fun in the sun

after my last post, would you believe it, the kids have been swimming three days in a row. alex's first swim in the pool at our friends house, then swimming at my favourite cousins house yesterday... we don't get to catch up all that often, but i love it when we do. her kids are just so kind and play around with my littles, keeping them happy while we catch up on everything we've missed. it was a great day.

and then today... we spent a couple of hours in the scorching heat (it was really hot today) at the ellenbrook water park with mel and her girls. we are so lucky to have such amazing parks, especially this one locally. we have spent so many days here since we moved here and even plan to have joseph's birthday party here this year. it is the best!

even this pale skinned mum is cheering hooray for summer this week, cause they are having the time of their lives! 

alex's first swim

it's no secret to anyone who knows me that i avoid the beach. so everyone assumes i hate water. not so. not at all. i actually really like swimming. i love the feeling of being in the water, after the initial "getting in" bit. my issue is the sun! i can put on suncream 5 times over a few hours and still end up burnt. it's just my insanely white skin which you can see above. i seriously get a headache 10 minutes after going in the sun too... and i just can't explain it. the most annoying bit, is that the kids seem to have inherited dougs genes. they both get red after a while in the sun, but then go to a nice tan the next day. maddie even has a little bather tan, lucky devil!

sometimes i brave the sun - and today was one of those occasions, so baby could have his first swim. oh did he love it! he was splashing about, moving around and loving every second. i'll have to take him in the water more often.

my happy little water baby ♥

"australia" day lunch

i am the only aussie in the kendall crew. (and very often amongst my friends... i am surrounded by kiwis!) my kids are half and half, my in-laws are one kiwi, one samoan... and every year when australia day rolls around, they make fun of me when i want to celebrate. but i don't care. i will do it anyway.

this year i said we were having australia day lunch and invited them over for a bbq. keryn (my in-laws next door neighbour - also a flipping kiwi) came too. these are the faces i got when i told them to smile and say "happy australia day!" hahaha. steve did that face on purpose just to ruin my picture, maddie smiled and doug muttered something about how our government doesn't want him because his citizenship application hasn't been approved yet. sigh. 

but that's my life. surrounded by new zealanders and very happy to be:

the token aussie.

i love this country and i feel lucky every, single, day, to be here and be blessed with all i have. ♥

western power in the country

i have spies... everywhere! a friend of mine sent me these sneaky snaps today of the western power boys working out in the country town of york. unfortunately doug isn't actually in the shot, but it is so good that i wanted to share it anyway! the awesome bright colours (just looking at it makes me feel hot...) and their set up is really cool to look at. 

my husband is amazing, working hard to provide for us, rain, hail or shine!

a holiday at nannas

we went to nanna's for a holiday at the end of last week. it was all getting a bit much for me with these three and i needed some time out, so up to nannas we went. not before i got this absolute pearler of a picture, with madeline telling me just how hard it was to have three kids. oh girrrrrrl. if only you knew. but it did crack me up. (look carefully and you'll see her third "baby" in the pram. i was super impressed that she got an umbrella to shade the sun off of alex too! good girl.

we went into toodyay for a look at the opshop and the quickest play ever at the park on saturday morning

but it was hot as and there isn't much to do out in the country. my clever mum had suggested i bring the little pool with us, that was an absolute life saver. the kids played with it for hours 

- and set up in the carport, it was even in the shade!

alex got to have a snooze, i got another adult to talk to, wins all round!

and baby alex got to sleep the night in a washing basket. cause why not?! this baby is just too cute. ♥

maddie at wa ballet

the incredible pinker family got madeline the most amazing christmas gift, a ticket to a day workshop at the west australian ballet, which she waited very impatiently for and finally got to use today. i had to stay home with the boys, but aunty dom was all over it and sent me plenty of pics of our little ballerina having the time of her life!

i love seeing pictures of madeline dancing, she is so madly in love with it and listens and watches so carefully to make sure she does it just right. i really hope she always loves it this much! especially seeing as she will be doing three dance classes a week in just a few weeks!

look at her go!

and i am super proud of her perfect posture here!

here she is with the guy who taught their workshop. she had the "best day ever!" and wanted to go back again tomorrow haha.

go girl. shoot for the moon! we are so proud of you and your dancing

and we are so grateful to the pinkers. who knows, maybe one day she will be dancing at uncle taui's work... the west australian ballet! ♥

aquaman

we managed to sneak in a date night on friday night. after getting dougs mum to come and watch the kids, we went off to see aquaman at the local cinemas. baby alex enjoyed his third time at the cinema on daddys lap... he obviously has no problems with his hearing as he jumped multiple times during explosions and loud scenes. it was cute as, but i did feel sorry for his little ears cause there was a lot of them!

so, the movie? it was good. not great, but good. lots of good one liners and amazing graphics. basically it was a superhero movie. some of them are amazing... some aren't as amazing. saying that, i did enjoy it and i'm glad we went.

the highlight came afterwards, when we stopped it at the new diner, (made to look old fashioned, like 1950s style, on great northern highway,) joey's diner. it's just inside the swan valley sports club and it's amazing. super friendly staff, old fashioned diner food and a cute outdoor area. we loved it so much and will definitely be back... a great end to a great night!

baby alexander: three months old

look at this cutie! he is seriously the best thing ever! i am so glad we had a baby, he is cuddly, chunky and oh so adorable. he is 3 months today and he has slotted into our family so well. madeline and joseph are besotted and so proud to show him off to anyone that will look and listen. it's so cute.

over the last month he has been gurgling away and "chatting" back to us when we talk to him, now that he's awake for much longer periods of time. he's always happy and smiling to see us before he cries for his food, but you do not want to keep him waiting, he gets haaaaangry!

