letitia and jordans wedding

today was a great day. we got to be with one of our very favourite familys, one of those "friends who have become family" familys and watch as their daughter was sealed to her husband for time and all eternity in the melbourne temple. this of course was the whole reason for our trip to melbourne and i am so glad we were able to be there. 

i am so grateful to mum and dad for dropping everything this weekend to be with the "big" kids while we whisked alex away with us. it makes being away that much easier when you know they are being taken care of. alex was an angel. spent most of the time sleeping when he wasn't being doted on by all our friends and dougs family who we are staying with.

doug and one of the lovely bridesmaids tayla. they are all samoan so he lays claim on them as his little sisters. 

and it's become somewhat of a tradition for him to have a photo with these two at every fepulea'i wedding, even though letitia was the bride today, she was more than happy to get in on it.

it was such a lovely day too. the temple ceremony was beautiful and then we were able to spend time with some of the family at the house they were staying at between the temple and the reception. we were certainly being looked after today too. we had someone lined up to cuddle alex while we were in the sealing, someone who wasn't going to be in there, but they ended up running late to the temple. we were certainly in a pickle as we obviously couldn't leave him by himself. as a last desperate attempt, i asked the man at the recommend desk if there was anyone that might be able to hold my baby for a few minutes while i attended the sealing. he ummed and ahhed a little, but said he would ask, just as a worker rushed forward and said she would love to help us. what a blessing! plus, we found out later that this lady was a good friend of the grooms mother. oh was i pleased. i was so scared that one of us would miss it after coming all that way. the world is full of wonderful people if you only know where to look - and the temple is a very good place to start!

each of the guests had one of these wooden name cutouts on their plates at the table. they even had one cut for baby alex which was so sweet. i couldn't resist having a photo of him with it.

having fun at the reception. alex was fast asleep, so we made some time for a selfie or two

the newlyweds letitia and jordan. we heard so much laughter from them today, which makes me sure that they will be very happy together. there is nothing better than being able to laugh with your spouse and be able to mock each other. (in a nice way of course!)

what a cute set up. ♥

us with mr and mrs faamausili. thanks for an amazing day guys. we felt so honoured to be a part of your special day.

letitia even insisted on having a photo with baby alex which i thought was the cutest! she'll be such a good mum one day.

us with our cute babe

♥

lemon and coconut cupcakes

i have made these a few times in the last few weeks, i found the recipe when i was googling something else - and they are delish! please have a laugh with me at my picture featuring half a lemon to make sure that everyone at our last goodlet family dinner knew they were lemon flavoured haha! recipe is from here... all i changed was to add a little lemon juice to the icing which was otherwise a little bland. go on and give them a go!

lemon and coconut cupcakes 

1 cup self-raising flour

1/2 cup desiccated coconut

1/2 cup caster sugar

2 eggs

160 ml can coconut milk

3 teaspoons lemon, finely grated zest

125g butter, melted and cooled

coconut icing

2 cups icing sugar

30g soft butter

1 1/2 tablespoon boiling water

1/3 cup coconut flakes

method:

1. Preheat oven to 170C or 150C fan and line 12 medium muffin tins with paper cases. Place flour into a large mixing bowl. Stir in coconut and sugar and make a well in the centre.
2. Use a fork to whisk eggs, coconut milk and lemon zest in a jug. Add to the dry ingredients, along with the butter. Fold together until just combined but don't mix or beat. Spoon into prepared cases. Bake for 20 mins, or until springy to a light touch. Leave in the tin for 5 mins then lift out onto a wire rack to cool.
3. To make the icing, sift icing sugar into a bowl and add butter. Pour boiling water onto butter to melt it and stir until smooth. Spread over each cake, sprinkle with coconut flakes and leave to set.

primary presentation 2018

oh my word. kids. who would have them?!

 we had our primary presentation today, very inconveniently the day after madeline's dance concert, and joseph being out late at the woolworths head office christmas party.

well. they were both exhausted when i woke them up and dressed them and were highly unimpressed, especially joseph, who was sooo tired the night before that he'd had a full blown tantrum - at dom of all people! i could barely believe it, then another one when we finally got him home. but. they got up, got dressed and we got them there on time.

