Thinking Inking

I have been watching Jennifer McGuires videos on You Tube lately. She is doing a free course on Two Peas about using Ink and paint etc. It's really good! There are three vids each week and it's made me get out some stuff I haven't used in a while and have fun....

Heidi Swap Mask, Tim Holtz Distress Ink (Spiced Marmalade, Broken China, Faded Jeans, and Dried Marigold)

Heidi Swapp Flame stamp and clear and blue embossing powder.

Looks kind of cool huh?

Great texture!!

These are from an album which I'll share on Saturday. I've spent a lot of time at the scrap table lately, it's good!

♥

And his first word is....

on video... Yay! We have heard this word a few times over the past few days but Yesterday it most certainly became official and was used many times I love the little 'thss' sound at the in because 'da' is so hard to say. It's not that first little teak sound it's the second more deliberate one around the 6 second mark....

Expectorate

Don't ask me why I started this EX thing with the post names... but today's one may just be too much. Will thinks this game is a whole bunch of fun, me not so much actually it's kind of gross...



Apologies for Merenia's shoddy camera work she thinks it's funny to have an earthquake in every film she does, I don't.

♥

Exhibitionist

Fun things to do with Will #583... I call it Babbleburble

♥

Exhilaration- Goal 1 Achieved

Will has two main goals in life... make it to the Cat food and make it to the toilet paper.... Tick one Goal Achieved!



♥

Excerpt

Will reads from 'Babies'....

♥

Experience

I like the fact that Will is developing a sense of humour...

Even if it is at my expense.
♥

And he laughed...

♥ I am trying to get to writing a big update post but yesterday tidying and sorting came first and today it's a shower and this months ATC's.

So in the meantime all I have for you is this...

♥

And then he laughed some more...

♥

♥

And we swooned

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Last Saturday when we were outside talking to the Patels Will started clapping it was the first time boy did I swell with pride...

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Even Will knows the truth.

Sweet

It's 9:21am...

• Les' birthday was pulled off successfully... nothing over the top; good food, good company, flowers, silly stuff, and nice pressies.
  
• We rocked it to school this morning!
• Dinner (Lamb Ragout) is s-l-o-w cooking
• The (cranky) baby is asleep
  
• The dishwasher is washing
• The fire is lit
• The wood is chopped
  
• The washing is loaded onto the drying rack in front of the aforementioned fire
• I have a list for today (yay direction)
  
• I know what my ATC (artist trading card is going to look like)
• There's a sweet new babe in the world: Welcome Lucy Margaret Congrats Jasmine, Warwick, Molly and Grace!
  
• I'm about to write a long overdue email to a good friend.
• A blog post almost in the bag.
  
• I'm ready to go!

Picture This: Me driving and rockin' it out side to side a bit of steering wheel and knee drums.
Will- facing backwards but I know he's smiling and jigglin' and Kieran and Merenia seat dancin' up a storm in the back... stereo up loud so they all look and stare as we drive in the school driveway.... hooligans rockin' it too school!

Here's what we're listing too....

Kieran's Fave; Jack Johnson Mudfootbal from Brushfire Fairytales...



Merenia' Favourite; Jack Johnson Bubble Toes from Brushfire Fairytales...



Au Revior- have a good one!

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Happy all round

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So Les is back.

This means everyone is happy.

Les is happy;

• to be out of the heat
• back in his own bed
• in the company of his family
• somewhere where the food is normal and cheap
• away from shoeshine guys

I will upload some photo highlights of his trip sometime soon or maybe he will do a guest post. Maybe even video for the flying fans.

Will is happy; he remembered his Daddy and he thinks himself and daddy to be just the bees knees and the combination of the two of them together is utter bliss.... the only non breastmilk related thing better is getting to watch Kieran do funny tricks whilst being held by Daddy!


Kieran is happy;

• because he has someone to play Stat Attack with.
  
• And also because he's been hanging out with his friend Tony in the past couple of days... they are off upgrading their hockey skills today.

Merenia is happy;

• Because in her own words she felt like this....

I am happy;

• because I really love him so it's good to have him around.
  
• And because I don't have to do everything
  
• and for this week at least I don't have to leave the baby to cry if I wanna go to the loo.
  
