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a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2014 via Practising Simplicity

They : as the school holidays come to an end and my ideas were running low it was time for an old fallback. The hose in the sandpit is always a winner and has given us HOURS of joy this week. 

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a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2014 via Practising Simplicity

He : has not outgrown his love of mud. Tooway creek creek river mud in this case.

She : hops nimbly over those rock pools, deftly treading the same paths she toddled over three years ago. On a search for sea cucumbers, we found seven of them, plus one spectacular nudibranch - my absolute favourite creature name ever (and difficult to just drop into everyday conversation without the giggles).

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a portrait of my children, once a week every week in 2014 via Practising simplicity

He : stumbled onto Legoman's old stash of Yowie figurines, oh the joy of searching and sorting.

She : is adventure-girl about to leap out of trees with a very dodgy rope arrangement. She had only just taken off the pink vinyl handbag which was obviously hampering her style.

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a portrait of my children, once a week, every week in 2014 via practisingsimplicity.com

They : as we go the full circle of a year, we find ourselves back at the same playground as this time last year, longer limbed but with the same love of water and sand.

After stepping away from this space for the last few weeks there has been much pondering. About the year just gone, the year ahead and just surviving the day to day of school holidays (it never bodes well when your child wants to go back to school and there are still five weeks to go). 

I finally decided to go ahead with another  year of this wonderful project, although it is possible that only my girl is happy to be photographed in the months ahead. The photos are likely to remain amateur but the memories and moments captured will always be golden. Regular blogging will resume shortly, once I catch up. 

And so this is Christmas

I thought this was a fitting title given that another year is over and a new one has just begun and I am only just getting this Christmas post finished. My excuse? It's a good one - lots of white paint. Yep, the long painting hiatus is over and there are some rooms getting finished over here, but that is a whole other post.

This Christmas was kind of compressed into a whirlwind few days as we arrived back from Wooli the night before the night before Christmas and needed to fit a lot in. We squeezed the suburban lights in on Christmas eve. This house  had an alternating light show every 15 minutes with a matching musical soundtrack.

We went to the winning street for our side of town which was good but just quietly we think probably not as good as last years winner. There were still some amazing displays and the kids loved the fake snow bubble machines mounted on the roof that would  start intermittently and cover their heads.

Inspired by the map pavlova in the Aldi Christmas catalogue I decided to make my own version. I took progress shots as I suspected the chance of actually pulling this one off without a collapse were slim.

We dug out the Christmas books including this vintage masterpiece I found at the oppie last year but packed away until this year.

Even big kids love pop up books, I just love the vintage colours and pictures.

Liongirl set herself up a cosy chair to peruse the whole pile but this was her telling me she is a big girl now and can read chapter books. She looks convincing for someone faking it until she makes it.

Incredible that after making annual pavlovas for about a decade, this is the first one that did not collapse on removal from the oven. Unsure if that is due to finally having a decent oven or the structural integrity of our glorious continent. There was a dash of continental drift as Tasmania merged back with the mainland but that was easily fixed.

 Despite being up past nine the night before, the kids were up at five, beyond excited to unwrap their presents. It seems that sending Santa a letter requesting not just lego, but the specific numeric lego code for the galaxy squad set that you want, does pay off.

Liongirl was just beside herself with the arrival of that light up pillow pet and the Sylvanian families caravan. We virtually didn't see her for the rest of the day.

Of course given that it was Christmas day and we had both a roast pork and a pavlova in the oven it was the hottest day we have had since we moved home. It's never a proper Christmas until the togs and water pistols come out.

Meanwhile I got to play with my presents,

which were highly coveted by others I might add,

and set the table.

 The new paints were put to good use to create  a painting for Grammy who has her birthday on Christmas day.

Christmas baking was light on this year but we pulled out a last minute effort.

 And finally, we sat down and gobbled that pavlova. I might just have to pop out another one for Australia day I think.

 And that is how you compress a month long ritual into just two days. Happy New Year!