The bike-a-thon

The kindy Ruby so eagerly goes to every week held a bike-a-thon as a fundraiser this weekend. Ruby arranged sponsors (well - Mum and Dad helped!) for her 10 laps of the carpark and she practised for weeks in our garage, faithfully going round and round and round ... Every night for the week before, she went to bed asking 'is it the bike-a-thon tomorrow?'

Eventually we were able to say 'Do you know what's happening tomorrow?' and the shine in her eyes and the excitement was magic (and did rather lead us to wonder if she actually understood what a bike-a-thon was and hadn't got it muddled up with Christmas or the Tooth Fairy or something).

The next morning she decorated her bike, carefully dressed in her fairy costume and her 'boot-scooting boots' and proudly donned her bike helmet (the major hair decision - one ponytail at the back or two pigtails on the sides - easily solved when we realised pony tail and helmet are incompatible).

The starter whistle blew and she was off!!

Lap one done.

Lap two taking a bit more effort (either that or she was already tired of me pointing the camera at her).

Getting into the swing of it by lap 3.

Having a well earned drink at the end.Getting her certificate (currently pronounced 'cerfiticut') and a bell for her bike.

Mmmm - those lemonade popsicles are c-c-c-cold on the brain!

Miss Independent taking off for a walk in the sun. 'No don't worry about me, I can walk thank you. All the bikes ridden by pre-schoolers will simply swerve around me...'

Leah getting involved by practising getting on her own bike by herself. Small logistical problem yet to be overcome ... how to get on facing the steering wheel. Hmmm.

Leah checking out the very cool windmills on Cailin's bike.Thank you to everyone who sponsored Ruby - we made a great total of $70, which Ruby will be very proud to hand in this week!

Just cute

There's something about kids and bubbles! Mummy usually gives the baths - that's Daddy's time out. But when Daddy does do it, bubbles are his specialty! (and yes, that is a syringe Ruby is using to fill up her frog. We gave them one as a toy to get them used to it in the hope they might end up liking taking medicine from one ... Ruby then discovered it was far more efficient to pump her frog full of water to then squirt at her sister than it was to put it under the water and wait for it to fill up).

Leah got given a new hat. She was rather proud of it!

Naked gardening

We were halfway to the bath when Leah decided a detour outside would be a good idea. I thought 'what the heck, it's warm, the concrete is gonna be hard on her feet so she won't last long'. Turns out she's quite the naturalist at heart and knobbly concrete didn't faze her one bit.

Helping Daddy garden.

Inspecting the condition of the car.

Baby version of tree hugging.

Peekaboo Ruby!

Ruby cooks

Ruby's getting to be quite the cook. She has learned two of the most important things: 1. when the beaters come out, it's a good idea to hang round and get first dibs on cleaning them; 2. even if the cookie dough doesn't quite work out, it tastes pretty good raw.

Here she learns how to knead dough for our pizza (she couldn't quite get her head around 'making' the pizza base when we first did this, as pizza base comes in a plastic packet from the shop ... doesn't it? Not the ones made without wheat sweetheart! Perhaps this whole wheat-free thing is not before time!)

This was gearing up to make gingerbread men. Didn't quite work out how they were meant to (we had gingerbread slice!) but she proved she'd learned the lesson when she said 'doesn't matter mama, we can still eat it!"

More catching up...

If you've seen the earlier post, you'll probably also (quite rightly) have come to the conclusion that our girls spend a fair amount of the time in the bath (the other option is to hose Leah down outside, which, while often tempting, is a little cold at this time of the year). At least Ruby thinks that bathing Leah is a chance for quality sister time.

Starts off as fun and games...

Yep, still fun...
Hmm, not so much... When we saw this start to play out we thought there might be pistols at dawn. Ruby's quite protective of her ice cream! But she surprised us...

What's in there Ruby?? It's ice cream!! I can tell! There, in your mouth!! I want some! (cue parental cringing)
But no, what's that? Sharing? OMG! We've done it! She shares! Wahooo! Crack out the parental celebrations!

We're very lucky to have had a few student nannies come work with us for 3 weeks at a time. Most lucky in that they're willing to do activities with the girls that we probably aren't quite brave enough to tackle yet. Like painting...

I'm used to hunting all over the place for things such as the grater - some items do rather choose a new place to live each time they're washed ... I just didn't expect Leah to be one of them! (and I can't be too sure she's washed either!)

And this is what you do when you're tired of pulling the tea towels out of the drawer. You sit on them to get access to the higher drawer...

June/July

Babies go through some silly stages. Leah went through one in June/July of putting everything on her head. Her trousers:

Her sister's trousers:

Her facecloth:

And at the other end of the scale, we have Ruby, in love with Mum's boots... snapped a pic and suddenly realised Ruby was about to turn 16. Help!

Time for a catch-up

I have pondered for a couple of weeks about how to attack the next blog session. The problem arose when I reviewed the photos from the last few weeks and realised, with horror, that in every single photo my littlest child is filthy. Grubby. Dirty. Mucky. Grimy. To post the reality or not? Hmm.

Well, in the end I figure people may as well know us as we really are. So long as the kids are smiling and still remembering to say please, thank you and pardon me (well, the eldest does anyway) then we don't mind if they eat via pores in their skin vs their mouth. So here's the truth.

Butter chicken (note that the plate is virtually empty so I can only assume that some of it got in her mouth).

Nope, not the result of some really bad accident. This is what happens when you dish up berries for dessert.Pumpkin/chicken dinner. She was fine when I went into the kitchen for seconds. By the time I came out, she'd done this. Facial and hair treatment in one, I believe.Spaghetti. When she started, she had the bib on. I'd specially got the one with the sleeves to avoid getting spaghetti on the pale blue all-in-one. Didn't realise she could get it off. Got to love the 'butter wouldn't melt' eyes. Think she knew she was in trouble.

Rice bubbles. This was one of those lessons Mummy had to learn the hard way. Owen usually gives the girls breakfast, and I didn't know he puts fruit on her ricies, not milk. Evidently that's because if you put milk in the bowl she upends it to drink it and the rice bubbles all fall out. Ah well.

A little trip away

We spontaneously went to Rotorua this Easter weekend - to catch up with good friends we hadn't seen for ages who were up from Wellington. We were too busy to take many photos but on the first day Owen took Ruby and Dave took Jack out on paddle boats on the lake. Ruby's too cool to wave but did grace us with a smile. Owen says "of course she's smiling, she didn't have to pedal the thing!!"

Then that evening we were kindly invited for tea at Jack and Ollie's Grandparents' house ... we all had a great time!!

Olly and Ruby had a 'silly face competition'. I think Olly won!!