Today's achievements....A List

1. Get out of bed after 7am.

2. Make the kids Saturday morning pancakes in Hubby's absence (he's in Australia with work until tomorrow morning).

3. Get everyone dressed before 9am.

4. Look at the sewing machine on the dining table and decide to finish the bunting (flags) for Miss E's room.

5. Take photo of finished article (hanging with blu-tac) before it proceeds to fall down.

6. Make a note to get pins to hang bunting.

7. Get kids ready for a walk around to Poppa's place for coffee.

8. Ask Miss E 4 times to put on her shoes.....blood pressure elevates to boiling point....lose it like a crazy lady and shout VERY loudly to "just put your bloody shoes on will you!".

9. Realise bedroom window is open and cringe that all neighbours must have heard "that crazy scottish woman yelling at the top of her voice".

10. Take 10 mins time out then apologise to Miss E for shouting so loudly, before getting an apology from her for not listening.

11. Get both kids to Poppa's house for coffee and decide that a certain fast food restaurant is a good place to take the kids for lunch, that way they can act up all they like and I won't be tempted to kill them (sarcasm, people!).

12. Get home, lie on the couch and beg the kids not to disturb me for 20 mins.

13. Get disturbed by kids at least 10 times over course of next hour.

14. Make pizza dough for dinner later.

15. Visit a friend for a coffee (just lovely).

16. Get home and make pizza (see below). Yum!

17. Get into some comfy clothes post pizza.

18. Start blogging this whilst kids watching cartoons before bed.

All in all a successful day...my kids are still alive, I haven't gone into labour and I haven't cried......

...yet!

I'm back

Its been a busy couple of weeks. Been on a week long holiday with family and had a lovely time, but it took almost a week planning to get everything packed and organised to go on holiday. How does that happen? We had a lovely time and I'll do a seperate post on it when I get time to upload photo's.

Here's a quick update of what's been going on lately.

Organising - new filing trays for paperwork and a cork/white board combo for my to-do lists. I always keep them in my head and therefore ALWAYS feel overloaded with stuff to do. This way its out of my head and I feel less stressed. Phew.

Broken camera - we've had ours for a few years now and it's finally given up on us. I'm working on Music Man to invest in a new digital SLR when we travel home to Scotland. Nikon D70 is a preference.

Booked flights to Scotland - between packing and organising for holiday, this was the other thing that took up most of my time before we went away. Music Man's a procrastinator when it comes to spending cold hard $$, and I'm not as persistent as I need to be. I was that week though and we're (finally) booked to go home to see everyon on 7th Sept. I'll do another post on this too.

Bronchitis - After my trip to Queenstown and Wanaka I felt a little off colour. Trip to the doctor confirmed bronchitis. Eew! A week of amoxycillin, still no better and my lovely family and extended family had to put up with my hacking cough all week. Back to doc on Monday and stronger antibiotics this time. Its working, I can feel it.

Doctors - on the aforementioned trip to the docs, we had Master L's 15 month check up which included his vaccination catch ups, so my poor wee baby had to get 3 injections that day. Its my commitment as a parent to protect him and the wider community from the diseases that these vaccines are created for, but boy, it still hurts to watch your baby being assaulted by a nurse with needles. Poor boy.

Weather - Summer arrived this past fortnight, oh, just about 10 weeks late. Its been great, in the high 20's, but the Slip Slop Slap routine is not that romantic and protecting my babies skin (and mine) from the harsh New Zealand sun is a huge chore in itself. I've decided that 25 degrees celcius is my ideal temperature, when it hovers pre 30 degrees I get sloth like.

The usual routine this week. Pre-school run. Nightly wakings from both Master and Miss. Catch up with friends. Pop in on the in-laws. Emails and phone calls. On top of all the other obligatory chores like laundry, cooking, baking, folding, hoovering, wiping, cleaning, cuddling and the same all over again and again. I feel like I'm caught in the Bermuda Triangle some days and can't escape. Oh, wait, that's just being a stay at home parent.

So, after my post on my holiday, I'm afraid that there will be no more pictures for a while. Unless with brute force I can convince my camera to start working again.
Will my blog be boring without photo's?? Your comments please! I love colourful blogs with great writing and lots of pictures, but I don't want to look at mine in a few months and get disheartened and stop writing because I won't have a camera until September. I need to know that someone other than me will read all this rubbish I write, sans photograps. Mum, you're bound by family law to read this regardless, so, sorry you don't count. Call it unconditional love.