Some highlights of the Christmas holidays so far

Friends, family and good food always make for an awesome Christmas time. We had a pretty relaxed Christmas Day. And by relaxed I mean really relaxed - well enough for me to fall asleep on the couch in the afternoon only to be shot in the eye by my darling son with his new water pistol. And his answer was "Daddy told me to". He's learning really quickly about shifting blame.
Christmas Day involved a very excited 4 year old running down the hallway checking the tree then running back to our room to very loudly exclaim that Santa had left lots of presents under the tree.
I asked him if perhaps he had seen the huge sack on the end of his bed as he jumped up out of it, and so off he ran again to find it..... the rest of the day consisted of opening pressies, church, eating, water fight, sleeping on the couch (well me anyway) and then eating some more.
It was a lovely sunny day amongst a week of not so flash weather that caused floods around the country.


We had Steve's parents here for Christmas day which was lovely. We had managed to have an early christmas with my Family in Dunedin due to a sad occasion which was the death of my grandfather. We traveled down to his funeral and had an early christmas with everyone the night before the funeral. It was lovely to have a Christmas with all my family together despite the circumstances. Here's some pics from the Dunedin Christmas....

The boys all dressed up ready to go to the funeral.

Well here's the rest of our holiday in photos
Puzzleworld

Kids fishing day out - Jack's first Salmon

Giveaway Day at Sew Mama Sew

I have made a pact to try and revive my blog and post at least once a fortnight. so here goes my first post and it's all about the sew Mama sew giveaway day. Over at Renovating our Foursquare she is giving away some lovely fabric of your choice from the sew mama sew shop. I really want too win it.
Check it out http://woodlandfoursquare.blogspot.com/2010/12/giveaway-day.html

check out all the other giveaways over at sew mama sew.

What a slacker

I have been. I haven't updated for ages. Life has been really hectic around here lately. So much has happened I almost don't know where to begin. Charlie is just about 8 months and is into everything. He got his first tooth on Christmas day.

I have officially started selling my kids clothes although at this stage it is still low key, I have some stock in The Musterers Hut here in Twizel and in Ecomoon Boutique in Nelson. My label is called Two little Taniwhas. I am currently working on more stock for Ecomoon as I have only managed to get a few samples sewn for the shop so far.
I am currently working with a designer who is designing some labels for me. Looking forward to getting those printed, and will be working on getting a website/blog up and running some time soon.
We had some Our friends Jason, Tracey, Cass and Thomas come visit the week before Christmas which was great. We spent time at the lake, the river feeding the salmon. We met them at Antenatal group when we had Jack. It was great, Jack and Cass play so well together and apparently Jack is planning on marrying Cass.


We also spent alot of time leading up to Christmas making pressies for everyone. We had decided that we would attempt to make the majority of pressies. So Steve made Jack, Reuban and Sam some handy Manny toolboxes. I made Here are the christmas Photos we took of the boys. I made Riley some Clothes, and Brayden a Lego mat. I made Mum and Marilyn a merino top each. I also made some crayon rolls - 1 for Daniel Robertson, 1 for cass and 1 for Thomas.


Here are our christmas photos of the boys

Christmas here was a very laid back affair. My mum joined us and then Steve's parents joined us for tea. We had a lovely lunch sitting out on the deck in the lovely sun.
The boys were very spoiled, but they had a great time. We spent some time down at the Lake in the afternoon to burnoff some of that Lunch.


Marilyn and Stewart arrived down for a visit over New years. Steve and Stewart did some firewooding and took Jack fishing. We went down to the lake and had a picnic and a play.


This week the Cropps visited and we spent time doing all the same stuff. It was just like old times sitting out on the Deck having a BBQ with the Cropps and the Thompsons, only there were 10 Extra children and we were eating way better than in the old days. There was 10 Extra children because we also had our nephew Ethan staying as well. (normally only 9 children)



So things have finally settled back to normal, Jack is back at Preschool, Steve is back at work, and I am frantically sewing, packing and de cluttering as we are moving again in another month to a long term rental as this one has been Sold.

Steam and crafts

mmmm crafts. With crafts in the title - I had to go... plus it was a long weekend so was a good excuse to do something. So last Monday we all piled in the car and drove down to pleasant point to go on the steam train. "me go on train" Jack said the whole way. Which kinda wore a bit thin after about half an hour. The train was the old Fairlie Flyer and it has been so well looked after. It steamed into the station with a big puff of Steam that billowed up and sat just under the ceiling of the station. We got on and Jack was soooo excited. The carriages were lovely inside with beautiful big leather seats. There was a bit of a queue getting on so we missed out on getting one of the private carriages so we sat in a public one - but managed to get our own wee private one on the way back.
Jack was very impressed when the train let off a big puff and a toot toot.
We got to the other end and looked around the crafts stalls and bought some devine chocolate brownie Fudge. mmmm Fudge. Jack played with the Alpacas and went on the jigger and the wee play train and we looked through another train. we also had a wee look at the railcar which we were going to try and go for a ride on - but always seemed to be full.
So Jack spent the rest of the day shouting "All aboard, toot toot".

Waitaki power station 75th Anniversary

Last weekend was Labour Weekend so we packed up the car and a picnic and headed to Kurow to go through the Waitaki power station. They had a free open day because it was their 75th anniversary. It was a really cool experience. It 's hard to believe the stuff that the construction workers that built it went through. Although as Steve points out it was during the great depression and they were probably the lucky ones, because at least they had jobs. Some of the conditions that they worked in were horrendous. You wouldn't even dream of building a dam with a pick and shovel these days.
Here are some pics from our day ( it was a lovely day although a tad windy)

Well we made it...

to Twizel. The day we arrived it was snowing ( not very heavily - but still snowing) which reminded me of how extreme the weather can be here. We have been so busy since we arrived - unpacking, sorting, exploring, enrolling and more. Jack has just started preschool on Tuesday. We couldn't get him into Kindy as there is a rather large waiting list. So hopefully he will start Kindy next year, but in the mean time he is doing 3 afternoons in preschool ( afternoons was all that was available) He seems to really be enjoying it. It's always a mission trying to get him to leave. We moved into a house which was on the market and has now been sold. Although the new people sound like they might be keen to keep us on as tenants, but we have also put an offer on a house - so a bit unsure as to what is happening with the living arrangements at the moment but hopefully things will be sorted soon and we can start to settle down. I have started a sewing class at the school to meet some people and have just started sewing some stuff to sell at the local christmas market they have here. Looking forward to the summer and lazing around at the lake.