Joseph turns Four

We started the birthday celebrations with cupcakes at Kindy.

'These are much better than the fruit they usually make us eat, Mum!'

Birthday morning with the 'only one thing that I want for my birthday', the $8 truck that he spotted in the toy catalogue months ago.

Happy to be able to finally hold up four fingers!

On our way to the dinosaur museum- birthday boy's choice, which is becoming a birthday tradition.

At the museum.

Joseph went through every birthday cake book, magazine and website available and decided that he wanted this hopscotch cake. I didn't even know that he knew what hopscotch was...

Joseph insisted that he wasn't four until he had his cake, so here he is, now four years old, eating the number 4 piece of the hopscotch cake, of course!

Let them eat cupcakes...

Four!

Going Fishing

From our holiday up at Caloundra in September.

Swimming Lessons

Elizabeth started swimming lessons last week. So far it's going well, and she's happy to have Kaff' (Kath) for her teacher, just like Joseph.

Ready for her first lesson.

The Terrible Twosome

They do love each other sometimes.

Reprise

If anything was going to make me end my extended blogging holiday, it was going to be this....the opportunity to post this picture of Brendan enjoying his 36th birthday, in his party hat and with his fish cake. No need to thank me!

So, what have we been up to?

Well, Elizabeth has spent the last few months learning to feed herself- with varying degrees of success. Here are some of her failures- best not viewed if you have a weak stomach.

Back in February

March

More March

April (and a first taste of the delights of Mr Whippy on Easter Monday- I think she's well on her way to a chocolate coma)

And finally May, which is about the point where I gave up on ever eating at a restaurant with her- is it just me, or is she getting worse?

Saturday Morning Makeovers

Apologies to the three of you who read this blog for the delay in updates. I'll attempt to catch up on the last few months over the next week or so. Stay tuned for some exciting
adventures*. In the meantime, here are a few pictures of some recent Saturday morning makeovers....

* Adventures are likely to be not very exciting, or even slightly adventurous. Please don't call the complaints line to register your disappointment.

Doing Time

Joseph spends a fair portion of his waking hours sitting in the time out corner. Lately, Elizabeth has started keeping him company. Whenever he gets sent there, she'll follow him over and sit down too like it's part of some game. Invariably Joseph will ask her 'What did you do?' and I always get visions of them as grown ups in jail and Joseph asking 'What are you in here for?'
Let's just hope that vision doesn't come to reality.

In the meantime, I'm going to have to work on alternative punishments- I don't think that Joseph looks like someone suffering the consequences of pushing his sister off the couch, does he?

Complaints Department

Whenever I don't blog for a week or so (or six), I invariably get an email/ phone call/ text from a certain person who shall remain nameless demanding that I rectify the situation post haste. I know it's only one person, but when that person represents a good 20% of readers, action was required.

So I've spent the last six weeks restucturing Barrett Enterprises and am proud to introduce our new Complaints Department. Elizabeth has been trained up and now the phones are manned and she's ready to take your call.

But don't get upset if she doesn't take your compaint too seriously.

She's learnt that from her mother.