madeline got up, rattled her long part off at top speed, pretty much by heart and then sat down again. joseph on the other hand, got up, stared at his teacher when she tried to prompt him, didn't say a word, so she eventually said it into the microphone herself and then they sat down. little monster! he had practiced his part over and over at home and was (or so we thought) good to go. he even knew it off by heart. sigh. but, that is life and that's what we signed up for isn't it. thank goodness he's cute or i'd knock his head off. 

i must admit though, the funniest bit of the day was when i asked them after church if i could take a picture, and this is seriously what they did. i nearly died laughing. i then pulled the old, oh well i guess everyone that wants icecream had better sit up and smile.

done.

and i am so done.

if i've said it once, i've said it a hundred times. lucky they are cute

step up 10th anniversary concert

our little ballerina danced in her first ever concert this evening and wow was she amazing! we were so proud of her as she danced with her class in their "bluebirds" number. she was focused and tried her hardest all the way through.

i really didn't know what to expect, but i was blown away at how much work must have gone into the concert, especially for the opening sequence. the teachers and a selection of students had made a video that played on the digital screen on the stage prior to them starting their dance on the stage... it was epic. although this is our first year at step up, the dance school is celebrating their 10th anniversary this year and had gone all out to make their anniversary concert amazing... and it showed. i can't wait to watch the dvd when it arrives.

the junior ballet "bluebirds." thank goodness for the other mums, last night at the dress rehearsal while i was trying to keep alex quiet when this was taken - and sent to me via sms.

dress rehearsal finale

the concert was very long, especially when you add in awards at the end and i was grateful every single minute for my friend emily who offered to be the "dance mum" for the evening so i could sit in the audience and enjoy the show with many others to help with alex, rather than being stuck backstage in a crowded dress room with a tiny baby. she was an absolute lifesaver!

we had the most wonderful surprise when the awards were handed out, our maddie won the class trophy for her ballet class! we were absolutely thrilled with this, considering she was a last minute addition to the concert and she'd been front and centre for nearly their entire dance. (she had spent most of the year not wanting to do it, then changed her mind at a time that we thought she could no longer be added in, only to have one of the dance teachers chase doug down one sunday and ask us to reconsider. maddie looked like she had won the lottery that day!) obviously their teacher has been really pleased with her dancing and we couldn't have been happier for her!

as you can see, she was loving life and was so so chuffed with her trophy. what a cutie! i don't think i have ever seen her that excited in her life.

me and my big little girl! i am so proud of how hard she has worked with her dancing. ♥

things just got better from there, when we found her ballet teacher miss georgia to thank her, she took me aside and said that maddie had great potential and had proved herself to be a great little dancer, then asked if she would like to join the lyrical troupe next year and do competitions!! oh my gosh! doug and i will obviously talk about it, but i we are so thrilled for her to have even been asked! it looks like she'll have a great path ahead of her in dancing.

doesn't she look like the happiest little girl in the world? i am so pleased that her first dance concert was such a success. 

maddie with her proud as punch parents ♥

and last but certainly not least... maddie with my lovely friend emily backstage. emily - i am so so grateful for you! thank you from the bottom of my heart!

♥

what a night!

some photos ordered from the concert - look at our sweet girl. she makes the most beautiful ballerina!

a night in the bethlehem marketplace: a relief society additional meeting

this evening we had our christmas additional relief society meeting - a night in the bethlehem marketplace. what an excellent idea! the activities girls absolutely nailed it and it was such a good night! 

we began the evening with a spiritual fireside in the chapel, complete with bible readings and musical items. i was asked to sing with my beautiful friend maddy - a song we had previously done together, thank goodness, we didn't have a great deal of time beforehand to practice! it's called "when mary sang her lullaby" by sally deford and you can find the music here. i love it so much, it's well worth the listen on youtube here if you don't already know it.

when the fireside aspect was finished, we moved into the hall for an evening in the marketplace, where bustling stalls were set up ready to receive their visitors. each person was required to pass through the census, having their name recorded, paying their tax (a can of food to be donated to charity) and receiving a bag of gold to use at the stalls to purchase food and goods.

the stalls were so cool, there was a jewellery store, with some funky finds from ebay

and handmade earrings i helped the girls make a few weeks back. i was glad to see they were a hit!

some bracelets and necklaces we found

and rings and hairclips

grandma was on hand to hold alex while i had some food and fruit from the food stalls

looked around at the nativity table - a lot of these were mine on loan as well... such an awesome idea - a great focal point and a way to ensure the focus of the evening remained about the birth of christ.

