She is one whole hand now*

E decided she wanted Rosetta from the new Tinkerbell movie to be on her birthday cake this year. I told her that was a great idea because I figured I could get one of those edible picture things you put on the top of the cake and that I would add some flowers (she is the Garden Fairy) and sprinkles and we’d be set. The problem there is that the movie has only been out for a month or so and Disney hasn’t had a chance to cover every possible surface with the Fairy’s faces yet and so there was nothing even remotely close to Rosetta to decorate the cake. We were now onto Plan B which had me drawing Rosetta free hand with gel icing. My hopes were shot down really quickly when, using this for reference:

I did a practice try and came up with this:

Um, yeah. It kind of looks like a praying mantis in a skirt or something. What can I say? An artist I am not.

I did a bit better on Saturday night when attempting the real thing. I made a mistake on the first try, but it was a layered cake so I just made the mistake the middle and started again on the new top. After a very long, slow process I came up with this:

This will probably be the ugliest cake I’ll ever make, but E loved it so I’ll mark it down as a success. Or it was until I woke up the next morning to find her hair had all slid down the side of the cake, but whatever. Here are a couple other shots:

As for the party? It was great. This was E’s first big(ish) party and she had so much fun with all her friends. After everyone arrived we had a total of 10 kids, 14 adults, 4 teenagers and one little baby. My not so big house had a hard time fitting everyone in, but did manage.

We played some games: first a balloon race:

::snicker::

(As you can see most of the kids were a bit too shy too play. K gave it a whirl, but just ended up running around the yard with her balloon while happily screaming when the race started.)

Next we played Pass the Parcel. This was the first time I’ve ever wrapped one of those suckers up and is it ever a pain in the ass. I couldn’t not do it, though – the kids EXPECT to see a parcel and it had better be passed.

Then there was some playing, chatting and a lot of eating and last, but not least, it was time for the cake. I loved having so many people there to sing for E and I think she did too. She blew her candles out…

…the cake was devoured (plus the cupcakes that made up Rosetta’s garden), we passed out the Christmas themed loot bags (for my Christmas baby) and we were done.

After preparing the day before, the actual party time, and cleaning after I was freaking exhausted, but so pleased E had a great day. This was her first milestone birthday so it was worth all the effort.

HAPPY FIFTH BIRTHDAY, E!

*OK, so not for two days, but she started calling herself five from the day of the party so I will too.

KFG

I often point out birds having baths or showers when it rains to the girls because I think it is cute and they get a kick out of watching them flap around. Today we were in the car on the way home from running some errands and it was pouring down with rain. I saw a Galah on the power lines stretching his wings out nice and wide catching the rain, having a shower and what appeared to be a great time. Then he got so excited that he spun around on the power line* and, since there was no one behind us, I slowed down and said, “Look girls! Look! The bird is having a shower! And look at him spinning…”. That was when I noticed that his wings were still open, he was still upside down and he was swinging – just not in a natural kind of movement.

The bird was being electrocuted.

I slowed down and made my girls watch a bird be electrocuted! (Not that they realized.) I sped up, and headed for home and didn’t mention it again.

*I have actually seen birds do this for fun.

Last day

E had her last day of preschool today. I’ve said it before, but I’m going to say it again: Time flies! She is going to be five in nine days!

I didn’t think I would be sad saying goodbye to E’s teachers, Ange and Libby, but as I was beginning to talk I felt like I was going to tear up. I ended up leaving with what probably came off as a completely asshole-ish farewell, just a quick thank you and goodbye (we gave them presents this morning and the cards said enough for us…I hope), but I didn’t want the awkward crying or anything. We’ll go back during the school year next year before we move so hopefully we can say a proper good bye then.

Also E brought home a pet rock from school which she has named, “Rocco”, which she came up with all by herself and I happen to (absolutely unbiasedly) think is quite clever.

Do they have rehab for five year olds?

