i know...i'm fired

I promised myself that now that I wasn't trying to hide a pregnancy and a baby that I would be a much better blogger.


Guess not.



We've been back in Oz for a month and I'm still as lame as I ever was. Sorry, Amie. I know you are the only person that actually reads this anyway!!

So, the month in review:


The second night we were back here I woke up in the night to find our kitchen and living room flooded. Not fun. Carpet guys came to suck up all the water and then left these two big fans to dry out the carpet. We had them going for three days. I believe the guys exact words were: "now tell the kids this isn't a bouncy castle".

yeah. right.

after three days I just couldn't yell at them anymore.


they thought it was pretty fabulous!


January is mango season here and we just happen to have a huge mango tree in the yard of our building. We discovered this was both a blessing and a curse.

Blessing: free mangoes! yum yum yum. and even though they grow here, they are stupidly expensive to buy, so free is great!

Curse: wildlife also enjoy mangoes so you get heaps of loud squawking birds, and screeching freaky fruit bats. Whatever said wildlife doesn't eat or only half eats falls on the ground and then you get rotting fruit smell and ginormous swarms of fruit flies.

So, to make up for the curse, we made sure to count our blessings and feasted on some delicious free mangoes!



Osh started 'kindy' the end of January. Kindy is basically the same as playschool. Here he is all ready for his first day:

He has to have a hat like this in order to play outside. They are very serious about sun protection here. I put sunscreen on him before he goes to school and he has to have one at school that they reapply before they go outside.
He has been loving going. He counts down the sleeps until he can go again. I'm glad he has something just for him that he is so excited about.

Meanwhile, Ryan is still on school holidays, so he's taken on a project or two.

His sister gave us a Slap Chop for Christmas and we have put it to good use!

Ryan is a slap chop pro.




The end result: Salsa!


So yummy. We eat salsa a lot and it is, of course, crazy expensive here. Now we have heaps and can eat it with reckless abandon!

We've had some trips to the beach and parks and all kinds of good stuff as well. We are just making the most of what's left of summer and our time with Ryan before his studies consume him for another year.

When we were home, our very talented sister in law took some family pictures for us. They are awesome! Anyone in her area in need of photos should definitely book her. Check them out! Maeve and Family

the reactions!

Hard to believe that our trip to Canada is over and that we've been back in Australia for two weeks already! We had such a great trip. It was so great to see family and friends and to let the kids have endless hours of fun with their cousins. We miss that here.

We got to experience a real Canadian winter - the coldest one I can ever remember! Heaps of snow, which the kids thought was pretty awesome. It was nice to experience another season besides never ending summer. (not that I'm complaining!)

Anyway, the highlight of the trip was surprising our families with our new baby, Maeve. The reactions were awesome and made a year's worth of secret keeping and deception worth it!

Ryan has been playing with his computer and made a website where he posted lots of videos and pictures from the big surprise and our trip in general. Rather than post things in multiple places, just check it out here.

Love that smiley face!

don't ever say we can't keep a secret

it's finally time to make this official - in the blog world anyway. most of our family and friends have already had this surprise. but for the rest of you, the story goes something like this:


a while back, ryan and i were dicussing when we wanted to have another baby.



i wanted to wait.




he didn't.




guess who won.








did i mention we found out this news 3 days after arriving in our new home - 8000 miles away from family, friends and all my maternity/baby stuff??!!


since we were so far away, but knew we would be returning to canada at the end of the year, we said, "wouldn't it be funny if we just didn't tell anyone that we were pregnant and just showed up with a baby!"


we weren't sure if we meant it, but we kept our news to ourselves for the time being.


meanwhile:

18 weeks


my ultrasound at 19 weeks. we didn't find out if we were having a boy or a girl.















now should we tell people?



nah



32 weeks



i got ginormous this time. i got asked on several occastions if i was having twins. and people always thought i must be due any day really early on.



now should we tell people?




nah




so we're pretty committed to keeping this on the downlow by this point. and it was not easy! you'd think being so far away would afford you copious amounts of anonymity, but technology these days complicates things. when we first moved, we started off having regular web cam chats with our families. but when i became obviously pregnant we just had to start flat out lying: "sorry, our web cam is broken!" one of numerous 'white' lies we had to tell!

we even had multiple visitors from canada that we had to swear to secrecy!

we didn't even tell osh and aviana that i was pregnant. they are too young to really get it anyway, but we didn't want them leaking the surprise over the phone or anything. osh just thought it was funny that i was getting so fat!

at exactly 36 weeks, baby decides to pull a surprise of it's own! you'd think by child number 3 i would be able to recognize true labor when it sets in.

apparently not.

i started having contractions the night before, but wrote them off as braxton hicks. when they were continuing the next morning, i paused to question, but thought it couldn't be real labor because i was only 36 weeks. yes, this from the person who had baby #1 at 31 weeks. i should know babies can come early. but, i'm just that stupid (or was in that much denial because i didn't want to go through labor!)

by the time i decide that this is real, contractions are right on top of each other and i can't not scream! i have become the crazy screaming woman in labor.

after some drama with getting someone to watch osh & aviana (they very nearly came to the delivery room with us!), we headed to the hospital.

we arrived at 9:30 am.




