The Punchbowl Devils

This weekend is the Primary School Basketball Championships. Jalen was asked to play on his school's grade 3/4 team and was so excited to play until he heard it was running over Saturday and Sunday. We had a talk about it and decided that we would let the school know he could play on the Saturday but not on Sunday and he was worried they wouldn't let him play, but they were more than happy for him to play just when he could.

One of the boys Mum's from school organised and coached the team. They borrowed some tops from her son's basketball team and were therefore called 'the devils'. They have been training for a few weeks one night a week after school. As usual Jay ended up being one of the shortest players on the team.

Today they are playing three games - starting at 8.50 am and the last game tonight is at 6.50 pm. The first game this morning was a bit early for Noah and he decided to sleep right through it as usual.

This morning they played against Mowbray Heights Primary - Aaron's old primary school. Aaron kept stirring Jay that he was going to go for Mowbray since it was his old school. It was a really rough and fast game and Mowbray won by quite a lot.

The boys were excited to go and watch and see all of Jay's friends on a Saturday.


The game this afternoon was against non other than Deloraine Primary School - my old primary school!! I then got to stir Jay that I was going to be going for them instead of Punchbowl ;) Aaron was excited when it turned out that Jay was number 5 which is actually Jalen Rose's number in the NBA.

Mum came along this afternoon and watched the game too. Kobe loved having her there.

Jay's teacher Kate also came along to watch as four of the boys were from her class. Jay was so excited to see her as she hasn't been at work this week and they have had a relief teacher. He was excited to tell her all the things they had been doing this week.

Mum and Kate must've been the lucky charm as they won this afternoon's game by 4 points. Jordan's Mum did a great job of coaching the boys. She kept telling them the main thing was to have fun and it didn't matter if they won or lost.

She made it lots of fun for them and was always encouraging them and the boys were excited as she brought them juice, lollies and chocolate for after the games! Tonight Jay will only be able to play half a game as he is also performing in The Boy from Oz at the Princess Theatre as part of the Punchbowl Primary School choir! I took him to see it last night so he could see what the show was about before being in it, so we had a very late night He is going to be VERY tired tomorrow.

Cold Spring BBQ

Today being a public holiday for Show Day, it was the perfect opportunity to get together for a BBQ. Lisa organised it earlier in the week and told me that there would be lots of 'cool' people meeting at the Tailrace park and asked us to come along (I guess that means she thinks we are cool - thanks Lisa!;). Harri kept asking me all day 'is Callum and Taj going to be there. I didn't know who was going to be there and told him that they might be as I didn't want to get his hopes up.

He was VERY excited when we arrived and he saw that ALL of his gym friends were there - Callum, Ty, Taj and Eli! It turned out that almost everyone that meets at the gym every morning were there. The boys were super excited to go to the Tailrace park as it's lots of fun with a great playground, including a maze.


The kids had heaps of fun running around it playing 'Star Wars'.

Kobe was so tiny in the huge big maze! He thought it was great running around with all the big kids.

Jalen cracked me up as we got in the van to leave. He asked 'is that baby with Gary and Lisa their baby!?'. I reminded him that it was Eden and he said 'I never knew they had a baby - when did that happen!!?'.

He couldn't believe that she is actually older than Kobe and he totally couldn't remember her being born! It makes me realise that we don't see Gaz and Lisa as often as we did when we were in the same ward as them at church.

Jay grew up with Phebe and Eliza so it was a total shock for him to know they had another little sister! You would think we live on other sides of the country or something - not the other side of town!

Flic and Rob had Corom with them today so it was really nice to see him, even though he wasn't have a great day. Every time I see him I'm amazed as to how huge he is. Hard to believe he was once that cute little 4 year old I was nanny for when we travelled to the USA to find treatment for him.

It's 'funny' to think about how much I loved working with him, and even wished that Aaron and I would have a child with autism as I loved working with him so much. I guess it's a case of that old saying 'be careful what you wish for'. I think working with Corom prepared me a lot for having Noah even though his needs are a lot different to Corom. Noah was the opposite of Corom today - he slept for most of the day including the whole time we were at the park. I had a feeling that meant he would wake up cranky later in the night which of course happened. When he sleeps for most of the day he is usually having lots of seizure activity, which means he is pretty cranky when he finally wakes up.

Despite it being Spring it was actually freezing all day today. We were considering going to the show until we realised how cold it was going to be and knew it wouldn't be fun for Noah being in the cold wind all day. Hopefully having a BBQ will persuade the weather to finally start warming up as it doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon!

The guys kept laughing at us girls sitting around talking and 'cackling' all afternoon - saying we sounded like a bunch of witches.

It was nice to catch up with everyone somewhere other than class at the gym. We will all be back there in the morning working off the BBQ :)

Boys!!!

When you have four boys you expect them to come home from school with holes in their knees, or grass stains and dirt all over them. You would expect that from boys - but not from grown men!!!

