Tim Tams at Target

An old room mate of mine from Chicago tipped me off last week that Target now stocks Tim Tams. So I checked it out, and sure enough, there they were. Made in Australia but in some pretty funny looking packaging. For those of you who have never had a Tim Tam, they are an Australian cookie (which we call biscuits), with a chocolate layer sandwiched between two cookies and then the whole lot coated in chocolate! Under "Tim Tam", they say "Australia's favorite cookie".

For Christmas, Chris surprised me 5 Flake chocolate bar. I think this is my favorite Cadbury's chocolate bar. In Calgary I was able to find them occasionally imported from the UK. Chris was really nice and would buy me several whenever he found them at a store. The week before Christmas Chris found them at an Indian grocery store. I was so surprised that he was able to find them here in Augusta!

So I think I can now get all my favorite foods right here in Augusta!! One of the grocery stores stocks Milo. The only thing I can't get is Vegimite. But that's ok, Mum just gave us a small tube when she was here in September and that should last about a year! It's not something I like all the time, but every now and then it's great on toast for breakfast.

Christmas Chaos

The night before Christmas there was order in the house, not a creature was stirring not even a mouse.....

Less than 12 hours later, there was chaos as presents and wrapping went everywhere!!

Owen got 2 goldfish in a bowl as one of his presents. Later in the morning he tried putting his hand in the water!! Another favorite present were his squeaky shoes. He has been testing Ella's out for the past few days and was very excited when he got his very own pair. They squeak with every step!!

Ella received a very pretty skirt and hairband from Auntie Simone (thank you!!). She had to put them on right away. From Santa she got a few more toys for her play kitchen - a baking set, mixer, and smoothie set.
Santa brought Sam a blue Ukulele. He just loves it! Now his Mum and Dad just want to know how to tune it! - Can anyone help?? And for everyone to share, Santa brought a Marble race track. It kept Sam busy for a long time today!
For Christmas breakfast we had oven pancakes - a family favorite.

And for Christmas dinner we had a pizza party along with chips and punch. Chris and I had been tossing ideas around about what to have for Christmas dinner. We finally decided on pizza because it is a family favorite that everyone enjoys. We use a special thin crust recipe and pizza stone and they are just delicious. Best of all, everyone gets to choose their own toppings. Sam likes cheese and poppy seeds. Ella and Owen like pizza sauce and cheese and today Chris and I had three different toppings - Hawaiian, caramelized onion, and mushroom-apple-goat cheese. It was a great Christmas dinner!!




For desert we had pink cup cakes and popcorn balls! Ella received a cute book called Pinkalicious for her birthday about a girl who eats too many pink cupcakes and then turns pink. The kids have been asking for pink cupcakes since Ella got the book so we decided to include them in our Christmas party today.


Later in the afternoon we went out for a walk. It was raining just a little and so Owen and Ella tested out the new umbrellas they got for Christmas..

Falling behind

I can't believe Christmas is only a week away and that 2008 will be over in just a couple of weeks. It's all gone too quickly. We have been busy the past couple of weeks getting ready for Christmas and a few other things and unfortunately the blog has been a bit neglected.

Last week we started a little pre-school for Sam, Ella and two friends that live in the neighborhood. Each Mum takes their turn teaching. It was my turn last week and our class was on winter. It was lots of fun. The kids had a great time being bears hibernating for the winter, making snowmen pictures and playing in snow (shaving cream!). The great thing is that I take two mornings and then get 4 mornings free! We are planning to do it just twice a week and will start again after Christmas.

Here's the class playing in shaving cream snow. Notice how much Sam and John have on their hands? The girls weren't so keen on getting their hands messy.

I left Owen for a few minutes while I cleaned the boys up and this is how I found him!! He smelled of shaving cream for the rest of the day!
Sam has been begging us to put up his train that he got from Grandpa Bingham last year for Christmas. We finally got around to it last Saturday. The spare bedroom has now become the train room! Sam has already spent hours in there watching his train go around and around or just pushing it around the track. The trains could almost be considered antiques (I think they were built in the 1950's). Sam takes very good care of them and does not like anyone to drive them too fast or push them off the tracks.


It almost feels like spring already!! The past few days have been warm and humid. A great chance for the kids to get outside and enjoy the backyard. Here they "camping" and having a picnic of chips and gingerbread cookies.

Getting Ready for Christmas

Sam knew last Monday morning that Thanksgiving was over and that Christmas had begun. The Christmas tree and Christmas lights all had to come out straight away. Sam loves Christmas and is getting us all into the holiday spirit.

Here are Sam and Ella after decorating the Christmas tree. Chris thinks we need to upgrade our tree, it's so small. My answer, let's put it on top of a table to make it look bigger!!
Sam, Ella and Owen cooking popcorn for popcorn balls to take to the Ward Christmas party last night.

Sam, Ella and Owen in the tub this morning. We don't have church until the afternoon and so having a bath in Mum and Dad's bathroom is a special treat to keep them busy on Sunday mornings.

