Who's Cute?

I got this photo of Tate in my email today from Jared. I think Tate is the cutest 2 year old I know.

Short Liner Posts

One of the ladies in our ward, whom I LOVE, was so nice to make my sister this wonderful banana cake which was soooo yummy! It had all of the Aussie sayings on it.

"Barbie"

"Struth" {means: ah crap!}

"Maaaate"

"Fair Dinkum" {means: yeah, sure}

"Crikey"

"Aussi - Oi Oi Oi" - Remember the song from AC/DC (TNT- Oi Oi Oi)? They are from Australia.

Look how gross this is. I was IN my house and took a pic of all these flying bugs that were EVERYWHERE in our back yard one morning... like they just hatched or something. There were so many of them that it showed up in a picture. I don't know what they were... but yuck! I can't go outside right now to dry our clothes on the line. They freak me out.

Tate "helping" with yard work.

Me & Stef-man on top of the black mountain tower.

The "boys" on top of Black Mountain/Telstra Tower.

There is a field over by Costco here in Canberra that you can go see the 'roos' at dusk when they come out. Joey & the Roos.

Me in my PJ's with Jer & Stef.

Jared & Hisa with Steffan for his birthday.

Making dino-balls with the boys to play with. {cotton balls, flour, water & food coloring/baked}

This little ham gets into EVERYTHING right now. Look how happy he was when I found him.

Here are some pics of our house. I had to hurry and take them. Our house was clean and 'manicured' for our 6 month inspection which is government law here to inspect ALL rentals to make sure they are in tip top shape. It's hard to clean sooo much and keep it that way until they get there when you have kids!

We decorated gingerbread houses (which were made from scratch) the day Kiley got here{i was so proud of myself}... Day 1: Make gingerbread and bake. Day 2: Put houses together. Day 3: Decorate - - - However, the swearing and anger that came with trying to glue the houses together made the activity not fun for anyone. Next time I will have to purchase the already "sized to fit" home pieces. And I thought I was sooo precise with the sizes too. :( The decorating part was fun. I'm glad I took a picture of the houses before they were slowly destroyed {secretly} by the boys over the next few days. There is not much candy left on them now.

 We took Kiley to the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve yesterday and there were some really cool wallaby's that were just coming up to us. Turns out the LOVE bananas. :)

 It was nice to have Kiley there to take a family pic with a "small wallaby" in the background. Now if I can only get them printed and handed to people BEFORE Christmas... otherwise I will be changing it to say, "Happy New Year 2013". :)

We are having so much fun with Kiley here. I don't want her to go home. If we can only talk her into coming to school here... :)

Updates and Updates

We have been soooooo busy and have all been SOOOOOO sick! {ear infections, coughs, sore throats, fevers, heat rash, roseola, vomiting... you name it!} I've never been sick so often in my life until we moved here. Is it because we are in a new country?

The first week of November, Jeremy was gone in Sydney all week for a training at work. The boys and I drove up there and picked him up on Friday and stayed the night in the temple accommodations since it was the Young Men temple trip that weekend and Jeremy was going to go anyway to do baptisms. We also got invited to a dear friend's sealing later that day in which I was also asked to take photos (and felt very honored to do this as it has been a 'journey' to make the 'temple goal' for their family). It was so awesome to be a part of that!

A couple of days after that, Jeremy's friend Joey flew in to visit us {and just in time to get totally sick from all of us}. I felt so bad that we weren't feeling well while he was here and even worse that he brought our sickness home with him. There's nothing like the Australian Flu to bring home as a souvenir. Hopefully we hankered (sp?) up all of the energy we could muster to provide a fun time during his 10 days. It was really, really nice to have him here and I even took the time to actually find the Southern Cross constellation with Joey while he was here. {It only took us an hour: ahem} If you know Joey, being sick doesn't slow him down. One day he said he was going on a walk to see the neighborhood and I looked outside 10 minutes later to see him mowing our lawn and pulling our weeds. I had even mentioned to Jeremy that we needed to get that done before he came, otherwise he'd go out and do it for us and I was right! ha ha Our house looked like the ShangriLa by the time Joey left. He spent more time at our "Home Depot" called "Bunnings" here and got my husband to come home with all sorts of power tools and yard tools. I guess that's what Jeremy's gets for having a General Contractor as a best friend.

Isn't this picture awesome! It's up at Black Mountain Tower.

Jeremy is on the wait list to see a specialist for his stomach issues I mentioned in a previous post.
Steffan is still having a bit of tummy issues himself. I hope he grows out of it. But I will say that it's getting better! We celebrated Steffan's 1st birthday (sick)... I mean... with Joey and Thanksgiving dinner (as good as I could throw together with a fever that day) and pumpkin pie instead of a traditional birthday cake, which Steffan LOVED {thanks to my sis and mother in law for sending canned pumpking along with Joey}. Hisa and Jared came over and made up for the lack of cake and brought over a cake (and it was gooood).

As for me, I thought I was going to get away with not getting too sick until this last week, it was a downward spiral. On top of Jeremy not feeling well either, I had to go to church and speak in sacrament again and teach my lesson in Relief Society the same day. I actually love doing stuff like that and I will never drop something like that on someone else at the last moment, because I'm just not like that and don't have it in me to do that to someone else no matter what shape I'm in. Also, I have just been taking photos and editing away. Jeremy got me my early Christmas present on it's way (thank goodness for friends that work at Adobe)... Photoshop and Lightroom! Woo hoo! I can't wait to start editing with Lightroom. I took a Photoshop class awhile back with my dad, so hopefully I will be able to pick it back up.

Tate hasn't stopped talking or hurting himself. Joey learned really fast why we didn't fuss much when Tate hurt himself... It's because he hurts himself every 3 seconds. It's like he never learns the first, second or third time of doing something. I don't get it.

Look at this little ham. Tate wanted his picture taken with a cape on while I was taking pictures for Teagan's 4th birthday stuff.

Teagan is about to turn FOUR! We are in contact with people to try and enroll him in a private school here next year (because it is so much cheaper than going to public school when you are not a resident here). He is LOVING Angry Birds right now. We had an Angry Birds Family Home Evening one night to talk about how to deal with our "anger" and other emotions and he has been obsessed with it ever since. He wants his birthday party to be "Angry Birds". Honey Lona sent him an Angry Birds shirt recently and I thought it'd be cute to do a photo shoot with it for his birthday invitation... but, I couldn't get that kid to smile. I said, "Ok, SMILE Teagan! Pretend like you're having fun!" Teagan looked at me and said, "But I'm NOT having fun Mom." Uhh... ok. Needless to say, the photos didn't turn out as good as Steffan's 1st birthday pics.

I'm thinking of using this one for his invite because it is the most decent one with Angry Birds on it.

Then Teagan didn't want to wear his Angry Bird shirt, he wanted to wear his Superman cape and undies. :) ...and doesn't he look 'so happy'?