James the (toy) echidna

Echidna Day passed with very little fuss this year. I wanted to bake a traditional chocolate 'spikey' cake but it didn't happen. In fact, aside from the 3 girls making echidna's from sticks and air drying clay we hardly marked the occasion at all.

We did, however, have James the (toy) echidna, wandering the house. I love him. We get him out of his box as Echidna Day approaches and he just sort of ... shows up... around the house. People pick him up and pat him while watching TV. The kids play games with him. He travels to the girls bedrooms and sits on the couch watching telly when the kids have left him to it. He often startles me as I walk through the house at night to check the kids before I go to bed.  And do you know what? It makes me happy. I look forward to have James visit with us.



I wanted Echidna Day to become a celebration of our blessings. Australia doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving. This is our version. Give thanks in all circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:18a). We have plenty of circumstances going on that we could easily not give thanks for. You know what though? I am thankful. We have a great, beautiful and messy life. Thank you God for all the blessings you have given our family. And thank you for being our soft landing place when the circumstances start to get the better of us.

Echidna makings

This year Echidna Day crept up on me. We have all been feeling pretty lousy still trying to recover from whooping cough (which is taking forever I might add!) and virus' that seem to keep attacking our family.

Our Echidna makings were limited to the above this year. Esther and Ellamay made some Echidna's from foam eggs and pencils or sticks. And Ellamay drew the awesome Echidna picture above.

Usually we make some kind of Echidna cakes but we didn't this year. We made do with our "sticky" food of chocolate malt sticks and chocolate raspberry bullets.

Stay tuned. I might be able to find something crafty to share soon. :-)

Echidna Day adventures part 2

More Echidna Day adventures. If you recall, I said I don't like reptiles. The snake above... perfect example of why I don't like them. It is a Red Bellied Black Snake. Actually, nothing against the snake above, I actually just don't like any snakes.

This lovely, sleepy lump of an animal is wombat. These things were huge and sleepy. I think it must have been afternoon siesta time when we went to see all the animals :-)

Our emu friend.

Kangaroos in mid bounce.

Eastern Grey and Red kangaroos. I don't think I have ever seen Red kangaroos before. We have lots of the Grey ones around here. The Red ones are so much bigger than the Greys. I don't think I would like to get too close to them. They are pure muscle.

The cockatoos were fun. Two of them took a liking to Tim. One was chewing on his jumper and the other quite liked his shoe laces.

Esther loved the cockies. She was so excited she could pat them. When we left their enclosure, one cocky said to us, "Hello, Cocky". So of course we stood there for a bit longer to see what else he had learnt to say.

These parrots were really enjoying the seed they had to eat.

This is a Bearded dragon. We counted 6 of them in the enclosure and they were just sun baking on the branches.

The kids were particularly excited to see this animal. It is called the Spotted Quoll. They have been watching a wildlife show on TV and it has been featuring about Spotted Quolls. They are an endangered species. Very exciting to see live ones - even if they were sleeping.

This is a Tasmanian Devil. Also, sleepy. I think the thing that struck us about this enclosure was that there was a chicken carcass up on top of the fence guard. They are supposed to be ferocious little things so we assume it got thrown there in a feeding frenzy.

This is a Brush Turkey.

We got to the last few displays and the kids were tired from all the walking. One of the last displays had Flying Fox bats and Blue-tongue Lizards in it. Ellamay was completely freaked out by the bats and Esther saw a lizard that was shedding its skin. This completely freaked Esther out. She has seen skins off snakes on the TV before but the fact that the lizard was walking around with some skin sticking out was too creepy for Esther.

We left the main park for their playground/picnic area and had some afternoon tea. We ate some "sticky" kind of food in keeping with our Echidna Day idea. Raspberry chocolate bullets and chocolate malt sticks. That seemed like good food to celebrate a "pointy" kind of animal.

Another year gone by and another year celebrated that we have abundant blessings. We thank God for the life we have and even though it has its ups and its downs, we are blessed beyond measure. I hope you have given some thought to what you have in your life to be thankful for.

Echidna Day adventure

On Sunday 16th October, we celebrated Echidna Day again. This year I really wanted to go somewhere so we could see and actual echidna. I made a phone call and found that they had one at the Kyabram Fauna Park. I remember going to the Fauna Park when I was a kid but the main attraction then was we use to go to the kiosk to buy mixed lollies. :-) I had only been in once that I remember on a school trip. That was probably when I was about the same age as Esther and Ellamay.

My very vague memories of the place when I was a kid was looking at displays and not being able to see anything. It was exciting to see things so close up this time. I guess a lot of things can change in 25 years. :-) Perhaps I am a bit taller too. This koala barely moved in the 5 minutes or more we stood there looking at him.

The animals there are very use to people being around. The emu above, for example believed it owned the path and we had to move out of its way because it wasn't stopping or changing its path for us. The 3 girls were in love with it as soon as it walked past and without a word they turned and started to follow it bobbing up and down just as it did. So cute and so funny.

