Happy Pre-Easter!

We had an early Easter Party @ Mike and Shelly's house - our wonderful Uncle and Aunt. Mikey and Joshy hid chocolate easter eggs for Jaren though he did need a little help finding them all. :) He didn't quite get the concept as you can see from below where Josh put one right in front of him. But that also maybe has to do with the fact that we don't let Jaren eat chocolate yet and I don't think he really knew what it was.

 

We love seeing them and were excited to have a chance to bond. Happy pre-Easter 2011!

 

Tidbits of April 2011

   

Now that I don't print off every photo I take to add to my giant collection of photo albums, I think of this blog as a place to put all these memories and small moments. So here are a few miscellaneous pictures from last April. One day Jaren was playing by himself in his room and just laughing away so I peaked in to see what was making him so happy and the first picture below is what I saw- him sitting and reading a book to himself. Oh it melted my little teacher heart. Jaren has always really liked books and will sit for ages with me or alone and read story after story. 

 

So this is a tribute to all husbands out there who for some reason can't seem to manage to pick up their own clothes. I hesitate in posting this in that Varian and I have recently discussed this again and he's doing so much better and putting his clothes in the laundry basket (which usually are in the laundry room). In our Brisbane house our laundry was out in the garage and so we kept our baskets in the bathroom. The first week we were there he joked about how he was almost tempted to leave his clothes on the floor again but how that would probably drive me crazy since the baskets were right there. We had a laugh about it but then after a week or so this is what started to happen. Sigh, old habits are hard to break

And just another photo tribute to laundry I took this picture when Varian went out of town on a little trip with his sister. The caption in my head was, "you can't be lonely when you have all this laundry to keep you company." I had gone through all our bags of stored and donated baby clothes to wash them all in preparation for baby Reid coming, and in general laundry can pile up for me as it is. But while he was away I went through and washed and sorted everything. Getting ready for a baby is hard work! :) 

A Work in Progress

Occasionally Varian and/or I would have to drive back up to Ipswich to meet the builders at our house and go through with them, make various decisions..etc. Shortly after the floods one of the inspectors told me that as a father he was telling me not to come in the house again, that it was too contaminated. But after a few months of ripping everything out, sterilizing and rebuilding I too could go back in. Here are some shots of some of the rebuilding process back in April.

 

One challenge we had was picking out things separately. The builders had 6 tile combinations we could choose from. We really wanted a darker non-peachy floor tile so we went with this one. So we took a picture of it and then weeks later picked out carpet and paint colors we hoped would match.

 

The white tiles are for the shower, side of the bath, and splash tiles of the bathroom sink and kitchen. The smaller white square is the color of our cupboards, the smaller grey square is the color of our counter tops, the shiny silver bar is the edging of our kitchen splash tiles (nice and modern) and the feature little square tiles are a strip down our shower and down the wall next to the bath tub.

 

Carpets were sadly not covered by our insurance but luckily we found a nice man giving flood discounts and went with his company. We kept trying to take pictures of everything and hoped to match them from the photos and our memories. We hoped to replace our black furniture and hence the black flip-flop so we could see how the contrast looked. I really do like our carpets and I like the tiles, but my initial impression when they both were finally installed next to each other was that they didn't match. I had picture the tiles as being just a dark charcoal grey and that the carpets would be fine, but the former ended up having a brown tinge to it and the carpets more of a blue cool color tone. Both look great with the wall paint we choose, Frosted Ice (light grey) and our white trim, but when you stand in between the two you notice the discrepancies.

This giant skiff was placed in front of our house for months, ruining our glass and cement edging and filling up again and again with plaster and cupboards and everything else that made up the inside of our home. Meanwhile all our plants were growing wild and unkempt.

We paid extra to have the builders turn our garage into a 4th bedroom and as part of the deal had to go out and find our own bricks to match.

Jaren discovered his love of playing in the front seat (supervised) and it has been an obsession with him ever since. We'll have to drag him out sometimes while he stretches his hands towards the driver's seat and cries, "Car! Car!" Maybe one day he'll be a chauffeur.

Varian's Birthday Beach Day (April 2011)

Here's a picture of the two men in my life (Reid, if you'll remember hasn't been born yet) being serious and manly and eating a Man-burger for Varian's birthday. So I mentioned that our birthday tradition has evolved into a 3 day celebration. A nothing day (relaxing, movies, eating, being together) a family party, and an adventure/activity day. For Varian's activity he had us first stop at KFC for the Man-Burger (2 chicken patties, with cheese and bacon in the middle and no bun). I realize the target audience for these were 25 year old males, but I totally want one now and am so bummed that they stopped making them!), we then went to Bribie Island where we had never been before, and had a lovely beach day.

 

So I loved these photos I got of Varian and Jaren at the beach. 

Varian got these ones of Jaren and I playing in the water.

So they don't look that bad, but it seemed like the waves were a bit rough and windy that day so we moved to the other side of the island where there was supposed to be a more protected beach. It was a bit muddier, but we still had a fun time there. It was a bright beautiful day and I just felt so content and full. Full of life and happiness and love for my wonderful husband, baby boy, and baby on the way.

I sat there feeling the sand and sun and breathing in the day. Varian and Jaren were in a different place on the beach digging away in the sand. I came over to see what they were building and this is what I saw.

 

Seriously?! What an amazing husband I have. Was it his birthday or mine?! :)

 

I felt very loved! We had a fun day at the beach and a fun day celebrating. Jaren was in heaven eating sand (he had almost grown out of it at this point but not quite).

 

Varian tried to stop him but he mostly would just laugh and think it a great joke. All in all it was a great day. And I'll leave you with this image of my 32 year old sweetheart! :)

[Birthday] Dinner Time!

Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband. Last year he turned 32. We like to celebrate over a few days. This post is of the family dinner we had. Now what is that odd amazing looking cake I'm holding? Well let me show you a close up.

   

So Varian requested my carrot cake (oh my heavens can I say that it is the best carrot cake ever? I found it online and tweaked it a little and have absolutely loved the recipe.) Well I've made it many times before and so to try and make it special I thought I would come up with a fun way to decorate/accessorize it. I googled around and came up with the idea of doing candied carrot curls to place on top. They were pretty disastrous. Out of two big cookie sheets these were frankly the only decent ones and they didn't look all that pretty or taste very good so I've never done it since. Basically the idea is to make strips, boil them in sugar water, curl them up, then bake them. I think the main problem was my gas oven. It never really cooked things very evenly, and they just got baked to a crisp. Oh well. The cake itself was amazing!

Here's the amazing birthday sign I made Varian and then taped up on the wall, I know super-classy, but our other ones were victims of the flood and so this was made from the heart (and at 2 o'clock in the morning if I remember right).

Here's a shot of us at dinner. Warren, Leah, Panu, Michaela, Varian and Jaren. I can't remember why Oma and Opa couldn't come, and Lani and Cameron had something else on and came later for dessert. It was a fun night and possibly one of our first dinners to have in our new place. Happy Birthday dinner my love.