My Easter Bunnies

Hi all,

Hope you all had a great Easter and enjoyed spending time with family and friends. Here are a couple of pictures that I took of the girls on Easter morning. The Easter Bunny delivered bunny ears and toy rabbits to our house as you will see.

We celebrated the Easter Sunday with Mum, Dad, Louise and Michael having a BBQ in the back yard. It was a very enjoyable way to spend a Sunday afternoon. After lunch Nathan swapped the swing set combinations around so that Sabi could also enjoy a swing. As you can see she does enjoy it.





On Easter Monday we packed ourselves off and headed over to Jill and Bruce's for a Webber roast and catch up with Terry and Lyn, Steven and Deepa and their little one Amy, Andrew and Karissa and of course the hosts. It was great to catch up with them all again.

Quick update... Nathan is still super busy at work. Maddie is now up to List 18 in her sight words and is loving school and is getting over her cold. Sabrina now has 2 teeth (if you look carefully on the first picture of Sabi on the swing you can actually see them), is crawling lots, starting to pull things off the furniture and is coming down with a cold. (oh how I love it when they get sick... NOT!!!!) and I am surviving and haven't got the cold yet, touch wood.

Catch up with you again soon.

Love
Annette

Here is what the girls look like this week.

Hi all,


As it has been a little while since I have put up some pics of the girls here are a couple.


News time...


We survived the week and weekend!!! It was one huge week and weekend for us beginning with the boats (I will do a separate blog for this) and ending with parties galore on the weekend (separate blog for this one too), with all the prep work in the middle. Needless to say I am hoping to get back into my normal week pattern this week and catch up with all my friends.


Maddie now has her home readers happening and so every afternoon we now need to read and journal comments in our home reader manual. (I thought blogging was all the creative writing that I would have to do... ha!)






Sabrina now has a tooth!!!! After a sleepless Tuesday night we cut our first tooth on Wednesday afternoon. When it is fully through I will attempt to get a pic of it to prove that it finally happened. She is also getting bolder every day. She now knows what the word "No" means and chooses to ignore it completely. If you retell her no then she promptly waves at you as if to say "I am going to do it anyway and if you don't want to see me do it then you may wish to turn away now."




Have a great week.

Love
Annette

OK lets bring you up to date

As promised I will now attempt to bring you up to date with what has been happening in the Mackay's lives over the past couple of weeks.

The party season continued with all of us having one more family party to celebrate Nathan, Maddie and my birthdays. We had a BBQ in the backyard with some of the relos. Here are some of the pics. As you can see we had a perfect weather day.

My final birthday cake for this year! (refer to blogs below they are getting less fancy as we go on)

The following weekend we went to Andrew's 30th Birthday Party. It was a dress up in the theme of A or M so we went as Mikey and Minnie Mouse and the two girls went as Angels. I had a very busy week making costumes. The costumes themselves weren't to hard it was finding the time to do it. Whilst Maddie understands that Mummy needs to sew and can't play Sabrina is yet to learn this.

Since then we have started digging in the back garden again. Not as much as the great wall of Mackay but it brings it rushing back. We need to protect the back of the house from the grass crossing over the termite barrier so we are laying pavers to limit its access and to give Nath something to use the trimmer up against. This is part one of the outside refurbishments. I will keep you posted as to the remaining parts as they come up.

Maddie is now in her final term of preschool and is looking forward to going to big school next year. We have achieved our final "things to learn before big school" item. Maddie can now tie her shoe laces!!! (And anything else that has two strings relatively close to each other) This means that our shoe choices have now increased as we don't have to keep doing the shoes up. She is producing huge amounts of art at the present time her pictures are getting more and more intricate each day. She is also wanting to spell alot of the words that she uses every day and is now reading the time off the clock.

Sabrina has made 6 months!!! (yesterday) She is growing at a rapid pace as well and is taking in her environment and appears to be learning alot of how this place works. She has begun solids and is showing typical Mackay traits in wanting to eat what ever is on our plates. I think we are not too far away from mobility as the last couple of days she has been starting to roll and push up and move to where she can reach her toys. Although her every helpful sister normally gets them for her. Tomorrow I will try and take her back to the clinic nurse (she has been away) and see just how much bigger she has got. Friday is immunisation day. This comes around way to fast, it doesn't seem that long ago that we were having our 4 month ones.

