Beehive Overnighter

Last night was the 'Beehive Overnighter' for the 12 and 13 year old girls from church . Sarah, Toni and I had been planning for it for a few months and were hoping we would get a good turn out - especially since we were able to get permission to have it as a multi-stake overnighter.



In the end we had more girls than we expected with 5 coming up from Hobart Stake and 16 girls altogether which is actually very good for the smallest stake in the world!

Toni is now three days over her due date, so we thought it was best that she stayed away :D The girls kept making jokes that it wouldn't have been much fun to see a baby being delivered during the overnighter.

We started off the night with pizza making and eating.

We then had a get to know you game which was very funny. We played the 'two truths, and one lie' game where you have to tell two things about you that are true, and one thing that is a lie and everyone has to guess which one isn't true. My lie was that I was pregnant and everyone picked that as the lie straight away! Sacha has been called as our secretary for Stake Young Women's and one of her things she told was that I was her YW's leader when she was growing up. The girls all cracked up and were like 'yeah right!!!" which was great as they thought I was a lot younger than I am!!! I told them that was true and one girl said 'I thought you were like 2o or something!' YEAH!! :D Even though we don't feel that old it's so funny hearing how different we are to the girls. One of Sarah's statements was 'my favourite band is U2', and the girls were like 'who!!!!????' as many of them had no idea who they were!

The girls had fun just hanging out, talking and swapping mobile phone numbers.

Sacha invented a game for them which she called 'straw wars'. The object of the game was to be the first to blow the straw to the opposite side of the table. The girls really got into it with elimination heats and all!


After the final was battled out in 'straw wars' we paired the girls up randomly and had a hand pampering session, where they did each other's nails.

Even Sacha (our bikie 'lady', as she was known) got into it!

After our homemade 'cold rock' dessert everyone was ready for a bit of singstar action. Sarah loves this photo of her, with her 'Meatloaf face'.

The girls were getting into it when the leaders had their turn and were doing lots of back up dancing.

Sarah got booted off the mic so decided to join in the conga line!

At 1am we (the leaders) decided to turn into bed and told the girls it was time to start quietening down a bit. A few hours later they all finally went to sleep! We got them all up just before 8am, ready for our morning devotional.

Bethany (a leader from Hobart Stake) did a great devotional using duplo in an object lesson.

We then had a HUGE pancake breakfast. Amelia was so cute, getting very excited about the smiley faces she kept drawing on her pancakes with maple syrup. It was nice to see how the girls treated her and she had lots of fun.

Sarah, being the pig that she is, had to have THE biggest pancake of all and had to have it on a platter, rather that on a plate as it was so big!!! She was very happy that I caught it on camera! ;)

After breaky Pres. W. took a mini lesson about 'virtue' which was great. The girls were really listening and had some great answers, ideas and questions.

Sarah then talked about journal writing and showed us some of her journals from when she was growing up. She talked about how important it is to keep a journal and to not just write about events and people such as family and friends, but about feelings that you have and how great it is to look back on, and to see how things have changed. The girls then each made their own cute little scrap booked journal that they can keep adding to. During the night we had printed out some photos for them to put in their journal which they loved.




Bethany was known as 'the hole punch lady' so I had to make sure I captured a photo of our 'hole punch lady' as she was kept busy punching holes in paper and card for the girls all morning.

It was great seeing the different creations that the girls came up with.


The girls then went around getting everyone to sign their journals for them.



We finished off with lunch before everyone was picked up. It was a great overnighter and the girls seemed to have heaps of fun. As Logan said while we were making journals 'I've had so much fun - I want to stay here all year!!!'. It was lots of fun and the best thing was seeing how well the girls got along and how good they were. I'm looking forward to lots more sleep tonight, before the next overnighter - next weekend in Glen Huon with the 14-18 year olds!

My baby is one!

When I was pregnant I wasn't looking forward to having a baby at all. I'm not the type of person who gets 'clucky' and feels like I need to have a baby. I just get 'that feeling' that it's time for another one. After having Harri I really thought we had 'done our bit' by having another baby after Noah, and thought Harri would be the last. The feelings that I had when I knew we had to have just one more baby were overwhelming. I fought them for a long time, but am so glad now that we decided to have just 'one more' (and it really IS our last one!!!! There is not going to be another 'try for a girl' as everyone keeps asking us! :D).

When he was born I fell in love with him straight away. He was such a beautiful little baby. It was really hard for the first couple of months and there were MANY times when Aaron and I wondered what we had done! We thought we were crazy for having another one when it was like we still had a baby in Noah.

Now I can't imagine life without our little man. He makes us smile all day, every day. Whenever we are out I get strangers comment to me about how beautiful he is. I am always having people say 'you should enter him in baby competitions - he is so cute!'. We think so, but of course we are biased! Thank you Fiona for this beautiful photo of him. We absolutely love it!

