This year we seem to be moving into a "proper" winter again, instead of the mild, dry one we had last year. The country has been so anxious for rain, it's the first time I can remember that we've had a rainy week and nobody I've heard has been complaining about it. It's a real praise point! Here are some of the things that have happened around our place recently.

A new juicer

This is one of my favourite things. On Saturday I bought a fantastic machine that can juice both hard and soft fruits and vegetables so that we can make our own fresh juice. You feed in the chunks of fruit and veg, the juice gushes out of one side and left-over pulp falls into a catching container on the other side. Brilliant invention. We experimented with apple juice first. Then I gave Emma pineapple, mandarin and watermelon, which turned out to be delicious. Next I tried something ultra healthy - apple, carrot, fresh red beetroot and ginger. However, that one was not so successful. I mean, the juice was certainly successful enough but not the flavour. There was a bitterness about it that needs to be sweetened somehow. More experimenting is required. Sometimes I go a bit overboard on healthy ideas.

Poor Emma's joke falls flat

After visiting my parents near the city on Saturday afternoon, I came home and had a short lie down in the early evening. When I got up, only Logan was in the house. He told me, "Emma wanted to go to the shops with Dad."

I asked, "Did they take Blake with them?"

"I suppose they must have because he's nowhere about."

Then, after half an hour or so, we heard the car come home. Emma was first in the door with a big smile on her face, waving a chocolate bar. I asked a silly question. "Did Blake go with you?" meaning it to be just a rhetorical question. But she put a blank expression on her face and said, "No." Then Logan and I straight away went into full panic mode. We started tearing around yelling, "Blake!" Emma started laughing and said, "I'm just joking. He is with us." When Andrew and Blake walked through the door I rushed to pull Blake close to my heart (yes, I really did feel that dramatic). He started patting my face and saying, "Don't worry, Mummy." Logan was shouting at poor old Emma for making him so worried, and I told her never to do that sort of joke again. Then she got upset and went off crying because she really didn't mean any harm, so I went and calmed her down too. And all the while my legs were still rubbery and my heart still thumping. It doesn't take much for a full blown fear reaction to take control.

An illustrated safety booklet

This is something the kids began making on the computer, complete with their own funny graphics. They have instructions like, "Don't sunbake without sunscreen or you'll shrivel up like a pizza" and there is a picture they've drawn of a slice of pizza lying on a beach towel with a binkini on. Quite funny and they enjoyed themselves. In fact, I don't think they've finished yet. It's good because while they're hard at work on it, Blake sits on Logan's knee carefully watching. He really benefits from having them at home and not at school.

Night in the Museum

Andrew and the kids borrowed this new-release movie to watch a few nights ago. I didn't think it'd be my cup of tea and I was concerned about the others too, as it sounded too much like a horror movie. However, it turned out to be pretty good and we all enjoyed it. It's more like a big history lesson than a horror movie. The story is that Ben Stiller's character, Larry, gets a job as a night-watchman in a big natural-history museum, and he's amazed to find that when darkness falls, all the exhibits come to life!" I think Ben Stiller is a very funny actor but I haven't come across many of his movies that are really suitable for children so I thought I'd chalk this one up, being the first.