Attack of the Nerfs

Cheekus Weekus got $20 for his birthday from fabulous Auntie S.

Footy cards? "Sold out" said two newsagents, "end of the season".

Lollies? "No." said I, "not birthday money and not twenty dollars' worth". This sparked some very impressive sulking and sooking, if Princess had been quicker with the camera vid we would be looking at an AFI Award, category Short Fiction.

Quick thinking found the local toy shop still open. While Princess Pea was trying to persuade him to buy Lego knights (armoured horse, two guards and a prisoner in a cart - "because we only have one gaol and we all always want it") he found The Best Toy Ever: a Nerf gun for $19.95. Following "TV is for weekends", "only home-made sweets" and "all kids in bed by 8:30", the "no toys of war" rule has fallen in a sad little heap. It's been confiscated once already after Running Boy could not resist firing a sticky-dart at my bum and later got Cheekus in the face. I'm told this was an accident, Cheekus popped up from a redoubt unexpectedly. The bumshot, however, was not.

Showtime

Yesterday we went to the Royal Melbourne Show even though Running Boy's team was in the Grand Final. He was well rewarded with a draw and re-match next week.

We saw animals - the boys lasted through two rounds of showjumping, enough for Princess Pea to pick up basics such as clear rounds and tight vs long lines. We went on the Crazy Coaster which was terrifying. We looked unsuccessfully for the snake man, the kids hoping for a repeat of last year's "The snake wee'd on Mum!" excitement.

There was a break for dodgem cars where Cheekus Weekus put hours of Top Gear viewing into successful practice. My chiro will be forever grateful. We recovered with a bit of woodchopping championships enlivened by a female competitor nearly losing her dacks, which seemed to slow her pace a bit, and a small boy of perhaps thirteen coming third in the States Juniors ahead of several strapping great seventeen-year-olds.

On to the Animal Nursery; a chook fell asleep in Princess' lap and everyone fretted about a lamb looking for its mum and an ewe looking for its lamb. (They didn't seem to match.) There was a litter of very young piglets with their sleepy mother; there was a gorgeous donkey foal.

It got dark. Foolishly I disclosed the existence of the Showbag Shed, which used to be called the Hall of Manufactures. (Last year, their first Show year, I fobbed them off with one of the carnival-side, limited-choice caravans.) Agonising decisions later it was hometime. "You're the best, Mum!" said Cheekus. "You got me three showbags and you only get cross about once every two weeks!"

Summer roundup

School resumed on Monday. Everyone likes their teachers and (generally) their classmates. Nobody likes the heat. I chucked a wobbly when the predinner squabbling led to fights over a small fan at the dinner table and culminated in Cheekus Weekus knocking the big fan right over. Their collective punishment was - and this shows I am a Bad Mum - to be ordered to go for a swim in the pool instead of using electronic entertainment. To work off my shame I was the first in.

So...this summer we learned to ride a RipStik; raised an unknown number of froglets (one turned up in the pool tonight); found that guinea pigs love to free-range; saw Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jnr yum yum), Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakwel (Running Boy says "OK") & Fantastic Mr Fox (RB says "excellent I really liked it"); hosted a Chaos Dinner and some barbeque-y sorts of things; worked looong hours, as always; bought lots of fabric but did nothing with it; got a second car; started scrap-booking; watched Hoodwinked so many times on DVD we know the lines by heart; went to Rickets Point and caught crabs; went to Philip Island and say giant stingrays; got totally nicked off about the local council closing down the local oval to joggers, dogs and kids for FOUR WEEKS over the holidays for rehabilitation but let the cricket club keep training and playing weekend matches that whole time when it has two other grounds to use, not that I am a bit fixated on this, having three lively kids, oh no;


...did actually bake an orange cake; made up fabulous Base Stations and flying cars and things from Lego because it's more fun than making power miners & stuff according to the directions (though we did a fair bit of that too); were delighted by my baby grand-nieces and celebrated their beautiful mother's birthday; built a new fence; saw baby ducklings being rescued at Daylesford; completed Boot Camp; and took up jogging.

I really did mean to blog about most of these things but I think this is about as far as I will get. And I've lost all the pictures somewhere in the hard drive.

But I can manage to mention a giveaway: go and have a look at Knot Sew Crafty...http://knotsocrafty.typepad.com/knot_sew_crafty/ (and no, I have no idea how to do a link properly so shoosh up.)

Fame

A red-letter day today. First, I noticed I have two comments - thankyou Ladydi and Frogdancer! One of these days I will work out how to respond.

Second, I showed the children this blog. They were fascinated, especially by the bits about themselves. Running Boy says he was not "terrified" about skin cancer. Princess Pea debated several pseudonyms before deciding she was happy with Princess Pea after all. Cheekus Weekus wanted more pictures of himself and his guinea-pig. All wanted to know why there weren;t more photos (answer: becuase I;m still wokrng out how, and half the photos I planned to post seem to have vanished fomr the hard drive.) The CFO, who is not actually a child, objected to my description of NYE before admitting it was accurate.

Finally, I have been puplished on What's That Bug and Cicadamania. Pity I can't type. I'll now go and have a Bex and a lie down to recover from all this glory.

Happy New Year 2010

Not a big night for us - we'd planned to picnic in the King's Domain Gardens then see the family fireworks in town. But the weather was too hot for movement of any kind, so I put together a salady dinner which we finished just before the rain hit. This was about the time we would have been in our possie waiting for the fireworks so we were pretty glad we'd stayed at home. The CFO fell asleep about 10 pm and didn't emerge until dawn 2010, but the kids managed to stay up to see in the New Year (Cheekus Weekus fell asleep 2 nanoseconds past midnight and had to be carried to bed; at 11:50 Running Boy announced that he was going to spend "the rest of the year" lying on the sofa and appeared to be trying not to get caught shutting his eyes. Princess Pea was very sensible about the whole thing - at five-to she said she was going to bed because she was tired, but changed her mind when she found out how close it was to the next year.)

The four of us watched the Sydney fireworks on TV - yah boo sucks Channel 9 for not televising anything local - ate chocolates, played Junior Scrabble, squabbled, all the usual.

This year I did a symbolic or token or propitiatory sample of all of the things I hope I will manage to do well, or at least do, in 2010. I cleaned one bathroom; mended a pair of trousers; knitted a bit; tidied up a little; texted friends; drank good champagne; did some situps and pushups; had an idea for a work project; played games with the kids; handfed a guinea pig; put up the Christmas tinsel (again) after it fell down (again); invented a salad; and found a cyclamen, which I thought had been killed when the new fence went up, putting out new leaves. May 2010 allow you to do all the things you hope to do.

GO!!!!!

Running Boy's Medley relay team made the Little Athletics State Championships on time results, by a squeak. He's been very excited for weeks. It was on this afternoon at Olympic Park.

He went to the Crystal Creek aths camp to prepare and came back happy, exhausted and lobster red. I have never had a child peel from sunburn so we were horrified, but eventually accepted his tearful protests that he really had put sunblock on and that the kids weren't allowed outside without sunblock. (We think he must have waved a finger's worth of block at himself first thing in the morning no repeats. He's since been terrified enough with tales of skin cancer that he now seems to be doing the job properly.)

After long delays - the timer was off meaning lots and lots of false starts - he ran his heart out. I was at the final straight and I shouted. My voice is a rasp now. Running Boy was fourth (last) runner up in their heat. He chased them down from fourth to second, he cleared by a metre and was moving up to take the leader. His leg twisted fifteen metres out from the finish! Thank God he didn't fall. They missed the finals by half a second.