Monkey Joes

It rained all day Saturday and with 6 kids four years olkd & under in the house we had to find something to do! We took the kids to a place called Monkey Joe's which has a huge room full of inflatable jumping castles and slides. We were there for 2-hours and they all jumped themselves silly!

Ella was the champion jumper for the day. She did not stop the whole time we were there and went down the biggest slide over and over.







This morning before going to church Sam and Ella along with their friends Sarah and Jason who are staying with us entertained themselves playing with a wooden train track. I think this is the only time all weekend they all played together with the one toy at the same time! Of course Owen wanted to be right in the middle of things.

Thanksgiving

We had a really fun Thanksgiving yesterday. An old friend of Chris's and his family have come to stay with us for 5 nights over Thanksgiving. Shane and Cindy live in Florida and have 3 children the around the same age as ours. The kids have had a blast playing together. We weren't quite sure how they would take to each other since they haven't met before, but we didn't have to worry at all, you would think they had all been friends forever.

Yesterday we enjoyed a thanksgiving meal at lunch time (which I didn't get any photos of!) and spent time outside at the park in the morning and the afternoon. Below are a few shots from our trip out to the park on Thanksgiving morning. Chris did most of the cooking which was great for me!!

Happy Birthday Ella!

Ella turned 3 on Saturday. She has been so excited about the big day and loves to remind us what a big girls she is. It seems like she should have been 3 a while ago. And at times she can act like she's 13 not 3! Some things I love about Ella -
- Her spicy personality
- Her made-up words. For example, "cutters" for scissors and "up shoes" for high heel shoes. She refuses to be told that her words are not the right ones.
- The way she eats her pancakes and waffles with lemon juice ("lemonade") and no sugar and doesn't even wince.
- She is such a girly-girl

Some pictures below from the big day. She was so tired out at the end of the day that she just sat and watched her friends hit the pinata. She then feel sound asleep at 5:30pm and did not wake up until the next morning.

Getting ready to open her presents. She had to wait until Owen woke up which was about an hour or more after she woke up..


Reading some of her new stories with Dad..
Blowing our the candles on her birthday cake at her butterfly themed birthday party. She had about 6 little 2 & 3 year old girls at the party.
Chris doing a great job on crowd control


Ella gave her dummy (pacifier) away to the birthday fairy to give to a new baby the day after her birthday. We've been preparing her for months for this big event. She was quite happy about it all until it was time to go to sleep on Sunday night.

Ella asleep Sunday night without her dummy and a present waiting for her to open the next morning from the birthday fairy to say thanks for giving up her dummy
The present was a small blanket. She has a big one made by her Auntie Laurel-Lee and calls it her baby. Laurel-Lee also made her two small ones, both of which got lost. The last one was lost at the Science Center in Calgary back in May. Ella was soooo excited with her gift and told us that the Birthday Fairy had found her little baby and brought it to her here in Georgia. We had one happy little girl and she has not asked for her dummy once. And I am so glad to see the dummy gone!!

Backyard fun

This week we've spent almost every afternoon playing in the backyard. The weather has been really pleasant and we now have enough toys and activities to keep the kids entertained outside for a long time - something that I obviously love!

Here they are playing on their "new" swing set that arrived today. I picked it up from a yard sale a few weeks ago for about $40, which included delivery and set-up! What a bargain!




A couple of days ago I raked up the leaves. Of course the kids had a great time rolling around and playing in them!

Ella and Sam love to use "rain-brellas". We had a little sprinkle of rain and they played with the umbrellas for a long time, even after it stopped raining.

Owen posing for the camera and saying "cheese"..

And here's one of our first pics of baby #4. I turned 35 this year and have now hit the "high risk" category. The doctors like to do early screening to look for any issues. At 17 weeks the baby looks just great and was kicking and doing tumble turns yesterday making life a bit difficult for the ultrasound tech. Anyone want to guess if it's a boy or a girl? We're keeping it a surprise and so the ultrasound tech had to turn the screen so I wouldn't accidentally check things out.

Happy Halloween

One of the things I love about living in North America are the holidays. It all starts with Halloween and then there seems to be another holiday to look forward to every few weeks until Easter. And then after that summer is just around the corner. We've had a great time with Halloween this week and the kids are now getting excited about Ella's birthday and Thanksgiving in November.

We had fun this week carving our Halloween pumpkin. Sam chose the stencil off the internet. It's so happy - just like Sam!

On Thursday night we went to a Halloween party at church. The evening included a chili cook-off and prizes were given for the best three. I won a prize for the best tomato-less chili (it was the only one!). I made Lizzie Maughan's white bean chili from a cook book that the RS sisters put together while we were in Chicago. It's a recipe we love and make often.

Chris, Ella and Sam at the Ward Halloween party.

Owen getting into mischief!

Friday night was Halloween. Here are Sam and Ella with their friends Malcolm and Myla setting out to go trick-or-treating. They came home with way too much candy!

Yesterday we drove to Columbia, South Carolina and took the kids to the zoo. Sam has been mentioning the fact that we didn't go to the zoo almost every day in his prayers lately so we thought we had better go! The weather was just perfect and we had a really nice day out.