SHE arrived at 10:02 am.





maeve elizabeth reid audenart
6 lbs
19.5 inches


another daddy's girl


meeting her big brother and sister.


since we didn't really explain it to the kids, osh just thinks you can go the hospital and get a tiny baby! he's asked me on multiple occasions, "mom, can we go back to the hospital and get another baby? a boy baby this time?!"

our little peanut




so, she arrived the first part of september. we weren't going back to canada till the end of november. it's one thing to keep a pregnancy a secret, it's a whole other issue to keep a newborn a secret!!

again: more lies. lots of just not answering the phone or proactively phoning people when you knew she would sleep for a while.

it was kinda stressful at times!


but, it was all worth it when we saw the looks on our families faces when we brought back the best little souvenier ever!!


more on that to come.



don't ever say we can't keep a secret!

critters and jitters

I often feel like you could film an entire nature documentary right in our apartment complex grounds. Ginormous spiders: got em. Bright turquoise butterflies: check. Thousands of ants clamoring down an ant superhighway: present. Tree climbing possums: accounted for. Who needs tv when the nature channel is your own backyard!

Just another few that would make the film:

a baby owl with glowing yellow eyes - staring right at us! so cute and fluffy.

momma owl keeping tabs on junior. dad was higher up the tree too.


on a far less cute note, this was waiting to scare the pants off us right at the front entrance


that bad boy is so big I think he's less 'stick bug' more 'entire tree bug'! seriously - almost three bricks long. scared. the. pants. off. us. gives me the heebies just writing about him!

only 6 more sleeps until we depart bugville for a while! i'm so mentally checked out already it's ridiculous. poor ryan, he still has to study and write an entire exam-the night before we leave. how brutal is that?! i'll try to keep my hysteria on low key to not distract him, but it's gonna be tough!

getting our halloween on - aussie style

Australians aren't really big on Halloween. They know what it is and it is starting to get a little more popular, but it is nothing like it is at home. There's no trick or treating, no decorating your house or carving pumpkins. Kinda sad for a little Canadian family who think Halloween is so much fun!!

But, it wasn't a total loss. There was a 'family fun day' at a local park that we went to and even though it was so hot, the kids had fun.

jumping in a bouncy castle

osh with special guest Thomas! osh loves Thomas and was very excited that he was there.

see...told ya he was excited!

we waited 30 minutes for the kids to go inside Thomas and play with all the levers and knobs and stuff. they were in for not even 2 minutes (it was really busy!). remind me not to go to Disneyland anytime soon!
we got a last minute call from an american family inviting us to a small halloween party for the kids. these are the treats we made to take with us: eyeballs on a fork!!
theoretically these are really easy to make. donut holes dipped in white chocolate, mini m&m and then red food coloring for the veins. of course they don't have donut holes here (don't get me started!) so we had to make those too. they look fun and they were so yummy!
playing the classic 'eat the donut with no hands' game at the party. they both kind of looked at us like we were all stupid: 'why would we waste time trying to eat it with no hands when we can just grab it and shove it in our faces!' oh, i did mention this was a last minute invitation right? hence the space man pj's for osh as a costume!
little fairy going after a donut
we did get to trick or treat to a couple ward members homes. osh was excited to get some treats and has spent the last few days taking them out of his bag, lining them up meticulously and then putting them back in the bag. oh, and asking me if he can eat chocolate bars for breakfast!
aviana excited to have some loot too!

so, halloween wasn't a total write off. in fact, it was fun! i'm so glad because i was feeling pretty sad about the whole thing. it turned out to be a great day with the kids.

now, for those of you tuning in for the countdown, it is only 19 more days until we come home!!

hate mail

i found this in our mailbox the other week:



it's terribly polite for hate mail! not sure which neighbor sent it to us, most likely someone on our floor. i don't blame them. i wouldn't want to live near us either. let's face it, a 3 year old and an almost 2 year old are not exactly experts at being quite. they yell, scream, cry, laugh, shout, sing pretty much from the moment they wake up until they go to bed. if you remember what our place looks like then you'll know there just isn't a lot of space for kids to play. it's not that they are standing at the front door screaming, it's that the living room (the main place the kids play) is right at the door! not sure how i'm supposed to fix that.

in an effort to be more neighborly, we have been trying to spend a little more time outside. we took the camera with us on our last walk around the block and here's what we found:

spring time here is synonymous with jacaranda trees. these magnificent purple trees are everywhere here. they make a beautiful contrast to the green of the other trees and we have really enjoyed seeing them. they are starting to drop their flowers now, but they were exceptional a few weeks ago. we'll look forward to these every spring!





no idea what the technical name for these flowers are. we call them toilet brush flowers!


trees here don't lose their leaves in autumn like at home. trees lose their leaves at random times of the year - like this one...


...which also grows beans! i've noticed a couple different bean growing trees here. who knew?!


4 weeks till we come home! i bet our neighbors are as excited as we are!

as promised, the aviana pics from our mock photo shoot the other day. she wasn't a whole lot more willing than her brother to sit still, but there were still a couple cute ones.





the days are getting hotter and longer (as my children continue to wake up even earlier in the morning! 6:30 am has turned into 6 am lately. yuck.) and i've been trying to find things for us to do so we don't all go crazy during the day. these have been two of the most popular things this week:

osh and aviana refer to this as the 'bath'. something fun for the hot days. now i just need a lounge chair and we'll be in business!

this is the first time i've made playdough since having kids. we've always had the storebought stuff for them to play with. the kids liked to help make it though and the smell and feel of it totally reminds me of childhood (my mom always made us playdough).


nothing extraordinary, but the kids have had fun.

5 weeks till we'll be home!