Leaving on a jet plane..

But I know when I'll be back again :)

Home on the 2nd of August....off to see my dad in Hong Kong for a visit and for a bit of r and r.

How lucky am I? Just so you all know, I have the best husband in the whole world.

Tooting my own horn.

Well, just a little.

More like sharing something mummy-ish with other mummies that I have found is a good solution to an age old problem.

The kids bring home pictures from school/kindy. They go on the fridge. They fall off a few times and generally start to peeve you off so you take them off the fridge. What now? If you're like me, I feel guilty and horrible if I chuck them out (except for the dodgy scribbles that they obviously did whilst running past the art and craft table. Those go straight in the bin, no love lost there).

I'm talking about the special pictures. The ones that come home with a story behind them. One of my favourites from Isaac is one of a crocodile which he did from the perspective of looking down on the crocodile from above. All his teeth are showing and it looks like a green version of Hannibal Lecter. He also has a collection of drawings Ebony has given him - all of ladybugs and "love from Ebony" on them. I mean, how can you throw this stuff out?

Then there's Cassidy's current artistic version of people.

(I love how she does the toes).

Solution: Expander files!

I have a file for each of the kids, and have stuck a label for each year since they were born on a section of the folder. All their special artworks, letters, notes, awards....it's all in there. I keep one section at the back of the file which is all their school photos.

Easy to get into, don't take up much room, keeps everything in order and flat and alleviates my guilt. Cool, huh?

Originally I was going to cover each of their folders with photos and special notes ala scrapbooking style. Yeah....well it hasn't happened in the five years we've had Isaac and it's not looking good for the next five either.

Sweat shop.

Cassidy took it upon herself the other day to do a spot of ironing.

She started out with her little ironing board but apparently that wasn't enough and daddy was enlisted to bring in the big guns - mummy's ironing board. Conditions were bad as we don't actually have a play iron, so a wooden block had to suffice.

She removed every single item from her dressing table drawers, unfolded, "ironed", re-folded and replaced them in the drawers. Every. single. one. I'm guessing that's about fifty or more items. Look up determination in the dictionary, you'll see a picture of her.

I wasn't actually there at the time (Steve took the photos) but when I came home, every item was neatly replaced back in her dressing table. The only giveaway to the activity was the fact that instead of a pile of singlets, a pile of pants, a pile of tshirts etc there were just....piles. ie singlet, pants, shirt, undies, pants, shirt, singlet etc. All very neatly folded and placed, just in rather random stacks. When Steve mentioned this fact to her she said she liked them better this way.

It's lucky we had her or who knows what sort of shenanigans our clothing piles would have got into.

It's almost there!

The studio is getting so deliciously close to being finished :)

The scuffle over the flooring has been settled with some pale timber-look vinyl which arrived yesterday. Steve is downstairs with his friend Keiran who unluckily arrived for a couple of night's stay (I'm thinking he might go for the local motel next time after he's helped Steve prep a concrete floor!)

I'm itching to start fixing up my retro cupboard I bought off ebay, alas time is not on my side at the moment. I have had Isaac home all week so far with his bad flu and we have spent most of it hobbling around coughing and sneezing and huddling on the lounge watching movies. Today he was just in that annoying "almost better" stage, bouncing around bored when I did the age-old parent threat of "ringing your teacher cause I'm sure she won't mind if I drive you in to school".

Suddenly, without warning, he was struck down with a terrible coughing spasm and it was obvious a relaspse was coming on :)

Photos of the Miss taken yesterday in the new studio for the lovely Casey at Ten Sticky Fingers . When Casey first asked me if Cassidy would be able to model some of their new summer range, I briefly saw my life, flung clothing and a dummy-spit flash before my eyes.

But she proved this doubtful mummy wrong and was such a good girl, changing outfits like a trouper and pulling out all her best poses! All she asked was "a pink and a white" marshmallow for her efforts.

Cute and cheap labour. Gotta be happy with that.

I've removed all the light bulbs.

Sheye and I had the pleasure of shooting Whitney on the weekend for a commercial project Steve and I have in the works.

We came to the decision that from now on, we are only going to get undressed in the dark.

I mean - really. Is she nothing short of absolutely stunning? Not to mention sweet and willing to go along with any creative whims we came up with.

And here I am, surrounded by tissues, coughing like a old horse and wearing my shapeless Pooh Bear pyjamas I bought when I was sixteen (but they're so comf-eeeeyyy.........)

There's no hope for me really.

Smoke and mirrors.

I often get lovely emails from people that have found my blog through somewhere or another (usually other blog-addicted mums like me!) They say they love reading about the funny events in our household and seeing photos of the kids.

