My boys are in love with Nerf guns....

This delightful missive was penned hurriedly by the Big Fella, who is now 9, just before bed last night.

It was then photocopied, and handed out to all his friends this morning.

There goes my peaceful Sunday afternoon......

It's been a rollercoaster....

It's been a wild ride for the first half of 2014...

Some of it fun, some of it not....

Some relaxing times, some very stressful times....

Some camping in the middle of it all....

Which is wonderful for the body, and the soul....

And here's hoping we're off the roller coaster, and back on solid ground.

My year as a stay at home mum with both kids at school.

Wow. 

The year is nearly over, my first year with all kids at school. It wasn't meant to be this way, but it is what it is.

And here was I thinking I'd have time to do everything I wanted to do, get everything on my to-do list done. It doesn't really work that way though, I found out.

Although I have gone from being on full-on-mum-duty 13-14 hours a day, to full-on-mum-duty for about 8 hours a day. Better working conditions there, right? And during my 5 kid-free hours, I can actually sit down and have lunch. And pee without company.

But as any mum knows, those 5 hours are crammed with 101 things to get done and sometimes lunch doesn't actually happen. Then again, I get to do those 101 things on my own, no more dragging cranky kids to the library or grocery store, no having to switch off the vacuum cleaner 15 times to listen to little voices requesting food/tv/stories/mummyPLAYwithME!

And the on-duty hours are filled with taxi-ing kids around, negotiating homework, preparing breakfast/lunch/dinner/snack, packing aforementioned foods for school and extra curricular activities for kids and husband. No nappies to change, sticky fingers to wipe or kids to persuade to have naps. Lots and lots of laundry and sorting out uniforms and work-out gear for the whole family. TV and computer use to negotiate. Catering to everyone's needs and personalities. And sometimes to mine.

As well as sooo many activities the school asks for help with. Running club, swimming, supervision on various excursions, jump rope for heart, hearing the kids read, preparations for the school fete, cross country, school athletics day, church services and my mind goes blank on what else.

I like to make healthy, paleo-style meals for us all, so lots of shopping for good food and a ton of time in the kitchen. Figuring out everyone's tastes and TRYING to make sure everyone has the appropriate fuel for the activity they want to undertake. Not always succeeding. 

Farmer's market every Sunday. Growing some of our own veggies to hopefully off-set the cost of all that good food just a little.

Dealing with the "I don't wanna to go school/karate/rock climbing/do homework" that inevitably pops it's head up from time to time.

Camping, we've done quite a bit of that this year too. The boys are old enough to help set up camp with the husband, while I sort out the food. Our family seems to run on it's stomach, surprise, surprise. Lots of organisation and laundry and catching up afterwards involved in that too, but worth it.

Constant decluttering takes place as the boys get bigger, so boxes of donations to be dropped off, free cycle pick ups to be arranged, ebay items to be posted. Larger clothes to be sourced, preferably not at top price, so perusing all possible sources of good quality second hand clothing and school uniforms takes place on a semi-regular basis.

Throw in a few periods of unwell kids, the odd late night babysitting at the mansion, a big catch up with my side of the family, lots of karate, cage fitness and rock climbing, the run-of-the-mill stuff like kids parties, to attend, gift buying, mending, arranging appointments for everyone, play dates etc etc etc and that just about sums up the year.

And here comes Christmas.......

Yikes.

Oi, July was the last time I posted on here, no, I haven't dropped off the edge of a cliff.....will catch up with the world soonish....

School hols - the Farm

We had the opportunity to go to the farm for a few days this week and it was fabulous as always.

I haven't been there in the middle of winter like this before, though the kids and I spent nearly two weeks there at the END of winter back in 2011.

The fog/mist seemed to roll in off the river late in the afternoon, then in the morning we were completely surrounded.

This lasted for hours, I am not actually sure if it was fog/mist/low cloud or a combo effect. It didn't lift until mid-afternoon most days and sometimes it hadn't cleared completely by the time night fell again.

But that didn't stop us, we went for walks in the fog, looking at all the details that we could see...

and more walks when the fog did eventually lift.

We met the latest resident of the farmhouse and had a fine time as usual. Lots of crafting, playing monopoly, doing jigsaw puzzles and playing tiggy in and out of the many doors in the homestead.

Back to Melbourne now and our house is not nearly so well heated as the Farm.....!

Lets go fly a kite....school hols day 4

This was us today...

Yeah, 'twas windy and grey but we like it any way it comes during the school holidays!

Yo ho ho, school holidays - Day 2

Day two of the school holidays... and I have no voice.

The pirates in the bedroom sure make up for my lack of noise though!

Ah, for the love of almonds....

I've been doing a lot with almonds lately, in an effort to give my 8 year old some different food options that do not involve grains.

It turns out that after tightening up his diet...taking out wheat, sugar, preservatives and most grains, he has turned into an angel once again at school. 

Remember I was complaining about his turdyness? Well, his teacher says he's calmed down a lot and is behaving beautifully. Now, it's not like he used to eat a lot of junk, but the wheat had crept back in to a certain extent and with a certain wheat product was preservative 282. 

Hmmmmm. No real mystery is it?

All of which meant I was scrambling to find school lunch solutions that he would be happy to eat in front of his friends. One of the things I came up was a 'milkshake'. This has raw, organic, full cream milk, avocado, a pastured egg yolk, cocoa powder, a couple of dates, a baby spinach leaf or two and a small amount of rapadura. I whiz it up in my thermomix, pour it into a shaker with a leak proof lid and it goes in his insulated lunch box with a freezy pack and a straw.

I'd give him this every couple of days or so and then my preppy started wanting one too. No problem, just we started going through a lot of milk and it's not cheap. Almonds again to the rescue, I tried making some almond milk. Very easy to make, and lovely and creamy. I wrote up how I make it, with pictures, if you want instructions.

How to make almond milk.

(Yes, clearly I cannot pour straight...)

Actually, if you look at the messy kitchen picture in my previous post, you can see jars of almonds lined up on the windowsill. I also have been using the almonds to make grain free brownies, grain free banana bread, almond butter and grain free cereal. We are lucky enough in Australia to be able to get raw almonds, and you can probably source truly raw almonds in many other countries too, but not in the U.S.

In America all almonds are pasteurized but growers/manufacturers are still allowed to label them as raw.

But the only way to get REAL raw almonds in the U.S. is to buy an imported brand.   

Ok, enough rambling. If I don't post again soonish, you'll know my house has been taken over by almonds. 

Or more likely, the school hols are kicking my butt......