Tonight I was talking to E about the need for her to stop sucking her thumb. Not too long ago we managed to get her to attempt only sucking her thumb when she went to bed at night and it worked, but only for a short time and lately it’s been getting out of control (relatively speaking). E has a “lovie” (and I am using that term very loosely here as it is mostly a bunch of wool) called Aggie. She once told us that if she smells Aggie she can’t help but suck her thumb and tonight I mentioned that if she is not able to cut back we might have to take him away. The following was her response/ explanation (slightly paraphrased because it was a few hours ago and I can’t remember crazy preschooler logic):

If you take Aggie away I will still suck my thumb because it is in my bones. I don’t know why I can’t stop, but I can’t. I can’t help myself. If I see something white I have to suck my thumb. Aggie is white so other white stuff makes me suck my thumb. See that wall? It’s white so it makes me suck my thumb. I look out the window and see stuff and I suck my thumb. My bones are white so they make me suck my thumb. It’s slightful* for me, it makes me happy. I don’t know why, but I can’t help myself.

She sounded like a junkie trying to explain their addiction. And we’re no closer to solving the issue.

*Delightful, but she would not accept that was the word she was trying for.

Santa Clones

We hear crying from E’s room so I go down to see what happened. She had bumped her eye on the edge of her window.

“I saw Santa.”

When she sees a twinkling star E thinks it is Santa.

“Then I saw another of him and another and another. There is one there and there and there…”

She’s pointing them out to me in the sky.

“I think he must have made a Santa making machine and made all kinds of himself.”

She stops, looks back at the sky and says very seriously, in an almost suspicious tone:

“I don’t know why he did that.”

The numbers of 30 days

Writing for Nablopomo has set a new record for me for the number of consecutive posts. Some of the posts were just fluff, some were only a photo, a lot were stuff nobody but me even cares about, but it is still 30 posts in 30 days. At first I figured I would crap out after a week or so, but it didn’t take me long to realize that it really wasn’t too hard a thing to accomplish (especially if you don’t mind the fluff once in a while). I don’t plan to keep posting every day, but I think this have given me the push I needed to at least start regular blogging again.

For this, my last post for Nablopomo, I decided to break down the posts I’ve written into some categories. I started the draft for this somewhere in the middle of the month and got the idea because I thought I was going to end up with a ton of photo cop outs. In the end I didn’t do nearly as many cop outs in general as I figured I would. With that I give you the number of posts…

With photos: 17

About/involving my kids: 11 (I expected it to be more.)

Involving a rant (mini or full strength): 2 (I expected this to be much more.)

About me: 7

Where I whine/complain (excluding rants): 3

Where I get on my soapbox: 3

That include a Paint drawing: 2 (oddly)

That are a photo cop out: 4

That are memes: 1 (Woo!)

Where I actually had something I wanted to write about: 17

In the “I’m moving to Nova Scotia!” category: 6

With no comments: 8 (*tear)

With a bulleted or numbered list: 3

Where food is either pictured or mentioned: 12

Where I swear: 5 (Not too bad when you consider that all the drafts in my head contain swearing.)

That I wrote while drunk: 0 (This place would be way more entertaining if this number existed. I’ll work on that.)

Is it just me…

…or is Quality Street not even trying anymore?

More specifically:

The asterisk next to each of them isn’t even an excuse or apology it just says they may contain nuts which, you know, wouldn’t even be necessary if they still called the purple one Hazelnut Truffle (or whatever it was called). I don’t remember what the green triangle was originally called so I guess their plan is working?

I have just one thing to say…

2 Bits and a Bite

I quit my job on Monday. I was not getting enough hours to make any money over the family payments I lost from being employed in the first place (I was scheduled for 3.75 hours this week in case you think I’m exaggerating). They just keep hiring more and more people so it didn’t seem like that was going to change any time soon and since soon is all I really have left here there was no point in sticking around. I certainly won’t miss working nights and weekends, but it was still frustrating since it was a big deal for me to have gone back to work after five years. I also want to add that I wasn’t getting low hours because I suck, the same thing is happening to everyone there (at least on nights) because they’ve hired so many people.

