I've been meaning to blog this for a while, but it's been busy at home lately!  The other day the girls got out the playdough and asked me to judge their "baking".  What a difficult task to judge between my girls'  beautiful creations :-)

Here are the cakes I had to choose from...

and the winner  is...

Bethany's cake:

The cookie entries:

and the winner is...

Emily for her lovely display on the bottom left.

Ainsley won the pie contest, but I don't seem to have a pic of that one!  Here's a lovely snail she made though:

mustn't leave out Ruby's sausage pie - very appetizing...

and here is my afternoon tea :-)

Well, at least it kept all four girls busy for a couple of hours!

Eeuwe's boss and his wife recently went to China.  Yesterday, Eeuwe came home with these little porcelain dolls for each of the girls:

Thomas is two weeks old today and is doing very well.  He's changed a lot already!

We've been taking a break from formal schooling since Thomas was born, but the girls have been pretty good at keeping themselves occupied. One day last week they organized a play for Mum, Dad & Nanna, complete with costumes.  Here they are:

even Prince Thomas had a part! 

Please excuse the pink bib, we have since been given a few more boyish ones, so I won't be putting that one on him again!!

Another day the girls took their little notepads & pens and went off outside in search of some stories for a newspaper.  This is what they came up with:

Our little Thomas is doing well.  He is a very hungry baby and was back up to his birthweight within a week.  I am hoping he'll let me sleep a little more at night soon!  In case you're wondering how I'm finding the time to blog right now, I'm getting quite good at typing one-handed while feeding Tommy in the wee hours of the night! 

Here's a couple of pics:

had to laugh at his hair after we washed it for the first time!

 All tucked up!

Thomas Albert John Reitsma arrived safely on Thursday 31st July at 11.30am! 

He weighed 9 lb 1oz (4105g). 

 Praise the Lord!

Well, we're still waiting for this baby to arrive.  Technically he's not due til Tuesday 29th, but I was wishfully thinking I deserved an early baby for a change!  Not that the others were that late, the last two were born on the due date!

In the meantime, we've been told by our Metservice that the biggest storm in a decade is brewing over the country today, set to hit our region by evening.  (Baby will probably decide to come in the middle of all that, lol!)  I'll let you know on Monday if we've been blown away or not!!  It also happens to coincide with Condoleeza Rice's flying 24 hr visit to our wee country.  She's spending the day in Auckland, supposed to be one of the worst affected regions by the storm - that'll be a visit for her to remember.  The University students in Auckland had put up a $5000 bounty for a citizen's arrest of "Condi" (as a protest against the Iraq War) but after being warned by police they've pulled it!!  Like any of them would've got past her security people! 

Well, that's a little ramble from me today, enjoy your weekend!

I have recently set up a blog for my nine year old daughter, Bethany, to post her stories. 

Check it out here.

Beth is learning to type and has done a lot of the typing herself.

The 1st July is our Wedding Anniversary, 13 years this year! 

Happy Anniversary Eeuwe, I love you more every day!

"Two are better than one because...but a cord of three strands is not quickly broken."

Ecclesiastes 4:9,12.

We chose this as our wedding text because we know that without the third strand, our Lord Jesus Christ, we would fail.  We acknowledge that it is only by God's amazing grace that we can have a loving marriage and are given the much needed strength to bring up our children in His ways.

We had an Indian themed evening with our Ladies' Group at church last night.  We were all dressed in a Sari and got to sample some spicy Indian treats.  There were about 30 ladies there, so it made quite a colourful sight!  This is a photo of me with a friend.

I'm still having trouble with my photos, they seem to have blurry lines when reduced for the blog.  Must fix it before baby arrives!