My two peas

I asked them to stand together for me so I could do a demo shot for Grandad with my new lense. I never actually expected them to do it.

Doesn't that just describe having kids: expect the unexpected.

Extreme Makeover

We sort of took over the kitchen :)

Dee doing her 'thang on Mum

Cassidy decided Shell needed a bit of accessorising

Doesn't this face just say it all.... "Well yes, you can give me a makeover but really, there's not that much to makeover is there...you can't improve on perfection" :)

A couple of the beautiful girls - Nanna and Cassidy

Okay so maybe not that extreme. No botox, implants or medical procedures were involved.

But we did arrange a morning with Deanne so we could all get told how to use our makeup supplies properly.

You know what it's like, you grab a couple of good products here, a couple of dodgy ones there "because they were on special" and before you know it you have a makeup box full of crusty specimens you have no idea what to do with.

Once the word got out, it quickly became the usualy morning tea extravaganza it usually does when we all get together (their family of three girls and our family of two, add in our two mothers and my Napoleon Perdis apprentice daughter and we had enough progesterone to sink a battleship).

I fear for my life if I were to post some of the before and after photos so some of Cassidy will have to do. She was in her element as you can imagine. On the way there I said "won't this be fun Cassidy, Deanne will show you how to use your makeup" (before we left she had enthusiastically packed her collection of Pink Poppy makeup in a little suitcase).

She said," No mummy, you've got it wrong. I will show HER".

There's really no point arguing with her so I let this one slide - but between you and me her style of makeup would fit right in at the local red light district or the cast of Cirque de Soleil.

Anzac Day snaps

the happy couple - in it's third year now :) :)

Isaac marched with his school on Anzac Day. It was the cutest thing seeing all these tiny prep kids lining up :) They each had a buddy from year 7 to keep them on the straight and narrow but there were so many people we followed alongside just to make sure we could find him in the sea of yellow and brown.

As you can imagine 100's of kids in yellow uniforms in the midday sun was a photographer's nightmare, but as it's my boy in yellow and the midday sun that makes it okay ;)

Looking at these, it is just more apparent to me each day how much he is like his dad...so much so that I'm really not sure I contributed much to this child besides being the oven for nine months :)

My mummy is beautiful {like a flower}

(playing the guitar on his shirt :)

'Ma boy. He is so many things. A worrier. A wonderful friend. A helper. A softie. A perfectionist.

And lately - an expert mummy manipulator.

Whenever he is about to get in trouble or just in general senses that things are not heading in a direction favourable to him, he launches into his own composition that he calls "My mummy is beautiful like a flower".

It doesn't have a particular tune and the words vary but are based upon the chorus line of "my mummy is beautiful like a flower". He sings it in a sweet voice usually accompanied by looking into my eyes and touching my face softly (that part reminds me somewhat of those snakes you see in cartoons that get people under their spell with spiralling eyes).

Here is an example of some of the words...

My mummy is beautiful like a flower...

I love her very much because she is beautiful....

...and she loves me......and I love her so much....

My mummy is beautiful like a flower from the garden....

....that I picked just for her.....

...oh she is so beautiful like the petals on a flower....

(and a personal favourite from todays' version:)

...my mummy is beautiful like a flower....and when you water a flower it grows with love...

And so on it goes :) He keeps it up until I smile and can't keep up the cranky mummy act for any longer...and he usually has me by verse two. He has such enormous blue eyes and they just suck me right in.

I want to bottle him right now. While he's five. Before he gets to fifteen and won't sing songs to his mummy anymore. This growing up thing has to be stopped.

Baby Alive

Walking out of school after dropping Isaac yesterday, there was another litle girl walking along with her mum that had a similar baby doll to Cassidy's.

Cassidy watched her with what could only be described as a mis-trusting stare the whole way as we walked to our respective cars.

We got to our car and I said, "Oh Cassidy, that little girl had a baby just like yours didn't she?"

She said, completely deadpan:

"Yeah, I looked at her. But my baby is REAL. Hers is just a fake".

You've got to look out for those imitation babies, they get you every time.

Fi-nona

Just had to post a few shots of Fi on here cause she looked so gorgeous as a bridesmaid :)

Another scrapbooking deviation too....I just thought she looked so 50's glamour in those shots I started evisioning a scrapbooking page and the rest as they say was history.