Our tickets home are booked! We leave here April 20th at 7:15am and arrive in Nova Scotia on April 20th at 11:00pm. Don’t let those times fool you into thinking we’ve only got a 16 hours flight in our future though, we are traveling back in time (so to speak) and I believe the travel time is around 28 hours (I don’t think that includes layovers, but none are too long so it would only be a few more hours). It’s exciting and nerve wrecking all at the same time. Exciting because, well duh. Nerve wrecking because we still have so much to do. The clock is ticking now!

My birthday is April 22 so it will be nice to back home for that. I’ll get to  have DQ ice cream cake for my birthday for the first time in eight years! And I will be turning 30. That fact didn’t bother me until yesterday sometime when it just suddenly hit me. 30. I will be thirty years old. 30! Yikes!

Photos for a family with a dog in it*

At approximately 11:30 am today you could have found me sitting on a bench at a local mall, sweaty, shaking and crying (just a tiny bit).

You see today I had to take the girls to get their Australian passport photos done (and my Australian citizenship & Canadian passport photos) and if you read my post on Thursday you might understand why it wasn’t something I was looking forward to. I even found my self near tears in the car just anticipating the upcoming event – which I quickly realized was totally stupid, gave myself a slap (not literally) and kept on going. Anyway, what I’m saying is I was dreading what I knew we were in for (but still foolishly hoped we weren’t).

The story…

We set out for the post office around quarter to eleven this morning. On the drive I didn’t tell K what we were doing, but when we went inside she heard me tell the guy why we were there. We did not get the photos done at the first stop, mind you, because that post office was not set up for passport photos and he directed me to the central post office (which was where another post office suggested I go a couple weeks earlier because they could not do children’s passports and assured me this one could, but I got them mixed up). While driving to the new location K started saying, “No photo.” – over and over. That’s when I started bribing my two and a half year old. I started by promising an ice cream at McDonalds and she was all for the treat, but insisted on no photo. I added a new toy to the bribe, but she was still not budging. By this time we arrived at the central post office, paid for an hour’s worth of parking and got in a long line inside. Our turn came up and I told the lady why we were there, she looked at K and told me they were not set up for children that young**, I gave her a look that would likely make a giant bear drop dead on the spot and she directed us to a camera shop nearby. I did not go to this camera shop because they were rude to me not that long ago and I don’t want to give them the business so I went to a different one near where I live. On the way E and I managed to get K to agree to having her photo taken. She was excited about the prospect of all the treats to come and I gave her a big hug and a little cheer telling her how happy I was she was willing to cooperate. E was first and had her photo taken without a hitch, then it was K’s turn and she apparently changed her mind because she had a complete meltdown. Again. I tried holding her up, bribing again, threatening to throw Puppy in the bin, but it was impossible. If I was able to get her standing she would cover her eyes, if I tried to hold her arms she went limp, if I tried holding her arms and forcing her to stand she would shut her eyes tight and scream like a banshee. There is no way to force a two and a half year old to take a photo. Trust me – I KNOW. It was at this point that I left the shop for a minute for us to all calm down. This was also the point where we ended up on that bench looking like the most pathetic bunch of people you have ever seen. We need K to have these photos, there is no way around that. It is especially frustrating that a child who is a ham for the camera and will ask to have her picture taken if she spots the camera is so dead set stubborn about getting these done. The guy at the camera shop may have come up with a solution and we’ll find out if it works this afternoon – and God help K that it works or she might be in the same boat as Abby come April***.

The not so important cherry on top of all this is that I made the genius decision to go last and that means that my photo was taken after I was sweaty, shaking and crying. I look real purty.

*I let E name the post because I am about ready to quit this day (it’s 4:00pm). And we do not have a dog.

**The post office is where you have to go for the passport interview, so you’d think at least one around here would be able to take a small child’s photo. Not that it would have mattered for us anyway.

***Kidding. Sort of.

Updated at 5:16pm: It worked! It worked! I just wish her citizenship photo looked this normal: