A Date With My Boys

A few weeks ago, Playschool was coming to town. Well, not our town, but one a few hours away. My sister and I decided that we would road-trip it and take our three boys. Alas and alack, my nephew came down quite sick the night before and our plans were dashed. I decided though, that I would do something special with my boys by myself anyway. I didn't want to do the big drive to Playschool on my own, so I chose something a bit closer to home and took the boys to "Snakes Downunder Reptile Park & Zoo".

It was such a fun day out. The term 'zoo' might be a bit far-reaching, but reptile park it is indeed. When we arrived, we literally had the whole place to ourselves, and the non-venomous snake show was about to start. Reuben enjoyed seeing all the big snakes, and also one very special "dinosaur" (read: baby crocodile)... but the fun was just beginning.

You see, after the show, the handler brought out one of the large pythons, and the said dinosaur, and let us have a hold! It was so cool that we were the only ones there at that point; no waiting around for the boys, and we got to spend as much time with the creatures as we pleased. Reuben was keen to hold both animals-- I myself was not quite so keen. Unfortunately, I was required to help him hold the crocodile as it was much too heavy for him to have on his own. It was well out of my comfort zone to do so, but he was beside himself with excitement. And not to worry, as Reuben explained to my mum, the dinosaur couldn't bite him, because he had sticky tape on his lips. Ha! I know I should have corrected him about the whole dinosaur thing but it just bought him such a great lot of joy to think of it as a dinosaur that I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Holding a crocodile. You wouldn't do this at a Playschool concert! Note my very forced smile.

Next up was the creepy horrid snake. Reuben again couldn't have been more excited to have his hold. The handler wound the snake around his body, and Reuben giggled as the snake explored around his neck, flicking its tongue in and out. I took a bunch of photos of my little man, cool as a cucumber, with this gigantic snake wrapped around his body. He handled it really well; only freaking out a tiny bit when the snake tightened its grip around Reuben's legs when it started to slip down at one point. The handler offered Mama a hold, but I was nowhere near as brave as my cool little dude and politely declined.

"Yeah, that's right, I'm holding a snake". Coolest dude.

Quinten was sitting in his pram while all this was happening, but as the handler unwrapped the snake from Reuben, he started to call and reach out toward it. He was, of course, too little to handle the snake properly, but the handler head it over him in his pram, and Quin was delighted about the whole thing. He had a pat, the snake flicked its tongue all over Quinten's feet to check him out, which Quin thought was completely hilarious.

Do you think Quinny's a parseltongue?

Once all that was over, we explored the rest of the park and said hello to all the other animals. We watched a koala presentation which the boys were pretty underwhelmed by-- the Koala's were sitting with their backs to us and pretty much just ignored us.

The koala's weren't in the mood for being show ponies today.

The kangaroos were a bit more accommodating, and we spent quite a while hanging out with them - once we got brave enough to sneak past the Emus who were guarding the gate! They are rather big and intimidating creatures!

Old Man Emu

Reuben was so cute talking to the kangaroos.

Sizing each other up.

Quin was pretty intrigued with these guys too.

We saw a gigantic four metre crocodile (from a distance) and explored a snake house filled with dozens of extremely venomous snakes which totally gave me the heebie-jeebies, even if they were well and truly contained within their glass cages.

Yeah... we ain't holding that one... and he sure ain't holding us!

This is the snake that Reuben held earlier. *shudder*

It was such a fun day out with my boys... Especially Reuben. I am beginning to discover that he responds really well to quality time, and doing something like this where it just us, was really good for both us us. I definitely need to do more of it!

Any outing that ends like this is good with me!

Do you like to take your kids on dates? Any ideas about other places I can take my boys? Would you have held the snake!!??

I'm baaaack!

Hello world!
Does anyone still read this old thing? We have been without a properly working computer for about six months now and blogging from an iPad is painful, so alas and lack, I have become a rather absentee blogger.

And yet; here I am! That is because my (slightly insane) husband bought me a flipping MacBook Pro for Mother's Day yesterday. After I unequivocally made it clear that this would NOT be setting a new bar for gift-giving, I graciously accepted my VERY generous gift, and here I am... with a computer that actually talks to the network and internet... how novel!

Now it's just a matter of getting my blogging mojo back. I have plenty of stories to tell, but finding the time to sit and tell them may be another matter, so let's see how we go.

