Fourth of July!

Happy Independence Day to any Americans reading this!!! =D

Visitors for dinner

Note: I'm unsure of the actual date I wrote this...
~~~~~~~~~
 We invited the de Boer family to come to our place for dinner tonight, the 5th of May.



Most of the day was filled with the usual ‘Saturday things’: cleaning, vacuuming, washing, ironing. And I actually managed to bake(!), I made 5 Star Chocolate Chip Cookies and a couple of chocolate cakes. Later on Mum put the roast on, Danielle made a self-saucing chocolate pudding for dessert, and Dad organised seating for everyone. (Yes, our family alone fills our table, when extended, so we pulled in the table from outside for the little ones to sit at.)


They arrived, and after some conversation, we all sat down to enjoy our meal. One table seemed to express their enjoyment more vocally than the other!


The dessert mix hadn’t looked quite right while being made, and it didn’t look nearly cooked when it had five minutes to go. So, Mum decided to use plan B – tinned fruit, ice cream, and the red velvet cake Anne Roos had brought.


After dessert had been consumed, my siblings brought out their certificate albums and various history projects to show Amie (Dieuwe’s girlfriend). Dad brought out drinks (go Coca-Cola! Lol), and Mum reminded me to take some photos for my blog (how could I forget?!).


All to soon, goodbyes were said, our guests left, and bath time began for my siblings (Think: Noise and chaos! Haha) More housework (dishes and folding) was done, and finally it is now bed time...G’night! =)


PS: I’m kinda tired now, so hopefully this piece isn’t entirely void of sense! :P

Happy Birthday to Me

Just 'cos I'm soooooooo cool(!)...I'm gonna wish myself a happy birthday:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!

Yay I'm sweet sixteen now ;)

Talk about random people these days...lol! :P

Another visit to the Botanical Gardens!

Smelling the flowers

One Friday afternoon (3rd of May to be exact), the weather was nice so Mum decided we should go for a walk at the Botanic Gardens. The Smiths agreed to go with us, and soon we were piling into our vehicles (I went with them since we don't all fit in our van!). 

Diana and Amelia pose
(Don't you love Diana's 'peace' sign?!)

The little ones played for AGES in this hut;
it's incredible how entertaining running
around in circles can be!

Left to right: Aaron, Danielle, Diana, Amelia, and Bryce

Essie's 15th Birthday

 

The awesome pressie I gave Es.
I was trying for a vintage look, and no, the fact that we didn't
 have much gift wrap didn't have anything to do with it!!! :P
I think next time I'll make sure I have plain  black-and-white
 paper for the flower, and maybe use tea  to
give the paper a brownish-yellow colour.

 After the airport on Tuesday, Mum took someone for a doctor's visit, Monique and Jarrod had a violin lesson, at some stage we had lunch, and then we rushed off to my orthodontist appointment. After that (I think) we picked up some packaging for Dad, and finally, we headed out to the Sonnevelds'. I was going for Essie's birthday that evening, and my mum and siblings had been invited for afternoon tea (which, by the way, was VERY exciting for my little siblings!).

When we arrived, I helped Es out with the massive amount of baking she was doing for that night; by the time we were done with that, the rest of my family was leaving, and Suzanne, Esther, and I were going to play a game. Just as we were starting to play, Es thought she'd better work out when we'd need to start dinner in order to have it ready on time.

Ever-exciting chocolate!!!

As it happened, we ended up leaving the game and making dinner! Neither of us were familiar with marinating meat, so were unaware that the process should have been started hours earlier! We ended up calling on Suzanne to use her cooking skills (she's done classes at MIT) to help us.
 

Ruthie posing...

Finally we were just about finished preparing the food, and the expected arrival of two more friends was fast approaching. Es, Ruth (who'd just arrived home from a run) and I started taking various items for the evening out to the flat (above their double garage). I wouldn't have been overly surprised if someone had told me there was laughing gas in the air right about then! 'Hyper' would have described us quite well when Becks and Middy arrived!

Hungry? lol this was our dessert

We finished transferring everything we could think of from the house to the flat, and started cooking the meat. Soon we sat down, and our hunger was evidenced by our somewhat sudden silence.

Dinner was soon finished, and we made quick work of the dishes before preparing our desserts, and sitting down with them to watch The Ultimate Gift, one of Esther's birthday presents.

watching a movie

I think we all enjoyed the movie, despite its many sad  moments. At some point we paused it to get Fanta and lollies (we decided to forget the muffins, yummy as they looked!). I forget why, but for some reason some of us had to go back to the house - wow was it COLD outside!! A few days before it had still seemed like summer, now it was FROSTY!

on the way home =)



Once the movie finished, we restored the flat to its former state, and piled into the car for the trip home. Spirits were high during the drive, and before long we were returned to our own homes, thus ending our awesome evening! (Of course, I get to relive it, at least to some extent, while I write this! =))



Visit to Airport



The chips Dad bought from KFC were (not surprisingly)
very popular!



The Campbells are a homeschooling family, originally from South Africa. Mrs. Campbell's father (Mr. V) had been here in NZ for quite a while, and Dad decided we should go to the airport to see him off for Africa. I'm not going to write much for this post either, but I will post a few pics with captions.

I got to drive there, yay 20 minutes closer to 120 hours!



Jagos and Mr. V




Seth, Mrs. Campbell, Mr. V, Nathan



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