Christmas Parade 2009

Ben, Annabelle and Bridget were lucky enough to get picked to go in the Christmas Parade with Santa!
Ben even got to drive the sleigh. "That's me, driving the sleigh and father Xmas supposed to be driving the sleigh. "

"Pixie Pixie and I dress up as pixie pixie, the pirate. I a too busy Pixie pirate. That's my costume. The ho ho. Bridget the fairy."

Bubbles

Annabelle and Bridget made a bubble movie. Video is still playing up.

BBQ

Mum and Dad had a burn up, of various prunings and cooked up steaks over the flames, and kebabs and foil baked potatoes for tea."Eating meat."
"Cooking the meat, " over the hot coals.
"potato."
"eating the potato."
Dad's voice: A good chance to teach Ben about fire, and how to cook using traditional methods. Everyone loved the BBQ food, it just tastes so much better. Lashings of butter on the potatoes, following on from our Ben Warren course, with much from Sally Fallon's "nourishing traditions" book, about eating healthier by eating more traditional foods and avoiding heavily processed foods and foods with toxic additives. Our bodies use natural good fats for a whole range of things and butter is better, low fats diets lead to all sorts of health problems, yay! No more cooking in oil though, it's to unstable at high temperatures. We've also been making butter, cheese, fermented buckwheat pancakes, sweetened with rapadura and maple and trying to make yoghurt.

Family trip to Napier

While we were at Nana's we decided to stay the night and take a day trip to Napier, we started at Farm yard zoo, when to lunch at breakers (kid's roast) off to a second hand book shop, then to train world, were we rode the train and got to play with the huge train track layouts. Finally we finished off by checking out the aquarium, just in time to see the diver feeding the sharks."Having a ride on the train. Had a look at the things and the railway track. Then we went in the tunnel. We played with the Thomas trains."
"Having a ride on the boat."
"Mum had a picture of me by the swimming dinosaurs and the dinosaur sharks"
"Having a look at the diver man, and having a look at the stingray. then we came back to Nana's"
"Feeding the lambs, at the farm yard zoo."
"Having a drive on the truck."
"Having a ride on the horsie."
"The pig."
"A bull."
"I don't know, what is it? A llama."
"Dad, feeding the llama."
"Having a ride on the bull, having a ride on the horse." Ben was really hoping to "ride a cow" there.


Some of the things we saw at the aquarium, but the video is playing up.

Arataki Honey Family day.

We went to Arataki Honey for their family day. Dad told a marathon four sessions worth of stories, all including bees and honey 11 stories in all.
We stayed at Nana's. With the radio station there I decided it was time to treat Nana to some mighty air guitar. "playing guitar, on my guitar and turning my hands on the guitar, for Nana."
My cousin Tone made the model for this picture out of plasticine. "Mum putting me in there. There's lots of bees, and there's some bee hives and clouds behind and bees."
Here we are with Auntie Pam, Jack (Caroline) in auntie Jenny's old shop frock, Great Auntie Barb with the yellow balloon. "Caroline, Auntie Pam, Mum, Bridget, me, Auntie Barb."
Great uncle Doug took us for a ride in his car. "The car, Uncle Doug, it's a very fast one and it's a vintage car an oogah car. Uncle Doug toots the horn and it goes dougah dougah. I got two rides. There's another wheel on the car."
I liked "the car, my car, the balloons."

Great Chilli Cook off

Mum, Dad, Alex and I headed down to the great chilli cook off, (the girl's were at Aunitie Pam's.)
We tried 20 different chillis, only Dad and I though, (Dad got gout the next day so he probably shouldn't have.) My favourite was the motor bike club's chilli. Dad said it made his mouth really warm, his favourite was playgroups. Judy's chilli was pumpkin flavoured!
Hmmm.
Not bad Judy, you can have a donation.
We saw Mary tell her three little pigs story, with the Bruns our neighbours.
Then we finally got a look inside THE BIG RED BUS! I've been waiting to do this for a long time.
I was rapt.
But it couldn't take us for a ride, so we got on the other big red bus.
We rode up to Pukeora, but didn't have enough money for the ride back. Fortunately the bus driver let us back on and we got some more money to pay him back (and a fresh made, real fruit ice cream) in town.

I left my yellow balloon on the bus.
Back in town we got a ride on the fire engine, even better than the bus. Grandad says we should go to Auckland and see the transport museum.
Gaining literacy in the stories and symbols of our local town culture.

Alex's Birthday

Gran and Gran, Aunty Nell, Cody and Mikayla came down for Alex's birthday, we all headed down to the park for a walk.
Mum's voice" Auntie Janelle, Cody, Gran, Grandad, Mum, Bridget, Annabelle and Benjamin walked down to A’dene park. Alexander and Mikaela started to but then they hopped into the push chair for a ride. Alexander, Mikaela and Benjamin enjoyed the swing the best. The kids enjoyed the adventure playground and having a see-saw with each other. They discovered a Benjamin and Mikaela weight the same as a Bridget. They giggled and laughed and had a great time and didn’t want to go home for lunch.