at around 9 weeks he started rewarding people for smiling at him with some big smiles of his own... and at 10 weeks he srtarted sleeping for 7-8 hours at a time. i am one heck of a happy mum!

he has also started to follow people around the room with his eyes and spent a few minutes looking for nanna with a very put out look on his face when i was speaking to her with the phone on speaker. it was so adorable, he loves his nanna already!

baby alex, you are so so loved!

back to young women’s we go...

there i was, thinking i was home and free without a church calling, when the lord decided otherwise... and just before new years, i was set apart as the second counselor in young womens. oh my word. i've never tried to hide the fact that i am not good at all with teenage girls and struggled the last time i was in young womens (as the president i might add!) so i'm a bit nervous about this time around too!

upside is that i get to serve alongside one of my best friends - and another good friend, so i should be able to stumble my way through it! i really hope i can be some influence for good on the girls.

tonight we had youth temple baptisms and i got to (finally) have my turn as the towel angel (handing the towels to the youth as they come out of the font) which i loved. i love seeing them dressed in their whites ready to serve, it's amazing. maybe i can do this!

so here's to 2019 and a new start... young womens here i come! 

mary poppins returns

(not pictured, almost 5yo who suddenly hates pictures)

as a little girl, i watched mary poppins over and over. we didn't have a great deal of movies to watch, back in the day when dvds still weren't a thing and hard drives hadn't even been thought of. but someone in our family had recorded mary poppins one night when it had been on television (ads and all) and i wore that video out!

i loved the music, the characters, the nursery, the admiral, the make believe and magic lands... but most of all mary poppins herself. (i've even dressed as her for two seperate halloween parties over the years i love her that much!) as far as i am concerned, julie andrews is the flipping queen of disney! it's a well known fact that she was hand picked by walt disney for the part and when she said she wasn't able to because she was pregnant, he said, "that's okay, we'll wait!" if that doesn't make you the queen of disney, then i don't know what does.

imagine my excitement when they released the teaser trailer and then trailer for mary poppins returns! i was hanging out to see it, and exactly a week after it was released, my mum took the kids and i to go and see it. so. flipping. happy! i loved every minute. emily blunt was perfection. her mannerisms, her singing, her accent (of course)... she was just ideal for the part. i'm just so glad she got to do it, because history repeated and she was pregnant when they chose her too!

*When Mary Poppins (1964) was being written, the lead role was offered to Julie Andrews by Walt Disney himself. Andrews told Disney that she was pregnant and couldn't do the movie. Disney wanted Andrews so much that he postponed the production in order to accommodate Andrews' pregnancy. When this movie was announced, the history repeated as Emily Blunt was also pregnant and the movie was postponed to accommodate her pregnancy.

i love to read the movie trivia for pretty much everything i watch, so i read on... only to have my idea of julie andrews being the queen of disney, cemented in place. she is so gracious!

*Julie Andrews turned down a proposed cameo appearance as the balloon lady, fearing that it would be too distracting. Julie said, "this is Emily's show, and I really want it to be Emily's show." Quite poetically, the balloon lady part went to Angela Lansbury, who had been considered for the role of 'Mary Poppins' in the original film before Julie Andrews was cast.

i also loooove this trivia. i loved bert so much in the original and it makes me insanely happy to know that dick van dyke has still got it at 93 years old!

*Dick Van Dyke was offered four options for his dance scene, each with a varying degree of difficulty. He insisted on performing the hardest dance routine and refused any help from fellow cast members while filming the scene.

i can't tell you just how much i loved the movie. i had read mixed reviews about the movie before going with the two major points being 1) that it's too long for children (not true, i have a 7 and almost 5yo and they were fine, other than fighting over who got to hold their baby brother for half of the movie) and 2) that it's a terrible remake. um, what? it's not a remake... i think it's important you remember it's a new chapter and in no way a remake of the original. it's so worth seeing and i enjoyed every minute. 

disney, you've done it again, walt would have loved it! ♥

(trivia points from imdb.com)

goodbye to the parsons crew!

this morning some of our very favourite people in the whole world drove out of perth for the last time. it's hard to believe they were only here for two thirds of the last year, as it feels like we've known the parsons family forever.

sometimes there are people you meet and you just click with - and you know you'll always be friends. it's easy, you don't have to try - and the jokes and the laughter and the friendship just flows. it was like that for us from day one. yet, our time was limited - and off they go, back to the eastern states, where work is calling.

our kids flow in age, from 8 - 7 6 5 4 and got along 90% of the time during play date after play date... some planned, most not. then when baby alex arrived, as a very welcome addition to the kid crew (on alice's birthday i might add!!) there was much oohing and ahhing from the kids as well as fights over who got to hold him next haha.

thank goodness we finally got a good photo of the kids together, after all this time. how cute is it?!

we have loved every minute with you, and although it's not goodbye, just see you later - we miss you already. ♥

new year, same me... trying to be better

we rang in the new year with the parsons family, at about 9pm, (before they went home and we threw our kids in bed...) with sparklers in the front yard. oh the life of a parent with young kids!

so. i know we are all supposed to say wonderful things we are going to do whenever there is a new year... but as i said a few years ago, new years resolutions (in my opinion) are stupid - we need to make new years commitments, if we are going to change our lives and ourselves.

so without further ado, these are the things i would like to achieve in 2019

personal
-daily prayer and scripture study for myself
- attend the temple once a month
-get (and keep) blog up to date
- lose at least 10kg 

family
-daily prayer and scripture study
-study come follow me program throughout the year
-create a budget to allow for savings... so we can:
- build up savings for samoa trip
-new car for doug

wish me luck! ♥