Papa Sam & baby bear's birthdays

Hi All,


Mama Fern here, just posting a couple of quick pics of the cakes made for our youngest, and for Papa Sam this year (neither made by me, either.  Our youngest got a German Panzer tank, courtesy of Papa Sam's amazing cake making skills, while our little Druichi made Papa Sam a bookworm cake.

Love to all,

Mama Fern

What we did over the christmas break

We've been so busy on these holidays so I've managed to snap a whole bunch of pictures of some of the stuff we've accomplished around the house.

Weeding

More weeding

Pruning

Staking apple tree and even more pruning.

Tire wall and Natives to prop up the bank

Neighbours and us removed fallen tree and cleaned out next to the avacados.

Small row planted alongside steps to backyard.

Free seedlings planted out in back backyard.

More free seedlings in 3rd raised tire garden in top backyard.

Evie's room done. Aquatealish colour.

Ashely's room done. Bright GREEN

Entrance to girl's dual bedrooms.

Evei's wall above bed,

Sore room behind gril's dual bedroom with door so girl's have more privacy.

Boys hall triple bedroom.

Jonathan's room done. White (he would have chose black otherwise...so not black)

Max's room. Picton Blue

Max and Jonathan's wall.

Aidan and Max's Wall, Tree Frog Green.

Green Rhubarb out the back is flourishing. The chickens had decimated this before I built the fence next to the shed.

Bike Rack, Weed Eater, Puffins and Pumice towers.

Stage 1 of cleaning up the garage. I made a bike rack, all the bikes are nice and neat.

Didn't look at all strange riding down the street with this on the back.

Fern made some Puffins.Nom.

Decorations for the Garden: Pumice Towers from one of our friends up the road.

Ahhh weekends without children

Yup, it's been a weekend without kids, so what amazing jobs did I get done round the house?

Umm, not a lot, but I got another 4 quests done, 23 levels and my nails are now a reverse French manicure of dark purple and neon orange :).  Yup, I hit the bonus xp weekend on Runescape hard, while Sam studied his little heart out and got through his final assignment :)

It's nice to take a break sometimes

Otherwise, it's well into spring now, and the garden is blooming furiously.  Not long until the roses are all open, but my Dublin Bay, Iceberg and my daughter's Sweetheart rose are all in bloom.

Some of the flowers in the front garden

Sweetheart living up to it's name

The ledge garden outside the kitchen window

Anyway, I'll try and post more soon, but for now, only 10 hrs of bonus xp left :)

Love,
Mama Fern

Riding along in my automobile

Just a few pics regarding the co-op we're a member of.

a full load of Dry goods and fresh fruit and feges for the week. 60kg on back of bike.

"and I already went to the gym today."

What it looks like in the larder. Zombie apocapolypse here we come.

and the Pantry.

--
Papa Sam

I built a fence and painted some walls

Ok so my first post here for a while, been working on the gaming blog, but I did a couple of things in the last week. So I painted the boys walls and built a fence to keep the chickens aout of the front and top planting area of the backyard. Then snipped all their flight ffeathers off one wing each. Chicken apartheid.

Aidan's room, a nice tree frog green. one tester pot 20ml covers the whole wall, need to get another and We're all done here.

Max's room, in Picton bay blue, another testerpot and we're all done with this wall as well.

I'm building a fence yo, so chickens can stay on da uvverside.

--
Sam

Dashing toward the end of the year

Hi All,

Well, I was just starting to get into the habit of posting regularly when things went into a bit of a whirl in our lives, and the blog well and truly went on the backburner...  But we're still here and still keeping busy.  For those that know us well in real life, we're coping fine and moving foward :)

The kids haven't quite finished making their aprons, although the two girls did theirs

We also had our youngest daughter's birthday party.  She's really keen on Taekwon Do, and was turning 10, so I did my best to make a dobok (Taekwon Do uniform) and put what I'm hoping is actually the number 10 in Korean on it.

 She got her first Warhammer Fantasy army for her birthday - Dark Elves.  She's been so busy putting them together.

We raised up the shelves in our storage room, and still have some work to do to turn them into a large wall, but it's already giving the girls a whole heap more privacy.

And, what is this?  An artist busy at work?

Yup, Papa Sam is busy painting our boys walls with some test pots, so that we can see how we like the colours, then we'll be completely painting the walls and brightening up the place.  This colour is called "Tree Frog" by Resene...  Gorgeous :)  (the paint isn't bad either)  ;)

We've also put up some gorgeous blue thermal curtains in our room and the living room - it makes a huge difference to the house

Oh yeah, and I learned that I make a MEAN plate of pork ribs!  Yum!  Might I mention that this pic is dedicated to two absolutely lovely vegan regular readers I know  ;)  You know who you are....  Mmm, pork ribs marinated in ginger, garlic, soy sauce, red wine and sugar....  DELICIOUS!

As for the rest of the news from the past month or two, I spent a wonderful week in the South Island with family, getting to know parts of the country I haven't seen before and spend time with my awesome cousin and her family.  Thanks so much for having me down there to annoy you, guys!

As for Papa Sam, he's busy playing wargames most of the time, so you can find out what he's been up to on our Warhammer blog - http://napalmelfrebelscum.blogspot.co.nz/

I think that's about it...  Here's hoping I can get more posted up here again soon! 

Love to All,
Mama Fern