This kangaroo was quite happy to ignore us as we stood nearby in awe of how close we could get.

And here is the creature of the day... an echidna... bottom. It was asleep with its head in the hollow log and did not care that we came all that way to see him. We asked him to wake up and pose for a photo, but he didn't hear us.

I got a little emotional having my family all there to see this echidna. It was a perfect way to celebrate Echidna Day. Having our family together, enjoying (reasonable) health and having fun.

These guys are called Tawny Frogmouths. They look like they own the place with their chests all puffed out like that.

I can't remember what this one was called but he (or she for that matter) was an owl.

Pretty sure this one was a Barn Owl. Really know my fauna don't I? :-)

We went into the reptile house... I don't like reptiles. I was glad they were behind glass.

This was the crocodile. It hardly moved the whole time we stood there looking at it. I wondered if it was real. Then it slowly came up and opened it's eyes above the water level. That was creepy.

Amelia was happy to have Daddy holding onto her while she looked at the crocodile.

I have another post to come of our trip to the fauna park. I hope to share that in the next couple of days.

Yesterday, on Echidna Day

Amelia finally got to see an echidna yesterday. She has heard so much about them. She was only a baby on the first Echidna Day. We went on an adventure to Kyabram Fauna Park for our Echidna Day. I rang them last week to make sure they had an echidna for us to come and see. I was really glad we could see one again. I must admit I got a little emotional to see this.

I will share some more photos of the day soon. We saw lots of Australian animals and it was a great way to spend the day with our family. I love family adventure days like this.

Happy Echidna Day

We are celebrating Echidna Day today. It is our special day for giving thanks and counting our blessings. Echidna Day is a family time, but it came about as a way to stay focussed on the happy things, like an echidna wandering into our yard, rather than the day the dreaded phone call came with Amelia's CF diagnosis.

You can read all about what Echidna Day is on this post from last year.

We hope you have a happy day today. Take some time to count the blessings that you are surrounded by and give thanks for what you have.

I am thankful for another year of joy and tears. I am thankful for the great health Amelia has enjoyed this year. There has been just the normal coughs and colds. Our children are growing older and understanding more about all areas of life (and Amelia's CF) which can make explaining things to them difficult at times. I am thankful we can help them understand things even though it's difficult. I am thankful for children who support and love each other (even when they fight). I am especially thankful God blessed me with such a wonderful and supportive husband. We have trials in our life, but we are so blessed too.

So what are you thankful for?

Echidna Cupcakes on a cupcake blog!

Sometimes you get to have a little piece of awesome handed to you in your day. I just got featured on a cupcake blog! Little ol' me! And completely out of the blue! If you want to see who I am being featured next to, click over to Party Cupcake Ideas. Very cool. There are some seriously clever people in this world and my cupcake is right in between them. Yep. That is pretty awesome.

Have a great week. :-)

Echidna stitching

I really wanted to make something... crafty and nice for Echidna Day. Something that wouldn't matter if it was around after Echidna Day was finished for another year.

I decided to do another stitching project in a hoop. I found this colouring page of an echidna and decreased the size I wanted. I traced it onto calico with a water soluble pen (aren't they a dandy tool to have?).

I have been trying to think up a focus for Echidna Day for a long time. After an email from a crafty friend of mine I settled upon it being a day of counting our blessings. My friend sent me a paper project she had about a month of thanksgiving. We don't celebrate Thanksgiving in Australia but I really wanted to adapt the idea of it to Echidna Day. This was perfect.

We have so many blessings to be thankful for. It is important to remember them when things get too overwhelming. In the grand scheme of things - Life is good.

This week has been a tough one. Amelia had to have a routine broncoscopy and there were complications during the procedure. We are so thankful that the medical team were able to clear her airways again and she stabilised. The day after, you would not even know anything had happened. She was happy and playing like she always does.

We are so glad that God bought such a special little person into our lives. We have been blessed with three beautiful daughters. We have a lot of blessings to count.

Echidna crafts

When I googled echidna crafts, there really wasn't much to pick from. Apparently, echidna's don't inspire crafts. That's okay. We will have to come up with a few of our own. For next year, I might broaden my search to include hedgehogs - which of course and not at all the same animal but with a few tweeks things could be adapted for our purposes :-)

Anyway, here is a paper plate echidna that Amelia and I made last week. It is a paper plate cut in half and then stapled together. We painted it brown and made a pointy nose from an egg carton and the spines from fringed paper. Amelia decided it needed a googly eye and also decided it needed a tail. Echidna's do not have long tails like this, but she thought it looked good so we went with that :-)

Another paper plate craft now. Esther came up with this one all by herself. She made a paper cone nose and stuck paper spines all around. Amelia wanted one too so Esther made the paper cone for her and she worked on the rest herself. I think maybe a little brown paint would've made a bit of difference. They look a little... creepy. But they are very proud of what they made and that they did it all by themselves. It was a late in the day - should be going to bed not crafting craft.