Yesterday Aaron got home from work and Jay yells out 'what is all that dirt on your back Dad!!?'. Aaron turns around and has a huge grass stain and dirt all over his shirt! He likes to get 'dressed up' for school and wears a shirt and tie most days which isn't always a good idea when you are teaching Sports Skills.

He is feeling VERY inspired with the new free high definition channels we recently got in Tassie. It's driving me insane as all he's watching now is sport. He is in heaven as he has followed American football, the NBA and American baseball ever since I have known him, but has never had the opportunity to really watch games live except for years ago when we had Austar for a while.

For Sports Skills yesterday he thought he would teach the kids some American football. Needless to say he got VERY involved in playing with them and came home very excited about it all. I wasn't so excited about his shirt!

He is playing again today and decided a shirt and tie wasn't really appropriate for playing American football in. Boys!!!

Heart Attack

Yesterday morning I opened up the blinds in our bedroom and Aaron yells 'a heart attack!!'. I started panicking as I thought he was telling me he was having a heart attack! Then I realised what he meant! Outside on our front lawn some sneaky people had come during the night and placed hundreds of cut out hearts on skewers in our lawn.

We are assuming it is someone or a group of people from church but really don't have a clue who it was.

The boys LOVED it and spent ages after church playing in them. The neighbours pulled up while we were out taking photos and asked us if it was a special day. I said 'I guess so!', but told them there was no special occassion but obviously some friends had come during the night to surprise us. I think they loved them as much as we did.

Harri kept saying 'we are lucky aren't we Mum? No one else has hearts in their garden!'.

Kobe thought it was fantastic and would've stayed out there all day if we let him.


This is actually the third or fourth time we've been heart attacked. The first time was the night after Noah was diagnosed with hydranencephaly. We brought him home from the hospital after the Dr gave us the news, and woke up the next morning to beautiful hearts all over the lawn. It really touched us as although people couldn't really help us it meant a lot to know that they were thinking about us.

It's so hard to believe that was just over 8 years ago! We have changed and learnt so much in those 8 years.

The Demons Prevail

Today was the long awaited footy rematch between the guys from church - the Devonport/Deloraine/Burnie guys V the Launceston guys. Last year Aaron umpired for half the game, and decided he wanted to again. This year he was very serious though and got all the gear from school including an umpire outfit from one of his students. Jalen decided he wanted to be the goal umpire and was practising his hand moves all night. I was NOT impressed with the state of the flags and couldn't help it, but had to wash them last night after this photo was taken! Aaron was stressing they would fall apart, but they held up well.

Supposedly the DDBs are named the Saints (or according to Ty and Cade they have also been called the 'Rabbitohs', 'Stingrays' and I believe they are now the 'Donkeys'!).

The Launnie boys are the Demons.

It's actually not an official church activity as it can't be because of insurance or something, but even though it's only in it's second offical year the 'Stake of Origin' footy match has a HUGE turnout!

Last year the Demons won and this year everyone was very excited to see what the outcome would be this time. The guys have had a few training runs before the game. Cade was unfortunately not able to play this year as he just had a knee reconstruction, but was a very serious coach!



Some other players weren't quite as serious as others! :)

The boys were excited for a big day at the footy. I don't think I saw Harri half the time as he was off playing with his mates.

Kobe just wandered around all day going over to everyone and anyone and helping himself to their food. You would think we didn't feed him or something!

The biggest shock of all was that after the wettest winter we have had in decades, the sun actually shone all day long! Kobe's face sure got the brunt of it today and has very rosy cheeks - sorry Kobe! Luckily for Noah we thought about taking the sun tent for him - more to shelter him from the wind than the sun. He enjoying having a big sleep and then woke up towards the end of the game.

Aaron gave them all a big talk at the beginning of the game. He was soooo serious that it cracked Toni and I up as he had his teacher voice on. He gave them the big talk about how it was the DDBs V Launceston but they are all 'brothers' and hopes they play fair and it doesn't matter who wins. He wasn't impressed with me as I then yelled out 'as long as it's Launceston!'. I got the dagger for that one!

There were even a couple of imports from the mainland just for the day. Chrish planned his holiday to come down for it, and Jim even flew down from Melbourne for the weekend to play. I was too pre-occupied at the time and missed a photo of Chrish getting the first goal!




Jay did a great job as goal umpire. He took it soooo seriously and didn't move the entire time.


After each quarter he would get together with Aaron to make sure they had the same score.



I think Aaron did a pretty good job umpiring the whole game by himself. I only heard of one person complaining about him which is disappointing as it's not a job a lot of others would want to take on I'm sure. I think he will be sore from doing all that running tomorrow.

This year the Devonport girls even did a couple of cheers!

While I don't think I actually watched even half the game it was great to spend some time in the sun, catching up with family and friends while watching a little bit of footy.

The papparrazi was out in full force today - including Fiona! Seems like everyone has digital SLRs now! I'm sure everyone got some great action shots.


In the end the Launnie boys won with 77 points to 64. I heard the DDBs are back in training starting on Tuesday for next years game! ;)