our marketplace for the evening ♥

the girls had asked me to make the desserts for the evening (much to my mother in laws annoyance... she told my friends not to ask me, but i was happy to do it. i love to be involved in these activities!), so i had been busy making most of them, but cheated and bought fruit mince pies. seriously, who has the time to make them when they are cheap as - and the cheap ones are actually good!

i made rocky road

brownies, fudge and cupcakes topped with a piece of turkish delight (trying hard to somehow tie it into the middle eastern theme there). yum!

everything looked and tasted amazing, i am so grateful as always for the amount of effort that goes into each and every one of these incredible activities!

our christmas tree for the evening - to the left was "bishops brew" which i unfortunately didn't get a photo of, oh was i cracking up over that one!

and in the middle of the room was the "women at the well" a gathering place to eat, sit and chat, while enjoying a quick massage on the house from one of our lovely relief society sisters who is well trained.

at the end of the night after pack up and finally dropping something off to oli, poor baby alex was completely exhausted. after a decent feed, which i had struggled to offer while at the chapel, he fell asleep on his grandma before i took him home to bed. i just love this picture, it shows how much our boy is loved ♥

what an amazing night. i am truly surrounded by amazing women in the gospel

**a huge apology and thank you to the wonderful bert ghergori who took the majority of these pictures. i was dying to capture some good shots of the evening, but spent most of the night racing between the dessert stall and my baby, so i have used his pics from our ward facebook page. thanks bertie! x**

best bros

i didn't know how joseph was going to take this whole big brother thing after he spent half my pregnancy telling me "i'm your baby" and telling me to "call me baaaaaby", "i'm a little tiny baby!" but he has risen to the occasion and looks proud as punch when he "holds" (has him propped against him) baby alexander and loves to tell everyone about him. thank goodness for that, it looks like they are going to be best friends one day ♥ i mean seriously, look at that smile!

a jar of jam

i always used to make jokes about having a third baby so i could complete my neapolitan ice cream tub. i'd say that i had my strawberry and my vanilla and that i just needed a chocolate baby to round it out. obviously i am well aware that the chances were slim to none, but i held fast with my comments, saying that if doug came out red as a throw back, why couldn't we have throw back to a previous darker generation haha.

but here he is - and he's in no way a chocolate baby. i've given up on my neo dream, because i got a jar of jam!
joseph alex and madeline,
two strawberries with a dash of vanilla. they are perfect and i couldn't love them more if i tried! ♥

baby alexanders birth announcement (+ what's in a name...)

here we are, with baby alexanders birth announcement finally ready to go... not late at all, who am i kidding? things have been a little crazy around here!

so... where did we get the name from - is a question we have been asked a lot over the past few weeks.

well. we threw around sooo many names and there was always either one of us that wasn't happy with the choice we would be discussing. i was convinced this baby was going to end up with a "h" name, as they were the ones being discussed the most.

i liked:

henry and hayden

doug suggested hudson, which joseph jumped at, can you imagine his baby brother being named after the fabulous hudson hornet? haha. then in came madeline who decided she was set on hunter.

plus i still loved:

leon and lennox 

which are both names we planned to call joseph...

one night while were laying in bed, almost asleep i said, "what about alexander?" doug replied with mmmmm, which led me to believe he liked it, only to find the next day he'd been more or less asleep, hadn't really heard me and didn't seem to be a fan. back to square one. 

from the day we knew we were having a boy, baby was always going to be something james, after dougs (childhood and still very much) best friend who lives in brisbane. he and doug are still firm friends after all these years and i adore him too. so that bit was easy.

a few weeks passed and doug was like, what about alexander? me: pffft. really? but i still did love it. dougs mum was super keen as well, as it had a samoan option - aleki. (he is now getting aleki and leki a lot) plus there were so many other nickname options: alex, xander, lex (i think this is what may have gotten doug on board. lex like lex luthor the villain from superman haha). but, it was still a toss up between some names and we just couldn't decide. all the h names seemed to go by the wayside and we were down to alexander and lennox. 

when he was born, everything happened so fast, there were people everywhere and we just didn't get time to talk about it or really decide. so the next day we sat down, looked at him, talked about it more... and he just wasn't a lennox. we both associated that name with much darker features and it just didn't seem right. alex seems like a red head name to me and it just worked. so alex it was. this time around was for sure the hardest to pick the name, but he suits it and we love it. and him. he is simply the best and we are obsessed ♥

baby alexander: one month old

look at this little chunkster! he was one month old two days ago, but with our trip to rottnest and sam leaving i haven't had a chance to get to this post, so here we are...

