Mid-Year Random Roundup...

Hello friends!!

So, as I'm sure you've come to expect, its been a long time since I've popped into this blog or paid it any attention at all!  I've been thinking about blogging, honestly I have... but life always seems to get in the way :)

So please enjoy this completely random catch up (mostly in grainy iPhone pictures) on the last 6 months!  Warning - this post is positively laden with photos!!!

In January, Alex and I scooted off to Sydney to catch up with family and friends....  We met my completely gorgeous new baby niece, Lily and I was very happy to get LOTS of cuddles :)  Alex loves babies and he was totally smitten - I think the feeling was mutual....

And here's Alex, Ella and Lily chilling out together:

They had such a fun time :)

While I was there I also met my Sydney bestie's gorgeous little boy, Mihalis - isn't he beautiful!!  I was so  busy snatching cuddles, that I completely forgot to take a photo!!  Fortunately, at a catch up with my old school buddies, my friend Faith shot this little gem:

And while I'm at it, here's a photo with some of my old school buddies and all our kids (its fortunate that photos don't have sound, as Alex was in full meltdown after poking himself in the eye with a pipe, hence his back being turned to the camera... and I'm pretty sure Mihalis was crying too - although his sweet little baby cries would be totally eclipsed, so intense was Alex's hysteria!)



Due to extreme weather in Queensland, we were unable to fly back on our booked flight and Alex actually missed his first day of School!  After a call to the School we were all good to go for the following day though, so here he is all ready to go on his first day...  doesn't he look so grown up?

And his first day in his new sports uniform:

While we were in Sydney, Boofy painted our master bedroom with my chosen colour (which I finally decided on - you can read about my painting paralysis here!)  Just for a refresher, here's what it looked like at that time:

And after the paint job in my chosen gray, it was very bare still, but we'd made progress none the less!!  (Changes have happened since then though, so I'll try to write more on that soon!)



For Easter this year, I really wanted to do a bit of decorating (having still not come to terms with putting the Christmas decorations away - boo!!!) - so Alex and I got busy with some little eggs I'd bought post-Easter last year on sale....  these ones are my favourite:





And since this is a completely separate room, we broke out a different colour scheme in this one:







But my ultimate favourites were these cute little nests....  they look so real!!

Around this time also I got a hurried call at work from a respiratory specialist Boofy had been seeing - he'd done a routine blood test a few days earlier as part of a 6 month post check up from his hospital visit last year - and the Pathologist had picked up that he had dangerously low salt levels.  The Specialist told me he needed to be taken to hospital immediately, and that he was in danger of seizures and fatality....  (I nearly had my own fatality to deal with at that point!)  So off to hospital we went - they took him off all medication and broke it all down, they thought he may have been misdiagnosed for an unusual condition 10 years ago... and on it went.  Boofy was in bad shape during his visit, and I don't mind telling you I was very worried:

It turned out he was correctly diagnosed, but over medicated - this had caused his low salt levels...  So the stint in hospital regulated it all again and he was cleared to come home.  This then prompted some fairly hilarious doctor and patient exchanges in our household, whereby Boofy was informed his xrays showed "he has a slow heart beat and his bones have turned black.... he's going to need an operation and lots of needles"....  Poor Boofy - as if he hadn't been through enough!!!  Hahaha...

Somewhere in between all this, Alex had his first ever school holidays... which of course means a sleepover with his besties!  To keep the kids occupied, I went all MacGyver and made them this marble race track out of old pool noodles and an empty beer carton:

They loved it!!

Boofy also had a birthday - Alex, in his wisdom, decided Daddy needed a stick on beard and mo for his birthday....  he actually chose this himself...  so hilarious!  (He wanted to stick it on Daddy while he was sleeping so he woke up with it, but I managed to talk him out of that!)

And Alex and I made a trip to Seaworld:





I completely cleared and replanted the vege garden (AGAIN!!!) in preparation for the Winter garden....

....unfortunately only to nearly break by back a few short weeks later removing dreaded nut grass that had actually pushed up through the wet newspaper I'd topped the bed with.... sooo frustrating!!!  Oh well....  It looks a bit different to this now - I'll try to post some more up to date pics soon.

A month or two back I also decided something else needed completely clearing too... so after a couple of years of having long hair, I hacked it all off again.....

....and went for a shorter style (its a lot shorter in the back than the front):



With my 40th Birthday Party imminent, we got a lot done around the house, and I finally fulfilled my dream of a pergola ceiling covered in a sea of fairy lights.... It started out like everyone's worst Christmas nightmare:



And I couldn't even tell you how many minor electric shocks I got during this process, but it was worth it in the end.... that is 150 metres of fairly lights right there!!  Quite a feat for Boofy and I if we do say so ourselves!!

The day before my party (of course!) was the book character parade at Alex's school....  There was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing on what he would go as, but in the end he decided on Harry Potter (he was one of about thirty on the day!! Haha)....  I bought the glasses and robe from the Harry Potter shop at Movie World (thank goodness for season passes - which meant I could just pop through the gates on my way home one day, dash in and dash out!)  I picked up the tie in our local Op Shop for $2, and the white shirt was one he already had.  The wand was all hand made by myself and Alex - and I LOVED how it turned out (we made three at a time)....  I got the idea from the very talented Michelle at Falafel and The Bee, and you can see her tutorial here....  Check out my little Harry:

And our marvellous wands...

He also went as Harry to my fancy dress birthday party the next day (the shirt with vest was the same as the one he wore to his Baptism back here....  I bought two sizes at the time and the larger one fits him now!  The glasses were also noticeably more lopsided than the day before....) Here he and I are on the night - I was dressed up as Eddy from Absolutely Fabulous (more party photos to come soon):

So there you go!  A bit of a random roundup of what's been happening since I 'saw' you last...  hope you enjoyed it!

Bye for now :)