Quick Halloween Piccie

Just wanted to showcase the girls in their halloween finery!

We went to a "trunk or treat" with Melody, Parker, Kate, Marguerite, Richard and a whole bunch of others at a local church on Friday afternoon. It was a lovely afternoon and a real pleasure being out.

Anyway, both Kendall and Sydney wanted to be Izzy (from Jake and the Neverland Pirates) but at the last minute Syd changed her mind and wanted to be Minnie. So, we went out on Thursday night and got a Minnie costume and I whipped up the accessories for Kendall's costume (headpiece, sash and pixie dust bag.)

Anyway, I will post more about the evening later but for now.....

I loved the way they looked and they were both so excited to be dressed up. Both had such a great time (took a while to warm up with the trick or treating part) especially on the blow-up slides and houses afterwards! I'm so stoked that they are going to swap costumes for the school halloween party on Wednesday.

Cooking with the girls

Both girls are so happy to help out in the kitchen. When Mavis was here they were both happy to help wash up and most days they want to help prepare dinner by cutting up the vegies and cheese etc.

One night we made pizza which they happily made and then, with a bigger grin on their face, happily ate. They're not big fans of pizza (except for last night when Kendall ate three pieces of Hawaiian - but that's for a different post!) so anything to get their buy-in is a good thing in my eyes.

Last year, Henry and Karen bought the girls a learning tower for christmas. This thing is fantastic as it brings them up to counter height safely. This was really important for them and I thank Henry and Karen a lot for such a great pressie.

 Playing with food. Nothing beats it! I used to do it with cheezels (I think every Aussie kid does) and it's so much fun!

 Making pizza.....

 Yes, Kendall loves olives!

 Just the essentials for Syd - ham, cheese, pineapple and peppers! Woo hoo.

  And, yes...tomato sauce goes with everything. Grapes, honeydew melon, apple, pineapple all extremly scrumptious and better with tomato sauce.

Falls Park

Recently Simon and Katie came to visit on their pre-baby trip. They went to a wedding in Hawaii where Katie was a bridesmaid (again! She has so many friends getting married!) and then stayed with us for a week before heading out to Cancun for a small babymoon before heading home.

It was great seeing them both for the short time we did and the girls just fell in love with their Aunty Simon and Uncle Simon (yes, they kept getting it backwards!). They used our car to get around a couple of times and we all went out and about together a couple of times together (thank you mini-van!) too and of those times was to the Greenville markets on Saturday. Main St in Greenville is a very pretty sight and after walking through the markets we headed down to Falls Park.

Falls Park is a lovely developed nature area surrounding the natural falls there. There's miles and miles of walking/biking trails that lead to and from the zoo to downtown where we were. There is also a great suspension bridge that goes over the falls providing a great aspect for photos. There are always a lot of ducks and geese there which the girls just absolutely love.

On the way down along Main Street is some great brick scupltures that the girls just have to climb through everytime. This time Kendall got the sweet spot to pose.

 Down along the top part of the Reedy River before it goes into the falls with the ducks and geese. I have a bucketload of bread ends and crusts in the freezer that I keep meaning to pack in the car when we come to the park here. Oh well, next time....

 I cannot tell you how fascinated the girls are with animals (which makes me so happy). There is no fear just a wonderful sense of awe and love for all creatures (except for bugs which Syd will squish after a lengthy observance!).

 Kendall let the ducks eat from her hand but only once. I don't think that she liked the pressure of the feeding. All we had to give to the ducks were the peanut butter crackers that we took just in case the girls got hungry. Those ducks would have eaten anything that day!

Posing with Daddy. My three most favourite people!

A lovely piccie of the happy expecting couple beside the river. The suspension bridge is in the background. Katie is expecting in January somewhere between my birthday (11th) and Kauren's (16th) from what I understand so it will be very exciting when we meet our neice or nephew. That's right I am pleased to know that they don't want to know what they're having and are waiting for the big reveal!

 Posing with Uncle Simon and Aunty Katie.

I just managed to get this pic of Kendall swinging from the guardrail before I walked around to join her.

 Looking back towards Main Street from the suspension bridge with the beginning of the falls in the background. Did I tell you that Nanny was also staying with us?

 Afterwards we went to Papas & Beer for lunch. We usually go to the one here in Simpsonville but it is so small and the Greenville one was closer. A much bigger restaurant with some yummy (but huge portions) of mexican food. My favourite is the shrimp fajita quesadilla. Storm's is the beer I think....

 I don't think that Simon understood just how big the portions were. Especially compared to Australian portion sizes and made a face accordingly...

I think that Mavis was equally overwhelmed with her meal too...

I was supposed to have gone to a conference in Asheville, NC that day and I'm glad I didn't as we had a lovely day all together.

Birthday time!

The occassion? Kendall and Sydney turning three...

Not much to report as the day was spent with just us four (and the doggies too!) and it was nice...

without further ado...

 

Blueberry season

So I know that we're now heading into winter but I need to catch up so much that I'm starting with our blueberry haul this season.

Mrs Rudy told us about the blueberry bushes at the bottom of the property and said that we'd get an ok amount out of what was there come blueberry picking time. Man, she was not wrong!