• And I'm happy because I did some scrapbooking!

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Will Stockley in....

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No Babies were harmed in the making of these videos. Except maybe their tickle bones. There was a slight injury to a big brother in rehearsals, but doctors say the ear can be reattached. (kidding!)

Credits
Will Stockley as Ninja Baby
Kieran Stockley as the defeated!
Gypsy Stockley as Stunt Mama
Merenia Stockley as Camera Girl

Progress is being made...

Yeah I uploaded a whole bunch of stuff to Trade Me and got rid of some other stuff to various places. I'm done in the lounge for now and will now move on to the spareroom! Yay! Right now I am sorting through photos as Snapfish has 1 cent prints (50 max) till tomorrow at midnight... sweet!

Here's something funny...

Tidbits

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Hello,

A quick note, I have written a goal for myself to work my butt off to finish getting the house sorted following the 'great cot installation' because I can't create till it's done and there's a bunch of other stuff that I just can't let myself enjoy till it's sorted- like planting spring bulbs and reading magazines etc. So my blogging will be sporadic till that's all done and dusted (well not dusted exactly- hello? I'm not that committed) :-).

In the meantime we are all good (cept Merenia).

The snot seems to behind us... yay!

Les is ramping up for Turkey- very exciting, he leaves at the end of the month. Check out the countdown.

Kieran had the worlds best weekend; Indiana Jones with Kieley and friends, Crusader Victory in the Super 14 final, new Lego sets in the toy world sale and with one exception he's happy with the new All Black Team (I'm sure Graham Henry will be pleased to have Kieran's blessing).

I enjoyed lunch and starbucks with Kieley today and have a cape-seed loaf for tomorrow, Yum! I was also delighted to be personally invited to attend the opening of an exhibition of photographs of local people this evening at the library. The photos were taken by Willow Harfleet who attends Kieran's school and had a couple of stints in G.a.T as she is also a passionate scientist. Her photos are exceptionally good, she has an eye that most adults don't have when taking portraits. Super cool!

Will was pleased to catch up with Ma, Kieley and Room 20 today. He also enjoyed a trip to the beach with some close up seagull action and a jaunt around the cool pet shop at Brown's Bay. And he liked the exhibition as well, mostly because he was fascinated by Willow's 3 week old nephew and entranced by the sound Kieran's teachers voice (she was at the exhibition too).

Merenia is not so happy as she came home from Penguins tonight to discover my statement regarding her bedroom was not just an idle threat, and that the contents of her bedroom with the exceptions of furniture, books, clothes, and Mary (her unicorn) are now gone. That said she is still unable to accept that the mess was her responsibility and that she broke the rules by having food and pens in there as well as a bunch of other transgressions! Oh well, such is life I reckon.

NB. Everytime I refer to 'Penguins' I always imagine some sort of Nun school for kids... you know how in the Blues Brothers they refered to the Nun's as Penguins... it's actually St Johns Cadets.

A few notes from the weekend....

If you have kids aged say 5 and up try the game Zooreka... very cool!

Me and Kieran want one of these... (use this link if you are in a hurry), a steal at just US$3000.

If you are an Outrageous Fortune Fan Check out the promo on You Tube... if you aren't then why not?

If you love collecting books check out this.

If you are a scrapbooker check out these. I am so going to get me some of those.

Check this out because I said so.

And finally if your baby has died or you care for someone who's baby died then you may like to read this and this. I am a lot further down my grief track than Kate, Saskia will be 9 on Sunday and she seldom gives me anything but joy- (NB. not all whose babies die reach a peaceful place), but I can so remember that searing pain in the newness of loss.

Like I said I may not be around much the rest of this week... if I can I will try and complete some more of the book posts. The book lists are already sorted (I am on the second shelf in the lounge now) :-) .

With any luck I'll be a brighter happier me with my creative thirst quenched when you next read my words. Time to sleep, then to focus.

Why you shouldn't do THIS at our house

Our friend Elliot, who comes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, has a groovy school bag.
So groovy....

It makes Elly happy dance.

Until....

He realises we are filming him....