Hope you are all doing well and this brings you alittle more up to speed with what we are up to.

Love

Annette

Well its Monday again

Hi all,

Well its Monday again! They are coming around way to quick. I finally have my voice back. It didn't really make an appearance till Friday last week so this made for interesting times with Maddie who can't read hand written notes yet so there was alot of charading going on. As we were all sick over the last week we didn't really do anything of interest during the week and saved it all for the weekend.

On Saturday Nath and I went to one of his work mates wedding. It was a gorgeous day bit windy but that was OK. They had the service on Shark Island and the reception at Pier One. Very Flash!!! So we had to be at the wharf at 1.45pm to get on our boat to go out to the island. Kim looked stunning. Just after the vows and while they were signing the register a pod of dolphins decided to come and frolic in the waters around the island. This made it very special as not everyone could say that they had dolphins at their wedding. Kim said afterwards that the dolphins had actually joined her when she got in the water taxi to go out to the island and had followed them out. Maddie and Sabrina had a Nanna day. Big thankyou to Mum!!! Even though I called a couple of times to check on them it meant that we could enjoy our day out as well.

On Sunday Maddie had a birthday party for one of the boys in her preschool. It was held up at a play centre in Penrith. She had an absolute hoot as you can see from the pics below.

Sabrina has started gripping onto and "playing" with her toys. Note the outfit is actually the one that we took photos in whilst we were still in hospital (see blog on 14th May) we have grown just a little.

Here is another pic of someone playing with her Dad.

Today we are getting the new carpet laid in the girls rooms. I will show you pics next week.

Have a great week.

Love

Annette

Sorry it has been a while

Hi all,

Yes we are still alive. Sorry that I haven't posted for a little while. We have been pretty busy in the past couple of weeks. I needed to get the diary out to see what we had done.

Okay... here goes.

Nathan update

Since my last blog Nath has become quite the jet setter. On Sunday 17th June he went to New Zealand for a day of meetings on the Monday and then came home that night. Makes for a pretty big week. Then on Sunday 24th he went to Melbourne for a week. Got back on Saturday. His girls are very happy to have him home. We have now decided that 1 week is way to long and hopefully he won't need to do another one. While he was in Melbourne us girls packed ourselves off for a holiday of our own. When the going gets tough... the tough go home to Mum and Dad's. We had a great time. I don't know about Mum and Dad though. There were times when Sabi was letting it rip that I am sure they would have preferred if we had stayed home. But I appreciated having some "grown ups" around to help with my sanity.

Maddie update

Maddie had a great week over at Nanna and Pop's she loves all the attention that she gets over there. The only problem for her is that she doesn't get away with anything. Because there is normally either Mum or I there to catch her out. She has got a cold at the moment so this is playing havoc with her, she is getting really tired at the moment and is going to bed really early for her.

More preschool dress up from last week. Every week at preschool this year the kids have been learning about a letter of the alphabet. Last weeks letter was "S" so the teachers decided to have a week of dress ups. (oh what fun!!! especially when you need to get completely organised because you are not staying at home.) Here is a picture of Maddie going on Thursday as a Star princess.



And here is Maddie on Friday going as a Singer... the ultimate in 'Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair'



Tomorrow one of Maddie's friends Thomas is having his 5th Birthday Party. (I can't believe that they are turning 5 this year). Thomas is having a McDonalds party. Maddie is really looking forward to it. Birthdays are really exciting when you are this age.

Sabrina update


We had our follow up visit to the paediatrician on the 21st June. He was really happy with her progress. She had put on 2Kg since discharge and had grown 7 cm. She behaved really well in his surgery. We were expecting her to scream the place down as he needed to strip her down to her singlet and normally she does NOT like this but fortunately she was fine and didn't even whimper. As the pead. is in the same building that Louise works at Sabrina did her required show and tell to all the nursing staff up in day surgery. Which at least lets them put a face to the stories that Lou goes and tells them. As she had been so good at the pead. we decided that we should take her for her 2 month immunisations as they were due on the 23rd. Any good behaviour that we had previously displayed went out the window. To be expected she was rather unhappy about the prospect of someone jabbing two needles into her legs and voiced her opposition. Need I say more. We then paid for the next 48-72 hours with a irritable little girl. But she has got over that now.