After afternoon naps for the littlies they enjoyed playing together. They were very noisy and had a great time.

Bridget and Annabelle enjoyed playing dollies with Mikaela.

Later we put on a Mainly Music CD and the kids had a great time dancing together. The danced for a long time and they giggled and laughed. "

Cross country

Mum and Gran to us to the school cross country.
Mum's voice
"Today is the cross country run for school so the girls missed out on their swimming lesson and Benjamin didn’t go to Kindergarten. Mum, Gran, Benjamin and Alexander followed the 3 buses up to the farm. Benjamin said that the last bus to leave was the number 1 bus and the first bus to leave was the number 3 bus. The bus to leave had Bridget in it. I think she saw us following behind.

Once we arrived Benjamin ran off to be with his sisters. Alexander walked beside Mum and Gran.

A bit later the girls went off to walk the track they would run. Benjamin wanted to go too. Mum said he had to stay with us. We waved to the girls at the fence.

While we waited for the races to start Benjamin helped Annabelle eat her lunch. Then Annabelle had her race. We checked her on at the fence and watched her go around. She did some running and walking and chatting with her friends. She finished 7^th.

Bridget ran her race and she was puffed pretty soon. She had just gotten over her cold and had done no practices at home this year so ended up finishing last. She looked a little disappointed at the finishing line.

Afterwards we had a picnic lunch together and Benjamin gave Annabelle some of his lunch. "

Wearable Trash

Bridget and Annabelle got dressed up for the schools wearable trash awards so I got dressed up too.



Exploration fashion literacy. My sisters love things to do with fashion on the internet and T.v.

My day with Dad

As a special father's day treat Bennie got to come in to work with dad on Monday (also because Alex had an ambulance ride at 4:45am with mum so she's stuck in Hastings till dad get's there with the car, he's okay in and out of AE with x-rays in under an hour! Nana Pat picked them up from hospital at 6:30am) Fortunately someone was away so we had an extra space at Kindy.
Ben loved the bear suit "I was puttign a bear suit on. I was jumping around like a bear, here comes a bear stomping, stomping..." (lots of dancing and singing.) "There is a lion coming to me." (More singing and stomping.)

and the farm animals, plus he rocked out with the kindy guitar.

"I bring them to the farm. A horse a sheep and a little sheep and a little horse and a cow. Playing with the cows today, and sheep, and cows and goats. I didn't paint! I wanted to do a painting at your kindy. I liked playing with the animals and the dogs and the cats. I liked daddy's fire engine story. I want you to put it on again."

Reading numerals

We all helped dad tidy up the lounge this morning, and then we got to play trains. I showed dad that James had a number 5 on his tender and pointed out the black coal and dad told me about how the trains used the coal to make steam. Later I found Henry and showed dad the number 3.
Dad asked me about Peter Sam and Toby and I correctly spotted the number on their sides was a 4 and a 7 respectively. Dad thinks me recognising numerals, up to at least 7, before I'm even four is pretty brilliant.
I've been really interested in numbers and counting the last few months, and I regularly count things and spot numbers and letters. I've been spotting the letter B around town since Christmas. When I start counting things dad often joins in and we count together. Today I told dad I was three and would be four at my next birthday, and five after I'm four. So we counted everyone's birthdays in Maori and English.

"Playing with my trains. (finding trains in the box) Number 7, number 3 and number 4 too."

Alex's birthday

Alex turned two, so we had a little party at home, and will have his friends over on another day.
Ben "Alex's birthday party. We sing a song, happy birthday to you."
Annie "and we also sung it in Maori."

New Drum kit

Mum saw a drum kit for $25 in pak-n-save a few weeks back and decided to put some money aside for it.
Dad helped me clean up the lounge, my room and the sun room and then helped me set it up.
But it didn't last day. Dad had been watching to make sure I didn't hit them too hard, but they still broke. He looked at it and found it had a design fault with the skins held in place by six screws, rather than tensioned evenly around the drum. He tried replacing the plastic skin with a tough hide skin, but again it ripped where the screws held it in place. Mum and dad are now looking at other options. A $125 plastic and metal kit, a $600 kit, or Getting 3 tough drums for $200, +$40 + $40 from MTA and adding feet and attachments to them to turn them into a kit.
Sounds like we've got some saving to do. Meanwhile dad will see what he can do to repair the drums again. Ben ended up taking his drum sticks to bed with him. He took to the foot pedal liek a duck to water.
"I'm playing my drums, I bang, bang banged them and they broke. The little one broke, and I bang, bang, bang a bang, bang. I banged that one with my drum sticks."