I thought I'd start off by catching you all up on life in the Friend house. Life goes on, much too quickly for my liking, and the kids are growing like weeds.

My beautiful Quinny-Bean turned one in March. One! Can you believe? He has six teeth (four at the top, two at the bottom) and runs faster than I can catch up with most of the time. He started walking just before his birthday, and once he started there was no stopping him. He's a gorgeous little fella, he's pretty chilled out, though has a much louder voice than his siblings and doesn't like to stand for too much badgering from them that's for certain! He's a lovely little boy, who charms everyone he meets.

Quin is learning lots of tricks from his brother...

Reuben turned three in April. He is a real boy's boy. He likes all the boy things... dinosaurs, trains, trucks, cars, making LOUD noises. He is rough and tumble, incredibly mischievous, cheeky as anything, and completely adorable. His EoE is well under control at the moment, and keeping him off wheat, dairy, eggs and peanuts has helped him to avoid a flare-up for quite a few months now! He is scheduled to see the immunologist in October, and I'm interested to see what comes from that. He goes to kindy one day a week and loves it.

Reuben and I on his third birthday. This photo sums up his personality beautifully.

Mayana, my big girl, is now SIX! She is in grade one and jumping ahead in leaps and bounds. She loves school, and works hard. She is up to level 19 readers, nearly finished sight words, and her teacher had only wonderful things to say about her at our parent-teacher interview. She's still our social butterfly, and is never happier than when surrounded by friends. This year she has started a few extra-curriculars, and thoroughly enjoys both Girl's Brigade and Calisthenics. She still loves her 'making', and our house is always brimming with her creations.

Could she be any more beautiful!?

And Pete and I are well! We moved house last October, into another old Queenslander, which we are renting from my parent's. In essence, we get to treat the home as our own, and Peter and my dad are constantly planning their next project for the house. Pete has so far painted the entire living area, and next on the list is Mayana's bedroom. I've started doing relief teaching again, and am enjoying the one or two days a week work. I love relief teaching; getting experience with so many different age groups and picking up ideas from various classrooms and teachers. I'm still into all my crafting (which is obviously where Mayana gets it from) and crochet is still my hobby of choice, although I have been getting back into my sewing machine a bit too. My other hobby is creating allergy-free food alternatives for Reuben. I have in fact started a Facebook page to share my recipes, which you can find here if you're interested in following along!

My SUPER family. More on this later, promise.

So there you go, our 2015 so far in a nutshell... We are well, healthy, happy; life is good.

And hopefully, you'll be seeing more of me in the coming months!!

Ciao for now!

Staycation

I don’t know about you, but life for us has become incredibly hectic. We have been busy for more weekends in a row than I can count. Not bad busy; fun busy… lots of time with family, fun adventures and great memories… but busy, and always with other people. I literally couldn’t remember the last time it was just us.

I was craving some time with my people. Just my husband and kids. Call it grounding.. or regrouping.. I needed it. I would have loved to have gone away for a night or two and totally escaped, but money is a thing… a thing that we don’t have lots of.. so we did the next best: a staycation. A pretend holiday, where the accommodation is free and you get the luxury of sleeping in your own bed. Win-win-win! We spent the days doing whatever we wanted to do, holding hands, and just enjoying. It was magic, and it made me so, so happy.

  

It’s getting harder to fit our family into a selfie!! We started off the day at a local craft festival… checking out market stalls and enjoying free show rides and cheap locally grown fruit.

 
And yes, Mayana is wearing a beard…

How did I get so lucky as to marry this boy?

Did I mention the rides were free?

We also stopped at pretty much any playground we went past, much to the kids’ excitement!

When it started to sprinkle a little, we bought some bits and pieces for a picnic lunch and jumped in the car to another nearby town, where we found a little museum with picnic shelters, barbeques and another playground. Happy days!

 
Quinten has huge problems with watching us eat. He wants in on that!! He was particularly cranky this day, and wouldn’t be calmed until I gave him a crust off my sandwich… which he proceeded to go to town on… hands-free!

    
These two were a bit thrilled when I gave them a lolly… and that thrill was increased ten-fold when they discovered that it changed the colour of their tongues!

 
My men in their fabulous hats!

