Gosh, I have a lot of catching up to do! And I promised a long catch-up post, so here it is :) ~ with pictures!
My lack of blogging lately has been due to much sleep deprivation, some of my own doing and some of my son Daniel's doing! You see, Daniel owned a dummy (pacifier for those overseas) early on in his life that he loved so much, he could not bear to part with it! All my effort's to introduce a friend like Thomas' Teddy were futile. All Daniel wanted for sleep was this particular dummy. Which was perfectly fine with me until the dummy started to look a little worse for wear! We tried taking it from him and even replaced it with dummies that we flattened ourselves, but he knew the difference and would just throw the "fakes" at us! Eventually, I'm ashamed to say, the dummy looked like this...
I know, I know absolutely disgusting! It had tears in it so apart from it being a hygiene issue it also became a safety issue. We simply had to take it off him and we did. Thus began many nights (and days) of no sleep! It's amazing how attached he was to that bit of worn out rubber! Now Daniel has learnt to climb out of his cot so the sleep deprivation continues...but at least that dummy is history!
What else have I been up to? A few weeks back I decided to go on a massive shopping trip...not to buy gifts for others but to spoil myself. Obviously I am not a natural shopper, because I came home with only a few things and none of them were clothes for me :( I just find it so difficult buying for myself!
I did buy the Underbelly Uncut DVD collection (see below). I missed most of the series that had everyone (except Victorians) enthralled, but I wanted to see it because for years I have been reading about the real life events of the Melbourne gangland wars in newspapers. Intriguing. I should read the book...I think it's called Leadbelly...
I was in the mood to read after exploring a few online bookstores (more about that some other time). I walked into borders and Monica McInerney's novel, "Those Faraday Girls" caught my eye. I've still only had time to read less than a quarter of it but I'm loving it! The characters remind me of those in Little Women although the book obviously has a modern twist to it. I've already cried whilst reading it (but I am a sook).
Another thing I bought was a pearl necklace (I'm wearing it in the pic below). My sister celebrated her 30th birthday with a big party at my parent's house (the night before they were due to fly back from a 6 week overseas trip)!! It was an excellent night...she hired a DJ, bar and bartender, had decorations and food all organised and everyone had a great night! Lots of laughs! That's Rocky below - a friend who ended up a little worse for wear by the end of the night! LOL you're great entertainment Rocky (and you managed to make it onto my blog after knowing me for less than a month - pretty impressive! Sorry Robert, I had no photos with you, otherwise I would have given you a spot too!)
My husband and I left the boys at my in-laws for the night so we were able to enjoy a few cocktails (me) and beers (him). Just a few...
Here I am with my baby sister, now aged 30!! I am getting old! But hey, we both managed to keep up with the 18 year olds at the party so we must be doing okay :)
And here is my sister's cake, made on request by my sister in-law Barbara! She's becoming a very clever cake maker! Some of you may recall that she has previously made Thomas' 1st and 2nd birthday cakes along with Daniel's 1st birthday cake. 
And a party wouldn't be complete without one of my guestbooks ha ha! So here is the one I made for my sister...
A bit hard to really see the true colours...maybe it will look better on my website, if I ever get around to updating it!In between all this, I was also madly making invitations for my niece Alessia's upcoming Christening. Again, a bit hard to capture what they really look like in a photo, but here they are... the back of the invites featured the details but I just couldn't get a good photo of the back!
I also worked on a few other projects and have a few just starting but I'll leave them for another time!As I mentioned earlier, my parents got back from an overseas trip the night after my sister's big party so it was a big weekend and we were all exhausted by the end of it! Here are my two little munchkins - they climbed into Alessia's portable playpen/cot! Not the first time...but luckily Alessia wasn't in there! Last time, Daniel crawled across her to get a teddy bear (as you do)!
And finally, here's the gorgeous little lady herself! At first she wouldn't oblige and give us photos for the invitations, but once she found her inner supermodel, there was no stopping her :) Those cheeks are just tooooooo cute!
So much more I could blog about, but I have bored you enough I'm sure! I feel guilty when I don't blog for ages! Oh, just some other exciting news...my class is just starting up a blog of their own and eventually the students will all have blogs of their own. Many schools are getting into blogging! Woo hoo! So for all those family members that laughed at me when I started a blog, it's becoming more mainstream than you might have thought...
Above are the winning Trivia team, "Fig Jam" and below our overall Trivia Winner (Josephine) and picture below that features our winner and runner-up (Francene).