But I have been questioning myself the last couple of days. I call my blog my "online diary", yet when I think of a diary, I think of events recorded in there being the good, the bad and the very very ugly. As I'm sure other mum bloggers can relate, it somehow feels odd to record the really bad days on your blog. I mean, I will often say when the kids have driven me nuts, but always with a dose of humour or usually record the times when humour IS involved. I mean, I usually can see the funny side pretty quickly with my two. But sometimes, I just don't.

Like last night. I had a client coming to pick up an order. I expressly asked the kids to please play quietly for five minutes while mummy talked to the lady. It really does only take five minutes for someone to collect an order; I had them set up in the playroom right next to where I was and had every confidence all would be fine.

Instead, as soon as my client entered the room, they both came out of the playroom, bickering loudly about some ridiculous thing. Then Isaac started to play drums on the wall and generally show off whilst Cassidy hung off me and whinged whilst I tried to wrap up a rather delicate order. I dealt with the situation like the NRMA ad with the mum in the front seat and the kids mimicking her and laughing in the back - I tried to keep on talking whilst giving undectable little grimaces in the kids direction when my client wasn't looking. I was so very embarrassed.

I shut the door behind my client and turned around. The were both staring at me with guilty faces, knowing it was bad. I was so upset, so shocked that they would actually behave that badly after I specifically asked them to be good, I was nearly in tears. I spoke to them in a quiet tone so I think they knew they had really done it. Luckily at that moment, Steve walked in from work and took over so I could go upstairs and cry. I was angry at them, I couldn't believe they would behave that way and I was not a Happy Mum.

I think it's so easy to get a frail grasp on the big picture through our online appearance. I often have to step back and make myself think what a tiny, miniscule piece of my life my online world is. Noone hears the tears when I am frantic, or me yelling at the kids to "get in the car! We're going to be late!!" on school mornings. If I am dressed for work, other mum's will often say "oh you look lovely today!" in the school yard and I can't help but think if only they had heard me hollering at the kids five seconds before. When I think about it, there is such a small group of people that know the Real Me. The me that panics over ridiculous things, cries and has nervous breakdowns on a weekly basis.

I guess that's because true real-ness isn't always very pretty. We take photos of things that are real to us; but just like I will photoshop a snotty nose to pretty up a picture, what the world sees of me is often prettied up to make it more "acceptable". Just because I refrain from yelling at my children at the shops, does not mean I don't yell at home and sometimes consider listing them on Ebay.

I suspect, that like a lot of other mums, I'm just good at smoke and mirrors.

White is the new black

The studio is WHITE!!!

Seriously, it's really really white. You can see in the dark in there.

We're very close to the floor going down...we're just having a last minute referendum about what flooring to use. We bought some off ebay in a hurried "buy it now" moment, now we're not sure if it was the best choice. The jury's still out so we're off to Bunnings to deliberate.

Pic taken today which is a very gloomy day with an even gloomier girl (we all have colds and coughs) but I'm sick of waiting for a sunnier one.

And you know what....it's still bright enough in there to take decent shots. I'm as happy as a polar bear in a snow storm.

The week that never was

Mum informed me last night when I said, "I just want this week to be over", that I say that a lot. Although I'm not into admitting that my mother is right (:P) I have to admit, I do say that a fair bit.

I use the calendar in my outlook email and when you add a new appointment of any kind, it puts a white box around your text on that date. I always know it's going to be a bad week when I scan my calendar and see a White Box Week. Sort of like "iceberg dead ahead Captain!"

Of course this coming week is going to be ice-berg-ish because the kids are on holidays. Don't get me wrong, I actually love the holidays. I love not having to be anywhere on time, I love not having to make lunches. I even love lying in bed with Cassidy's freezing cold feet pressed against my back (the child refuses to keep sock or slippers on). It just kills my productivity. I am determined to find some way to intertwine productivity and time with the kids and then I will sell it to other mothers. I just have to figure out how and I'll be rich. Rich I tell you!!

The iceberg from last week is still melting as we foolishly did another "hey we've got ten million things on our plate, so let's go away" mini holiday. To make it worse it was camping. And it was freezing. And we needed to pack enough stuff to clothe and feed a small country. And then it rained.

I spent a lot of time thinking that one of my dad's favourite sayings is right: The closest he wants to get to camping is a three star motel. I would have quite happily hopped into the warm bed at the nearest three star motel if the option had been given to me.

For the day we ended up being there though the kids had a blast. There was four gokarts doing the rounds of over twenty kids and about five exhausted dads (to come down a hill a great speed, one must first find a dad willing to push them up the hill).

I came home to five loads of campfire smelling washing, but it was worth it just for one day of hoon-like behaviour :)

Cassidy and her camping friend, Briohny. They handled all the boys just fine :)

spectating is tough you know :)

whipping 'er in a circle.