She has started to hold her head up by herself for extended periods of time and is beginning to recognise people that she knows. (You need to be seeing her daily for this) She waves her arms around and giggles and gives you big smiles. Completely makes your day when she does this. She has also started playing with her toys. She likes to bat them with her hands and watch them swing but gets frustrated with herself when she misses or can't coordinate to actually hit it.

Here are some up to date pics of the girls chilling out. Hope you enjoy.



I hope you are all keeping well and safe. Catch up soon.
Love
Annette

We survived the week

Well, we survived our first week with Nathan back at work. By the time we got to the weekend we were all exhausted but you get that. To give you an idea Maddie fell asleep on the lounge on Saturday night at 7.40pm and didn't wake up till 8.30am on Sunday - she doesn't do this very often only when she is VERY tired!

Our week in review...

On Saturday we went to Ma and Pa's for Mothers Day lunch. Then had Andrew and Karissa over for dinner and the compulsory game of Rummykins. Definitely a good way to spend a Saturday Night.

Happy Mother's Day to all the Mothers out there for last Sunday. I had a really good day. I am now the proud owner of some new clothes and a Deep Fryer. We have had a great time deep frying. We had one many years ago but it was not a swish as this one - really hard to clean, and no thermostat. This one has these defects rectified. Went to Mum's for lunch.

On Monday us girls took ourselves off to playgroup. It has definitely grown since the last time we were out there. I couldn't get over how noisy it has become. The next "generation" of 1 - 2 year olds are starting to make there mark and be playing whilst the 3-5 year olds are intent on racing around like mad folk outside. I guess it gets it all out of there system. Sabrina behaved herself and pretty much slept through the experience.

On Tuesday we caught up with the Hickings. It has been so long since Sam and I have had a Tuesday catch up. I think we both needed it. The kids once again raced around burning up energy. Trampolines, Swings and Sandpits are definitely a hit when you are little. The Hickings bought another car... Here is a picture

Wednesday was a quiet day. Thank goodness!!! I started doing our filing. I really hate doing this job. Probably as I leave it till it is an absolute disaster area then start. Nath went to try out his new golf clubs out at the driving range. He still thinks they are pretty schmick so this is a good thing.

Thursday Maddie was at preschool. Alittle sad as one of her favourite teachers left on Thursday. Maddie did not really want to go as she knew it was Caron's last day. It is amazing how quickly they attach themselves to people. Although I think that Caron spent alot of time with Maddie. She realised on Friday that she had forgotten to give Caron a card. (Maddie is really into giving cards at the moment) this resulted in more tears. I had to promise that she could make one and take it next week. Whilst Mad's was at school, Sabrina and I went to Mum's for a play day. Ended up shopping up at the new Kmart at Stanhope Gardens. Still reckon this is one of the best ones around.

Friday - Maddie Preschool, Me - more filing (oh what fun!!!!!!!!) We decided that we should try to get ourselves organised in regard to the dinner thing. As witching hour has returned and limits the amount that I can do in the lead up to 6pm. Decided that the whole freezer cooking idea may be a way around this. Little did we know at this point that this decision would dictate pretty much our whole weekend.

Saturday we went and bought some of the containers that we are going to need if this concept was to work. We then had to sit down and find recipes that were suitable for the concept. Result didn't really have any recipe books for this purpose - better go and buy one (a girl can never have to many recipe books!) While we were out and about also had the weekend compulsory trip to BUNNINGS (yes Lou - at least once a weekend is normal) we got the stain for our skirting boards. Nath tried it out in the en suite on Sunday morning - we figured it was an out of the way place to see if it looked ok. Looks really good, now we have the big job of going the rest of the way around the extension. Nath also went to his Mum and Dad's to help move there new water tank. I think Andrew best described the process. "Dad had his new 1250 gallon water tank delivered (into the front lawn) this week. Nathan, Vern, Dad and I just lugged it down the street, down the lane way, over the neighbours side fence, through their backyard and over Dad's side fence into his backyard." It must have been a sight.

Sunday afternoon was spent cooking and I mean cooking. By 6 pm last night we had put into the freezer 9 main meals and 6 side dishes. Not bad for 6 hours work. Hopefully they all taste great after they have been frozen because they all tasted pretty good before they went into the freezer.

Am off to do a bit more cooking. Have a good week. Will blog again soon.

Love

Annette