Christmas 2016

Well after HUGE anticipation, Christmas 2016 is done & dusted! It started for us on Christmas Eve with presents & dessert up at Aunty Jose's house & then carried on with presents & church on Sunday morning (for me only) & our usual yummy as lunch at Aunty Mells. This year has flown by pretty quick seeing as it doesn't really seem that long ago that we were swapping parcels at the end of 2015! Here are all the pics.....

Red envelopes with money from Bubu :)

Spence finally got 2 packs of the water balloons he's been DYING for from Aunty Jose & Uncle Mattsy - along with $20 spending money for Australia! Woohoo....talk about spoilt :)

Then Mac got a Stephen Curry basketball & spending money, lucky boy!

The dessert spread....we probably really should've communicated better cause we ended up with 2 cheesecakes lol. Mine was an experiment cheesecake top & brownie bottom recipe along with a strawberry sauce that you pour all over the top. Worked perfectly & was pretty yum, but I think I'll just stick the biscuit base next time :)

After that it was straight home to get ready for bed & Santa....

These guys were just a teensy bit excited until Spencer hopped into bed & started freaking out about Santa actually coming into our house...he got pretty majorly beside himself & was too scared to fall off to sleep, so in the end I had to text Santa to ask him to please just leave the presents on the deck this year. He was still a little bit worried about the whole thing though so I'm pretty sure I ended up falling asleep before him....& then woke up in a panic at about 1:30am thinking oh man I fell asleep & haven't put the pressies out yet! Thank goodness I still had heaps of time!

So yeah, in the morning this little guy was super stoked to get his remote control car from Santa :) He'd originally asked for a dinosaur, but I didn't wanna get him one cause he doesn't even really like them anymore & I knew there was no way he'd really play with it - not for long anyways....so I put the idea of a remote control car into his head & after a few weeks it'd completely stuck! Another reason I was keen on him wanting one is cause they came up on an awesome special at the Warehouse so I'd already gone ahead & got it for him haha....

So anyway, all was good in the hood, until we cut open the box & put in the batteries. After that we tried to turn it on & got absolutely NOTHING!! Man what an epic fail on that account cause it was the only toy in all his presents so he was pretty gutted that he had no toys to play with for the rest of the day :(

Thank goodness we managed to rectify the whole situation today though & swap it up at the Warehouse for one that works! He's been playing with it all afternoon now & totally LOVES it :)

Mac with this imitation "Go Pro". He was probably a little disappointed that it wasn't the real deal, but I know that'll all disappear once he's actually tried it!

Christmas pics with my boys x

I'm trying to remember & make more of an effort to be in more photos with the boys cause I know how priceless our pics with Mum are now that she's gone.... & if anything ever happens to me I want the boys to have memories galore!

Joe's usual cooking the barby shot :)

The mean spread - Mell's chicken coated wedges always top 

the list for me!

The little energizer motormouth conked 

out for a little cat nap after lunch :)

Cuddles with Indie on her 1st Christmas x

The waterballoon fiend ;) Couldn't handle getting wet though! 

What the heck?! He was crying to Uncle Jo about how he got water on his face lol...Strange kid 

A few tears from Spence & Ella - they loved dishing it out, but found it 

a bit hard to take!

The next door neighbours just had to look in on all the excitement while wishing that they were part of the fam!

I got sunglasses for all of the kids for their Chrissy presents & the kid I thought would be into them the least was the one that wore them the whole afternoon without even taking them off!

I think this little critters finally got my name down....man the number of times she's called me Aunty Mell lol

Mell's mandatory kitchen prep shot

These guys spotted noodles when we started on dessert & were desperate to have some seeing as I always say no to noodles at home...so Uncle Jo cooked up 8 packets in the pot & the boys were in heaven!

The next Christmas victim around 4pm in the afternoon....

Pic of the Christmas Day cuzzie crew 2016 (minus Jords & Spency)

And that was pretty much the end of an awesome day right before we rolled home to bed!

Up at the mall today Spence had a turn in Santa's chair before they pack it all away again until next year!!!! Bring on 2017...

Just a quiet couple of weeks now until we set off to Australia!!! x

Spencer's last day at Bayview Kindy :(

 Well Wednesday the 14th of September 2016 was the end of an era for us because our baby boy up & graduated from Bayview Kindy so no more kindergarten days for us.....it was actually a little bit sad cause both the boys have loved their time there so we've gotten to know the teachers pretty well so it was sad to say goodbyes - lucky they're just next door though so we can still wave & say hi when we're passing by....

Here's the little card we made for the teachers & their little hershey's kisses gifts

And here is our big almost 5 year old super excited to finally be getting his turn on the birthday chair!!! It must be so awesome when that day finally arrives cause they have to sit there watching it be someone else's turn for 2 years before they actually get their chance lol

He chose to sing the lollipop song which was the same one Mac chose (I think 99.9% of kids choose that song haha - the teachers must get sick of it!)

He had 5 lollipops to hand out throughout the song so he chose Mac, Shylah & I & then 2 of his kindy friends to give them to :)

We gave the kindy a duplo set for our pressie cause Spence really enjoyed playing that at kindy over the last little while

So proud of my handsome baby boy. He learnt & grew so much over his 2 years at Bayview Kindy but was really ready to move onto school by the time this day finally arrived xxx

So special to have cuzzie Shy there with us as well

Love how kindergartens still do the carboard hat with streamers, birthday cake & number 5 card they used to do all those many moons ago when we were at kindy :) Think the only thing that's changed is that the cake has had an upgrade from playdoh to actually being edible - & Spence made sure he devoured the whole thing of course!

Funny how Mum's the biggest & Grandie is the smallest. I've got a pretty good hair of head on me too - must be my hair when I wake up in the morning lol