I didn’t take any pictures in the museum but we had lots of fun exploring. Mayana got it in her head that you have to be REALLY QUIET in a museum, and proceeded to adopt a very theatrical whisper as she pointed out all the things that interested her. Reuben decided that museums are a place to see dinosaurs… luckily, there was a gigantic crocodile skin on display, and that was close enough to a dinosaur for him!

 
The kids asked for a movie night, and we decided to go old-skool and hire out DVDs. The kids had fun choosing, and we all enjoyed watching The Croods with a lounge-room fish & chip picnic (despite the serious look on my kids’ faces).

On Sunday, we went to church, then popped home to pack up the picnic basket, change into some summery clothes and hit the road.. destination: unknown.

 
We landed at the beach, and found a secluded spot under some shady trees to roll out our gigantic picnic mat.

Not a bad lunch view eh?

 
Isn’t Mr Q getting a bit clever? I dug a little mound of sand around him under the blanket to help him balance, but he sat there for most of the time we were eating… all by himself! Clever fella.

It was still a little chilly for swimming, but down by the water enough wind picked up to fly our kites. Mayana had been given this butterfly kite for Christmas, and this was the first time we have had a chance to fly it. Such fun! The kids enjoyed running around on the wet sand. Reuben inevitably got completely soaked… running around and jumping into puddles, which of course almost always ended with him landing pretty much flat on his face (“Splat Mama!!!”)

We had such a beautiful weekend pretending to be on holidays. My family is so awesome; it was such a happy time just being us, being together. I feel refreshed and ready for our next slew of busy weekends ahead. I can certainly see more of these staycations in our future!

Our Top 8 Challenge

If you are a regular reader of this blog, as well as noticing how behind I am in my blogging endeavours (Quinten’s 365 anyone!!?) you will know that we are currently doing an elimination diet with Reuben, after he was given a borderline diagnosis of Eosinophilic Eosophegitis.

Last week was EOS awareness week, an initiative run by a fantastic organisation called AusEE, that aims to raise awareness and money for education and research into Eosinophilic Disorders. Anyway, one of the ways to fundraise was the ‘Top 8 Challenge’, which we registered for. Our family committed to eat top-8 free for an entire day (the 8th of August), and friends and family could sponsor us. So basically, we went the whole day with no dairy, gluten, soy, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts or peanuts. All of which, along with corn, Reuben has been without for the last few months now. We are trialling corn at the moment, which means we really are only off the Top 8 at the moment, so that worked out well!

I wanted to share our day here. Creating allergy-friendly food has become somewhat of a second nature to me.. I read a recipe and automatically start to ‘translate’ it in my head… I can use coconut oil instead of butter… sunflower seeds instead of almonds, tapioca instead of cornflour, chia seeds instead of eggs… Reuben eats well… he eats interesting and varied foods and meals, and I have managed to find ways to recreate most of his favourites. So with that experience under my belt I was confident in going into this day. It was trickier for our friends. You see we decided that to make Top 8 Day a day worth celebrating we would end it with a dinner party in honour of Reuben. I was so excited at the thought of a meal with friends where Reuben was free to eat absolutely anything that he wanted to. So we invited our friends to join the challenge and bring along a Top 8 Free meal to share.

So here we go… our day of Top 8-Free food, in pictures:

 

We started the day with gluten-free weetbix. These are new from Sanitarium, made from sorghum, and taste close enough to their wheat counterpart to make my weetbix-loving-and-missing boy very, very happy. We served them with rice milk. Which was also in our coffee. The kids did not have coffee… Mayana had rice milk and Reuben had his neocate. None of us other than Reuben really like rice milk very much at all, but the weetbix were okay!

Mayana took a Top 8-Free lunchbox to school. She had a Sinchie with apple puree (we love those things), everything-free baking, rice crackers, corn cakes with ham & nuttlex, cucumber, grapes and dates.

Reuben and I had chocolate brownies, medjool dates, corn cakes and banana for morning tea.

Lunch was some delicious leftovers. Pete invented this very yummy top8-free carbonara with rice pasta. Quite delicious.

Afternoon tea was apricot-date squares (made by blitzing dried apricots and dates, and shredded coconut), a coconut ‘chocolate’ fish, and potato bread with blueberry jam. The potato bread is a new find, and one of the few gluten-free breads I’ve come across that contains no soy or egg. It does have corn, so we’ve only been able to buy it since the corn trial. It’s very expensive, but as far as texture and taste goes it’s probably the best gluten free bread I’ve tasted. Also, it’s made locally on the Sunshine Coast, which is pretty cool.