Yesterday he sat up on the bench and 'helped' Aaron make his birthday cake. He loves sitting up on the bench whenever we are cooking.

This morning he really had no clue what was going on, but was very excited to have new books, new toys and a new ball!

Nanna and Pa (Aaron's Dad and Step-Mum) came to visit in the morning and by lunchtime he was already worn out and we found him asleep on the floor!! How cute do his new Dunlop volleys look!

We were hoping for a nice 'winter's day' as in not raining and warm enough that we could be outside for an hour or two, but unfortunately it rained most of the day. This meant that we had to change our plans of going to the Bike Centre, and had a family party at home instead. All of 'the boys' (as in my brothers and 'big' Alex) were at work, so all the girls and their kids came along and also Mum and Dad. We realised last week how lucky we are that Kobe's birthday is in school holidays. Jalen also has his birthday in school holidays, but Noah and Harri miss out by a couple of weeks.

We played some party games which hyped the kids up - even before they hit the sugar!

Everyone loves pass the parcel.....


that is unless you are Harri - talk about high maintenance!!! Harri would burst into tears whenever anyone else would get to unwrap the parcel and then wasn't happy at all that little Alex won the prize at the end.

The kids loved the party food.

Kobe isn't always the best eater, but he got stuck into the party food!!! He loved the spring rolls and chocolate crackles.


It was a fun day and nice to have most of the family here to help celebrate.

We can't believe you are already 1 Kobe!!! We love you so much and feel so lucky to have you in our family. How glad we are that we decided to 'just have one more'.

Exactly 12 months ago.....

..... to the exact minute! It's unbelievable to think how fast it has gone! We love you Kobe!

My Brothers

On Saturday while Fiona was doing our photo shoot, there was the perfect opportunity to get a photo of my brothers together. My boys love each of their Uncles - all for different reasons.

Uncle Jared is the fun one who stirs them all the time (and hypes them up!!) and loves to wrestle with them. Whenever Jared is around there is a lot of squealing and 'be quiet Harri!!!!' (from me!).

Although Jared is also a builder, they think Uncle Eden to be very clever to be able to build houses. They loved watching him build his own home from the ground up. Harri used to ask us over and over 'is Eden's house finished yet!?', whenever he knew we were going out to Mum and Dad's to visit.

Chrish is the kind Uncle who is always very generous and loves hanging out with the boys. They love to talk footy with him and think he is lots of fun as he always let them use his phone to play games on, and lets them borrow his Wii games. He always makes an effort to come home for special events such as baptisms, and blessings. Now that he has gone back 'home' to Sydney we will miss him lots, but it makes it easier knowing that he likes living in Sydney and is happy there. We are so glad that his health is much better and hope that now he is home he will be able to enjoy being able to live 'normally' again (if there is such a thing!). Can't wait till we see you again Chrish!

'The best kind of sleep under Heaven above, is under a quilt hand-made with love'

That is the quote that came with Noah's very special quilt that arrived today from Quilts 4 Kids. It is such a wonderful organisation that makes quilts for children in Australia who have a life threatening illness. Each square on Noah's quilt has been cross stitched by a different woman, in the theme of Noah's Ark and wild animals.

Some of the women sent a special letter about themselves, and two of them chose to do Noah a square because they had a grandson and son named Noah. Most of the stitchers were from Australia - with a few from Tassie (and I think we probably know one of them - thank you!! You know who you are!!!) and there was also one from the USA and another from Canada.

The quilt is so beautiful and special that we don't want to use it, but a letter came with it saying 'this blanket is meant to be used....so tell your family that it is okay if something gets spilled on it, because the love that comes with the quilt cannot be hurt by a little dirt and it can wash out'.

So now Noah has a beautiful quilt to get warm under during winter. It is polar fleece on the back, so it is lovely and warm.

Thank you to all the lovely women who stitched a square for Noah and for Linde for putting it all together. It's very touching that strangers would do something so special for Noah. We have met so many wonderful people since Noah has been born and feel very blessed that people would so such a special thing for him.

Eamon's Blessing

Yesterday we went to Devonport for Eamon's blessing. It was really lovely and nice to be there for it.

Eamon is such a cutie. He is only about 5 months old, but just about as heavy as Kobe! He is such a placid little man.

After church we went to Jared and Becky's for lunch and had to say goodbye to Chrish as he is leaving on the boat tonight and will be driving back to Sydney tomorrow :( It has been so great having him home for a month. It's also so good to see him so well again.

Hopefully now he can get his normal life back and get back into all those things that he used to love doing, but couldn't do all the time as he wasn't well. My boys love Uncle Chrish and are sad to know he is going back to Sydney, but we know we will see him again very soon. We will miss you Chrish!