Today we enjoyed some beautiful mid-winter sunshine...

and some choc chip cookies made by Bethany:

Our latest game craze is Sjoelbak.  It is a Dutch game which involves pushing (no that's on the IEW banned words list!) scooting, shoving, hurtling, (however you like really!) little wooden discs into slots at the end of the wooden board - called the sjoelbak.  You get three attempts at getting all the discs into the slots and then your score is added up according to the points on each slot.

Instructions for the game can be found here. 

We had a game on Easter Saturday night, accompanied by my first attempt at making hot cross buns

(minus the crosses & fruit, but they were still delicious).

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God decided it was time to take Opa (my father-in-law) home last week on Wednesday 25th February.  We had a funeral for him this past Tuesday.  It was a lovely service and this was the text:

"For to me, to live is Christ, but to die is gain." 

~ Philippians 1:21 ~

This was truly his life's motto.  My parents came to stay with us this week, which was a wonderful help and comfort.  They have left again this morning to visit other family members. 

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Hello friends, I am still here!   We have had quite a month here at our place.  We are busy getting back into church life for the year and have been at the school books again for a few weeks now.  Thomas is growing fast and is still waking up Mum for a feed a couple of times each night.  I know, I should train him to sleep through, but it's rather tricky when he's sleeping in our room, the crying thing just doesn't appeal to me...it's quicker to feed him quickly, then he always goes straight back to sleep.

It has been a sad month in several ways for us too.  We grieve with our neighbours in Victoria, Australia who have lost homes & loved ones in the recent bushfires.  I lived in Geelong, which is an hour from Melbourne, for four years as a child.  In fact, it was in 1983, our first year there, that neighbouring towns suffered from the Ash Wednesday fires.

We have also had a bit of a family crisis of our own.  My father-in-law has been in intensive care in a hospital a couple of hours away from us, due to an accident, so it has been busy with Eeuwe travelling up & down to visit him. 

Here's a little collage I made up of photos of Thomas.  I can hardly believe he is already 6 months old!

We're finally starting to get into the Christmas spirit.  We baked some gingerbread cookies today and the girls had a ball icing & decorating them...and eating them of course, I think they are nearly all gone ;-)

Ruby adding mini marshmallows, choc bits & butterscotch bits to her gingerbread cookies.

Ainsley icing her cookies

Bethany & Emily decorating their cookies...

And the finished products:

All while Thomas, now 4 1/2 months, slept!

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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!