What's that yellow thing in the sky?

Helloooooo

It's been a while since I've done one of these pictastic posts.  In fact, it's been a while since I've done any posts at all.  Rest assured that all is well, and I'm still as much a wine and chocolate addict as ever.  

So.  We just had a beautiful weekend.  It's the first weekend this year where the temperature on both Saturday AND Sunday has been above 15 degrees and sunny.  As people here are so proud of telling me "You don't live in Newfoundland because of the weather".  Nope, you most definitely do not.

Anyway.  Dan is in Mexico for a 2 week holiday (I KNOW!!!! - I'm still wondering how he got me to agree to that), which means that while the weeks fly by with trying to juggle work and home, the weekends can sometimes draaaaaaaaaaaaaaag on.

This weekend was no exception.  It seemed to go on forever.  But that was definitely a good thing.

We spent pretty much the whole weekend outside.  First we did some planting.  Well... I did the planting, and Kalani did the watering.

He got a little wet!

We went to find some icebergs ...

 ... took selfies with icebergs in the background.  Erm.... oops!

Discovered what's inside a cannon (a lot of darkness and some candy wrappers, in case you were wondering)...

 ... and climbed mountains.

It was even warm enough to eat dinner outside... both nights *gasp* (Polar bear had already eaten).

On Sunday evening I sat on the deck with my wine, as Kalani used his hockey stick to rip the bark off some tree trunks (seriously), and I had a introspective moment when I realised... I'm content.  I don't know if that's better or worse than being outright happy about everything (and realistically that's never going to happen to me - I like having something to complain about too much).  For me however, it feels perfect.  Content with everything just the way it is...

... apart from Dan being away

... and the flipping weather again - rain all week?  noooooo ....

... and the .... (just kidding).

Until next time poppets.  Take the good times when they come.

I'll Fix You Mummy

So the last few months have been kind of awful, and the emotional healing process for this mc is taking a lot longer than the others.  Perhaps because I'm coming to the realisation that there won't be another baby and that's really difficult to get past.

I've made a big effort not to be sad around Kalani, but it appears that perhaps he's picked up on the fact that I'm still not feeling whole.

This morning I was sitting on the couch with my cup of coffee and he came over with his tools.

"I'll fix you Mummy"

Ahh.. innocent fun with tape measures I thought.  No problem.
 

And then ... "This won't hurt a bit" and out came the saw.

I think he realised that sawing someone's head in half isn't a very nice thing to do, so he tried to hide the evidence ...

Strangely - I did feel a lot better afterwards.

Kalani the Healing Handyman.

Awesome August and Sizzling September

I haven't done one of these for a while and I really love doing these pictastic photo journal type things.  The quality of the pictures isn't that great, and the shots are all unsteady and non-creative, but it's really enjoyable looking back over the last few weeks and remembering.

Kalani is going to be pro surfer....  only we can't get him into the pool to learn how to swim.  No matter - he practices his pop-ups with Dan, and occasionally they go surfing together.

I celebrated my birthday in August.  I turned 29 for the 10th time.  It's a lovely age.

We've had the most wonderful summer.  Really hot.  There were only a few days that were really wet.  One of them drew all the monsters out into the street.

Cute monsters though ...

And another crazy weather day brought down one of our trees into the neighbours back garden.  Luckily Kalani was on hand to help with the clean-up operation.

 Kalani has also been trying his hand at photography.

And I've been trying to do more of these types of photo's.  Ideally they'd have Dan in them as well, but he keeps buggering off to different places for work and play, so bleuuehh ..

A wonderful friend got married.  The whole event was lovely apart from Kalani having a total meltdown in the middle of the ceremony which resulted in me taking him outside and yelling at him, only to later discover that the church door had been left open so everyone could hear me yelling "Come and lie down you awful child, I need to change your stupid poopy bottom".  *sigh*  Nothing like the house of God to let everyone see what an awful parent you are!

This was Kalani's expression just before we had to leave the church

Much to my surprise, it seems that Kalani knows a bit of yoga. Normally I don't practice until after he's in bed, but I guess that at some stage he's seen something since one afternoon he got out the mat and started to do a little flow ...

And finally, there's been music.  Lotsa music.  At the wedding he sung "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" to the (partly emptied) reception over the microphone.  He was a little upset that I wouldn't let him up to perform on the stage.

Until next time chickadee's.  Happy Thanksgiving.

Hot and Embarrassing

(Tut tut tut - get your mind out of the gutter!)

This has been an almost perfect summer in St. John's.  It's been hot.  Lovely and warm and sunny and sooooooo pleasant.  When it's like this I almost like it here! ;)

So what have we been up to?