I personally enjoy the odd blueberry pancake and eating them right out of the punnet and Storm subscribes to my way of thinking as well. The girls? Well Kendall has always been more open minded and despite having eaten them before (sparingly I might add) was a little hesitant about eating them off the bush. Sydney has never been a "blueberry lover" but the novelty of eating them off the bush really got to her and she was converted into such a blueberry fan that we started calling her Sydney Blueberry. Kendall's name has now become Kendall Peakablueberry.
 
Anyway, here are the pics....

 Storm picking the delicious yummies...

 The girls realy enjoyed the fact that they could just walk up and pick the berry they wanted and eat it. I suppose we could have waited until we washed them but where's the fun in that?

 Showing off the pickings...

Anyway, having the bushes down the back has really appealed to my desire to becoming semi-reliant on the land and it helps that they're also incredibly delicious!

We've been able to provide the a couple of the neighbours with a couple of bags as well as freezing quite a lot. Note to self: get a bigger freezer as the plantings that I plan for next year are going to give me a haul! Can I get a woot woot?
Cannot wait for next summer's crop!

YIIPPPPEEEEEEE!!!!!

Yay.

I have my laptop back.

I'm going to get back on board with piccies as there's a bucketload of stuff to catch up on.

So happy to be able to catch up on this.

Won't be long until I'm back on track.

Can't wait.

Catching up - Part Deaux

This post is all about some of the critters that we have here.

Now it's not like we're in the bush and our neighbours are like 6 miles away. No, the house is - I want to say rural - {well there are horses, donkeys, goats and a llama down the street} but not farmland. We are completely surrounded by woods with huge trees and bristly underbrush that requires quite an effort to get through it. There's the occassional open space and creek/boggy/marshy area to provide a resistance that is a pain in the butt.

We have snakes (so far we've had direct contact with 5), tortoises (2), frogs ( a real mixture), toads *even more so!), spiders (they put out daddy long-legs to shame!), raccoons (haven't seen them but seen the evidence that they enjoyed playing on our porch!), deer (3), foxes (well it might be just one but we've had two encounters with them), various birds and a myriad of insects.

The snakes have been ok except for one. Our neightbors across the road actually have a bigger body of water on their property and it appears that the copperheads and cottonmouths prefer that to our property of woods and small creek. We've had encounters with a brown rat snake and a black one too (this was the one that got into the office via the window and scared the living daylights out of me!), a king snake (Woody - our next door neighbor told us that we want this snake around the house as once you have one of these all other snakes will stay away and thankfully these are not the same as the king snakes back in Oz). We also had an encounter with a gold ringed timber snake and another that we just saw the tail of. I don't like snakes and I know that they're more afraid of us than we are of them (but I swear that theory was sorely tested when that one came sliding through the window and plopped on the floor in the office!) and I really hate to kill things (except cockroaches. I hate cockroaches!) so I hope that the snakes have heard my requests that they stay away from the house and leave us all alone. My only worry is the dogs (especially Oscar) as their desire to go into the muddy creek right now to cool off is putting them into (potentially) harm's way as the creek is frightfully bushy and uncleared.

We had no idea that we had turtles in the area. Our neighbor's son and his friends are "herps" - Herpatologists..well training ones anyway. But they know a bucketload of stuff about the critters in the area. Anyway, one day the collection of boys asked if they could take a look around our property and check out snakes etc. They found no snakes (granted it was early evening) but found our skinks (such pretties with blue tails) and another lizard that I forget the name of but it looked like a frilly necked lizard from Oz just smaller and then one found an Eastern Box Turtle. He took it with him (which kinda took me by surprise but he's responsible). Since then we've found another one and got some pics.

Frogs and toads abound around us and I cannot tell you how excited I am that we have such a wide variety as well as the amount. We have Leopard frogs, tree frogs, pickerel frogs and bull frogs. The toads I canot tell you the names of except there's woody loooking ones, grey ones, brown ones and red ones. We have a wide range of sizes too from ones that hide in my herb garden that are no bigger than my pinky finger nail to tadpoles that are surviving in the pond that are the size of my thumb and still haven't grown back legs as of yet. The bull frogs in our pond haven't grown as big as I've heard they grow but our neighbors have the ones that you need both hands to pick up. Ewww. Mr Bully in our back pond and I are working rather successfully towards a great relationship. He grunts when I talk - typical male!

Anyway, here's my pics of what I've managed to get so far. I wish I had my camera on me all the time when I walk the rounds but it's too bulky otherwise I'd have a lot more pics to offer you. I love that we have such a wide variety of animals and stuff for the kids to grow up around. So happy here.

Oh well. Here they are...

Outside our screened-in porch sliding doors on the bushes.

 Hunting for the snake that came in our office window with our neighbors Russ and Christy. Yes it took three to catch it. I had the kids and the camera!

 The caught product - a very angry, pissed black rat snake! I couldn't get any closer as it got out before I could and dropped down two stories out of the office window.

 A tiny leopard frog.

 I mean tiny. And we had hundreds of them!

 I love turtles and want to get some red-eared sliders for the pond.

 Sticking his neck out after a while. Felt like it took forever with me waiting silently with camera in hand.

 Oh and here's some piccies of Storm mowing the back. He loves the ride-on.

I'll try and get back soon with more pics.