reminiscing

I was going through our pictures this morning (looking for a picture of a quilt I did a couple years ago) and ended up looking through old pictures of my little boys. I found myself ooing, aahing and laughing out loud at some of them. Thought you might like to reminisce with me...

January 2006

October 2006

February 2007

February 2007

June 2007

June 2007

June 2007

October 2007

August 2007

February 2008

Nappy Test

Jonas has been doing well with his potty training (the only accidents he has had in the last month or so have been when we were camping a few weeks ago). We have already gotten rid of the nappies at nap time but haven't felt brave enough to do the same for bed time (one set of sheets and not enough time in the day to wash and dry them will do that to you). But his nappy always seems to be dry in the morning and we are down to about the last 10 nappies in the pack so last night we let him wear his big boy underwear at night. In the morning he was completely dry! We are so proud of our little Jonas!!

Cheese factory

On the way home we went to the Bega Cheese Factory. We got to taste a bunch of their cheese and learn about the cheese making process. We also bought some mint/chocolate fudge. We timed it so we could eat lunch there but they didn't have the lunch selection we were hoping for so we moved on into the (totally ghetto) city of Bega where we found a KFC.

If you are looking at this picture below thinking "man, the Blanks are looking rough" you are absolutely right! This was following the night we all slept in the back of our station wagon.

Liam was not happy when he found out his face was in the girl's side!

So we made Jonas be the girl in the next one.

Mogo Zoo

While in Batemans Bay we went to Mogo Zoo. Lots of cool animals and we got to watch them feed a few of them. Maybe you don't really care what animals we saw but we thought they were cool. A few of my favorites-

Pygmy Marmosets

Emporer Tamarin

Red Panda

posing otters

By far the strangest animals of all...


and some unknown monkey species:

Luxury Camping

In August we went camping at a beach town called Batemans Bay (I mentioned it briefly in another post). The place we camped at was great. We both felt like we were so spoiled. They had nice showers, the bathrooms were right across a small road, electricity (for movie watching after dark), bbq area, fridges, freezers, playground, jumping pillow (see pictures below), swimming pool and the ocean was so close we could hear the waves crashing from our tent. It was nothing like the camping I remember from growing up - where if you wanted a bath you took your bar of Ivory soap and a wash cloth down to the freezing cold river/lake. Either way camping is fun. Here are a few pictures from our weekend. My favorite part was the beach. I could sit at the beach all day and play in the sand, play tag with the water, explore the rocks or just sit and do nothing. I had a hard time deciding on just a few beach pictures so I'm posting a bunch! :)

Jonas fell in the water (3rd change of clothes that day)

The jumping pillow was so cool. I wish we had one in our backyard. It is just a huge air filled pillow that is surrounded by sand. Nate got on it too but right as he was getting on Jonas wet his pants for the 2nd time that day. So I had to run off and get him changed. By the time we made it back Liam and Nate were finished.

Tidbinbilla

I am such a slacker lately with the blogging. Here is my attempt to catch up a little bit. We have been doing things, I just haven't gotten around to posting them. I didn't realize how many things I haven't posted until we were sending around Picasa albums to our families.

April 12th (I can't believe its been a month!!) we went to Tidbinbilla again - we went for Liam's birthday last year. It is a nature reserve with some nice walks and if you are lucky, you might see some native Australian animals. Last time we only saw kangaroos, emu and some other birds.

This time we saw a wallaby...

Kangaroos...

a huge bird...

and a KOALA!!

This was a huge deal for us! We knew they had them at the reserve but they are hard to find. You are basically just walking on a path through bush land. The first time we went it seemed like it would be impossible to find one. There is a man at church who has lived in Australia all his life but has never seen a koala in the wild. We did have a little help though. Someone had spotted it earlier in the day so the workers at the reserve put a marker along the path to tell you where to look.


Nate, Liam and Jonas climbing on rocks.

Mom picked a smaller one :)

Liam and Jonas looking towards the platypus pond. We haven't seen any but our friends who went the next day saw a few. That is my goal for our next visit (not that I have much control over it).

The Name Game

The other day Nate and I were looking up girl names (don't worry, this is not an announcement! It takes us a while to agree on names so we figured we should get a (very) early start.) Nate found this site Behind the Name that randomly generates names based on what category you pick. Here are some it came up with for us.

Norwegian: Ester Andrea

English: Angela Tilly

Irish: Naome Ide

Finnish: Iima Riina

German: Wilhelmina Petronella

Danish: Magdalene Agnethe

Spanish: Juliana Maite

Russian: Klava Feodora

Italian: Calogera Lora

French: Mirabelle Francette

Literature: Araminta Vivien

Transformer: Eject Sixshot

Fairy: Jellygaze Glitterberry

Hillbilly: Dolly-Sue Molly-Sue