Easterish

Okay. Maybe we got just a little bit Easterish after all.

1. The bunny's bum pancakes as spied on Pinterest.

2. The rabbit's foot pancakes as invented in our kitchen this week end.

 

 3. Bunny's bum and rabbits' feet pancakes with ice cream for breakfast. This is a once a year day!

 4. An embarrassment of chocolate and long ears for all. We were one egg short when the bunny went to dole out the booty on Easter eve so one big boy got an I.O.U. from the bunny. ( I suspect there had been a raid on the big high cupboard but have taken the path of least resistance and claimed responsibility for not thinking clearly at the supermarket. Imagine such a thing!)

 5. An embarrassment of sugar or maybe just enormous excitement in the bloodstream of the short one. This year Bunny trumped Santa!

 6. Ye ol' talcum powder bunny prints as delivered at midnight every easter. It never gets old!

7. My favourite ritual and family celebration of the year spent with my favourite people in glorious sunshine and all I had to bake was cupcakes!!!

Happy easter week end to you all!

The Ghost of Easters Past

So here we are at Easter already. 

Another year is speeding by like a 15 year old bombing a sick hill on his Bustin Mechanic. 

(Trans. :- boy skateboarding with unnecessary speed down a steep bitumen road.) Note how I try to fit in with the local dialect around here?

This year I feel very happy to see Easter. 

Two years ago I came home from hospital on Easter Sunday. Two days ago I got a big pat on the back and congratulations from my surgeon for getting to the third year and past the danger zone. I'm laying both arms firmly on wood as I type this.

Last year I kept remembering the year before. This year I'm celebrating being here on THIS day regardless of what the future brings. 

There have been no beautiful crafty Easter things unless you count the fifty or so roboturkeys made with year 8's before the holidays. I glazed mine in a pseudo Bitossi orange but didn't get it out of the kiln in time for this Easter.

Next year.

It's been good to enjoy home without the rush of school lunches and the guilt of after school care.
We've done a lot in two weeks. The small one has taken to having a brekkie tea some days with me out the front with the nanna tea set.

We have loitered around GOMA a lot and been back to see the animal sculptures in the Falling Back to Earth exhibition more than once. If you're local it is well worth the visit just for the serenity of that blue lake and the photo opportunities.

BYO animal.

 It's free for all the under 13's which makes it very economical for such a big exhibition. While you're there, the upper level houses an eclectic exhibition of all the State year 12 finalists for the Excellence in Art Award in 1013. If there's one thing kiddos will look at in an art gallery, it's other kiddos' art.

Like many valiant parents, I also survived the Lego movie. There were bits I laughed out loud at, others I felt intimately familiar with and parts where the five year old was burrowing her face into my shoulder in response to the sensory overload. SO many spots! If you did it in 3D or LSD, I respect but do not envy you.

None of this is very Easterish. In fact the only Easterish thing around here is the stash of eggs in the Big-High-Cupboard. It's been more about seeing some truly good friends, hanging out with my children and family, making memories and enjoying this beautiful city. The weather is sublime, the company even warmer and the next year lies undiscovered and full of hope and new life.

Happy Easter to you all!

A Fullsome Life

It's been a while hasn't it?

A lot has happened and nothing much has happened either. You know how it is.

There have been some changes. The stalwart Birkis have been thrown over for the new old Saltwaters. They are a bit lovely to wear and since summer just won't go away.....

This is the floor at work not our bathroom after a bad eyeshadow moment

 There has been much handling of clay at work and fish are the critter du jour it seems. Here is my demo and there are substantial additions to the creepy skull collection too.

Meanwhile the ladies have settled into a delightful year of sisters only at their primary school and are handling the top and bottom rungs of the school ladder happily enough. Today was free dress day. I don't like free dress day. Somebody always takes issue with what is being worn, be it them or me. It's just more laundry I say. The school "nooniform" is the way of no arguments and peace among the ladies.

 Lala and I have been watching The Block. I guess that means we're Blockheads but it's better than finding her watching Home and No Way and drooling into her nooniform.
We like to check out the art in the background of the Block shops. We saw something like this in one of the challenges. So we made one for ourselves. This stuff is easy and everywhere at the moment. Just splash colours all over your canvea or have a beautiful small assistant do it for you, then chalk a shape over the top and colour the canvas outside the lines white. Easy Peasy, lemon squeeeezy!

Then Poopsie here went and turned all five on us. (At this point the phone was commandeered by a teen who had coveted it for his 15th birthday. He installed something hipster on the camera and I was too agog with birthdays to notice.) There was yet another dodgy rainbow cake, cream thrown over it in the boot of the car and dollar shop butterflies applied liberally. They are SO easy to please when they are little.

I forget where she got the ding in the forehead but we painted a daisy over it for the party so her friends wouldn't think she was a battered sav.

I swear chillun only taste with their eyes when they are small. 

 The big boys constructed a sheet fairy tent thing in the trees which kept all the wee-uns happy for the afternoon. You have to love a good peg and sheet construction. It never gets old.

So she rode off into a new year of being five with all the sugary pinky sweetness that was attached.

A week later these two turned fifteen. 

I took them to see a contemporary version of Hamlet where he was just another difficult whingey teenager. They loved it and went home to proceed to fence with each other over the cake. 

So it's been busy and tiring and fulsome. There have been celebrations and blow ups and laundry.... always the laundry. The mother who strained organic sweet potato through a moulie for her infants is long gone. I leave you with the contents of a rushed shop before going out somewhere without the boys one night. They "cooked" their own dinner.

Paper to wrap present for the party we were off to, Three McCain's pizzas to fulfil the tastes and appetites of all three boys, muesli bars to keep them out of the pantry after dinner, a plunger for the blocked shower and medicinal wine for mother.

Ah, Life- she is always changing!