July Memories

It feels like I only just did my June Memories post! I'm having a hard time realising August has arrived already; July honestly FLEW by!

: : Some of the awesome people I was blessed to spend my birthday with : :

: : Working on our media projects at ACTIV8 : :

: : One month today : :
Final lunch at ACTIV8 before leaving

: : Packing himself to come home with me : :

: : New little cousin : :

: : Incredible weekend at the Fearless Faith Conference with Josh and Sean McDowell : :

: : He needed a cuddle when I arrived back from the conference : :

Bryce's Birthday Party

Despite my good intentions, the planning for Bryce's birthday party got left to the last minute. With a team effort (and a day without school work!) we managed to pull it off quite nicely, I think!

On the day preceding the party, we went to several shops, purchasing the needed items for games and lunch, wrapped the pass the parcel, decorated the house, and made some of the food. Meanwhile, Mum dropped Jarrod off at technology to finish his project (which didn't quite make the last day of class the afternoon before), and picked up the de Boers' two Maltese dogs to look after since their owners were away. (Well, all except for Dieuwe, and he had to work all day, and was going to be out late that night so it would be good for the dogs to come here, see some people and get some exercise.)  

The morning of the party, none of us were up as early as we should have been, so we had a fast-paced two or three hours, cleaning the house, finishing the games (i.e. spread two bags of chocolate bars through the sandpit), and preparing the food. Unfortunately this party lacked much of the baking which usually characterizes any party I organise! 

The day before the party, we knew of only one family who planned to attend, however despite that, we ended up with a good turnout! 

 : : Lunch was somewhat late in coming, but hopefully it was worth the wait! : :

: : Unwrapping lots of cool presents - thanks everyone! : :

After reading this post on the Wissmanns' blog, I felt inspired to try my own hand at piping chocolate to put on a cake. (Historically, icing cakes hasn't exactly been my speciality.) And no, this isn't an ice cream cake; one new thing at a time, right? Maybe next time . . .! I printed a stencil (search Google images for a colouring picture lol) of the train, and also the text. We didn't have any wax paper so I substituted with baking paper, taping it to the bench, with my printed paper underneath. I melted chocolate buttons, and piped them through a plastic bag. Then the paper went into the freezer until I was ready to put the chocolate onto the cake. Overall, I was quite pleased. Next time though, I think I'll put the paper onto some kind of tray in the freezer; pipe the chocolate thicker - I had trouble with it cracking; and do the text cursive, so they're all joined together. It was a bit awkward having so many small, delicate pieces and I was glad I had two sets of the text!

: : Singing Happy Birthday : :

Visit to Lyndal's

Diana and Lyndal brush Marmalade

 My mum and Lyndal met at school when they were 8- or 9-years-old, and they've been friends since. Lyndal used to live about 20 minutes away from us, and we spent a lot of time with her. Now she lives near Albany (must have been about four or five years now I think!), close to an hour's drive away, and we see her significantly less often.

Mum organised for us to go up and visit her on Monday, April 30th.

I took a couple of my textbooks, fully intending to get some school work during the drive, but I'm not sure that I even got through two pages!


The view

 I did take a few photos out the windows, but none of them were particularly great (rainy weather, etc.).

Finally we arrived. It was rather windy and I began to wish I'd brought a warmer sweater! We weren't sure what the weather might do, so we decided to ride first while it was dry, then have lunch.

Currently Lyndal just has one small pony (Marmalade), so only Danielle down got to ride; I became photographer, while Mum and Jarrod looked after Maria and Laura, and Mickey (the dog).

Bryce

In stark contrast to us older ones when we were her age, Maria was very apprehensive to get on Marmalade. What I mean is, when I was about two I think, I preferred to ride the thoroughbred ex-race horse over the 14hh ponies, and as a baby, Monique would crawl around the paddock after the ponies! (And yeah, she would be kinda dirty afterwards...). Maria, however, would cry when you tried to put her on Marmalade! Although, we did eventually manage to get her to stay on long enough for a photo (see image below).

The rest of my siblings were more enthusiastic! Danielle got to ride on her own - an unexpected lesson!


Diana's turn





After everybody had had a turn, Marmalade was returned to her paddock, and we went back inside (out of the wind!!!) for lunch.



They're kinda small, but I love the fern backdrop!



Danielle



The not-so-excited Maria



After lunch, Lyndal taught us to play a new game - No Thanks! You have a deck of cards numbered from 1 up to I'm not sure what (sorry), and a pile of counters. One card gets put face-up on the table, with the rest in a stack upside down next to it. The counters get distributed among the players. Going around in a circle, each player gets to choose between picking up the card, or putting down a counter. Now the point of the game is to have the lowest number of points, however, you can't play if you run out of counters! So eventually you must pick up the card, which also means you get all the counters that have been put on top of it. Then you need a number sequence (eg. 1,2,3,4; 15,16,17), which is to help lower your number of points (eg. if you get 17, then you get 16, 15, and so on). but there is only one of each number, and all players have a chance to pick up each card. So you have to pick the timing - get a fairly low card (or one that fits in with your sequence), when there are as many counters as possible on top of it, but before anybody else picks it up! Well hopefully that gives you the idea... ;)

I will quickly not that some of my siblings spent more time digging into the large bowl of popcorn rather than playing!! (okay, well I suppose you can't blame Maria...:P)



Marmalade





Finally, Mum announced it was time to leave. We said goodbye, gathered our stuff (which can be quite an undertaking with young children who drop things everywhere!!!)

When we got home, I found myself rather tired, not so helpful when I've got heaps of school work waiting to be done (yeah, despite driving for quite a while, I actually didn't accomplish much work!

 



 

Group Photo

Wenesday

Hey. =)

Aunty Melissa came to drop off Jesse (their dog) in the morning, as they were going on holliday and Nana was looking after him.

Probably shopped during the day.
 Have no idea what else we did.

Bee