Thanks for asking me along Fi, you looked beautiful xx

Puss in boots

Today I found a much cuter subject to feast my new 135mm f2 lense on :)

She has a new set of boots which she loves, so when I asked could mummy take some pictures and she could wear her new boots she was off to her bedroom to change like a shot. I recently had a little splurge in Pumpkin Patch (as you do!) so she had on a rather more stylish outfit that depicts that I dress my children like little catalogue models, when normally indeed I do not. I would like to pretend that I do, but real life and weetbix smooshed on the front of "good" outfits tends to get in the way.

But we had fun on our little mini catalogue shoot despite getting sprinkled with rain ("It's okay mum, I have my boots on so my feets won't get wet").

Current Cassidy lingo we hear daily:

Where's my baby? (I hear this a 1000 times a day...she constantly drops her baby on the floor and forgets where she is).

No, I was just..... (after she's been sprung and I ask her what on earth she's doing)

I'm stiiiiillllll hungry (can be said just after a meal, three hours after a meal or useful if she can't think of anything else to say. Silence is deafening to Cassidy).

The night before this day (meaning last night).

The morning after this day (meaning tomorrow).

Oisaac *insert approriate injury to her person* and now I'm not his friend.

Tastidy (Cassidy).

Ib-ee (Ivy).

She is also skilled at long descriptions of events without taking a breath. I haven't timed her as they usually happen in the car but today's went something like this. Add in her lisp and you can see how these tirades often leave her quite breathless.

"Mummy you know how we went to see Nonna and Father with Nanna and Pa and we stayed in the cabin and there were the up and down beds (bunk beds) and I was on the bottom and Isaac was on the top so we can chat and we fed the deers and Nanna said after we could get an iceblock but then after we fed the deers and the shop was shut so we couldn't get an iceblock and while the boys went fishing Nanna and Tastidy and Nonna had coffee and I played with Lucy (the dog)....and Lucy licked me, ha ha she's funny isn't she Mum........................"

Usually about here she trails off to puzzled silence for two seconds as the purpose of her original reason for speaking escapes her. We then breathe in and relish in the few moments of silence before her brains revs into gear and she takes it from the top.

Moi

Only because there was literally no-one else.

My dad arrived on holidays today with my rather slinky and sexy 135mm f2. To all my photographer friends, I can hear the "mmmm"s and sense the dripping jealously. To everyone that doesn't know what I'm talking about, unless you have something nice to say about my new baby don't come near me for a few days and burst my little new-lense-happy bubble okay? :)

Dark outside. Kids in bed. Husband at Bunnings. New lense still in box. Me twitching.

So me in the studio using the timer it was. I already felt like enough of a tool without Steve arriving home and confirming the fact for me. He selflessly made the offer to snap a few for me with a pre-requisite that certain items of clothing were removed. I told him selflessly where he could stick it.

Men - they can even turn a beautiful new lense dirty.

boy/girl

I know they're tiny and squishy already but there's something about them that makes me want to squish them more. Like in a "don't ever grow bigger" kind of way.

A desperate blogger

Please forgive the blogging drought. Since Nanna and Pa returned home last week, I have not seen much of my children.

Not that I am complaining, but it does sort of make for limited photographic options.

Tonight Nanna and Pa have taken them for a night away to visit their great grandparents - hey, who were we to stand in their way?! Steve and I had a very civilised dinner at Hog's Breath followed by making the civilised decision not to go see a movie considering the closest thing to our age bracket showing was Horton Hears a Who.

So these beautiful babes will have to fill in for now. I went along to assist Sheye this afternoon as she worked her magic on these tiny specimens of brother and sister. The 5D''s were flying, so I actually have no idea who took these :) but we had fun cuddling whilst I tried to be a good assistant and tried to stop my ovaries aching.

idonotwantmorebabiesidonotwantmorebabies.

:)

They're ba-aack!

waiting, waiting...

"Mum are they EVER going to come?"



They're here!!

(to me, Isaac is the spitting image of Steve in this shot)

Catching up on current events on the way home...

...where Isaac wasn't going to let Pa out of his sight :)

Nanna and Pa are home!

They had a great time living it up in New Zealand. By the way the kids greeted them at the airport and the smiles I noticed from other people, its obvious they thought they hadn't seen them for years. They have "only" been gone for four weeks - or "years and years" if you ask Isaac :)

The kids were almost beside themselves with excitement, as were Nanna and Pa :)

We're so glad you're home safe xxoo