Merenia World View

It's funny what we come across when we download the camera's at this place here's the latest little tidbit courtesy of Merenia...

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming

Well it's officially another week and a rainy one at that. That is a bonus as it means we start our week without our recent constant companions- the painters. .... We have three painters I think of them as 'No english', 'little english', and Sam. Despite the obvious language barriers they all seem really nice! They sure are hard working as witnessed before 8am on Saturday and after five pm that same day. Little English is also very good... (I haven't watched No English he seems a bit nervous when I am around so I try not to stress him out). I will actually do a whole post on the painting (goodness knows I have enough pictures) but for now I'll just tell you about my major excitement followed by major disappointment. Because they spray painted the house they wrapped all the doors and windows, in the lounge on sunny Friday afternoon that made for the most awesome diffused light. So I asked them to leave the lounge window covered for the weekend so we could take some family photos. So I had big plans to finally colour my hair, get Les to shave, dress up the kids and breakout the tripod. Then we got home from netball and shopping to find the window uncovered.... bugger!

Anyway today I have a head cold with a sore throat kicker courtesy of Will (thanks baby I knew you were wiping those bogeys on my shoulder for a reason!). I am sorting through 515 files as I write this post mostly photos but some movies as well and I find there's so much I wanted to share in the past couple of weeks so this may have to be a bit of a clip show post here goes....

As I said the cold comes from Will I think it was caused by the cool evening air last Monday at Hockey he was well rugged up...



Seriously bummed about the photos I lost in the last couple of weeks. It seems we got some sort of virus I think. I lost the photos of Will first night in his 'big babies bed'. This one is taken the next day...


The cold made him one sad little baby and so there was a lot of sleeping on his mama and also on the couch... lost most of those photos too 'cept this one.


That was K's second game for the season he was Goalie in the first...


It took about 20 minutes to get him all suited up and he walked out in front of the goal and his 'box' fell out, with the gloves and all it wasn't an option for him to put it back in... it was quite funny... but not as funny as when he had to change ends at half time... best I can say to describe it is that he looked like a robot which desperately needed to go to the loo. :-)

As you know Will turned 5 months... so of course I took Monkey photos gotta love this one...


And as you certainly haven't had much of the pleasure of Will's company lately on the blog here's a little number we call Yummy Funny Toes...




And then there's Funny Feet...




We had 3 empty house around us for quite a while but now have 2 sets of new neighbours which maybe cool... I haven't figured that out yet. I have only seen the guy front neighbour but it is a 4 bedroom house and there's a little pedal car in their back yard so I am thinking there must be at least some kids somewhere...? The back neighbours I have only met one of but he's quite cute...


Funny though Will wasn't all that impressed or interested... I thought he would be but maybe the puppy moves too fast?

Last week Kieran came home with the makings of his marionette which needed finishing for school the next day. He had a bit of fun on the sewing machine but didn't get him finished before bed time so I got to finish him off. 3 hours later introducing Malili Muliaina, a Chiefs player of course....


Kieran then promptly forgot to take him to school of course and I had to go back home and pick him up.

A quick run down of the rest...

• the netball is not going so well lucky it's the grading games.
• The Hockey is much the same although with a new player this may improve.
• Les spent the week at 360 so added a fair chunk to his saving for Turkey.
• I am so over Les working at 360 and will be glad when Turkey is done and dusted.
• My toe which had minor surgery is still not 100% I need to go back for more anti-bugs but haven't got around to it.
• I still haven't finished the spare room, but I did reclaim my scrapping table on Sunday.
  
• I managed to get rid of some stuff including a few sales on trade me which is cool... I'll post more on that later.

I should also say thank-you for the concerned emails after my post on the airforce... I guess the letter came across as I intended it, while it's true that the situation is crap I am not. I guess to a certain extent we are used to the situation but it's also a matter of not letting those particular bartards 'get us down'. So that'll have to do for now Will is awake, suprise surprise, I'm sure there's more but it'll have to wait till later.

Guest Blogger: Will 1

Saturday we went to Trees for Babies to plant a tree for Will... he tells the story in his interview here....




And I think the pictures will probably tell the rest feel free to ask questions... Thanks to the Waitakere City Council!!