I made some paper cut outs of echidna's too, (which I don't have a photo of because for some reason it won't load up). I had the girls draw on them what they were thankful for and we strung them up on the wall at the end of the dining table. I will take them down and put them into my scrapbooks (at some stage) and we can see what the girls were thankful for this year. It would be a good way to record each year what we are thankful for.

Stick around for my echidna stitiching project...

The day echidna came...

Here is a video of when the echidna came.

Echidna cupcakes

Well, we made them. The cupcakes turned out pretty cool. I thought that I would get the kids to help make maybe one or two and I would do the rest (in peace and quiet) but the girls had other ideas. They made quite a few each. After a few deep breath's, I realised that really this is what I want Echidna Day to be all about. Spending time with our kids and being thankful that we can. So I let go of trying to achieve the perfectly piped echidna's I was imagining and we just went with it. Considering their ages, the girls are all pretty handy with a piping bag.

Just in case you are interested, here is the recipe for the cupcakes. I am sure they are pure fat but wow are they yummy!

Chocolate cupcakes

Ingredients

8 tablespoons soft margarine

100g (3 1/2 oz) caster sugar

225g (8 oz) self-raising flour
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
25g (1 oz) plain chocolate, melted

Put 12 paper baking cases in a muffin tin, or put 12 double layer paper cases on a baking sheet.
Put margarine, sugar, flour, eggs and cocoa in a large bowl and, using an electric hand whisk, beat together until just smooth. Beat in the melted chocolate. Spoon the batter into the paper cases.
Bake the cupcakes in a preheated oven, 180 C/350 F, for 15 minutes, or until springy to the touch. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
(Recipe from this book)

Echidna Day cakes

I have wanted to celebrate Echidna Day and make it into something special since the first anniversary came around. The first time we celebrated it in 2008, was marked with a cake. Amelia was only just one in this photo. She already knew cake was yummy! :-)

It is just a plain and easy chocolate cake with chocolate icing. The spines are made out of malt stick biscuits. The idea for this came from an ice cream cake featured in this book.

This is the cake I made to celebrate Echidna Day last year. It was mud cake with white ganache. The echidna on top was made from fondant icing. The long nose was dipped in chocolate and the spines are made from chocolate ganache. It is sitting on a chunk of mud cake that I trimmed off the cake to make it flat.

This year we are aiming for echidna cupcakes. That should be fun. We will be working on these soon. I also have some other things to do to make the day special. A day of thanks. Stay tuned. :-)

Echidna Day

James the Echidna

On Saturday, we are going to celebrate our 3rd Echidna Day. It is our homemade celebration day to remember all the good stuff and a day to count our blessings. Here is the story.

The 16th October 2007 was a breezy spring day. Tim went off to work and I was home with Esther and Ellamay (three and a half at the time) and Amelia (five weeks old). I was talking to my mum on the phone about what the kids were up to and no doubt about how much sleep we were all getting. I looked out the kitchen window just in time to see an echidna come from the fence across the yard. I couldn't believe it! I told Mum and said I'd better go. I took Esther and Ellamay and we crept outside to investigate. (I should point out that yes we live in a rural area but it isn't common to have an echidna wander into our yard!)

We found it under the bush by the back door. It was so exciting. I had never seen an echidna before. And of course the girls thought it was amazing. It buried its head under the leaf litter and didn't move. We stayed back and watched. I rang wildlife rescue and they said they only move echidnas if they are in trouble. The echidna would leave when it was ready.

So we watched. The girls pretended to take photos with their shoe 'cameras'. Amelia slept through all the excitement. We came back inside to have our lunch with the promise of more echidna watching after. By the time lunch was over, the echidna was gone. We spent the rest of the day on a grand adventure in the back yard trying to find the echidna. Ellamay named it James "like on Top Gear" (one of Tim's favourite TV shows!)

On October 17th, again Tim went to work. After everyone was organised and Amelia was asleep again, we went out and checked for James. I had to come back inside when the phone rang. It was the doctor. "We have some results back from Amelia's heel prick test. I'm afraid it's not good news. She has Cystic Fibrosis."

Our world turned upside down with one phone call. The weeks after are a blur of medical appointments and grief. My mum suggested that perhaps God had sent that echidna the day before the news so that we would have something happy to think about during all the overwhelming worry and uncertainty.

So we choose to focus on Echidna Day. To get through a difficult anniversary.

This Echidna Day I am counting my blessings. I am so thankful for our little family. I am thankful we have made it through another year of joy and trials. We are blessed in so many ways.

This photo was taken a few days before Echidna Day.

I have a few Echidna Day activities to share. Come on back and see what we have been making. :-) Have a great day and I hope you will join with us and count your blessings too.