Skyfire

Last weekend was the local radio stations firework display. It is called skyfire here in Canberra. So I rallied the neighbours and off we went. We had a beautiful picnic for dinner and then waited for the show to start. It was a pretty good show. But I have been spoilt after spending many new years at a friends unit on Sydney harbour. But it was still a great show. The boys LOVED it!

Nath got a few photos using his mobile

Love hearts! They also had cubes and smiley faces! Oh! And a saucepan! The things got really silly. Cleon thought she saw a penis. I thought I saw two boobs but Paula who has just finished her treatment for breast cancer swears she only saw one! (She has a wicked sense of humour and is an absolutely gorgeous woman!)

Pretty colours

Good shot from a phone!

Lola, Eva and the boys. Do you know there are infinite ways to wear a glow stick!

I hope I dont see a photos like this in 15 years time after they have been to a rave!

How crazy is this child????

Subtraction

With Daddy away Mummy was left in charge of homework. This week we were subtraction numbers from 20! And well, I ran out of fingers so we got out the pegs! Grade one is hard!

An iviromet poster

For news this week Matthew had to make a poster about what he and his family do to help the environment and then present it to the class. We sat down early in the week to discuss what the Rickard Family does. We worked out the we recycled our recyclables, we left out compost bin back in Melbourne, young Rickard's were very bad at electricity conservation and we had more than enough trees in our yard to combat our carbon footprint. But one thing the Rickard household has that many houses don't is a grey water system. So we decided that is what he should do a poster on. I left him alone with his purple pencil. And this is what he produced......... A flow chart!!!!! You will probably recognise the washing machine on the left hand side of the paper. This flows on to the purple bin (as demonstrated by the purple arrow!). This then flows into the sprinkler and onto our beautiful garden! (Anyone interested in their own Grey Water Gator my neighbour Cleon sells them!)
My absolute favourite part of this poster is the bottom bit. (If you are trying to read what he has written try using phonetic 'Strayan. And you should work it out!) It says "Recycling water. Good for the environment and saving water. Now, Aunty Teesh if you are reading this you may have to lose your pommy accent for a minute to get the pronunciation down!
I am so proud of my boy. I may have put the idea in his head but the graphics and the slogan were all his own work. And brilliant if you ask me!

2010 Balloon Festival

It's that time of year again....Balloon festival. And as usual Nana and Poppy Rickard had times a visit to coincide! This year Cleon and Michelle thought that they might just be able to get up in time to join us! However when they called at 6.30am from the festival we were all still in bed asleep!!! So we didn't really have a choice then, we HAD to get up and go!

Ben was initially scared of the kookaburra but he warmed up to it pretty quickly.

Nanna and the boys. Oh and the operator of the Kookaburra doing the rabbit ears behind Nanna!

(P.S check Rye Rye's face!)

Good morning! All of our smiley faces!

A gorgeous morning in the Berra. Overcast and misty!

How is this for amateur photographer! I've taken a page out of my friend Nicole's book and am going for an artistic angle here!

Gets even better with the added fire!

Floating away into the mist!

Cleon and Michelle started it by suggesting to the boys they should hold up a balloon.......

Cleon got a bit better........

Poppy showed em how to do it! (anyone else think that is a really natural pose for him?!)

And then he got even better!

Someone obviously had some gas to spare so thought they would provide some warmth!

Spelling homework

How times have changed! My grandad did his on a slate with the threat of a caning if he got it wrong. I did mine in my book, reading from my word bear. Matthew has to do his spelling words in his homework book AND THEN practise typing them on the computer in Word. Not only must he practise spelling them he must spell them in different fonts!
I wonder how long till he finds the spell check button!

That crazy lady on Gininderra Drive

Yesterday a grasshopper hopped into the car through my open driver side window! He landed on the floor of the passenger side. I was hoping he was either dead enough or stunned enough to not move! However he was obviously stunned and therefor stupid as he started to hop around the passenger side of the car. So first of all the crazy lady was squealing and flapping her arms inside her white Holden Captiva. However as she had her precious son in the car she thought she should do the sensible thing and pull over and get the grasshopper out of the car before she caused an accident. However getting a hopping mad grasshopper out of the car is not so easy! Especially when you are a full grown wuss!
So I, oh! I meant the crazy lady, tried to get the bag the grasshopper was sitting on out. But you guessed it it hopped further into the car. This action resulted in lots of hand flapping, squealing and running on the spot beside Gininderra Rd (a major road in Canberra by the way!) The crazy lady then grabbed a Cheesecake shop calendar (i wonder how that got there, I haven't been there in ages!!!!) and tried to flick the grasshopper out. Again this involved lots of squealing, flapping and jumping up and down. By this stage I am pretty sure the grasshopper was in fits of hysterics!
Finally, when the crazy lady asks her three year old son if he would like to help Mummy get the grasshopper out, the grasshopper gives her a look of disgust and helps himself out via the open door,
Crazy lady gets back in her car and was last seen driving towards the Spence area!

It happened to me!

All throughout my swim coaching career I could NEVER understand how i was left with random odd shoes at the pool. I could not understand how a child could go home and not realise that they only had one shoe on! Better yet I would think to myself ...."When I am a Mum I would never let my kids forget one shoe!" Now many years later I have to admit my guilt and realise that I have figured it out! It's because they aren't wearing their shoes when they leave! Now how did I get caught out you ask? Well the school requested that the children take thongs to the swimming carnival (I guess they have invented OH&S since i left the workforce!) And seeing how the boys had two hours of school before they left for the swimming carnival I sent them to school in their runners. However, neither of them brought them home. Well actually Ryan brought one home! But one shoe is only useful to a one legged man!
Now some of you may be aware that Ryan has a shoe disappearing thing. Last year I bought him Ben 10 sandals which he loved and they just disappeared one day. We searched the house and yard for them. We quizzed him constantly, did he leave them here? Did he leave them there? We asked the back door neighbours if they had found them (as we thought he may have thrown them over the fence!). We wondered if perhaps Barkley had chewed them so well there were no scraps left. In the end we put it down to the worlds greatest mystery. Fast forward six months, and there I am leaning over the front step railing yelling at the boys to come inside when a flash of black caught my eye from deep within the agapanthus. Guess what I found...... Ryan's Ben 10 sandals! God knows how they got there as Ryan swears black and blue he didn't put them there. And guess what, it gets better, they had been lost so long they no longer fit him!
So it sounds like Ryan is always going to have a thing with losing shoes. I had just better get used to it!