted portraits that I can get with the wide angle. Must remind myself to switch lenses more often.

I’m also apparently to lazy to wipe Samuel’s mouth.

One of the last nights before our trip is well summed up with this photo – frantic and fast.  I’m not sure if there will ever be a time when I find myself prepared for an overseas trip days in advance of our departure. I was doing laundry to the last moment, dropping something off at the office (and leaving two of our passports there – LONG, traumatic story that was part of our eventful trip over) and shoving things into bags almost as we walked out the door. I’m dreaming of the day when the kids can do their own packing or, at the very least, keep themselves entertained while I do it for them.

So tomorrow we get back to reality – school, daycare and work. I’ll be back to post more after the jetlag lifts and I am able to emerge from a monsterous pile of laundry.

Bundled

The I Heart Faces challenge for this week is “bundled”. Of course I immediately thought of my little Michelin baby back in December when we experienced our brief, but impressive, winter snowstorm.

Of course it’s easy to look at these photos while we are experiencing 65 degree temperatures and the leaves are beginning to appear on the trees.

Coming soon: Select photos from a fabulous weekend with the girls (“select” to protect the innocent) and catching up on P365 – I have a whole week of pics to share.

Off to find some time to edit pics.

Feeling Poorly

We had all been doing so well and seemed to have avoided many of the illnesses that have been rampant over the past couple of months. Sadly, though, this new epidemic has hit three out of the four of us so Thomas, Samuel and I have been home today. Of course, given that I am sick I haven’t been the best caretaker. We went to the doctor this morning and have one confirmed ear infection. The rest of the day has been spent trying to track down our prescription (still don’t have it), napping and watching a lot of TV.

I am also behind in posting my P365 photos so I have quite a few to share from the past week.

Taking advantage of the warm weather with a walk to the park on the weekend.

And what’s a weekend without a visit to Ikea? This time we picked up a run and some cushions for a little reading area we have planned for our freshly painted landing upstairs.

And Kei is clearly happy about the purchases – or his cheap Ikea lunch.

My three (hilarious) children.

The kids have been taking showers while our downstairs bathroom is being painted a beautiful shade of chocolate brown. OK, it doesn’t sound beautiful but trust me, it is very spa-like and sophisticated – and much more attractive than the lavender walls and pale yellow ceiling than the previous tenants decided to bestow on us. It only took us four years to change it…

I’m not sure why I like this photo so much. It’s clearly out of focus and the framing is all wrong, but there’s something about the way Samuel is covering his face and Thomas’ smile in the background that I just love.

I’m not sure how many Star Wars figures Thomas now owns but it feels like they are taking over the house and he keeps asking for more. I guess he just needs enough to make a conga line.

I took the day off today to look after my sick children and my sick self – although every mother reading this will know how impossible that is. First thing in the morning we headed to a clinic for an ear infection diagnosis and a couple of prescriptions. That was the quick part. It then took us another couple of hours to find out that we couldn’t get the prescriptions – 30 minutes of which we spent hanging out in the toy section of Fred Meyer while Thomas picked out the things he MUST have for his birthday. Of course September means nothing to a four year old.

As for Samuel, he saw the ball aisle and it took everything in my power to prevent him from picking up every single one and announcing “ball!”.

Kei finally picked up the prescription at about 5:30pm after another 30 minute wait and about three more phone calls but, after Thomas asked for a second dose of ear drops, I realize that the wait was probably worth it to ensure a pain-free sleep for my babies.

Here’s hoping everyone is able to go back to daycare and school tomorrow and that we’re fully recovered by the weekend so we can really relax and enjoy it.

Giddy

Today’s I Heart Faces challenge is “Outtakes”. Pity I didn’t see it before I posted my project 365 post late last week because I’m pretty sure this would have qualified.

So I went back into the archives and discovered that I have many outtakes to choose from. That’s what comes from having two silly boys who love to make faces for the camera (or even not for the camera – who needs a reason?).


We had a great weekend, although it was busy which seems to be our normal state these days. Samuel and Thomas played well together and I can really see a bond forming between them. I love that they can now “talk” to each other and play games to make the other one laugh. Samuel has become Thomas’ little shadow and follows him around endlessly yelling “Toma!” (his way of saying Thomas) and then copies everything he does. The downside to this is that we have had to talk to Thomas about the fact that Samuel likes to do everything he does, but with less balance and control. It can be a recipe for disaster, especially given one of Thomas’ favourite activities is to walk along the top of retaining walls while we are out in the neighborhood.

I just love coming off a weekend when everyone was in a relatively good mood. In fact I don’t think we implemented even one time out the whole weekend. That must be a new record.

Oh, and my bathroom is getting painted today. Almost makes up for the fact that I was scrubbing down bathroom walls at 9pm last night. The end result will be worth it.

Looking forward to a week ahead that promises much productivity, a new episode of Lost, more early spring days and a few days closer to my girls weekend and an Aussie vacation. I think I may be sleep deprived – I feel almost giddy at the prospects.

Happy Monday!

It’s a Monday Mosaic Flashback

I was cleaning out some files on my hard drive and came across these little treasures that I scanned a while ago. The scanner was not very good, but the images are clear enough that you can admire the fabulous Carol Brady hairdo on my Mum and porn star mustache on my Dad. I’m also pretty sure this is the last photo of my Dad with brown hair. I sent him grey shortly after.

It’s also strange how items like the wicker chair and brown floral tablecloth, and even the antiquated bouncer chair are burned so clearly in my memory. Crazy to think that these photos are nearly 35 (gasp!) years old.