baby alexander has just fitted perfectly into our family. he is warm and cuddly and oh so cute. i am in love, the kids are in love, doug is great with him and it's been so easy to have him join our family. we are all just a little bit obsessed.

i have covered everything that happened at the hospital within the first week in previous posts, but here is what has happened since:
- alex had a pucker mark at the bottom of his spine, kind of like a dimple, which the hospital decided to check just to be sure. they did an ultrasound and it all came back a-ok. so okay in fact, that he was so relaxed and cozy that he fell asleep and the ultrasound tech asked us if she could have one of the girls in training come in and look because it was such a perfect still view of a babys spine, as most of them cry and won't stay still. what a good boy!
- in just two weeks, he put on almost 500g. that is phenomenal.
- a few times overnight he has slept for almost 5 hours. keep it up kid!
- he has already begun to turn his head when he hears voices he knows
- miss madeline loooooves to carry him about and show him off. a few of the mums at school have been horrified thinking she had a doll and then realised it was actually a baby!
- he just loooooves his food. just before a month old, he ate 6 times (like proper feeds, not just a little suck) between 4-9am. what a guts, no wonder he's putting on so much weight!

baby alex, you are so beautiful and we are so happy to have you in our lives! ♥

a trip to rottnest

sam swears that her main draw card to want to visit perth was to see a quokka. i distinctly remember when she told me she was obsessed with quokkas and seeing one and i responded with, "what? they are eveywhere at rottnest. but i have lived in perth more or less my entire life and have never been there." and then it was decided. we would go to rottnest!

issue: new born baby. cannot swim, or cycle with said baby.

resolution: bus tour. no swimming, no cycling - this time around. another rottnest trip will need to be made at some stage in the future. 

so. we booked our rottnest day, for sam's last full day in perth. i practiced tying the baby carrier, got a big hat and lots of suncream ready - and prayed that alex would make it through a long day without any major issues.

murphys law. things with a newborn will never go smoothly. we are literally about to walk out of the house and alex hurls all over the place. we drive as fast as is legally possible, but we can see there is no way we will make our ferry. i called them on the way there and it was no issue at all, we were just moved to the next ferry. easy! so we had a poke around in fremantle for a few minutes, bought some vanilla slice (i don't know what the hell this girl has been up to on previous visits to australia, but seriously, what the hell kind of person hasn't tried vanilla slice?!) visited elizabeths bookstore (best bookstore ever!) and then headed on down to the ferry terminal. right on time. day is back on track. 

by the way. how cute are the cranes at the port. i love that they look like dinosaurs.

i actually loved the ferry ride across to rottnest. a quick half hour ride... alex got comfortable in his carrier and went off to sleep straight away. i took that as a good sign that the day was going to go well.

and it did! what a beautiful place we have right on our doorstep! this is the view from the top point on the island where the cannons were set up. there is a tour of the tunnels that was included in our day long bus tour, but alex woke up right as it began, so feed number one for the day was at the top, as the rest of our group went exploring. 

i would absolutely recommend the tour we did. our bus drove around the entire island and our (very knowledgeable) tour guide told us everything cool there was to know about the island and even answered all the random questions people (including myself) had about other things we passed.

including the little rottnest island cemetery, which of course, i had questions about. fun fact: you can no longer be buried there, which i expected.

there was amazing, perfect beaches all the way around and i was just blown away by the beauty of it all. i absolutely want to go back and i can now see why everyone raves about it.

i mean, seriously. look at the views. 

and the colour of the water

it's all so pretty!

the lighthouse was gorgeous too, i will absolutely be climbing that next time.

we had such a good day. little alex slept the day away, only waking up one other time (he had another feed and went straight back to sleep) until we were just about back at fremantle. the day certainly got better, what an angel child!

and sam got to see her precious quokkas, so the day was absolutely worth it

unfortunately they weren't playing as nice as instagram claims they should be, but she did get a few pics with them and a lot of them.

they are super adorable. it certainly is tempting to scoop one up and sneak them home

our last pic before jumping on the ferry to go back home (in which you can see baby alex neatly tucked away and snoozing in)... what an incredible day it was! thanks for coming all the way to perth to drag me to rottnest sam. it was totally worth it! ♥