mundaring sculpture park with the cousins

our kids have loved having their cousins visit from queensland! we have had a great time together and i have enjoyed every minute of the giggles and fun. we met halfway between our house and mums house today for a play at the mundaring sculpture park, which is truly one of the best parks around! it is amazing, if you have kids and live anywhere about (or even close enough to drive out there) it is totally worth it. i cannot emphasise this enough. there is so much to do and see!

one of our favourite things there is the big lizard in the sandpit which is fun to climb on and dig about  - and apparently take photos on too!

time with family is the best... i only wish these little ones lived closer so we could play all the time.

nanna (my gorgeous mum) with her youngest grandbaby, my little alex ♥

what a great afternoon we all had together!

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i also noticed today that a "little free library" has been added to the park. these are honestly one of my favourite things ever... found all around the world (there are even a few in ellenbrook, including one at my kids school!) they are a small weatherproof cabinet stocked with books, allowing the public to take a book and leave a book. it's so fun! i am always on the look out for them and love it when we find one. what can i say? after all these years i am still a giant book nerd :)

our parsons peeps

“some people come into our lives and quickly go. some stay for a while, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same.” - flavia weedn

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earlier this year, a family appeared in our lives that have become very dear to us. the parsons waltzed in from radelaide like a storm in the middle of summer, appealed perfectly to our whacked out sense of humour and it's been a never ending party ever since.

we love them, our kids love each other - and i remember fondly our first dinner with all of us, that went on until almost 10pm, on a school night, cause we just talked and laughed and talked and laughed and talked and laughed some more. it was the best first family night ever.

but duty calls, as hamish is in the raaf and in less than 2 weeks, they'll be leaving us and taking off across the country for his next posting. time started to run out - and we realised we had never taken a photo with all of us together - or all of our kids together, seeing as we've added another one to the mix.

so today after church we got to work, once of us, a selfie, cause let's be honest, kids can't talk photos to save themselves...clearly i missed the memo, we were all meant to have sunnies on apparently. haha.

and some photos of these nutters. i am so glad that some of them are amazing (not this last one obviously!) so that once they are off on their adventures we can look at them and remember all the fun times we had. i must say though, i am so so grateful for the internet and modern technology. what a blessing it is to not have to miss people so badly, when facebook, media messaging and video calling are so readily available! 

oh you parsons peeps. we are missing you already!

ward christmas party

what a cracker of a ward christmas party we had this year! the bishopric went all out on the fun - and organised a giant inflatable waterslide (which we found out was even big enough for adults when our mate hamish decided to give it a go - so good!), a petting zoo and a food truck that served breakfast burgers, sausages in buns and snow cones. we were set!

it took a while to get joseph on there (he can be so shy and hesitant about things) but once he had a go, you couldn't stop him and the kids were having the time of their lives.

it was a super hot day, so they were glad to be getting wet and slurping down ice afterwards.

baby alex spent most of the morning cuddling with ashley, but was thrilled to have a feed under a nice damp towel when it was super hot. i always feel sorry for babies, they don't seem to heat and cool the same way adults do, but he made it through okay.

emily and i were in fits of laughter when we saw the petting zoo had goats, we have had a long standing joke about goats between our families, so we decided that getting some pics with the goats was an absolute must and we loved every minute of it. seriously, look at our faces - and that was when we had finally calmed down enough to take the photo!

awwww baby goats!

and one more for luck. awww. ♥

we even managed to get doug there - and he even looks like he's having a good time too haha.

when the heat got too much for anyone, the cultural hall had been set up kind of like a cafe, with gift wrapped tables (i wish i had have gotten a picture of that, they covered them with wrapping paper for a tablecloth and put a bow in the middle, with some christmas trees set up too, including a gingerbread tree, which you could of course eat the ornaments off. yummmm. i love gingerbread - and this stuff was delicious!

we had such a fun morning, i love that so many people in our ward make so much effort to make sure that people want to come to activites, because they look cool, they have great food and they are super fun. how lucky are we? 

merry christmas ellenbrook ward!