Merry Christmas Message

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X_b330odnA


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSHITvNdGRI


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PipXF7we9II

December

Ella and Raff went flying in a little 4 seater plane. The photos Raff took look great, but I'm not sure about a tiny little plane for myself. Hey, and they have ripped out the trees that spell PARAFIELD. Buggers.

We visited Father Christmas at Myer and had the girls photo taken. They were both very happy to sit on his lap, thank goodness, as after lining up for an hour and a half we were all pretty frayed.

I really just wanted to throw up a whole heap of photos. My brain is fried tonight. We went to the Gawler Pool this morning (37 degrees here today....) and that totally wore me out.

Ella on the noisy plane


Mall's balls


Sand sculpture in Rundle Mall


Ella gesturing rudely at her kindy concert


Father Christmas

Baby # 3

So we had sat on this news for 7 long weeks, with me feeling like crap and Raff feeling like some kind of stud, no doubt.
I did the pregnancy test on a Wednesday afternoon - Charlotte was asleep and Ella was at kindy - I then proceeded to walk around in a daze for a couple of hours. Alternating between extreme happiness and mini panic attacks. My overwhelming thought was of the labour and delivery, yet I had totally forgotten about the first trimester....nausea, tiredness, food aversion, dizziness, vagueness, exhaustion, bloating, hunger, frustration and sleepiness.

My iron levels were already below normal at the beginning of the pregnancy, so straight onto iron supplements for me. Yay.

On the Monday night before mum and dad came home I had a chat to Ella about having another baby. We talked on and off in general terms and then just as I was about to leave the room she asked 'How do you know that a baby is in your tummy? Do you have to wait for it to start kicking you?' So I touched briefly on pregnancy tests etc.

Come 6:30am Tuesday morning, a little voice next to my pillow says 'Mum, you should come and do one of those wee tests' So I did. I gave Ella strict instructions not to look at the test until the timer beeped, and made sure that she understood that 2 pink lines meant 'baby!' and left her to it. She was sooooo rapt to be able to come and tell me that I had a baby in my tummy. ("I reeeaaalllly want a brother, but I know that you don't get to choose and if it is a sister then I will love her so, so much. But I reeeaallly want a brother....")

So that's it. A new baby for us due sometime around the end of June next year.
How exciting!

Official photo

Thought I would add in the official photo that we had done. A bit blurry probably as I just scanned it.

Concert Day

We made it through our first ballet concert.
Ella was a real trooper about it. It has been a pretty full on month, with a photo session one Saturday, a rehearsal the next Saturday, a full dress rehearsal the following Wednesday night and then two concerts today.

We have had fun and made some great friends with a handful of the ballet mums.
Today Raff and I took Ryan, Bethany and Hannah up to Tanunda to watch Ella in the 2pm concert. Rachel stayed home with the babies. We then came back to Gawler, met at Fasta Pasta for dinner and then Ella and I were back in Tanunda by 6:30.

The concert was very well done, quite professional. The pumpkins were hilarious. Considering that Ella admitted quite openly that she was very nervous, I think she did a great job. There was an awful lot of waiting around to do also.

I didn't watch the evening concert as I was backstage being a 'dresser' to a lot of the other pumpkins. I mastered a real ballet bun, fringe and all - finally. And I got all the sequins finished in plenty of time.

Thanks to Rachel lending me her camera, I managed to get quite a few photos of Ella tonight. One of the other mums insisted on re-doing her make-up, as my effort was 'too light'.......

And a close up of my perfect sequins!!

As we didn't leave Tanunda until 8:30 it was dark by the time we got back in to Gawler, so Ella and I drove around looking at all the Christmas lights. It was gorgeous. She was just so blown away by the beauty of it all. It was a lovely end to a hectic month, her all snugged up in her flannelette pyjamas watching the glorious displays that people put all that effort into. Followed by a 'Thankyou sooo much for showing me these lights, Mum. They make me think about Baby Jesus'