Here come the cousins!

They came, they played, they went home exhausted! There hasn't been much crafting going on around here. This is why!
My adorable nephews came for a visit over the weekend, much to the delight of Romily, who adores them, and Tristan, who thrives on the excitement of so many kids to play with. My brother and my sister-in-law drove up from Melbourne on Friday and did it in reverse yesterday. A long way to come for the weekend, but three days was more than enough for my over-excited four-year-old!

They had so much fun, but not quite enough sleep. Rom slept in her swap on her bedroom floor while the twins top and tailed in her bed. They had the funniest conversations when they should have been sleeping. Darcy and Cody are four weeks younger than Romily, and it's quite funny to watch her try to boss them around (she gets that from me) and them just ignore her! Sounds like typical female-male relations to me!
The older two, Zach and Sam, were so good with all the little ones. Rom and Sam have a special relationship and they are just adorable together. It was really great seeing Jacinta and Jim with their tribe - we don't get a lot of chat time when we visit them in Melbourne, as we're usually too busy making sure the kids don't get into too much trouble to talk properly. This time we were able to have a good chinwag after the kids were in bed.
With five of the six cousins celebrating birthdays within a month of each other, we had another cake to celebrate. We sang happy birthday to 'everybody' and all of the kids helped blow out the candles (except Tristan who was asleep in his cot already!).We headed out to some of Romily's favourite places in Canberra, including Questacon (a science and maths discovery place for kids) and Cockington Green (Miniature villages and a miniature steam train). The kids had a blast at both places, although they really wore themselves out!Jacinta and I did do a little bit of crafting - Zach and Sam are dressing up as 'Where's Wally' for book week in September. We were raw-edge appliqueing red felt stripes onto white skivvies. They will look adorable in matching red and white striped beanies being knitted by their 'other' grandmother (i.e. not my mum but Jacinta's mum). Also, I finished another two drawstring bags the night before the cousins arrived. One for Darcy and one for Cody, stuffed with a cute t-shirt and shorts outfit each (matching, but different colours) and a cute first reader book for each of them.Romily was bereft upon the cousins' departure and spent a good hour sobbing and wailing. Every time I looked at her she burst into tears again! She loves her cousins and I wish we could live closer so that they could see more of each other.

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Things will be a little quiet around here over the next few weeks. I have a paper due on Sunday and then we're off to Sydney for the week for a little bit of a family holiday. I'm going to take some handwork with me, but depending on how exhausted I am, may not get much done! Looking forward to some more crafting soon.

Pleats to meet you

I realised I hadn't blogged this yet! Before we headed off on our road trip I made this skirt for Romily. Actually, I made it twice - the first one was waaaaay too big around the waist and a little long, so I made it in the next size down. It's from an Ottobre 6/2008 pattern - #16 'Tammy'. It's the first time I've made anything with pleats, and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. It's also lined. As the first skirt was so big around the waist, I also excluded the seam allowances. A perfect fit!
The bigger sized skirt has been put away for next winter :)

And just because, here's a photo of Romily with her twin cousins Darcy and Cody - they're exactly four weeks younger than her and cute as buttons. This is their favourite trick and they showed Romily how to do it too!
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All goes well here. We are all healthy for a change! We have also been night-weaning Tristan. It's going well so far after a fairly torrid first night. I think we will all be better for having a bit more sleep at night. Once he's sleeping through we'll move him downstairs into Romily's room. She's very excited about not being the only one sleeping downstairs!

Exhausted

We're back tonight from our week in Melbourne, happy to be home and utterly exhausted after a marathon two-day drive home. Without kids, you can do the trip in 7-8 hours (with minimum stopping). With kids and roadworks combined, it's more like 12-13. Since Carl couldn't come on this trip and as Tristan is still not sleeping the night through, I knew I'd be too tired to manage it in one day, so we did it in two in each direction, staying the night in a motel (an adventure in itself for the children) in Albury.

