Lizzie's 4th Birthday

Lizzie turned 4 (about 3 months ago! I've been very busy) and had a great day. Amita made her a birthday crown because she was the Queen for the day.

Here is Lizzie's first lego set and she's pretty good at making it all by herself.

The top of her birthday wish list was a Barbie with a pooping dog - I really don't get it but they both loved playing with it. I think we may have lost all of the little poos now. Lizzie's choice of breakfast was chocolate Up & Go. 

Her Barbie needed a nice house to live in too.

Lizzie chose chocolate cupcakes for her birthday cake and decorated them with the sprinkles herself. 

Here's a few things about 4 year old Lizzie:

1. What is your favourite colour? Pink

2. What are your favourite toys?  Squeaker (her Beanie Boo mouse), Barbies and her Barbie House

3. What clothes do you love to wear? Dresses, skirts and dress-ups

4. What do you like to do outside? Play with bubbles

5. What do you like to do inside? Watch TV

6. What songs do you love? I Love to See the Temple, I am a Child of God, Jesus Once Was a Little Child.

7. What are your favourite foods? Milo, bread with butter, 2 minute noodles and bananas

8. Who are your best friends? Beau, Hope, Elouise & Carlie (these are all friends from gymnastics) 

9.  What do you love to do with your family? Say prayers and go to church.

10. What do you want to do when you grow up? I want to be a gymnastics teacher because I love it.

11. What are your favourite books? Barbie the Mermaid because I love reading them.

12. What makes you happy? Playing Barbies, and playing Duplo with Nan.

13. What makes you sad? When Amita hurts me (when I asked how Amita hurts her she didn’t know).

14. Where are your favourite places to go? The playground because I have a lot of fun there. I like the flying fox.

15. What are your favourite tv shows/movies? Mia & Me, Barbie and the Mermaid Tale and Barbie the Pearl Princess.

16. What is your favourite animal? Giraffes – because they make me laugh when they walk around. I like whales too because water comes out of the hole and pops me up in the air.

17. Who is your favourite scripture person/story? Jesus because I just love coming to Earth.

18. What is your favourite ice-cream flavour? Chocolate

19. Who is your hero? Wonder Woman because I like her and she rescues me all the time from the playground. Then Wonder Woman flies up in the air and I like it.

20. What do you like about Mum? When she plays with me

21. What do you like about Dad? Playing Lego with him

22. What do you like about Amita? Playing Duplo with her 

Us lately

We had planned to go on a camping trip up to Mount Morgan (which is near Rockhampton and Yeppoon) in the Easter holidays but Cyclone Debbie ruined our plans! All roads leading up there were flooded in and halfway through our trip, Rockhampton was forecast to experience it's worst flood in 100 years so we decided to stay home instead. 

We didn't get any flooding in town, though the Weir benefited greatly and actually reached 100% capacity and was overflowing. Here's a video we got of it.

Normally there's just a huge concrete wall and a puddle of water at the bottom!

There's not a lot to do in town during the holidays (not much to do during the school term either haha) but we made our own fun. Here the girls made and decorated their own Easter cakes.  

We all got to stay up a bit later together and watch football. Here's Amita getting very excited about the Broncos getting the ball.

We still managed to roast marshmallows - with an outdoor citronella candle! Oh to have a yard where we could have a fire pit :). 

We went to just about every park in town, including the skate park and got very good at playing Skylanders and Disney Infinity on the Xbox.

Here are the girls at Gramps and Gramsi's house for an Easter egg hunt.

A couple of photos post Easter holidays:

Lizzie loves making a bird's nest in the lounge room with pillows. I think it makes her feel like Big Bird.

Amita competing in her Cross-Country Course. She did very well. 

This mask is on Lizzie's Birthday wish list (as well as the turtle shell to go with it). She'd be the smallest, creepiest looking Ninja Turtle ever! 

Say What?!

I was driving Amita to school yesterday and said that when she gets home we should look at making a Mother's Day present for Nan and Gramsi.

Amita had some nice ideas for homemade cards and books.

Lizzie said "I want to make them a gun!" (I think she was referring to a Princess Leia Blast gun?)

Lizzie Funnies

Lizzie came up with a song the other day. Her lyrics went:

"I really want to see a rainbow.
And all of the people moo.
And all of the people moo.
And all of the people mooooooooooooooooooooo."

Another funny thing she does is like her version of a Sheldon Cooper Bazinga. I'll ask her if she wants something like - Do you need to go to the toilet? She says yes and I'll start taking her to the toilet and then she says "buuuut I don't," in a very matter of fact way. She's a little prankster!

Chinchilla Melon Festival

We've been waiting a loooong time for the Melon Fest to come around and it didn't disappoint. On Friday night we could've gone to the Rodeo but I knew it would be really crowded and difficult to get good seats for the kids so we went to the 'movie under the stars' at Amita's school. We watched Oddball which is probably a very funny movie but I couldn't understand much of the dialogue with all of the kiddies running around! haha... next time I'll request subtitles :) 

Lizzie being cute.

Amita being crazy.

Lizzie snuggling up to Nan and Pa.

Saturday morning we headed to the markets down the main street. We have never seen so many people in one place in this town before!

Amita and Lizzie had a go on a ride each and got to choose one thing to buy. Amita chose a necklace from the crystal shop that looks like Moana's necklace. Lizzie got one of those plastic expanding ball things. She's holding it in a photo lower down. 

Time for the Street parade. We saw lots of interesting cars and people.

This is Miguel from 'The Living Room' being filmed for a segment on the show I guess. Those are some pretty big Watermelons on that float but the one that won the biggest weigh-in was 75kg heavy. 

A family shot just before heading home. We were on the last day of this 4 week long heatwave and at 11am we were done and needed some air conditioning. 

About 4pm and we all went out to check out the Melon Sports (It was still about 40 degrees at this time) and we were very grateful for the free watermelon! Even Steve had a piece to eat.

We stayed to watch a chariot race and then decided it was just too hot and headed home. We had a great time though and are hoping we won't be in a heatwave next time and will be able to see all of the activities. 

Amita is back at school

Here's Amita on her first day back at school. This year she is in grade 1 and has settled in nicely with her new teacher and friends. Lizzie on the other hand is missing her play buddy and keeps asking me to play doll house with her.

Amita received an award on parade. 

It says: For consistently being a responsible learner who follows all the school values. Amita you are a very respectful class member. Keep up the fabulous work.

Christmas and New Years

Christmas was so good this year. Nice and relaxed! Which is just the way we like it. We woke up and checked out our goodies from Santa and then had a yummy breaky of coco-pops, croissants and mangoes. Christmas, being on a Sunday this year meant that we could get dressed up in our Christmas dresses for church.

 Here are the girls obliging me with a pose under the big tree outside the chapel.

Once home it was time to put baby Jesus in our nativity (a new tradition we started this year). And then we opened our presents. I know it doesn't look like it but Lizzie was super excited to get a Star Wars play-dough kit.  

Amita was so happy to get a Harry Potter book. We have been reading it together at bedtime and are almost half way through.

I can't remember why they were hugging but it's such a cute photo.

Here's my crazies! We had a delicious lunch/dinner with turkey, ham and salads. Poor Steve had only just got his braces on 2 days before and was struggling to eat. He was grateful for the soft potato salad. After Steve set up our new Xbox we got to skype our extended families and wish them Merry Christmas.

Here's just a quick pic from New Years. We stayed up to watch the kid's Sydney fireworks and had some fun with sparklers.

And this is a picture I just found after Amita hijacked my camera. 😁