We've spent a lot of time outside in the garden.  There were a few issues with some weirdo worms that eat all the leaves in the trees and then poop them out all over whoever's under the trees (Dan and I were sitting outside one evening having a drink, and there was so much poo falling that it felt like it was raining!), but apart from that the garden has been lovely.

There's been lots of pushing K around on his bike, and lots of soccer.  Even Jazzy has been getting involved...

Unfortunately (or not depending on how you look at it), because the weather has been so nice I've hardly taken any pics at all, though I did manage to quickly snap this one the other day.  It's slightly out of focus because Kalani was running away from me and didn't really want his picture taken (perhaps he knew that one day this is going to be uber-embarrassing for him)...

And finally, yesterday we all went to the St. John's folk festival.  It was excellent, though we didn't get to hear as much music as we would have liked because Kalani has a beaver obsession.  Yup - we stalked the beaver for a lot of the time we were there, and even when we were trying to watch/listen to some music in one of the tents, Kalani would ask (very loudly) "where is beaver Mummy?"...

Oh, and before I go I wanted to share an excellent group that we discovered at the folk festival.  You might already know them, but we just chanced upon them as we were leaving.  Definitely my favourites.

Home

So we made it safely back to St. John's.

The trip was long (so very very very long) and thankfully uneventful, though it had the makings of a total nightmare at the beginning when I left one of my bags in the toilet at Brisbane airport (it was still there when we went back).  

And now we're home, and it's so lovely to be home.  It always is isn't it?  I miss my family already and I'm already so very sad that I won't see them again for goodness knows how long, but it's also great to be back.  To see Dan and the pets... well, perhaps not the cat... and to be surrounded by our stuff again.  Home.  Mmmmm....

K is getting over the jet lag much better than I am.  As I type he's still asleep, but I just couldn't make it past 5am this morning, so here I am.

It's actually quite nice at this time of day - particularly when it's light outside and you're all alone.  I've just had a cup of coffee while sitting on the couch looking aimlessly out the window - not something that happens very often.  It's lovely.  And peaceful.  Perhaps I'll continue to get up earlier than K so I have this time to myself.  

Well, we'll see. :)

Here's a few pics from the end of the trip ...

You can't really see him, but on my lap is our adopted cat Oscar.  He was lovely.  Quite unlike Shumba!

Having a snack at the airport before the start of our 37, yup, 37 hour journey home

A very bright, but very cold morning at Wivenhoe Dam.  Kalani is wearing Wiggles sunglasses.  Mum is not - she's wearing normal sunglasses.

A koala purse - this season's must have accessory.

The beginning of the 'Old McDonald Has A Farm' musical extravaganza.  The shovel is a necessary prop.

Wivenhoe Dam

Eeeeekkkk Mummy

So it's good to be back.  I expect there'll be more posts coming soon.  K starts at a proper daycare centre on Monday, so that's sure to start a whinge fest from me. :)

Amazing April

Well it's been a while since we've had a photo expose of life with the Morgan/Brake's, and there have been so many requests for another one (well there haven't really - I just like to pretend that I have an audience when I write this stuff, so I have some voices in my head that act as my readers *cough*  Normal?  Totally!), so here's an overview of the last month.  

We're missing piccies of some important events like Dan's birthday since we lost our camera, but I can paint a quick visual for you.  Sunny day (which was a bit off-putting, since we're so unused to Vitamin-D and bright lights when outside), lots of manic children running around and falling off the deck, food, boozes and friends.  T'was lovely.

Anyway, now for some REAL pics ...

We've watched men fixing the roof

and then dressed up as a man who fixes the roof.

We've discovered that snow is kind of chilly ...

... and then worked out (with some help) what pockets are for ...

We've watched men and machines destroy our road ...

... and we've helped in the kitchen.

And most of all, we've been happy ...

Really really happy.

Ba-ki-kee

A few nights ago I downloaded some pictures from the camera onto the PC.  Now we haven’t exactly been taking lots of photos lately, but I realised that almost all of the 120-odd photo’s were related to Kalani and vacuuming.

March Madness

Well it's not quite over yet, but March has been pretty mad so far.

Not quite this mad ...

.. but mad nonetheless.

We've shovelled the small amount of snow that's still in the garden.

The bathroom renovations have begun which has required us to move out of the house for a few weeks.

We've had birthdays ...

... and dancing ...

... and stories with Grandma and Grandma (nope, that's not a typo, that's just what Grandpa is currently called).

And as always we've had music ...

... lots and lots of music.

Kalani is currently 'learning' to play the piano (well, he's learning the difference between playing loudly and softly, but you have to start somewhere) which is fun, though slightly deafening.

And I'll end this with a photo that shows the beginnings of Kalani's Coronation Street addiction.