A minor miracle, we all managed to stay healthy this trip! This meant we were able to catch up with friends and family we missed at Easter. Romily just adores her four boy cousins and they like seeing her. It was great seeing them all playing so well together. Tristan was watching with eyes agog, and you could tell he was working out whether he could join in! He had a very exciting time playing with Grandma and Huppa (my parents) and has learnt to speed crawl. He loves nothing more than 'crawly chasy' - especially with his big sister.

(Rom looking like an angel with a halo at my parents' house)

(Tristan after Huppa sneezed loudly and frightened him - excuse the pink sleeping bag - it was Romily's when she was a bubba!)

I attempted to finish Robina's quilt in time for our visit to Bendigo, but our trip was brought forward by two days, which just did me in. It unfortunately still isn't finished, although I only have one side's binding waiting to be stitched down. I encountered some problems with Grandma's sewing machine, which saw many stitches being skipped on the front side of the binding. I ended up having to go around twice. Anyway, it's looking good, and I hope to finish it over the weekend.
Here is a photo of the finished top before it was sandwiched, as well as a photo of the basted sandwich. I hope she will like it.

While watching Romily and Tristan engaging with their grandparents was an absolute highlight of the trip, my initial reason for going was to see Pink! When I bought my ticket she wasn't coming to Canberra. Of course, Canberra concerts have since been announced. Ah well, we were due for a visit down south. I digress. Pink was fabulous! The venue has its challenges - it was the Rod Laver Arena, which is the main court for the Australian Open - including dodgy sound, but after the first few songs the techies managed to fix whatever was going wrong. What a show. I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet, but for those who have or don't plan to, let's just say it was world-class and the girl could sing underwater (and just about does!). I had a great time.

It was very hard to say goodbye to my parents yesterday. They're so good with the kids and the kids adore them. We don't get to see them often enough and poor Romily was bereft last night, wailing in the back seat of the car "I want to live with Grandma and Huppaaaaaaaaaaa". She gets the drama queen from me, by the way! Hopefully they'll be able to get to Canberra in the not-too-distant future and we might sneak down again in September, depending on how things are going.

It was lovely to arrive home this afternoon. And even lovelier when Carl got home from work. We all missed each other enormously. Back to reality tomorrow. Carl will take Rom to her swimming lesson and I'll get some crafting done. Got to get some things made for Rom's fast-approaching birthday party...I can't believe she'll be four in three weeks!

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And some excellent news awaited me upon my return home - I received a High Distinction (90 per cent) for my course mark. Woohoo! Yeeha! Got to be happy with that. I must have done pretty well on the exam after all. Thank god!! One more unit of coursework to go before I transfer to the coursework/research program, which will mean a 75,000 word paper, to be written over 2-3 semesters (part-time). I need to get cracking on my research proposal, as well as start reading for this semester's course - Strategic Management. The things we put ourselves through!

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And finally, here are a couple of pictures of my handsome boy after his first real hair cut. It was pretty tricky trying to cut his hair - he was a moving target - but I don't think I did too bad a job!Clapping hands! What a clever boy :)

Yum, Yum, New Fabric!

My parcel from Equilter arrived last week, and all the fabric is now washed and ironed.

Although it's quilting cotton, it's actually going to be dresses for Rom...although leftovers might just find their way into my stash :)


And shirts for my twin nephews. I just couldn't find good quality cotton/nice prints in my local fabric store, so I thought I'd get this! I'd better get busy though if they're going to be ready in time for Christmas.


I've also been tagged by Tina.

Here are the Rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are TAGGED by leaving a comment on their blog.

So, five 'fascinating' facts about little old moi:
1. My wedding dress was green
2. I fell in love with my husband on Mt Everest
3. I hope to be living in Tasmania within five years
4. My middle name is Margaret (and so is my mum's and my daughter's)
5. If I won the lotto tomorrow I wouldn't work another day in my life! On second thoughts, that's probably not just me, but you get the drift.