Dinner. Well. Our friends completely outdid themselves and we enjoyed an allergy free feast of epic proportions. We had amazing soups, Asian-inspired noodles, sticky rice with delicious curries… a feast fit for a king!

When I told Reuben that our friends were coming over for a special dinner and he could eat anything he wanted to he got very excited. “Party? Me?” he asked?
”Yep, a party for you Reuben,”
”Yay! Chips? Cake”
I think he thought it was his birthday, hehe. But yes, we did have chips and cake!

     

And dessert. Oh yum. I made a chocolate self saucing pudding with whipped coconut cream. It was very popular, and I should have at least doubled the recipe. We also had coconut rice pudding with strawberries and peaches, and coconut caramel custard with banana. So much yummy.

And that was it! Our Top 8 Free Day. We succeeded, we didn’t go hungry, and we actually enjoyed our food. And to top it off, we have raised over $300 for AusEE, which is pretty fabulous given that our initial fundraising goal was only $150.

I’d call that a great success for our very first Top 8 Challenge Day. Thank you so much to all our friends who sponsored us, and who joined us on challenge day.

That time we went camping…

I have had this blog post half written for a ridiculous time, and it occurred to me that our camping trip was about 2.5 months ago and it was time to get this post published!!
 

 

Yep, we went camping with a two-and-a-bit month old baby. Honestly, camping with babies is way less stressful with babies than toddlers. Babies stay in one spot when you put them down. Babies stay in their warm clothes once you’ve got them dressed. Babies don’t try and play with the fire.

Anyway. We went camping at the beautiful Kenilworth Homestead. It’s a great place for camping.. close enough to civilisation that you can go and buy things that you may have forgotten, it has flushing toilets and hot water showers, and acres of beautifully manicured green grass on the banks of the Mary River.

It’s a cool place, and has heaps of memories for me, because my family actually lived there (in a tiny duplex behind the main homestead in the picture there) in the early 1990’s when my dad used to be on staff running camps. Chances are if you went on a school camp in the 90s at the Kenilworth Homestead, my dad cooked your food and organised your activities. So it was extra cool for me to go back and check everything out from an adult perspective.

We chose a gorgeous shady spot to set up our campsite. We went with a couple of other families, and decided to set up Petes ridiculously enormous tarp as a central ‘living area’, with our family tents around it. This is the first time that we had opened up Pete’s tarp which he got for his birthday last year, and we knew it was big but boy…. is it big!!!

Quinten was our site supervisor, and gave Keith from The Block a run for his money!!

Pete was in his element. Between our group we had enough equipment for a really great set up.

Our tarp had plenty of room for a kitchen and dining area, as well as a 3x3m picnic rug which made a play space for the kids.

 

Our family realised that we would no longer fit in our tent! Luckily Pete still had an old 4-man stowed away, so we set that up for the kids.

Both sides of our family has since chipped in for Pete’s dream tent for his birthday present. Boy-oh-boy… just you wait till you see it!

Pete kept the fire going for the whole weekend, and we cooked some pretty delicious food on there. Pete had it down to a fine art, and the kids were all completely enthralled and very keen to help whenever possible.

 
We spent the days hanging out by the river, sitting around talking and doing an awful lot of eating!

Mayana is standing in front of the schoolhouse where I started my education. She couldn’t believe that this was my school.. it didn’t match up with her experience of what school is at all! The building is in disuse now, and is filled bits of broken furniture and pieces of wood. There are signs up warning against entering. But it still brought back a lot of memories… it’s a pretty special place to me – I learned to read there!

  

Quinten coped splendidly. It was quite cold, which disrupted his sleeping a little, but once he was snuggled into bed with Mama and Papa, we all got a bit more shut-eye.

And well.. this photo of Mayana and Reuben not long after we pulled out of the driveway of the homestead is pretty telling as to how much fun they had!!

Camping is something that Pete and I both love to do, but seem to put off, thinking that it will be too much work with the kids. I’m glad that whenever we decide to do it we always prove ourselves wrong, and find it pretty much the complete opposite.

Pete has a whole week of holidays booked in the September school holidays and we are looking very much forward to heading out for another family camping trip and trying out our brand new house-tent!