Cornflour slime

So what do you do with kids home from school and feeling generally lousy from whooping cough? You make slime of course! I found this recipe here. We talked a little about liquids and solids and then they got right to it. It was funny to see how each kid played with it. They are all individuals that is for sure!

And the mess I was left with. It kept them happy for an hour or more though so really it was a small price to pay. :-)

Lincoln's notebook and pen roll holder

Amelia's best friend turned four recently. Amelia thought they were like twins now because they are both four. :-) Isn't that cute. Anyway, we decided Lincoln needed one of my notebook and pen roll holders since both his older sister's had one and they use them all the time. I haven't made a boy one before though so I wasn't sure what kind of colours or fabrics to use.

Amelia picked out the fabric. That made my life easier. It looked a little plain so I added the felt circle on the front with Lincoln's name stitched on there. I really like the way it turned out. I think if I make anymore of these with the plain fabric, I will have to add some stitched felt on top.

I have to make one for his little sister now. Her birthday is at the end of the month. Nothing like a deadline to get some motivation! I just hope I can get it done!

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.

Amelia's 4th Birthday

Pretend if you will, that it is still September and I am actually posting this on time. HA! Not likely with the way things have been around our house lately.

This is how we started the day, way back when Amelia turned 4. Present opening in bed with the family.

We were going to have lunch at my parents house and tea at Tim's parents house so we decided to sing happy birthday to Amelia at breaky. I made her a little jam toast stack to put the number 4 sparkler in. Big hit - breaky birthdays. Might have to try and keep that up I think.

The birthday girl at Nanny and Parpy's for lunch. And candles in birthday trifle.

Chocolate cake I made, under Amelia's instructions, which we had at Nan and Pa's house. The aunties and uncles were all there for that.

Here is Amelia with her big present. She had to wait all day for this. I felt mean but we had to give it to her when there was time to ride it! All Amelia really wanted for her birthday was her own "Shakey bike". It took a little while to work out but Amelia wanted a bike that had streamers on the handle bars. We found out that you can buy the streamers separately so when we found the bike but no streamers, the problem was quickly sorted :-)

When Amelia started riding, she had real trouble turning the bike at the gate so she would stop, get off and pick it up and turn it around. Esther and Ellamay bought their scooters into town so they had great fun on them while Amelia rode her bike.

The expression on Amelia's face was priceless. She was so proud of her new bike. And she was concentrating so hard.

Okay, so I am biased. She's a cutie. Cheeky monkey. She has been through more than any child should have to go through by the age of 4. She is still a happy and healthy little girl who loves things that 4 year old girls love. Hello Kitty, green, dressing up, riding her bike and scooter, playing with dolls, talking on her pretend phone and making things.

She also knows that "God is the biggest". If she is afraid or if she sees that someone in the family is upset she will tell them "Don't be scared, don't worry, God is the biggest." I pray that her faith will always be so straight forward and obvious to her. It will see her through all her days.

So better late than never, right? Amelia's birthday was over a month ago and I can hardly believe I am organising Kinder for next year for her!

Once I have uploaded all the photos from last weekends Echidna Day, I will share the all about the animals we saw on our adventure, including the sleepy echidna.

Have a great weekend.