Lots of memes are doing the rounds, so don't feel obliged. But if you are game, I tag:
Helen
AJ
Cathy
Gabrielle
Nicolette

Oh and hoorah! My work trip to Adelaide was cancelled! Thank goodness. I can well do without it at the moment. So much happening over the next six weeks.

Back from Melbourne

And we had a lovely time!

We did have a little trouble getting out of Canberra after I finished work last Thursday - there had been a terrible fatal car/motorbike accident on the highway heading south and the police had closed the highway earlier that day. We thought it might have been cleared three hours later when we headed that way, but after queuing for about 20 minutes we were turned around and had to head back into town, up the northern highway to meet up with the Hume Highway (the major north-south arterial in Australia) - all this ginning around added an extra two hours to our journey - what a pain. Although of course an extra two hours is only a little inconvenience when you put it in perspective. Anyway, we ended up staying overnight in Albury, the border town between New South Wales and Victoria.

The next morning we headed south-west to Bendigo, where my father-in-law lives. We had a lovely catch-up with him and his partner, staying for lunch and dinner. After our meal we jumped back in the car and headed to Melbourne, arriving at my parents' house two hours later. We were all quite tired, but Romily had had a nap in the car, so was ready for a bit of a play before finally being put to bed at around 10pm - we didn't last much longer!

In the morning I took apart at the waistband and side seams the jeans I made for my nephew Zach - I rang my sister-in-law, who told me that his waist was 51cm - not the normal 63cm I'd catered for! I redid the side seams and reattached the waist AND added elastic to the back waist, finally getting them to approximately the right size. That's the last I want to see of those pants!!

We headed round to my brother Jim and sister-in-law Jacinta's place in the afternoon so Romily could see her four cousins again. They had a lovely afternoon playing together, along with my cousin's daughter and a one-year-old girl, the daughter of my brother's friends. The kids all played tea parties and dress-ups while the adults had coffee and cake. It was the most gorgeous day and so lovely to spend it relaxing with family.

Romily's tea party

A pensive but gorgeous Cody

The Darcy & Cody Dragon

After a quiet night in at my parents' house, the lot of us headed off to the Melbourne Zoo on Sunday to celebrate my twin nephews' 2nd birthday. Darcy and Cody are just gorgeous - non-identical but oh so similar! We had a great morning, followed by lunch and a cake. My other brother Bill and his partner Kate came too. Romily and her 4-year-old cousin Sam adore each other and held hands for a good deal of the time - which was great, as it meant our little bolter was less inclined to run off (again and again and again). She was very taken with the elephants, who have the most incredible enclosures - they are moved around quite a bit and have huge areas with swimming pools, piles of dirt to roll around in, toys to play with and a great 'elephant wash'. The elephants came from Thailand recently, where they had been working elephants. They are living the high life now in their retirement.

The transformation of the Melbourne Zoo over the past 20 years is simply stunning. Gone are the horrible cages of yesteryear and now all the enclosures are much more closely modelled on the animals' natural habitat. If there has to be a zoo, it should be this kind. I'm still in two minds as to whether there should be zoos, but I think they do serve an important educational service. I think. I'd much rather see no animal locked up, but the reality is that they are. If they are, then they should all be looked after so well.

Romily and Huppa in the butterfly enclosure

Sam, Romily, Huppa and Zachary

Sam and Rom

Sam and Zach

Cody and Uncle Carl

Darcy and Uncle Bill

We had a quiet afternoon back at my parents' place before brother and sister-in-law brought their four boys around for dinner. All the kids really enjoyed seeing each other and I enjoyed being with my family again. It's hard being so far away, but it's great when we're all together.

We drove back yesterday, taking around eight and a half hours. Bashka was VERY happy to see us when we picked him up from the cat boarding place and has been the biggest sook since then.

It is nice to be back home again.