All that and more

It's Wednesday morning as I write this.

I'm alone.

Not quite, but close enough.

Kieran is still at Jakes till this arvo and for the first time since the early last week Merenia is at a friends place. Will is asleep. aaaaaahhhhhhhh.

Whew- I love my girl but we were never designed to spend so much continuous time together. I know that I have the night times when she is asleep but by then I'm just too tired to enjoy and appreciate it! Bring on the 2nd of February!

So... lots of things to tell.

First and most shockingly we went to the supermarket the other WEEK and brought. Hot. Cross. Buns. I mean really Santa and his Mrs have not long made it to their annual holiday in Hawaii and already the easter bunny is being woken from his slumber... could they not have focused on "back to school" first? Then a few weeks of "bunch of flowers and your in" day BEFORE we got the guess what easters coming... I mean I know there's a recession on and they have to make profits from somewhere, but honestly making their money by preying on people addiction to spice and dried fruit in a delicious bun form?? Really?? So in protest I only brought one pack.

So what's been happening huh?

Les has been back at work for a week and a half now including a full weekend of 'working' at Wings over Wairarapa just past.

The weather looks like it may be back on trach today after is derailed just a little over the weekend so before school goes back we'll be spending a few more days like this....

How sweet is that photo? It's crazy cool if you ask me.

Some people of course have been spending their hols more like this....

That's Jake there with Kieran who is finally coming home after almost a week at Jakes place! Of course we wouldn't want to break them up too suddenly so to ease the transition Jakes coming to ours for a night!

Hows this for a cutie?

This is my grand-niece Caitlin. I hadn't seen her since she was about 5 months old (she's just 2 now). She's super cute and very smart and likes to hold hands... and I like that in a girl!

We caught up with her at Brother-in-law John's. Where we also caught up with her....

Les' mum stresses me out... but probably the less said about that the better. Did you notice the big boys are matching??

Les has a habit of taking extreme close-ups of Ruby and quite often around by the back door.

That's a good thing though cause she's so darn spunky! And she's been really friendly lately. This is both a blessing and a curse. She lies down on the floor in front of Will and says "Go on test my limits... and he does."

The sunflowers are coming to an end and that means that visitors are coming to the sunflowers..

Can you see the little green finch in there? S/he is having a delicious sunflower seed feast.

We planted this years crop of Swan plants on the edges of the kids gardens. This has been both a success, failure and failure.

For some reason the plants in Merenia's garden have not really done much on the growing front- possibly too much competition. The ones in Kieran's garden are great some of the biggest we've ever had, but there's a reason for that. Which brings me to failure no.2 We haven't had a caterpillar make it much past 1cm long! We've had heaps of visiting Monarchs and heaps of eggs and heaps of tiny baby caterpillars but none of them are surviving. I think it's ants or wasps but I've never seen anything happen so I can't be sure I am almost at the point where I'm going to start bringing them inside and 'hand-raising' them till they get big enough to make it own their own!

One last photo before I finish up....

This is Merenia's friend Jade we went for a swim at the base pool the night she slept over it was so good! The base pool heaters are run off the air con unit for one of the sections on base... so all the heat that is exchanged for cool air for the section goes to heat the pool... so on a hot day (and we've had a few of those lately- the pool gets even warmer (which frankly sometimes it needs too!) This day was a real sizzler so the pool was delicious!
♥